5-Minute Authority With Steven Washer

Igor: Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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Igor Kheifets: In every market, there’s one or several people who are visible
authorities. Today’s show is about that authority, your authority. Why? Because
when you have it, everything is easy. People respond faster to your ideas and
your calls to action. They get better results because they can see for themselves
that whatever worked for you can work for them. You get lower price
resistance, which is always great for business, and it also guarantees your
customers will have a more successful experience with your products because
they’re now more invested in the outcome. My guest today is Steven Washer, the
Founder of Visible Authority. Steven believes you don’t go out there to find or
manufacture your authority. He believes you already have it. You just have to get
out of your own way. Steven is going to help you see and understand how to find
your true authority under years of rubble and rubbish in your head, and to gently
coax it back to the surface, so your customers can experience it for themselves.
Steven, thank you so much for being here today.

Steven Washer: Thanks, Igor. It’s great to be with you.

Igor Kheifets: It’s great to host you because it took us a while to set it up, and
I was really, really excited to get you on the show because like no other, you
understand the subject and the topic of authority, which is so critical to success
in today’s really, really noisy marketplace. So to kick us off, do you mind
explaining what in your opinion authority is, and most importantly, what it is
not?

Steven Washer: Yeah, sure. That’s a great question. I really like to start off by
talking about this because there are really two completely different definitions
of authority, and we ignore one, while we hold divinely to the other. One
definition of authority that everyone understands is coercion. And that is that
you must do this, or you must not do that, or everything that is not forbidden is
required, that kind of thing. And you have people with badges, and uniforms, and
they make you do things, and they pass laws. That’s not the kind of authority
we’re talking about because that sets up one of Newton’s Laws, which is, “That for
every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” People react against that
kind of authority naturally. That’s why policeman don’t make good salesmen. So the
kind of authority that we deal with is inner-authority, and that is a knowing that
each individual human being has that there’s something they were put here to do.
There is a group of people for whom they are ideally suited to help, and there’s a
kind of activity that they’re already expert at that is a perfect match for
someone else’s need. There’s a lot of, as you put it when you were doing your
introduction, there’s a lot of rubble, stubble, and debris that covers that over
for a lot of people because they’re so invested in trying to do good in the world,
and trying to make their way, that they kind of forget the reason that they were
put here in the first place, which may not be immediately apparent to them. It
usually happens in a moment of revelation, a small, little insight that they have
into who they really are, that then they have to nurture and bring out, and have
the trust in themselves that it’s going to be okay. Because there’s nothing in the
world that’s going to tell them that. Everything in the world tells them that the
other kind of authority is what they should be shooting for, making people do what
you want to do. You hear this in copywriting all the time. “Bend people to your
will. Make them flood your site like a tsunami of money, and it’s going to rush
all over you, and you’ve got to make people do what you want them to do,” and NLP,
and all this kind of stuff. I’m here to tell you that none of that is necessary if
you understand who you are at a very deep level, and who you are here to serve.
That’s the inner-authority that I truck in.

Igor Kheifets: All right, well, you’ve literally just described every piece of
copy I’ve ever written.

Steven Washer: That’s okay. Everything works, Igor. Everything works at some
point, at some level.

Igor Kheifets: I know, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that I come from
exactly that sort of background, where I was getting to this industry under the
idea that I was to become that person, who bends people to his will. I even
considered to study hypnotism at some point. I went deep into NLP because the way
it was sold to me, it’s like you can kind of unconsciously influence people to do
what you want them to do, and so on, and so forth. Truth be told, I thought that I
got really good at this stuff because I ended up making a lot of money. But now
that you’re talking about finding your true purpose and being a really good fit
with that group of people that agree with you in every way, shape, and form, that
have this dimensional agreement with you, that makes a lot more sense. Because I’m
only successful in one place, and that is in my tiny, little marketplace.

Steven Washer: And that’s enough.

Igor Kheifets: Yes.

