Expertise is Not Authority: Authority is the Expertise People Seek You Out For - with Amanda Russell

Dan Nestle [00:00:00]: Welcome or welcome back to the trending Communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. So there's an equation that's been rattling around in my head lately. Here it goes. Influence equals attention plus trust. It's simple, clean, makes perfect sense. And it also happens to connect some dots for me. As my listeners can attest, I talk about attention a lot, specifically earned attention. So when attention is earned, it's audience first. It's sticky, it gets the ball rolling to create real connections. But attention can't stand alone. Somewhere between earning attention and gaining trust, the audience has to believe you've got something important to say. They have to see you as an authority. Then they'll pay even more attention. And as long as you deliver the goods, you got a real shot at earning their trust. And only then you've got what it takes to be influential. Which is all well and good, but Dan, you might say audiences are fractured. Attention is at a premium. There are experts in every category vying for authority. Plus we've got AI to contend with. Nice formula, but what should I actually do? It's a fair question and I've got some ideas. And I dare say so does my guest today, as after all, she's the one who created the influence equation. And now she's all in on helping audiences methodically build influence, attention, trust, authority, the whole package in our AI accelerated attention economy. She built one of the first online fitness communities before YouTube even had a partner program. Turned that into two companies, sold them both, created the world's first fully accredited influencer marketing program at UCLA, brought it to UT Austin and Northwestern's Kellogg School. She started a new YouTube channel that teaches her audiences about influence in relatable digestible stories. And now she's on a mission to completely transform business education as we know it. She's an elite Canadian distance runner whose career ending injury became the catalyst for understanding digital community. Chief Marketing Officer, post acquisition Board Advisor to Lamborghini, author of the Influence Code, Harvard Business Case, Author, Success Pictures 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders. As you can see, I'm getting all tripped up about it because she's lived every side of the equation, been the influencer, the brand, the buyer, the academic, and now the disruptor. We're going to dig into how to build systematic influence when everyone's fighting for the same shrinking attention. Making her debut on the trending Communicator, the host of Amanda's playbook and architect of the influence equation, my friend, Amanda Russell. How are you doing?

Amanda Russell [00:02:37]: That is a bio, bio and A mouthful, I should say. It is. And you know, nice introduction.

Dan Nestle [00:02:44]: Oh, thanks. Yeah. And I always kind of joke around about this, but, you know, of course I flubbed a couple of things and I'll fix that in the post. But yeah, I mean, it's hard to encapsulate a career and a person in like two minutes. And look, you and I have been connected now for, you know, better part of a year. And before that we were connected in some ways, but actually, like, we became friends about a year ago. And I have to say that the discussions that we've had, just having the privilege of talking to you about influence, first of all, because literally wrote the book about influencer marketing, has been really influential to me. Right. It's been, it's been quite the journey. And you know, I look at it from a, not only as a PR and marketing perspective, as an individual personal brand perspective, but like, this is something that I think is fundamental to why we communicate and why we want to establish personal brands, why we want to build businesses. You know, we want to be visible, we want to be out there. And there's all kinds of obstacles in our path to building the kind of the influence that we need to actually make a difference and to be a success. So very timely, very important. Especially now as I'm on my own.

Amanda Russell [00:03:47]: Entrepreneurial journey, we've had some great conversations. It's been a pleasure working alongside you. And especially as you become Mr. AI expert, it's been really helpful for me to realize how does the paradigm change on influence and does it in a digital AI driven world?

Dan Nestle [00:04:02]: Well, maybe that's where we start. Right? Let's start there. Now the audience here for the trending Communicator crosses PR and marketing, Right? But I think a lot of my guests, you know, might not be familiar with Amanda Russell, certainly not to the extent that, you know, those of us in your circle might be. But when it comes to PR and comms, right, we're always, you know, influencer marketing. That's for the marketers to handle. But I disagree. You know, I think influence is an incredibly important part of what we're trying to wield here in our toolkit, in our pat, in our purpose and meaning for work and what we do for our companies and our clients. And so can you just like, big picture, how are you seeing influence now? Like, how do you define influence? Because we did talk about the influence equation. I'm sure your thinking has evolved a little bit, you know, so how would you define influence? And then like, how could we Connect that to this whole idea of what PR&COMms people do, which is like, try to earn that influence rather than buy it.

