How to Develop the Authority Philosophy Habit
Note: This chapter is being built in public, one brick at a time — just like we do for clients through the Authority Chapter Plan™. Welcome to Chapter Five. Read the entire Authority Philosophy book here.
Our society’s fear of earnestness is what causes all the dysfunction. Professionals live “lives of quiet desperation” same as the masses. How many coaches and consultants there are, preaching to others how to live their best lives, or run their best businesses, that feel betrayed by the rot of their own mundane existences.
Books for Experts was not created to be hip, or cool, or even pleasing. Because the truth is, very few people naturally inhibit these qualities.
The professional w0rld becomes like middle school all over again, with 10% of people being authentically “cool,” and then another 10% actively not trying to fit in, with 80% in the middle doing their best to fit in. But let’s get this out of the way right now: posturing is not the path to authority, and it certainly isn’t a philosophy.
I always told my litigation clients, what I worry about most is the terrain, and using that terrain to our advantage. If we have more resources, then we try to drag the matter out, if we know the judge better, then we use that to our advantage, if we could get a better deal in Federal Court than Superior Court, then we make sure we file to change jurisdiction or venue.
Same thing here: unless you’re in the 10% of naturals, you’re in the 80% of posturers, and the sooner you admit it the more you can become something authentic. Because it is authenticity, not just popularity that sells professional services, and that’s a very good thing indeed. Because who wants to go back to middle school politics?
Still, we live in a culture that reflexively flinches from sincerity, that buries feeling beneath irony, that treats vulnerability like weakness and ambition as “cringe.” That’s why so many worship the performatively detached: the Tike Tok biters, the Twitter cynics, the influencer who ironically cares about something, the LinkedIn “yes men” and “yes women” who post feel good crap that’s as toothless as a seventeen year old Chihuahua.
In many professions we shame those who actually, unironically give a shit. Right now, these paragraphs may make you feel uncomfortable, because I am both writing about the importance of earnestness and in an earnest manner.
But the truth is, you must come to your authority philosophy with the excited earnestness of a Frank Wheeler from the novel Revolutionary Road. Any type of emotional artifice here will ruin the spell that is necessary to infuse your business with a true Authority Philosophy. That’s not to say that your business may not still become known for being hip, or cynical, but only if that is authentic and real. Yes, even the path to earned irony and cynicism carves through the rugged glacier rocks of earnestness.
What Did You Love as a Child?
Let’s focus for a bit now on ancient philosophy, and I don’t mean Socrates or Aristotle.
I’m talking about you, dear reader. What did you enjoy as a child? What did you excel at? Who were you before this big, mad world got its claws into you?
My favorite passion as a child was to write. I wrote short stories as a hobby going back to age six or seven. I won a local fiction writing contest in the third grade, one I discovered at a local library. It was not a school assignment. Being the weird, earnest kid who wrote all the time in my room was what I did. Sure, I also played sports, and attempted to sled over creeks with my buddies, but part of me was always called to writing. The same way perhaps some are called to religion. I do not think it hyperbole to compare the two.
Note that I was not called to arguing, although most writing is a form of argument. I was not compelled to speaking publicly. I was not drawn to logic for logic’s sake, but to emotion. I possess the skills of a lawyer, honed as they have been all these years, but my initial passion was for the written word. The great sadness of this world is that lawyer’s can get paid a far higher salary for their words than fiction writers can, on the average, and so in time I pushed back my writing as a hobby, an avocation, and for sixteen years the law became my career. But true passions are as hard to kill off as milk thistle, and just as thorny.
In time, I could deny my true nature no longer and started Books for Experts, combining my talent and love of writing with my deep knowledge of the law and marketing professional services.
But even that wasn’t enough, I soon discovered. I needed an Authority Philosophy. Something to guide the trajectory not only of my business, but in many ways, my life. This became the spine for not only Books for Experts, but how I assisted others in creating authority assets. This is what separates visionary businesses from mere legal entities. This is what makes you go from dreading another day in the office to building the business of your dreams.
The first step is to remember what you enjoyed as a child, what you did best even when nobody was watching, for yourself: not your classmates, your parents, or what society thought best. From that lens, you can begin to build the rest of your authority philosophy.