Steven Washer: Because you change peoples’ lives, and you changed your life, and
everybody profits from that.

Igor Kheifets: So, okay. So now that we know what authority is, and we also know
what authority is not, how does one go and find their true unique authority voice
and presence?

Steven Washer: It’s a big topic and it’s why I have this whole company. I think
that, generally speaking, you start with what you’re good at. Everybody can do
that. Often though, we find that the things we’re good at are not the things that
we necessarily enjoy doing. Maybe because we’re not compensated for them very
well, because we work for someone else, and they make all the money. Or, maybe
because we haven’t got results from it, because we just haven’t developed it
enough. But I think that’s a good place to start. There’s a few things that you
can look at here. That’s column A, what am I good at? Column B, what do I enjoy
doing? Column C, what do people tell me I’m good at? It’s not something to
discount at all, because after all, you are looking for a group of people for whom
this is going to resonate. Then the next column is, is there a subset of this
group of people, for whom that thing I already do is hugely important? And that
takes some thought, because those people are always out there, and they always
exist, it’s just a matter of the fact that people don’t really think about that
very much. They think, well, for example in my case, I show people how to make
better videos and be great on camera, and all that stuff, and turn that into a
system. But there are all kinds of people who can use that, but there are only a
certain subset of people who can … Well, let me put it this way. Who will use
that, do you know what I mean? Like there’s a lot of people who would think they
would like to use it, but in the end, they probably won’t because they’re … It’s
not that important to them. It might be important to them in terms of
entertainment, and thinking about it, and fantasizing about it, and imaging how it
might be, but when push comes to shove, they’re going to do something else and
that’s fine.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about, because as of the
moment of us doing this interview, a couple weeks ago launched a new program. It’s
called the Voice That Makes Millions, and I was really excited to launch it
because, so it basically takes [inaudible 00:08:36] deal with people on video, how
you teach people how to be an authority on video. It does the same thing, but only
focuses on the voice alone without the image. So I thought it’s going to be like
great success, right. Like [inaudible 00:08:49] would say. But what I discovered
is that a lot of people who got the program did not go beyond just kind of going
through the first tutorial, even though these are like two minute exercises that
can help them tap into their perfect voice. It seemed like a great idea, it was
comfortable, it was very exciting at some point, but I guess it wasn’t as
important to them as you were just saying. But I want to kind of go back to what
you said about finding out what you’re good at and then finding out if there’s
people for whom it’s important, right. That’s exactly what happened for me. I got
good at email marketing, and I tapped into a market who finds that very important.
That’s exactly how I sort of built myself up into authority in such a narrow
field. There’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. Obviously, we can go deeper,
but for that, there’s your course. If you guys go to visibleauthority.com, you
will find out more information about that. So, but for now, I want to move to the
next question, which talks about this uncomfortableness that I noticed. Whenever I
encourage people to become authorities in something, they often have this barrier,
this mental barrier of saying, “Yeah, but. But I’m not an expert on this. Or, but
I’m not, I don’t have many testimonials. I don’t have lots of proof so I can be an
authority.”

Steven Washer: Yeah. Years ago, I think it was around 2006, I took a course from
the great Sean D’Souza. I don’t know if you know who he is-

Igor Kheifets: Yes, yep.

Steven Washer: He’s a, yes, yes. He’s out of New Zealand. A wonderful human being,
an incredible teacher, and this was something that set the course of my life from
then on. Because I had never thought about it like this before. I had the exact
same question. I wasn’t the only one. He said something that’s always stayed with
me. He said, “To a third grader, a fourth grader is God,” which basically means,
“You don’t have to know everything about everything in your niche in order to be a
leader, in order to be a good example.” In fact, sometimes it’s better that you
don’t know everything about everything because then, you can be more like a leader
who’s in the trenches. Just a couple steps ahead saying, “Oh, go this way. Go this
way.” That really helped me get started with enough confidence, until I got to the
point where I really did know a lot more.”