Amanda Russell [00:04:53]: Well, it's interesting because you know your audience I love, and this is a great example is communications, pr, marketing, all these industries, people use that, those terms, but they don't really know what like the average person's like, what does that mean? What do you do? And also the term influence gets put into those buckets. It goes, oh, you must do pr, you must be a social media, you must do marketing. However, if you come back to the real definition, which is what kind of this idea is, what got me so intrigued by the subject was because the term influencer came out when I was doing YouTube videos and being termed an influencer. And I remember before, it's like the word gum, right? If you've never heard of gum before and you try to explain it, people are like, what? What is that? You're chewing the same thing in your mouth over and over and everything. Gross. And it was the same thing. For me, that's how I took the term influencer, which is like, well, they're calling me this influencer and various other pawns on doing ridiculous things on YouTube. And at that time, the only thing I knew about it was that there was a word influence. And influence is the ability to cause action. So when the media started talking about people as influencers, I remember thinking, but like, what do they inflict? Well, they might influence X, but they don't influence Y. And they might influence this audience, but they don't influence that audience or this person versus that person. So I remember thinking it was like almost comical, like calling somebody God to call them an influencer. Like, you're just the almighty influencer of all decisions. So that's how I got the bug to dive into this topic of influence, which I know it sounds ironic. I wrote a book called the Influencer Code. And it's because the stereotype comes right away as a social media creator. And influence, at the end of the day, is not relegated to PR and communication and marketing. In fact, if you want to be successful in anything, you need to be influential. Otherwise you could be the smartest, best looking, funniest, most charismatic person. But if nobody knows and believes that, it doesn't matter. So that's the whole idea of the equation between attention plus trust. Because especially when it comes to pr, marketing, advertising, for those not in the industry, they associate it with awareness, eyeballs, comments. And that is only one part of the equation. You can have all the Eyeballs all day long. You can have all the awareness, but if nobody cares or you're not influencing anybody to do anything, that's not influence. And so that's where I wanted to come back to, to start. I'm like, we're really missing the boat on this. And that's also why marketing, PR communications often gets a bad rep because a company will say, we want influence and then some will do a campaign or whatnot and they say, okay, now I want to see the awareness metric. So they click through metrics and those metrics are provided and they're like, well, you say we have 2 million views on this video, but we only got two sales of our very expensive XYZ. Well, that's because you're measuring one thing and reporting another. So measuring awareness and measuring influence are two different things. It's like in a race, you're not going to measure your time for the marathon on a 10,000 meter track. But that's what we're doing a lot in communications, pr, marketing. And it happens on both sides. It's, you know, industry don't understand it. And they're mistaking awareness and attention and popularity for influence and those on the outside. So to come right back to it, influence really is. It's the magic force that moves everything. It's the ability to affect action, action being doing something, a behavior. But it's also a way of thinking or a way of doing things, choices that you make, voting, everything.

Dan Nestle [00:08:36]: Right? It is that sort of, I don't know, it's in the ether, right? It's sort of between us, among us, and we do gravitate. I guess there's a sort of philosophical side to this where it's like you wonder, why do I gravitate to these people or why am I paying attention to this stuff more than this stuff? And you know, a lot of it has to do with is internal focus. It's your core values, it's your belief system. And you gravitate towards those who tend to either validate that or even challenge it some degrees. But in some ways it's connecting to that central you. But that's not something that's on the surface that we think about all the time.

Amanda Russell [00:09:08]: Right.

