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Welcome to Amplify Your Authority, the podcast where innovative marketing meets heart-centered entrepreneurship. Join Marissa Shadrick, an award-winning international speaker, Ray Edwards certified copywriter, and personal brand expert. You'll gain insights into the external strategies for business growth and how to navigate the internal journey of entrepreneurship. And get ready to amplify your authority in the competitive digital world. Now is your host, Marissa Shadrick.

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We are streaming live to LinkedIn, and hopefully, cross my fingers everything is working correctly. Hi there. Today we're going to talk about authority. This podcast is called Amplify Your Authority. And what is authority? Do you feel like an authority? So we're going to cover a lot today. I'm going to give you some tips so that you can tap into your inner authority. I'm Marissa Shadrick. I'm an online marketing consultant and certified brand and copywriting expert. And I love working with clients and really dialing in on strategy, specifically how to improve traffic. And so that is kind of my world and where I camp. But I love producing these podcasts and giving overall information about the internal and external challenges that we face as online entrepreneurs. So let me cue up my notes and hopefully you can see this broadcast. If not, fear not, I will have a replay of this with all the show notes, all of any links that I discuss, any resources that I mention will all be in the recap when I post the replay on my website, which is marissashadrick.com. So if you miss any part of this, or if you want to see it in its entirety, if you want to see the audio, the video, the show notes, the transcript, it'll all be posted next week on my website. So we're going to start by just looking at a couple of things and take it step by step because I love doing things step by step. And the journey of recognizing our authority is not something all of a sudden we wake up and we say, hey, I'm an authority in something, right? It's a process. But here's the thing oftentimes we have to move past a lot of self-doubt, and we have to move past some preconceived ideas about authority. And I'm going to explain at the end why I changed the name of the podcast to amplify your authority. Authority, first of all, we have to realize is not just a title. It's not a title, especially in the context of growing an online business. It goes beyond that, goes beyond a position, it goes beyond power. It's really the product of empathetic leadership and the influence that brings. And notice I said empathetic leadership. Because leadership is a big topic in itself. And a lot of people don't consider themselves leaders either. So we're going to take this step by step, and hopefully at the end, you're going to tap into that inner leader, that inner influencer that you've always been, maybe as a parent, maybe as a friend, maybe within your community. And then realize that you have authority to be able to speak on something because of your experience and your background and so forth. So we're going to take a look at this and realize that authority is not a title or position. It's not a position of power, although it may seem that way. Some people have authority where they have more leverage, right? But authority in the context of entrepreneurship is not really about title or position. It's really about the empathetic leadership and influence that you have. It's about people. And I talk a lot about this. The human human connection is so important, especially online when there's so much automation and there's so much noise on the internet. It's really about people. First, when you think about authority, you're thinking about yourself and not in a selfish way. You're thinking about personal development. You're thinking about how you can grow as a person and be a better person, which in result becomes a better leader, which in result becomes a bigger influencer, which in result becomes an authority on a certain topic or in a certain niche. So it really is a blend of who you are. And I often say your work is an extension of who you are. You can't hide it. Who you really are shows in your day-to-day activities. It's an extension of who you are. And you start with yourself, and then you realize that it's a blend of the deep understandings that you have, the experiences, and the competence that you've built. Now, some of that could be from education or real life experience, but it's a blend of all of this. But realize first that authority is not a title, it's not a position. It really is about how you've implemented you as a leader, whether that's not considered quote unquote a leader, whether you've been that voice, that person of encouragement to someone else. So let's look at the idea of leadership and the blend that you have. All of this has value. And here's why: because you're not only the product of many years of education and experience, but there's something that's so valuable, and that is wisdom. It's really hard to buy wisdom, right? Oftentimes we learn the hard way. But when we pass on nuggets of wisdom to other people, that's when we begin to make a difference. That's when we begin to influence people in a positive way. Not in a creepy way, in a positive way. And that's how we become an authority. And it's not a name or a title that we give ourselves. It's just something that's known. It's just something that people, the way people respond to you and interact with you is a reflection of that authority that you have. And we never stop learning. We're always learning, continuously learning. So here are some signs of a leader, and this will show many of the hard skills, the things that maybe you learned in in school or in college, or maybe through training or certification programs. So there's a depth of knowledge, that's number one. The comprehensive understanding that you have in your field or in your industry. And that could be, for example, I have a brand certification, a copywriting certification. Those are hard skills. But that certainly does not give me authority in and of itself, right? That is the competency that I have, but it doesn't necessarily always influence or