When To Outsource Your Authority Machine
Creating enough content that will build your authority online and off can be challenging, purely because there's just so much to do.
So, when should you hire copywriters and ghost writers, and when does outsourcing this work actually cause more harm than good?
When to outsource and how to outsource the content creation to build your Authority Machine is a constant topic inside our community in the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
So I want to share with you today what I think works and doesn't work when it comes to outsourcing, and I’ll talk about how you can leverage other people's time to help you build your business faster, and when you really can't - when it really has to be you.
What you can’t outsource
Building an Authority Machine that is going to send you high quality leads every single day so that you no longer have to go out and talk to people and meet them one on one, where you can actually sit back and let those leads come to you, takes an upfront investment.
And one of the things that you're going to be spending that upfront time doing is creating the foundational content that communicates all of your biggest ideas and your most important insights into your industry.
And that's what's going to make you an authority.
This can be one of the most challenging parts - not because it's so much work necessarily, but because it's the hard work, the thoughtful work.
One of my coaches, Taki Moore, likes to say that thinking is one of the hardest things you can do.
That's why so few people do it, and he is not wrong.
When it comes to building authority, the thinking part can be really challenging. It sometimes is brain busting stuff.
Now, that's also the good news. Because if you are somebody who likes to pick ideas apart, and put them back together and share them with others, then that means that you're going to be able to build an Authority Machine based on insights that people need to hear.
And it's going to be powerful.
I love to do this kind of work. I still find it to be very challenging to actually get to the heart of what I think and then communicate it in a way that actually makes sense.
But this is the most important piece of building your authority.
As I shared last week, the first thing that I would do if I was getting ready to build an Authority Machine from scratch would be to do the work to get to know myself and my thoughts.
And unfortunately, that's the part that you can't outsource.
I think a lot of people make this mistake when it comes to their content.
They see all of these amazing companies out there who say ‘You don't have to write a thing, outsource it to us. We'll come up with the ideas for you, we'll write the copy, we'll post it online for you. We'll create social media posts for you, we'll do it all, you don't have to do anything.’
The problem with outsourcing that part of the work is - what are those people writing? They're not you.
So they can't possibly communicate the depth and breadth of knowledge that you have inside your head.
They are going to research online, read what other people have to say, and they're basically going to treat it like a college essay - ‘let me aggregate all this information and then just kind of regurgitate it in a way that feels like it's on brand for you.’
That's fine, that can get you somewhere. But it will never tap into the special thing that you have to offer.
And that's why, in the beginning, even though it can be challenging, I encourage and really mandate that when you’re building your Authority Machine, you need to dig in first before you outsource any of the work.
The process of creating content
Ultimately, if you want to be an authority, your authority comes from what is inside your brain. And nobody knows what's in there except you.
And so your job in the beginning is to figure out what you think.
And the benefit of this is not just that your content will be so much more authentic to you - it will be more interesting, and it will force you to do that hard work.
It will force you to articulate things that you know that you aren't even aware of.
I have found over the years of creating content that when I am forced to explain something that I already know, I inherently learn it on a different level.
Inside the No BS agency Mastery Program, I talk a lot about specifics.
Specifics on how to have a call with somebody, so that it’s not salesy but still makes the sale.
Specifics on how to run a Lead Product interview so that clients see you as that expert advisor, and trust you so much that they'll pay whatever you ask to execute the project for them.
Specifics on how to write an elite product brief, that also gets those kinds of results.
Specifics on how to run an intensive so that it's seamless, so that when clients come in at the very beginning, you know that they’re going to love everything you show them, with little to no feedback.
All of these specifics are skills and processes that I did naturally, over time, over the years. But when it came to explaining how to do it, that was a completely different process.
I knew how to do it, because I had been doing it and I had been evolving the process. But I didn't know all the steps exactly.
And I didn't know exactly why I was doing all the steps until I had to explain it to other people.
For example, when I was putting together all of the lessons and the specific detailed explanations of every single piece of the intensives process for my mastery students, that was hard work.
That was brain busting work, because I had to dissect this entire system of processes that I had just been naturally doing over time.
And I had to understand why I was doing all those different steps.
But as I did that hard work, all sorts of epiphanies came to me about why each piece of the process worked so well.
And then I realised how many things I wasn't doing intentionally, but had dramatic effects on the outcome.
So the process of having to articulate why each piece was being done, why I think this is more important than that, made me way more expert on the process of doing intensives than I could have been before I had to explain it.
So if we take that back to building your Authority Machine and doing that initial content deep dive and figuring out what you think, you will find that the act of having to figure it all out and then articulate it in a video or in an article is not only going to make your content more effective, but it's also the work that's actually going to make you more of an authority.
You will build your expertise and skills by forcing yourself to explain what you already think.
