How to Become the Authority in Your Space w/ Matthew Byrd | Ep 436

**Chris Do** (0:00)
My guest for today's episode is the same as Matthew Byrd. It's somebody I've met and known for, I guess, two years now. We've gone fishing together, so we know a lot about each other.
He had this idea about how you can build authority without having a large social media following. So hopefully this is gonna be really intriguing for all of you, so stick around.

**Matthew Byrd** (0:18)
My name is Matthew Byrd, and you're listening to The Futur.

**Chris Do** (0:24)
Matthew, for people who don't know who you are, please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit of your story.

**Matthew Byrd** (0:28)
So I actually got started in this really interesting, but maybe seen as a boring niche around land surveying. And I found this path where I got into these new technologies, and I started while early in my career, I also started on LinkedIn, and I started creating content. And I found this path over a short period of time by creating content and being online, and being really active with networking. I grew from the bottom level position in the survey industry to being able to start my own business, scale and exit a company, and now on to building a global community around these technologies. And when I step back and look at like, what is it that took me from an entry level position to this position of authority in my niche, I really attribute a lot of it to being online and creating content and educating people. And the thing I also found in my community is, there's so many experts that nobody knows.
And so my hope with talking about authority is like, if there's people out there who have an expertise, how can they position themselves to become a person of authority within their space?

**Chris Do** (1:45)
What are the five biggest lessons that you've learned that we can pass on to people?

**Matthew Byrd** (1:51)
I think one thing I've noticed a lot is, there's a difference between building influence, being an expert, or actually building authority in the space. So there's a lot of people who, they don't even know exactly what they want to be known for or what their expertise is, but they're really worried nowadays with being online of like, how do I just get the most views and the most followers? And then there's people who are actually experts at a trade or in a certain field, but nobody knows about them.
To me, I think really becoming an authority in a space, the first step is you have to actually have an expertise. You have to be good at something.
The second is how do you actually become known for that thing? And then I think the next piece for building an authority in a space is what is that space? So who is your ideal client? Who is your ideal customer? Who is that community that would see you as an authority? And getting clear with that, because when people don't have clarity of who they serve and then they try to start getting online, there's just kind of mess in what the content looks like, what the messaging is. And in order to start being known for something, there has to be consistency over an extended period of time.

**Chris Do** (3:07)
There can be, and just not always, because some people do shoot out the gate really fast. These people who all of a sudden emerge. Some examples are people like Dan Martell, Alex Ramosi for most part is a sleeper and all of a sudden he's on the scene. And then in two years, millions of followers on multiple networks. Those are maybe more anomalies, but they do exist. You can come out of the gate really strong. His philosophy is, and I agree with this part of it, which is like do epic stuff. He doesn't use the word stuff, but do epic stuff and then talk about epic stuff that you've done in that very specific order.
And it seems like very young people are too impatient or they're drawn in by the limelight that they don't do the hard foundational work and they just pop on the scene and try to do as much things and make as much noise as possible.
And then they are able to build some notoriety and then they backfill the expertise. But what you're saying is you have to be consistent. What does consistency mean to you?

**Matthew Byrd** (4:02)
I think there are a couple pieces that come to mind for me.
One is consistency in your message, consistency in your beliefs about the topic that you're wanting to be known for. Whether you're speaking on a stage, whether you're talking through your content, it's not wavering from your beliefs around that core focus.