would say that I'm a leader in that, because leadership is all about people, right? You can't lead people that aren't following you. And we're going to get to that in just a second about audience. But there is part of the hard skills, part of the things that you have acquired is depth of knowledge in certain areas. Number two, some of the other hard skills that you have is maybe problem-solving skills. If you've been around the block for any length of time, there have been things that have come up in your life, whether it's your business life or your personal life, where you've had to execute problem-solving skills. And you have to also be an expert in identifying challenges and crafting solutions and maybe even looking ahead and helping people prevent the same type of pitfalls. So problem-solving skills are very good to have. These are all hard skills, and this will help you be a better leader and influence people and therefore have authority. Number three is peer recognition. We tend not to think about that, but peer recognition is very valuable. Being acknowledged by colleagues or industry experts is very, very valuable. And that's kind of a clue. Those are signs that you are a leader when people recognize, especially peers, right? Peers. And of course, we have client testimonials and things like that, but when peers recognize the value that you bring, um, that says a lot. That says a lot. And so that's number four. That may be a sign that you are a leader, and therefore you can influence and therefore have authority in your area of expertise. The fourth one is the educational ability. You have the capability to simplify the complex so that other people can digest it in little bite-sized pieces. That is also a skill, a hard skill. So you have that educational component, that way of making something easy to apply, right? Application is so important so that you can execute. And so the application piece, if you can do that and help people say, okay, this is how you apply this concept, that's very valuable too. And that's part of a hard skill. And that could mean that you're a leader. Many teachers have this, right? Where they can take a concept and break it down for someone to be able to learn it step by step. Another number five is you may have a successful track record. Maybe you started with a nonprofit space and you volunteered there. Maybe you volunteered in your community. Maybe those leadership roles somehow find you and you find yourself leading. You may not think it's leadership, but you're in charge of something and they're counting on you and depending on you, and you do it well. So you have a history of positive outcomes based on the things that you have accepted as a project or have done in the past. So it could have even been in college, you know, leadership opportunities there. Or maybe maybe when you go on a vacation, are you the one that makes all the plans and schedules everything for everyone when you're going on a trip? You know, those are all leadership indicators. Successful track record. Number six is innovative thinking. Are you one that sees a closed door, or do you look at that closed door and figure out how you can get around it, over it, under it? Are you an innovative thinker? That is very, very helpful because many people see an obstacle and they get stuck. And if you can see beyond the obstacle and help people with that, that's really super valuable. Contributing new ideas is so valuable because sometimes people lose hope when they see an obstacle. But if you can take that and challenge it and figure out a way to get around that obstacle, that breathes hope in other people. Because they know there's another way to get around this obstacle. And number seven, confident decision making. There are times that we have to make hard decisions. Are you that type of person that can make a hard decision? Because you see the pros and cons, you see where this is headed. How is this going to help me as far as achieve my goals? How is this gonna help everyone else depending on what it is? Sometimes we have to make tough decisions. So are you confident in your decision making? What does that process look like? What is your plumb line for making decisions? Do you have a mission statement? Do you have a value statement that helps you align your decisions toward that? And that's important too. Making uh informed choices as well. So decision making could be doing research, could involve a lot, but do you have a process for that? So when you make a decision, you feel confident that this was the right choice. This was the right decision. But hard skills, although they are very valuable and we can easily pick up on those, you also need soft skills to be an influence. And I'm not talking about influencer, I don't even know if I like that name, influencer, but just to be an influence where someone respects you enough, trusts you enough to take your advice. Let's keep it real simple. They respect you, you've shown a track record, they trust you enough to take your advice. And you need those soft skills. I love the quote from John Maxwell. He says, People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Really, in all of this, to really amplify your authority, I will say it again, the most important thing is empathetic leadership. You need to empathize with people. And then you have to realize who are your people? Who is your audience? Who is it that you're gonna speak to? That's really, really important. Because it will resonate with them. If you're speaking outside of your scope, it's not gonna, it's not gonna land. And so that's why we make such an emphasis. Everybody says, What is your niche? Who is your audience? What's your avatar? Because it's so foundational for everything, for growing a business, for writing a book. It's so foundational. And we can't get around that. We have to always be talking to our audience and see where they are and understand them even more, because that's part of empathy, is really caring about where they are in their journey. So some of the reasons, and I'm gonna cover this because I think it's important to cover it when we're talking about authority and being an empathetic leader and beginning to have that privilege of speaking into people's lives, which is equals quote