When you become the Trusted Authority in your field, it means that you have reached a level of success that eludes most people. Sadly, this level of success is attainable by anyone, but it takes a particularly developed sort of person to actually achieve it. When you do achieve status as the Trusted Authority, you’ll find that it plays into your success in every way. Understanding how it does play into your success will give you ample reason to apply yourself to pursuing it.
Credibility
The number one advantage that the Trusted Authority has over the competition is their credibility. When people deal with the authority in any given field, they know they are dealing with someone who is very competent regarding what is being discussed and that, without even having to claim as much, the person is always speaking from a position of authority. This allows the individuals that interact with the Trusted Authority to have confidence in what they are being told and in what they are being sold.
Serving Others
The Trusted Authority avoids becoming a commodity by being something truly unique in the marketplace: someone who is more worried about their customers than they are about themselves. When someone is dealing with the an authority, they know that they’re going to be treated right and that their needs are going to be taken seriously. For an individual that achieves the status of the Trusted Authority, there is no doubt that they have learned to put the needs of others before themselves and that they have made every part of their business and exercise and learning better ways to serve their clients. This is part of building trust. You can hire all of the marketing experts in the world but none of them will succeed in positioning you as the Trusted Authority if you fail to earn that position based on how you treat the people around you.
Competence
In order to become the main go-to-person in your field, you have to be working in a field in which you have very real competence. If you’re faking what you are doing or if you’re not very good at what you’re doing, people will pick up on that right away. In order to be the Trusted Authority, people have to have the sense that you really do know what you’re talking about and that they can trust themselves in trusting you.
Becoming an authority has a path to success that isn’t shared by anybody who doesn’t commit themselves to following their own core competencies and to establishing their authority in their field. Without doing either of these, and entrepreneur simply becomes another member of a very crowded marketplace with nothing special to offer anybody who comes. This is what you want to avoid. If you want to stand out above the crowd, you have to establish to the people that you do business with that you are working in the field to which you are best suited and that you are, indeed, the Trusted Authority upon whom they can rely.