What is Your Natural Authority Asset Language
I can fake it through a podcast, a speaking engagement, or an interview, but I’m far from comfortable. I used to get sick to my stomach before every trial, even after more than a decade in practice. Imposter syndrome has followed me like a loyal hound from law school all the way to some of the top posts in my profession and back again.
If you too suffer from imposter syndrome, know that it is really a sign you’re driven by integrity. It’s not a flaw, you just think too hard, care too much, and hold yourself to a standard most people can’t see. Remember that there is room for imposter syndrome in your authority philosophy, but you can’t let it become such a shadow that it renders you unable to follow through with the necessary work. You try to remember there are noble rather than corrosive elements to imposter syndrome, and I will try and do the same. Nevertheless, the imposter syndrome has always engaged in asymmetric warfare. I am afraid to speak in public sometimes because I fear I might mispronounce a word, a common symptom of those who grew up well read in blue collar backgrounds.
I rarely suffer from imposter syndrome when it comes to my writing, because writing is my natural authority asset language. I can spin out metaphors, copy, legal briefs, novels, short stories, and it will all make me feel whole, and satisfied as a great musician jamming with friends.
Put a mic in my face and I want to eat it.
When it comes to networking I love being with a small group, where each of us can stand out and reveal what we’re all about. I hate shaking hands in a large auditorium filled with mostly strangers.
The truth is, to thrive as a top lawyer, coach, consultant, or expert witness, you’re going to need to both speak and write. To network large and small. To sometimes, within the confines of your rules of professional responsibility, even sell outright — perhaps even by making cold or lukewarm sales.
Gasp.
The trick here is to focus on the ratio. I am happiest if 50% of my output goes to writing. Then I can devote 25% to speaking at conferences, seminars I give, CLEs, my own podcast, or being a guest on others. 20% of the time I do outreach, mostly by inviting people into my ecosystem. “Hey, want to provide a comment for my latest book?” “Hi, I wrote a book and I think you would really like it.” Then, the final 5% of the time is the dreaded cold calls, cold letters, and going to large events where I get to feel awkward and pay for the privilege.
Your ratio may be totally different. And this is not an extrovert, introvert thing, because it goes even deeper. Writing gives me energy. My podcast drains it. I enjoy both, but one of them sustains me and the other I survive.
What you excelled at as a child is a clue here, but very few children dream of being a lawyer. It’s more about taking the specific skillset that gives you power, agency, and voice, and setting that aside as where you want to build up your authority assets. And the good news is, if you know you need to do something like write a book but lack the time, talent, or desire, that’s exactly what my business is here to assist with.
If you are looking for a partner, find someone who is your opposite. One of you can write articles and the other can give speeches. Perfect. Or you can co-write articles and co-give seminars, with each learning from the other.
The important thing is being cognizant of your natural authority asset language. Because that will help determine what type of assets you can create or co-create, and what you might need to outsource. If I could pay some actor to go out into public and give my speeches for me, I would consider it (putting integrity aside), but for most of us we will need to run the full gamut of authority assets, it’s more a matter of getting the formula correct rather than isolating anything entirely.
That said, I find social media to be both nauseating and stressful, so I set that aside in glass with a “break in emergency” label and hope I rarely or never get to use it.
But Don't Forget About Your Customers
The old lawyer joke goes “This wouldn’t be such a bad job, were it not for the clients.”
And marketing would be much more fun, if we got to play in the corner of the sandbox we find most comfortable. If I could just sit around all day, writing, I would be in my own, messed up version of heaven.
But we must remember we are doing all this work for a reason: namely, our clients.
Where are your clients, and how can you speak to them effectively? If you’re an expert witness, then you know you better start communicating with lawyers. You need to write articles that make them think, teach CLEs to lawyers, go out and mingle with lawyers in the flesh (so sorry) at bar events. Now, the amount of time you spend on these activities should consider what you enjoy doing, but also what is most effective. Lawyers, for instance, are surprisingly social but insular. They mostly pal around with other lawyers. Meeting with them at bar events is a good start, especially if you enjoy it, but you have to show you are an expert worthy of their time and their clients’ money, and making good small talk over bruschetta is not going to do it.