unquote influence, and that's simply a product of trust, is that there's there's some hurdles for us as leaders to embrace the fact that we are an authority. How can you amplify something that you don't think you have? You can't. You really have to own it. And so let's look at some of the reasons why people wouldn't see themselves as an authority. Because sometimes they think, well, there's somebody that probably knows more than I do. Well, let me just tell you this: there is nothing new under the sun. I mean, if you've been online at all, you hear similar things everywhere. There's nothing new under the sun. And most people today are reaching back in history and looking at those that went before us that had those valuable gold nuggets of personal development, of strategy, of productivity. We go back to those great leaders. Nothing is new under the sun, and then all of a sudden, a new book pops up. But it's based on principles that happened years ago, decades ago. Nothing is new under the sun. But how you bring it to your audience, how you interpret it, how you speak about it is the difference. Because you're gonna interject your stories, you're gonna interject your perspective, your experience, your life that's different. It's as different as your you know, thumbprint. And that's what's going to help. And I think there's even though the internet is so congested, I think there's room for all of us to do our part and to create positive change in the world. So your soft skills are the things that are gonna help you build trust, have influence, and become that empathetic leader because it's all about them and not about us, as Rick Warren has said in his book, Purpose Driven Life. It's all about them. It's not about us. That was the first line, I think, in his book. It's not about us. And when we really embrace that concept that it's not about us, we're gonna have a better understanding of our audience. And we're going to behave or our actions are going to be a little different because of this knowledge that we're acquiring. So, what are some of the common hurdles in in claiming your inner inner authority? I want you to know that you have authority. And if you're if you've been coaching, if you've been in the online space creating courses, or if you're a service provider for any length of time, two, three years or more, you you are probably an authority in your area. But here's why people don't, and I'm going to give you a few reasons, five of them. One is right at the top of the list, imposter syndrome. People feel like somebody else knows more than I do. Well, as I said earlier, there's nothing new under the sun. They're going to kind of camp there in imposter syndrome, feeling like they're a fraud despite past successes, despite everything they can contribute to the world. Imposter syndrome really derails a lot of people. And uh the second, and they're very related, is perfectionism. When we feel like we're a fraud, we're gonna try our hardest to produce something that's perfect. Nothing is perfect, and so we we don't want to put the switch on yet. We don't want to launch anything until everything is perfect, and we delay and we wait, and we're believing that absolute perfection is necessary to be able to do that. And and I'll tell you, nobody is perfect, and you've probably seen I've seen it. I've seen sales pages with typos, I've seen books with typos. You know, I'm not I'm not there to say, oh, look, there's a typo, it's not perfect, I just wasted my money. It's human nature, right? It gives us an opportunity to exercise grace and give people grace because we understand how busy people are and something gets overlooked. No big deal. Get an email with, you know, wrong link. So, you know what I do is I email them back and I said, Hey, your link was broken, just giving you a heads up. When something is broken or something doesn't lead to something, I always email them back and say, Hey, you might not have known this, but or you know, you might not have realized this, but the date's wrong, you know, compared to what you have on the live page. And they usually just say, Oh, thank you so much. I didn't realize that. So we just pay it forward at that moment, and we give people a lot of grace. So perfectionism, you know, is something that can derail you and also not allow you to embrace that inner authority. The next one is very closely related. People pleasing. Now, there's a pattern here that I'm going to reveal here, and all of these, believe it or not, were the things that derailed me. That's why I'm talking about them. Because all of these I was guilty of. So, people pleasing, because you feel like a fraud, because you feel like you don't have any value to bring, you try to make everything perfect and you try to please people and go above and beyond, not because you care about them, it's more you care about the perception that they have of you. And it is people pleasing, it's it values others' opinions more than your own expertise and abilities. You just rely on the opinions of others to move forward. That could be really dangerous because if someone values it, great, but what if they say something that just crushes you, right? Or they say, Well, that, you know, this wasn't a good fit for me, or it's not like I'm not ready for this right now, or I've seen other opinions on this, and I don't agree. You know, people are crushed. So that can be a reason why we don't embrace the authority that we have. The other, very closely related, number four, is comparison trap. Because we feel like a fraud, because we are trying to be a perfectionist, because we're trying to please people, then we start comparing and saying, what are others doing? Right. And you start measuring your value and your success based on what other people are doing. And yet other people may have been in business for five, ten years. It's like comparing. Apples with oranges. One, because like I said, nothing is new under the sun. The way you deliver something is different than someone else. So you can't compare there. Plus, the experience that they have, the revenue that they spend on marketing, the teams that they've built, if you're just starting out and you have a small team of under three, you can't compare. There's no comparison, right? And so when