Igor Kheifets: Yes, there is a lot of truth to what you’re saying. Sure, there are
people out there who are experts at what they do, in terms of like knowing
everything, and usually that means they just made all of the mistakes there is to
make in the-

Steven Washer: Yes, exactly. Yes, right. So if you’re starting that way, if you
haven’t made all the mistakes yet, you really don’t know what you don’t know. You
haven’t been beaten up yet, and so you have a lot more confidence than you
probably should, which is great because otherwise, you’d probably never get
started, right.

Igor Kheifets: Exactly, exactly. For me, this journey … I know I’m pulling sort
of the cover, right, as they [inaudible 00:11:56], but like these are only the
examples that I can think of at this point. For me, I started with the email
marketing because that’s what I was excelling at more than other people. My first,
one of my first projects online was to charge someone $70 to write them an email
sequence, because I was better at that than they were. I was [inaudible 00:12:18],
but I was just a little better and they were willing to pay me money for that. I
mean, the statement, let’s repeat that. “To a third grader, a fourth grader is
God,” it’s so true. It’s just incredible. Anyone, anyone who’s been doing
something for more than two month and been putting down at least an hour a day to
something, is already more of an expert than most people out there.

Steven Washer: Right, because they don’t have the interest, or the inclination, or
necessarily the native talent to do that, although I don’t believe that native
talent is all that important. I think it’s really more about what you’re
passionate about. But I want to go back to one thing about discovering your
authority, because I feel like we kind of left that hanging. Do you mind if I tell
you a little, tiny story?

Igor Kheifets: Absolutely. Go ahead.

Steven Washer: Okay, so one of the things that came to me about this a while back,
was that I’ve had a lot of clients, obviously, in my time, a lot of video clients,
and one of them was responsible for me discovering this whole concept of
inner-authority and then translating it to the outside. I should tell you that I’m
a pilot. I love flying. I’ve been a pilot for 30 years, and I had this client who
liked flying with me, which is really cool. He was a dentist, and he was a very,
very successful person. One of these people that you never say no to. He basically
rules the roost with an iron fist and a big smile on his face. You could never say
no to the fellow. I just got used to that. He was a big client, didn’t want to
make waves, and that sort of thing. One day we were flying, it was one of the
first times we were flying, actually. There’s a phase in flight where you’re
getting ready for the approach in landing. They call it, with the big iron, they
call it the Sterile Cockpit, because things get busy, and you have to get, you
want to get quiet within yourself and make sure that you’re in the moment, right,
so you do everything right. My client was an extremely inquisitive person. He
always wanted to know how this worked, and how that worked, and the other thing,
and I think you can probably tell where this is going. I’m in a particularly
sensitive phase of the flight, and he says, “Why did you flip that switch right
there?” I just turned to him and I said, “Not now. We’re landing.” That’s it.
That’s all I said. “Not now. We’re landing.” Normally, if I said something like
that to Jim, he’d bite my head off, but it did something very funny. He sat up
straight, he sat back in his seat, he folded his hands on his lap, he said, “I get
it.” He put a smile on his face and that was it. Nothing else had to be said about
that. Now I didn’t raise my voice. I wasn’t rude. I was kind of quiet actually,
but I stated the fact from my inner-authority. And because of that, a person who
normally would never take anything but acquiescence as an answer, sat back in his
seat. I realized at that point, that we all have this kind of energy within us
that naturally commands attention and interest. It’s a fine line between that and
… It’s not coercion. But it’s real. Does that make sense?

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, absolutely. I noticed that my best authority voice comes with
my kids. Like because I know my daughter will not question my authority, so I feel
sort of secure to command things. But I get what you’re saying. I get it
completely because when you’re in a situation, especially unfamiliar situation,
and there’s a clear figure of authority, you just do as they say. Like we’re
conditioned to simply obey the rules, and if someone is, I’d say ballsy enough to
command authority in an area that you’re not really comfortable in because it’s
new to you, you automatically give it to them.