So in addition to the tremendous value that you can build by creating content online, so that people can understand and get to know you and your thoughts, what’s possibly even more valuable is the process of creating that content, because it builds your skills and your knowledge to a completely different level.
That is the part that cannot be outsourced.
But once you do that work, everything after can be. That's what I teach my students inside No BS Agency Mastery.
I show them how there's this first piece of it that only you can do, because you cannot build authority on somebody else's research and regurgitation.
It has to be built on what you know.
But as soon as you do that work, we have this process, that's basically a series of questions that forces you to challenge your own thoughts and ideas and guides you to finding out these deep, interesting insights and has you communicate them in a way that will make you more powerful.
Once you do that process, you can have somebody else polish that off into a piece of content - edit that video, take that article, that podcast, whatever it is, and turn it into a marketing machine for you.
And you don't have to do any of that.
So when it comes to hiring a copywriter or a ghostwriter or content creator, this is what I recommend.
Never outsource the ideation piece of it - that is the most important part and only you can do it.
They'll offer to do it, but don't accept.
I used to use a company that would do a lot of ghost writing for me, but I never asked them to write an article.
I would brain dump all of these ideas and then I would send it to them and they would turn it into an article.
Another thing that is going to make your content really unique and authentic to you is sharing your own stories.
A story is a great way to bring an idea to life. Every story or metaphor where you bring in an explanation of something is going to be more memorable than just the teaching of it.
In this part of the content-creation process, I would answer the questions that I have and I would explain what I want to and the points I want to make.
Then I would add a story that exemplifies this idea.
In the beginning, answering those questions and finding those stories can be a little more challenging, but the more you do this, the easier it is to access them.
In fact, sometimes I'll recommend that you start with a story and then back out of it to figure out what the lesson is, because every story has a lesson.
Every client you've ever worked with - everything that went well, everything that didn't go well, all the hiccups along the way - can be used to describe any piece of any process or even your own process of building a brand or a website.
You could take any little anecdote, explain that story, and then find a lesson or something that is going to be valuable for other people in that anecdote.
This just takes practice.
Build your Authority Machine quickly
The act of doing that, as challenging as it may be for your brain sometimes, can actually happen in a very short amount of time.
And then the process of taking that information and actually turning it into a publishable article can sometimes take a lot of time, and that's not necessarily a great place to spend your time.
You can't outsource the core ideas, the insights or the point of view. And you can't outsource the stories.
But really, you can outsource everything else. And indeed, to build a powerful Authority Machine relatively quickly, that is the best method.
Create a system and a process where you are brain dumping your best ideas and you're digging into them.
You're figuring out all these nuances about what you think and sharing your point of view and sharing your experiences and your stories, and then let somebody else do everything else.
That's what we teach inside the Authority Machine portion of No BS Agency Mastery.
And of course, I'm trying to fit what I can in this one article.
But if this is a conversation you'd like to dig into more deeply, and if you feel like you would love to be around a group of people who are doing similar work, because they're looking to build deep authority and high level expertise, and if you want to do that with me as your support and all of the resources that I have, that will guide you there in a much more efficient fashion, and if you're ready to make $30-$50k/month in your branding agency, then you can go to nobsagencies.com/apply.
You can apply risk free to grab a call with my team, and they can walk you through what that might look like and make sure that this is a right fit for you.
Like Taki said, thinking is hard. That's why so few people do it.
Well guess what? Building a really profitable business that gives you freedom is really hard. That's why so few people do it.
But it's a lot easier when you have a roadmap, support, and a community around you to make sure that you don't fall off the wagon, and you stay consistent.
And it's much more doable than you think.
So that just about wraps up my four-part series on building authority.
Of course, I will continue to talk about it in the future, but I hope that gives you a great handle on what it looks like to build authority online, and when you should and shouldn't invest your time and energy in doing it.
One thing I will say - it's challenging, but it's so worth it, not just for the benefits that it brings to your business, but for the benefits it brings to yourself.
It is truly a personal growth ‘gym’ to build authority, because it’s about you and your ideas and sharing them with the world.
So many things come up when you do that - so many opportunities to grow and learn.
And by the way, all of this work is also going to make you so much more effective when you are talking to clients and prospects.
Every time I write an article that uncovers some idea or point of view that I have, it just becomes another tool in my arsenal. And these are ideas that I bust out on podcasts, or in conversation with prospects or referral partners or on stages when I'm putting together a speech.
I am building this arsenal of ideas that can then be pulled out and used anytime.
And so that's the hard work that has long lasting results.
Here’s what you need to get…
Outsource everything in your Authority Machine except ideation.
Take the time to do the hard, brain busting work of questioning your ideas, getting to the root of why you do what you do or think what you think, and lay it all out for some to make into an article, a video, a podcast.
If you do the heavy lifting first, you’ll be able to let the machine do the rest for months and years to come.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your Authority Machine, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!