you try to compare, it's like all of a sudden it's it's the wrong, it's the wrong compass. If you're going to compare anything, compare what you did last year to what you're going to do this year, or compare two years, or put compare a quarter, compare the activity that you're doing, compare your work-life balance. How are things going? That's what you should compare, but not compare with someone else. So the comparison trap is really dangerous as well. And it will not let you embrace your inner authority. The last one is fear of visibility. Fear of, oh, I don't know, going live. That's kind of tricky. And of course, I'm going live here on LinkedIn. I have no idea if it landed in the right place. You know, I'm still trying to figure it all out. I've got the announcement of a live broadcast. I think it's supposed to switch over to the live. I don't know if I'm appearing live somewhere else. I have no clue. But you know what? I'll learn, I'll figure it out. And there'll always be the replay. I can't sweat it. It's like there's so in the grand scheme of things, when you're talking about people's lives and illnesses and the things that people go through in this life, whether a broadcast goes well or not is really minuscule compared to other things. And you have to begin to look at things that way and not sweat the small stuff. I think they even wrote a book about that. Don't sweat the small stuff. But fear of visibility is something that can really paralyze people for moving forward. They don't want people, well, I know in my case, when I had that fear of visibility, I don't want people to look at me. Don't look at me, don't put the tension toward me. I don't want to give my opinion because it might upset somebody else, or it might not be right, or they might hear I'm not smart enough, or I don't want them at this point in my life. I don't care if people think I'm smart or not. I just want people to know that I care about them. That's it. It's really simple. And if I succeed in that, then two thumbs up for me. But maybe that comes with age. I don't know. But that's where I'm at right now. But I know all of these things crippled me, and I'll repeat them. So I don't want you to be have that fear of visibility, of fear of being in the spotlight, because that's an opportunity to share all of your experience and wisdom and knowledge and how to help people, right? Not make the same mistakes you're doing. So here are the five, and I want you to hear the common thread here, and this is what really jolted me to get over all of this years ago. These are the common hurdles of just claiming or embracing the authority within you. Number one, imposter syndrome, number two, perfectionism, number three, people pleasing, number four, the comparison trap, and number five, fear of visibility. All of these are all focused on me. When these things were in my way, all I was looking at was me. It was all me. And I wasn't looking out to the people that I could serve. Very narcissistic when you think about it. And when I realized that, I just kind of got a cold sweat. I thought, oh my gosh, I can't believe how self-indulgent I am. You know, just thinking about myself all the time. This is not the person that I want to be. It's not. I don't believe that that's healthy, and yet here I'm doing it. And it was all the emotions going on. The emotions were leading me by the nose. And once I started reframing how I was thinking to align my emotions, then I was able to actually start serving people in a way that was healthy. So embracing your authority in this last section I have for you is I want you to, if you struggle, embracing your authority. And again, that is the product of just being a great empathetic leader that when you're in front of people, you're able to win their trust and then have influence over them. In other words, they will take your advice or they will read something you've posted because they trust you, and it will make their life a little better in some small way. That's the influence we're talking about. I'm not talking about influencers, that's something else. But the influence you want is you want them to take your advice and consider it as a success suggestion and see if this would alleviate a pain or a struggle for them. So embracing your authority. If you're struggling with that inner authority, here's five more tips for you. And don't worry, I have actually a worksheet that you'll be able to download with all of this. So if you missed it, I will have that in the finished show notes on my website. And I usually post a little video reel on LinkedIn, other platforms unless you're subscribed. You can always subscribe to my email list at marissashadrick.com. I usually have a free resource there, and you can subscribe, and then you'll get it in your inbox. You'll get the replays in the inbox, and there will be a resource that you can download to get the the worksheet. So those worksheets I think will be really, really helpful. This is so new that I have a clever name for it, and I can't remember what it is. It's so clever. No. It's uh called uh workflow worksheets. Wow, why couldn't I remember that? Workflow worksheets. So maybe not so clever, but in any event, uh, these would be offered periodically when I have a lot of points so that you don't have to write them down, or if you're driving, you don't have to remember. I'll just have them for you so that you can download it. But in any event, this is how you embrace your authority. Ready? Here we go. If you're if you're struggling with any of these, no guilt, no shame. I went through the same thing. Many people go through the same thing. I want you first, number one, reflect on your journey. Just look back and reflect. That's why I love journaling. Because with journaling, I'm able to do an audit of not only my head, all the to-dos, my current emotions, right? How I'm feeling, and my heart, what my intent is and what I really want to do. So I reconcile everything. It's like a little morning audit. How am I feeling? What am I thinking about, and all those to-dos. And then in my heart, how I really want the day to play out. And I think when you do, when you reflect your journey and you look back and you're journaling, it really helps you to set yourself up for success. And I