Dan Nestle [00:09:08]: Like if you're working for a company or you're for yourself and you want to get out there and get in front of people, you know, you're not necessarily thinking of, okay, how am I going to have that unseen connection with all these different people and their value systems? Maybe we should be thinking about that. That's probably exactly what we should be thinking about. But what you want to do, like getting through your day is all right, I need to get these, I need to put this communication out, I need to put this ad out and I need to then measure how well it performs. And then I got to go back to the CEO, justify the money that I spent and ooh. And it just could have. Anything metaphysical or philosophical is dead by that point. Right. And you're just sort of trying to.

Amanda Russell [00:09:45]: Get through when they force those kind of metrics, you're actually designing communication systems that are attracting the things that the client is measuring, but not what's actually creating influence. Like if you're creating a campaign over around simple awareness, that's very different than buy in for the expensive surgery.

Dan Nestle [00:10:07]: Yeah. And even then when we thinking about what you said about the real, the meaning of awareness and versus influence, it's like, why are we even trying for just pure awareness? I mean, it's a start, right? You want to measure like, okay, it's.

Amanda Russell [00:10:19]: Like it's a start point. Like, yes, you absolutely have to have awareness. You can't influence somebody without them having any awareness.

Dan Nestle [00:10:25]: Yeah, but it's almost and clearly like we definitely want to make people aware of things. But to your point, if we're just measuring clicks and impressions and stupid things like that, we're going to think that the job is done when it isn't, hasn't been done. I've railed on this show against like stupid vanity measures. You know, I mean, you know, like in PR there used to be, and maybe even in a lot of places there still is this metric that's called ave, right, Advertising value equivalent. And that's like when you get a media hit and they say, oh, Amanda, you're my client. I have great news for you, Amanda. You were in the Wall Street Journal and you were quoted. There's says Amanda Russell. And the exact space around your quote is a quarter of an inch by a quarter of an inch. And therefore if we would have bought a quarter inch square advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, it would have been $25,000. So convert, congratulations, that's 25 grand in free value. And it's nonsense. Like it's complete and utter. It's a bullshit metric. It's a way to sort of justify PR budgets for that kind of thing. But we didn't know that for a while and it probably made a lot more sense when newspapers were the only thing out there. But we chase these vanity metrics, impressions, you know, like okay, it's an indicator that something's hitting. You know, it's kind of like, okay, watch the impressions. But then what do you do with that? You know? And how does that ladder up to influence? This is these connecting bridges that are rarely, if ever fully completed or made, you know, and that's where I think your work is coming in. It's pretty powerful trying to illustrate what people should be paying attention to. So, you know, when you think about influence and you think about all these vanity metrics we have, like, where do you start? And what is the kind of. Maybe we have to define an audience here to make it work. But let's just say broad. Broad. Let's assume that you've got your awareness going, right? And then you have this opportunity to take that audience and build influence with them. Now, how do you keep their attention? How do you build that trust? And how do you kind of ladder between the two? What's the connections that you're seeing in what you're doing?

Amanda Russell [00:12:16]: So basically, what is the magic secret to influence?

Dan Nestle [00:12:18]: I guess that's. And just give us your secret.