Steven Washer: Yeah, I think so, if I follow you. I think, in this case, it’s just
that there’s a realization that, “Hey, I’ve got this. I understand how this works.
I know how this works, and I know what … I know what both of our places are here
to make everything work well, so we’ll do this.” And it’s just a knowing more than
anything else when you say, “Not now. We’re landing,” you’re just acknowledging
the reality of the situation.

Igor Kheifets: I see what you mean, so you’re talking about achieving that
inner-strength or inner-peace, so by the time the words come out of your mouth,
they come out so naturally and so organically, right.

Steven Washer: Yes, that’s exactly it. You see, the words come from a very deep
place. It’s actually not the words you’re using that command authority. It’s the
energy from which the words emanate that commands the authority. The words are
incidental. We need words or people won’t totally understand us, but yeah. You
totally have it there. Once you’ve got that, the words will come.

Igor Kheifets: Okay, so here’s a question that comes to mind naturally, for me.
You mentioned you were a pilot for 30 years, so one would argue that, “Okay, it’s
easy for you to sound like a natural, like an authority in that situation, because
you’re truly an authority.” What about if we’re kind of stepping into a brand new
market we’re passionate about, but we don’t necessarily feel like an authority
yet?

Steven Washer: Well, that really gets back to what we were talking about before,
how much of an authority you have to be. It doesn’t matter … Let me put it
another way. Yes, I’ve been a pilot for … ’86, ’96, ’06, oh gosh. Over 30 years.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been an authority. It doesn’t matter how many
great sales pages you’ve created, how many wonderful emails you’ve written, what
are you judged by? The last one you did. Every pilot is judged by their last
landing. It really doesn’t matter. Yes, you might feel like you have that, but you
also know that you’re also, people are also going to be looking at what you just
did because they don’t know that you have been a pilot for 30 years, right.

Igor Kheifets: Interesting, interesting. I’m an avid soccer fan, and my favorite
team is Manchester United.

Steven Washer: Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: Several years ago, one of the symbols quit. It was the general
manager, Alex Ferguson. So the guy had coached the team for like 20-something
years, it was crazy, and 18 or 20 times out of those, out of those years, he took
the championship. When he retired, he said that he considered to retire a couple
of years earlier and really wanted to leave when he won the champions league and
the national league for the first time. I’m sorry. Like together again, because he
did it before. He said, “I wanted to quit then because I wasn’t sure I can pull it
off again.” He wanted to leave and be remembered-

Steven Washer: On a high note.

Igor Kheifets: That last win, yeah.

Steven Washer: Exactly. I mean, think about actors who retire at the top of their
game, CEOs that retire at the top of their game. Everything, I think everyone
wants to retire at the top of their game. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it
also, but it illustrates a beautiful point that you just brought up, which is that
nobody really ever gets there, whatever there happens to be. It’s an illusion, and
the best thing that you can do, as I mentioned about being in the plane, is to be
in the moment. When you’re in the moment, it sweeps away all the objections, it
sweeps away all your fears because of what you’re focusing on. What you’re
focusing on puts you in the moment and that’s the moment you want to be in. Now in
the case of marketing, what you’re focusing on is service. What you’re focusing on
is sharing something valuable, something you know is valuable. That trumps all
your fears. It trumps all your doubts. It trumps all their doubts about you. And
it trumps a really, another thing that is, I think, the biggest impediment to
someone experiencing their own inner-authority, and that’s their self-doubt, which
creates neediness. I really want to say neediness.

Igor Kheifets: Yes.

Steven Washer: Now sharing is the opposite of neediness, so if you feel needy, and
this is speaking to your point directly, what do you do if you don’t have all this
wealth of experience and you feel needy? It is impossible for a person to share
and feel needy at the same time. So if you stand in that inner-authority and share
from what you know to be true in that moment, everything’s going to be fine.
Especially, especially if you’re using, if you’re putting it on audio, like in a
podcast, or you’re laying it down on video.