You need to invest in a book written for lawyers, and articles in law journals and magazines written for lawyers, and you need to sign up for CLE programs and speak directly to lawyers about your specific area of expertise. The formula will come down to what you enjoy and what you can safely outsource, but know that you’re going to have to do it all to thrive.
Everyone these days talks about your ideal customer “avatar,” and I think that makes good sense. Pietro Ferrero, the Italian candy scion who created Roche Ferrero and many other famous chocolates and candies spoke about always baking for just one, hypothetical Italian woman. All his decisions in product and even marketing, came down to whether it spoke to this one avatar.
So certainly use that avatar of your ideal client, because it helps focus what you’re offering and increases your chances of success.
Think not only about your own authority philosophy, but begin to formulate an authority philosophy for your ideal client avatar as well. What exactly are they looking for when they are sniffing out authority? Who exactly do they want to work with.
But remember that you lead, and your avatar must follow. The goal is to understand your own philosophy so well, that you repel the wrong clients and attract the right ones. You are not trying to sell “to lawyers” as an expert, you are trying to sell to divorce lawyers in New Jersey who are litigious but ethical, who have business rather than W-2 clients, who believe that forensic accounting is useful in a divorce case, and who are willing to communicate with you effectively throughout the engagement.
By being more specific, you realize that you do not need to impress 10,000 divorce lawyers in the state, but the 100 who fit your specific profile. And from there, you build the empire.
Makes senses, right? That being said, why are so many professionals operating without an authority philosophy?
Why Is An Authority Philosophy so Rare? Why Do So Many Businesses Operate Without One?
There are many reasons why most professionals will die without a fully integrated authority philosophy, the largest reason being that it is not discussed.
Most CLEs today, or even our underlying educations, focus on the mechanics of a profession, and ignore the soul. Sure, some lip service might be made to customer service, personal wellness, or effective marketing, but you can probably count on one hands the amount of times anyone spoke about philosophy in practice during law school, or medical school, and so on.
Law CLEs either talk about famous dead lawyers, the nuts and bolts of a subject matter, or ethics, as though that term is broad enough to encompass philosophy.
If you’re not trained on authority philosophy, then you can sleepwalk through your career without being fully integrated. Which is what commoditizes the professions and dehumanizes us to clients and even ourselves.
What made you want to be a lawyer, or a consultant, or a nutritionist in the first place? Because that is a damn good place to start when attempting to reintegrate with an authority philosophy.
What do you hope to achieve, and not on a surfacy “do good work for my clients,” scale, but in terms of the philosophical framework that any great business must have.
Steve Jobs wanted his products to be both beautiful and functional. He insisted that form be married to function.
I started Books for Experts to fight marketing sludge, to humanize the professions, and to ensure that all the work produced met our internal Raven Coyote standards of excellence. Especially work for our clients.
It’s not just a mission statement or a marketing gambit, it’s the framework for how we treat prospective clients, current clients, referral sources, staff, even ourselves. The true, pitchfork frequency that carries us through the tough days, the setbacks, and when the sludge marketers attempt to retaliate.
In my many years as a divorce lawyer, my philosophy was “Happily Even After.” I wanted to leave my clients in a better place than how I found them. I wanted to do everything I could to get a fair deal while also considering the next decades, when they would have to coparent with their ex. This philosophy was Kryptonite to the wrong clients, so I needed them to know from the first consult what I was all about. So that they could go to someone with a philosophy they better understood (or even no philosophy at all, if the client also lacked one) rather than waste their time with me, leaving us both dissatisfied in the end.
Most professionals also ignore the philosophy because they lack the time. Coming up with a philosophy on your own is like unzipping your own dress. Sure, it’s possible, but it’s a lot easier with help. Of all the many valuable services we provide at Books for Experts, I can’t think of any with a higher lifelong ROI than our Authority Philosophy sessions, which are offered as one-offs or required of anyone who will be working with us but included in the cost of the authority asset to be created. We can do more in 90 minutes to change the course of a business than would otherwise happen in 90 years without the intervention.
In the next chapter, we will delve more into the specific traits that make up an authority philosophy. To help ensure your business thrives today, tomorrow, and always.