Amanda Russell [00:12:22]: Yeah. And you know what, And I know the reason I preface it that way is because that is what everyone's looking for. And the problem, not the problem, the this. Because this can be the problem or it can be the opportunity is how you frame that answer. And if you're looking for a magic bullet, if you're looking for a template like, this is not surgery, communication. Humans are not black and white that way. They operate in a gray area. A lot of things are subconscious. We can't measure everything that affects someone's decision. We just can't. Even if we measured brain waves and whatever, there's still other factors that we are not going to be able to measure. So trying to force putting a here is what to do to be influential is by nature of looking for that answer. You're never going to get there. Because influence is like a perfect storm. It's no different than, like, why two people on paper look like they have nothing in common, and then they meet and they hit it off incredibly. And maybe at another time in their lifetime, even maybe five years ago, they wouldn't have. So. So the reason I say five years ago is because look at all of the factors that go into what's going on in the world, what's going on in each of their lives, what's relevant? What is their experience? What do they care about? There's certain je ne sais quoi principles of people's energy and whatnot so like, so how does that help? So there's no one answer, right? So you're like, what do I do with that? Knowing that is the key to understanding what it takes to be influential, what it takes to be successful in business in general. It's not a magic bullet templated answer. The people that are the most successful are the ones that are the most curious, the most relentless in their search, that understand that it's so nuanced that they don't get tired of being like, okay, every situation is a new puzzle. It's like a new perfect storm. That doesn't mean you don't look at what's happened in the past. Doesn't mean you don't have all the best practices and understand you don't things key takeaways. But there's no one thing that's going to work all the time for everybody. That's like saying, hey Dan, I have this friend of mine and she's looking for a companion and here are the exact parameters. If you could just find me somebody, one of your friends that hits all those parameters, that's great. It's going to be your soulmate. On paper you're like, oh yeah, what are the chances that that's going to be the. There's no if it works out. That is the exception to the rule. And people like to point to exceptions. They like to point to the viral tiktoker or the channel that just went organically crazy because somebody just happened to mention it or, or whatever it happened. We like to point to the exceptions. But almost always the long winded real success stories were not a shoe in on the first try. That's why people love the stories of all these great founders and all these great companies that have all these failures and blah blah, blah. And Michael Jordan didn't meet the team because that is life. It's not like a just shoot and it's perfect every time. And even if like people like to use the Apple example or Lululemon or like the, you know, all these like brand heroes, even Lululemon was to try to take their original model today and try to put everything in place. Exactly. It probably wouldn't work the same way that it did at that time. That environment. And there's so many factors so understanding that. So the key is understand your audience, understand what is driving them on the decision at hand. Whether it's a thought, whether it's a pair of pants to pick out, whatever the actual thing is that you want them to do or think what is influencing them right now. And you're never gonna know everything, but you're gonna get a really. You need to be a detective in understanding where are they getting their information, where are they currently at? And what are those forces? Those forces that are affecting that decision, Those are your influencers. And that means that influencers aren't just people. Right. If I have a book club and I'm looking for new books, I might just go for a list. Let's say it's a ladies book club in a local public library for stay at home or retired women. I might consult Reese Witherspoon's book club because it's very popular, very mainstream. Does that mean that Reese Witherspoon's book club is not a person, but it influenced me. Brands are influencers. The World Health Organization. Love them or hate them. If they tell everybody that you have to stop eating meat tomorrow, it is poisonous. People stop eating meat. Google says they invest in you. All of a sudden now you look, your credibility for your startup goes from like zero to like, I'm taking a meeting with you because Google invested in you. Wow, that's influence.

Dan Nestle [00:16:50]: Yeah, it's that halo effect of people things.

Amanda Russell [00:16:54]: It's a halo of yes. And if you're asking how to get there, it's understanding all of the things, those forces. So it's understanding, number one, what do you want to achieve your goal? Which is what do you want to influence? And work backwards. It might be you want sales. Okay, so what are they going to create those sales? So you have to do the groundwork. It's like building a house, not pitching a tent. Do the work first. So if I were to put it into three steps, which I do in my book, number one is the what do you actually want to achieve? And then, well, what does it take? Who are the audience to make that happen? And then number two is observe. Observe is like become a detective in understanding the audience that needs to move the needle and what is currently influencing them on that decision. And then number three is now you can take all the connection. Like now you take the puzzle pieces and you start making the puzzle fit together. You might need to use social media, but maybe not. Maybe you're boomers and you, they are still using Facebook. TikTok is just going to like, it's just a waste of time and money. Maybe you don't, maybe your audience, maybe they're in private forums and Reddit threads. Maybe they're not offline. Maybe they're the local jogging communities. Like, where are they? And so you Start, you have all these puzzle pieces. You don't use all of them. Which ones are relevant and what is going to be the most optimal strategy. So basically, goal. What do you want to achieve? Observe two parts. Who is currently that audience and who are they currently following for information for that in that specific area? And number three, how do we connect with them?

