Early in my business, I joined a mastermind group focused on refining our message, methodology, and marketing to grow our impact.
As the year progressed, I grew increasingly skeptical of what we were being encouraged to implement.
Messaging? Check.
Methodology? Check.
Social media to grow our audience? … hesitant.
Sales pages, launch emails, launch calendars? … big red flag.
At the time, I was building a Fractional COO/consulting service. I wasn’t selling services from a sales page, or through launch emails, or enrolling groups on a cohort timeline. And I definitely wasn’t finding clients on Instagram, and not even LinkedIn.
I looked around the room and realized: most of us weren’t (or shouldn’t be).
Nearly everyone in that group was selling 1:1 services to a small audience. But the person leading us was selling self-paced courses to a large audience and teaching us how to do the same thing. The business models didn’t match, and the marketing strategies for those models are totally different based on my experience as a consultant.
And I hadn't seen anyone talking about that.
No one in the room was asking: Do these strategies even fit the kind of business I'm building?
So I started asking.
After two months of research, reflection, and drafts, I published a piece:
What’s Your Business Design?, where I identified three categories and seven archetypes of different expert business models.
It started as a newsletter article and blog post.
I got it republished by Every.
I asked Josh Spector to feature it in his newsletter.
I was honored to turn it into a workshop inside The Interweb, Amelia Hruby's amazing community.
The model became what I talked about on podcasts, a YouTube video, and now, an expanded chapter in my book (which we'll cover in August!)
I’ve been wrestling with this concept for three years now—adjusting the models, asking and answering questions about the framework, and finding the language to make it useful to others. It’s evolved over time as I have evolved.
And people responded.
One of my Define Your Foundations clients found me because a newsletter subscriber forwarded the post.
“I’m a ‘Company of One’ and intend to stay that way… I came to you because I read your post on business models and knew you got it.”
She’s since joined other programs—and referred at least five more people to my work.
Another client found me through Josh’s newsletter share. We worked together for four months.
Some of you found me via The Interweb.
All in all, I can directly trace over $8,000 in revenue to that one piece.
But that’s not why I wrote it.
I didn’t write it to get views or to directly get clients. I wrote it because I was curious and I needed to articulate my point of view.
And, most importantly, I wrote it in a way that could live beyond the inbox or feed.
The piece could be opened later, shared with colleagues, or found at a later date. It became an asset that could showcase my approach and philosophy without a conversation or endless content.
This is how authority building works.
Not click-bait content, not a perfect framework, not a “signature offer” built from someone else’s playbook.
But a body of work built over time, driven by curiosity and conversations.
Ideas that deepen as you return to them.
Frameworks, language, and approaches that guide your offers.
Content that helps the right people find you and know you’re the right fit.
That’s the loop I’ve been building—and teaching—inside my business.
And now, I’m teaching the approach I've been using live.
The Authority Loop Workshop is a 90-minute live session for anyone who is stuck trying to define their ideas, shape a clear offer, or make their content actually lead somewhere.
It’s for people who want a practical path to start their authority-building momentum through action.
The session will be live on August 6, but recorded if you can't make it live.
Next week, hear about how my best metaphors arose from my clients, not the other way around.