don't always mean dollar success. If you are empathetic, if you're an empathetic leader, if you have influence within your audience, if you embrace your authority, I believe the revenue will follow. So the priority is first work on yourself. And a great way to do that is to reflect on your journey, past your journey, maybe look back a little ways when you have time, and take a weekend, take maybe a day, and reflect on maybe different stages of your life and some of the things that you've accomplished, kind of to you know, start up this process and then journal each day. And you reconcile or you audit your emotions with your head and with your heart. Your heart is the intent that you want, the way you want things to look like, the person you're trying to become, plus the head, all the to-dos. You know, there's a place for those things. You gotta narrow things down to maybe, you know, one a day or up to three. And then your emotions. Are you feeling anxiety? Are you feeling excited? What are your emotions? Because your emotions will tell you what your beliefs are. So that's number one. Reflect on your journey. Number two, seek feedback. That's really simple. Use constructive feedback for growth and affirmation. And when you get to the place where you embrace your inner authority, you're going to want to know because it will help you serve people better. In a lot of the programs I have, and even some trainings that I do, I have a one-question feedback. And even Tennessee, when I did a workshop in Tennessee, I give them a one-sentence feedback. And that tool, when they answer, they either have a way to rate what they've listened to, and then a little box to make a comment. And that helps me know how to improve things. And so, and it also helps validate some things that I when I hit the nail on the head, right? So feedback is really helpful. And that's a great way to do it is have these little one-question surveys that you do anytime you present something, or you have a maybe um, you can even do it in a webinar if you wanted to, if you have time, but usually you have a call to action at the end of a webinar, so it might be too much stuff to do. But in a workshop, you could do that too, and um it's really helpful to know. And then number three is mentor others. Maybe there's an opportunity, and I like to pay for mentorship, but I also like to give free mentorship to people. And so depending on who they are and what's going on, I usually find one person that I can mentor and pass some things on just for the heck of it. Just for the heck of it, and to pass it on to help them out. So it's good to get mentorship and it's good to give mentorship. Kind of, it's like kind of like your volunteer work in your business, right? So mentor others, reinforce your expertise by teaching it, and perhaps you'll even improve how you teach it. And number four is challenge the negative thoughts. And you can do that certainly when you're journaling, but replace that self-doubt. And if positive affirmations work for you, use that. I always love to anchor things to truth based on the Bible because I'm a Christian and I trust that. So I look at any thought and I go, does that align with scripture? And if it doesn't, um, I throw it out the window or reframe it to a truth that feels good to me. But if positive affirmations work for you or something else, then align it to what your truth is so that you're not letting any self-doubt or negative thoughts take camp because they're always there, they're always trying to swim around our head. It's whether we allow them to camp there and stay there. We don't want them to stay there. And you get better at this. Maybe at first it takes about a week, and then it'll be reduced to three days. And then by the time you get really good at this, as soon as you notice some negative thinking, you go, Oh, I know what this is. And you can the turnaround time is much shorter. It could be five minutes, three minutes, as you get better at this. And the last point to embrace your inner authority is continue learning, ongoing learning is so important for all of us. I mean, I'm still learning, and I love learning. I just have to make space for it. So I either do it when I'm getting ready in the morning, or if I go for a walk, or if I'm doing laundry or cooking dinner or something, um, I find a way to listen to podcasts, or and I have a tool that reads uh Kindle books. I use uh Speechify, and that helps me um listen to Kindle books when they're not on audio. So I love doing that as well to continue learning, stay open to knowledge and experiences and challenge yourself. Because a lot of times we we change something because of knowledge that we have, we realize, oh, I always thought this, but I was wrong. And you can reframe that. We're only accountable for what we know, right? So if there's something that we're doing wrong until we know the right way to do it, that's when we're accountable to change it and make it right. So there you go. Embrace your authority by reflecting on your journey. Journaling is a great way to do it. Number two, seek feedback. Number three, mentor others. Number four, challenge negative thoughts, and number five, continue learning. Final thought: your authority is a testament to who you are as a person. Your work is an extension of who you are. Your dedication, your resilience, and your commitment is all of that. It's part of your authority. Own it and start making a difference. It's not about power, it's not about position, it's not about title, it's about who you are. So embrace your inner authority. And that's why I changed the name from resilient faith online to amplify your authority, because it's it's more action-driven to amplify your authority because it means you're going to be speaking out and you're going to be sharing your knowledge and your wisdom. It's not just about being resilient, it's about sharing your knowledge, making a positive change in the world. So I hope this broadcast was helpful for you. I really enjoyed putting this together. I will have a download for you when I finish all the post production work and it's on my website. You can always subscribe and you'll get it in your inbox. And thank you so much for tuning in. I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.