Dan Nestle [00:18:27]: As you're talking, I'm just going through in my mind how all of this is really excellent for communicators, like, for PR people, for storytellers, and for folks out there who are very, very mindful of the audience. And if you're starting from the audience first and you're thinking about the audience before anything else, you know you have your goal, you know what you want to achieve, whether it's for a business or whether it's an idea or whether it's a position. You want to get something across to people, you got to know who those people are. So start with that audience. And this is where I think there's been a melding of the ways or merging of the ways and in this whole kind of marpar marketing pr, I don't know which. We're going to have to rename this and rebrand it. That's maybe a new project for you, Amanda, but. But, you know, like, we look at things in terms of, okay, this is paid media, this is earned media, this is owned media, this is shared media, at least from a peso model. That's a. That's common among the communications world. But it's that earned side and the own side really, where you have so much kind of, not only leeway, but I think, responsibility to be looking at your audiences and give serving up the kind of things that they need and that they want and, you know, can't be, hey, I need to tell people about this product. So I'm just gonna start writing blog posts about it. It doesn't work that way because your audience is, a, they may not read blogs, but B, you know, you don't know what drives them. If you don't know what drives them. If you don't know if your product is solving a problem just, you know, at the most basic level, then, you know, you're gonna put all this effort into something and you'll have a lot of content out there. And as our friend Mark Schaefer always says, the value of content that nobody ever sees is precisely zero. So anyway, like, just backing that up into the whole idea of influence, right? And where that goes, I mean, and I think I mentioned this a little Bit in the like, there's this element of the whole thing that I think is a slow builder, but it's an earned piece that sort of separates not only people, but brands from one another. And it's the concept of authority. And I was curious to know. Authority is defined in so many different ways, but how do you see authority as part of the equation? Like, what does it feed in the whole influence building sphere?

Amanda Russell [00:20:24]: Yeah. So I'm just gonna back up for a second because you talk about earned versus bought attention, and I love that, because I love that you add earn to the formula. And it's brilliant because earn versus bot highlights something crucial with influence, and it actually completely mimics the formula of influence. Trust is not scalable, but it's transferable. Right. So when someone vouches for you, they're transferring their influence to you. That hierarchy in the formula for earn versus attention, it shows that there's really, there is a need for both. Right. Bought media gets you seen, that's the attention. Earned attention gets you believed. So you need both. Here's what most miss Is that earned attention compounds because when somebody shares your content or they refer you, they genuinely believe in it, in you. Right. They're not just amplifying your message, they're endorsing your character. And if you trust them or you don't think they have some personal motive, then your trust is now compounded. So earn versus bought attention is like the attention plus trust. And then the next question was finding authority. Yeah, So I like this one too. Authority is not expertise as much as we like to think. It's the expertise that people seek you out for, which is similar to what you said about Mark Schaefer's comment about content not being seen. You can be the smartest person in the room, but if no one's asking for your opinion, you don't have any authority. So there are really like maybe three pillars to this. Number one to four, authority, you actually get the thing done. But again, people have to believe this whether or not you do. They need to believe that because perception is a reality. I'm sorry, but this is true. If you're in the business world, you can actually get the thing done. Proven results. Two, pattern recognition, you can see what others miss. And then three, the power of proximity, that the right people know that you exist. So essentially, if I were to like, sum it up into like a real easy, like, you know, tweet takeaway would be that influence authority is when people quote you in rooms you've never even been in. That's authority.

