Course resource

Authority Positioning Worksheet

Becoming the person people think of for a specific thing — without becoming an influencer.

The principle

Authority is narrow. "AI expert" is a claim nobody believes and everybody makes. "The person who automates quoting for building contractors" is a position you can actually hold.

The narrower the position, the faster you get it, and the more it is worth.

Finding your position

The intersection of three things:

WHAT I KNOW DEEPLY   (your domain, not AI)
        x
WHO I UNDERSTAND     (a specific group, not "businesses")
        x
WHAT THEY NEED       (a problem they already know they have)
My domain depth
The group I genuinely understand
Their problem I can solve
My position, in one sentence

The sentence should be specific enough that it excludes most people. If it could describe a hundred others, it is not a position.

Test it: say it to someone in that group. If they respond "oh, so could you help with X?" — it works. If they say "interesting", it does not.

Why domain beats AI

Everyone is learning AI. Far fewer people combine it with genuine depth in a specific field.

Your advantage is not that you understand prompting. It is that you understand quoting, or clinical admin, or academic publishing, and prompting. Lead with the domain.

Building it

In order of effectiveness. The first is worth more than the rest combined.

1. Do the work and measure it. A real result with a real number. Everything else is downstream of this.

2. Write it up honestly. Including what broke. A write-up with failures in it is more credible than one without, and almost nobody publishes those.

3. Answer questions where your people already are. The forum, group, or community they use. Not broadcasting — answering. Ten genuinely useful answers beat a hundred posts.

4. Teach one thing well. A workshop, a talk, a detailed guide. Teaching is the fastest route to being seen as someone who knows.

5. Publish consistently, narrowly. Same audience, same problem space. Consistency of topic matters more than frequency.

The content that builds authority

Works Does not
"Here is what I built and what it saved" "5 AI tools you need"
"This failed, here is why" "AI will change everything"
"Here is how I'd approach your specific problem" Generic advice to a generic audience
A real number from real work A prediction
Answering the question they actually asked Broadcasting at them

The failure post is the highest-trust thing you can publish. Nobody writes them, everyone recognises the honesty, and it demonstrates you actually did the work.

The realistic timeline

Months What is happening
0–3 Nobody notices. This is normal and it is where most people quit.
3–6 The same few people start recognising your name
6–12 Inbound questions begin. Someone refers you.
12+ Inbound work, speaking, "you should talk to [you]"

Anyone promising faster is selling something. The people who get there are the ones still publishing at month four.

What to avoid

Becoming an AI commentator. Commenting on AI news is a crowded, low-value position with no natural buyer. Being a practitioner who occasionally writes is different and far more valuable.

Going broad. "I help businesses with AI" attracts nobody.

Volume over substance. Daily thin posts train people to scroll past your name. That damage is cumulative and slow to undo.

Claiming expertise you lack. In a narrow field, one person who knows more will notice, publicly.

Building on one platform. Platforms change their rules. Get people onto something you own — an email list, however small.

Your plan
My position, one sentence
The group
Where they already gather
The result I can show
What I will publish monthly
Where I answer questions weekly
What I own (list, site)

The honest check, quarterly

The last one matters most. Authority built on one old win decays. The work is what sustains the position, not the posting.

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