Igor Kheifets: Wow. I’ve never seen anyone talk about neediness that way. In other
words, I spoke about neediness as a repelling thing, right, as a way to kind of
drive customers away. Many times on this show, even had a couple of guests who are
really just experts at dating more so than marketing, which has a lot of
commonalities. But no one ever shared how do you fix that. We’ve told people,
“Don’t be needy. You’ll drive customers away.” I’ve never seen or heard anyone
talk about the fix to neediness, which as you just mentioned, is sharing, which is
to me, just lots of light bulbs went off right here.

Steven Washer: Good, I’m glad. It works, too. Because, believe me, there have been
so many times when I have felt that way, but when I stand in front of the camera
and do my little pre-shot routine, that’s the last thing. It’s okay, let’s share.
Let’s do this. And everything’s fine after that, everything.

Igor Kheifets: Nice.

Steven Washer: Works for, it doesn’t work just for me, it works for everybody.

Igor Kheifets: Nice. Well, there’s obviously more concepts and more things we need
to learn about authority and we can learn about authority. One, we work with you.
These episodes are usually limited to about 20 minutes or so, and which means we
have to wrap it up, but please, please, please, please share with our listeners
where can they go to find out more about you and your course that helps them tap
into their inner-authority?

Steven Washer: Sure. The website is visibleauthority.com. Just like those two
words are spelled together, no hyphens or anything. They can sign up to get my
free weekly video series, called the Five Minute Authority. There’s also something
I’ve been adding lately that’s been a lot of fun for me to create. I’ve been
sending these out on Monday. It’s called The Tao of Success. It was meant to be my
sort of take on the Tao Te Ching, and they’re just one minute long, one minute or
less. They’re just, they’ve been so much fun to create and I think people would
like them a lot, but I don’t know how long I’ll keep that up. But the Five Minute
Authority is really, I think, important for people who really want to go further
with this, and actually, now I know that this interview will air a lot later, but
it’s funny because tomorrow, it just kind of worked out this way. Tomorrow I’m
opening the Video Launch Code, which maybe by the time this airs, will be
available again, but that’s where everything gets put together in a course format
that takes many months to go through, actually. Because it’s not just about …
It’s not just about authority as the concept. It’s about translating that onto
video, and there’s just so much that has to do with technology, and your persona,
and the group of people, and the way you structure a series for the kind of
marketing that I like to do, which is a concept I created called the Content
Carousel, which is a whole lot different than the funnel. But maybe for another
time.

Igor Kheifets: Yes, so boys and girls, it is visibleauthority.com, no hyphens and
it’s spelled exactly like you hear it. You want to go there and grab the Five
Minute Authority course that Steven shares. I believe it’s for free, correct me if
I’m wrong.

Steven Washer: Yes.

Igor Kheifets: Yes, so it’s a free course. Get it.

Steven Washer: It’s not actually a course. It’s a weekly series, kind of like your
podcast, actually.

Igor Kheifets: Oh, right.

Steven Washer: Yeah, just in video format. There are lots of freebies though,
actually. And once people get on the Content Carousel, which is basically joining
the newsletter, they get access to a lot of stuff.

Igor Kheifets: Sweet, so that’s visibleauthority.com. Guys, do it even if you
don’t plan using podcasts or videos, because the concepts you learn when you
consume Steven’s material are, well, they shift the paradigm. And when the
paradigm is shifted, your confidence will increase automatically. I’ve experienced
it for myself. Steven, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me
and [inaudible 00:26:07] about authority. I’ve had tremendous pleasure, and most
likely, we’ll invite you on this show again because we have lots more to talk
about.

Steven Washer: Thanks, Igor. It was a pleasure talking to you. I like this format.
You did a great job.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Make sure to subscribe on
iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode, because who knows? Just one
conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. And don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of The Wealthy List Builders Survival Guide at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival. This is Igor Kheifets, and until next time
we talk, have a good one.