Dan Nestle [00:22:40]: A lot of the work I'm doing right now is, is really focused on that. One point is authority. Because expertise, you know, as we've talked about separately, you know, is, and even we talked about earlier here, expertise is something that you might have, but if nobody knows that you're an expert or if your expertise is not valued outside of yourself, then it's worthless. I mean, you might have worked intrinsically. Sure. I mean, you worked hard to become an expert in something. And there's no, you know, I don't want to tell somebody that they've studied for so long and they've built, you know, know, created some patents or they've become the person who knows every single last little thing about basket weaving in southern Peru. I don't know, whatever it is. But they have a very like, hey, all power to you. But that's not authority, Right? That's expertise. Can sit there and expertise kind of can be an accumulation of knowledge. It's like you have, by virtue of being in, in a certain world for a long time, you develop an expertise of some sort. And authority, exactly. Not necessarily authority. So what I'm doing these days, of course, is helping people to figure out how to build that authority and like why it's important. But where I always could use help and where I always kind of, where I'm starting to hear more and more from audiences is, okay, yeah, look, we get it, we understand that expertise is important. But how do we know what authority is like, how do we know that we're making, that we're actually, that's working, that we're building authority. And then people slip over to personal brand. And there's nothing wrong with personal brand. I think it's an interesting way of looking at authority and it's a reflection of authority sometimes, but I don't think it's the same thing. So I'm trying to help people understand.

Amanda Russell [00:24:08]: Because you could have a personal brand with authority or without authority. A personal brand is just your reputation. It's your modern day reputation they're calling a personal brand now, which is a unique take on it. Authority is the way that we're defining it is influence. Do you have influence being talked about in a room on something that you want to be or quoted when, without even having someone to force it. Like you said, you have the expertise, but you may or may not have the expertise, but people believe you do and your name comes top of mind. And I think the comfortable truth is that not everybody is an authority, even though they have the expertise. And also, not everybody needs to be the authority. The authority. But everybody needs to be an authority in something if they want to succeed. And so the question isn't whether or not to build it, which is, to me, this is the exact same. The word authority, which is exciting is the way that I'm seeing you define it, is interchange that with influence. The question isn't whether or not you should build it, it's where should you focus it.

Dan Nestle [00:25:10]: Fascinating. I really hadn't put those, Like, I'm trying to keep them separate for some reason because I feel like when you talk about influence, the brain goes to influencer and goes to all these different things like sales and such. Right.

Amanda Russell [00:25:21]: Hence the problem.

Dan Nestle [00:25:22]: Whereas authority is almost a natural outgrowth of expertise. Like it's an activated expertise in some ways.

Amanda Russell [00:25:28]: Yeah, you're right. It's interesting. And I think that you hit the nail on it. You hit exactly. Because one of the reasons I got started using that, I thought about using the other words back then that signified influence, like authority. And then whether or not I would have done it the right way or not. And maybe there's no right way. But I thought we use influence because. And to try to bring the authority back to the term influence versus try a different term. But it really is. I mean, it's. Everything is. Depends on how you define it, how you package it.

Dan Nestle [00:25:56]: I was just thinking maybe authority, like absolutely related terms. Okay, let's stipulate. But maybe authority is like influence in a domain, in a very specific domain, or authority in a domain gets you the influence in that domain. Like, I think authority is a prerequisite.

Amanda Russell [00:26:13]: But influence, again, it's not all knowing, all powerful. There's no one that's just like universally influential.

Dan Nestle [00:26:18]: Yeah, I think there's more elements. Like you can be an authority.

Amanda Russell [00:26:21]: That's a great chat.

Dan Nestle [00:26:22]: Yeah, I think it is. But I think this is one of those things you said earlier. Well, you said earlier that humans are not black and white. It's a gray area. And this is one of those gray area conversations, I think that we have to sort out or like we enjoy sorting out, but that we need to sort out, that can't. Like this is where AI doesn't necessarily do us any favors. But like, if you're talking about somebody who really wants to have authority. Right. Authority gives you. What does it give you? It gives you a license to operate. Authority gives you license to operate. It builds trust. It gives you a reputation, it supports a reputation. It gives you defensibility and sort of Maybe validation. Sometimes it's all earned validation. But is it influence? Right. I don't think it's the same thing. We've said that before. Just I'm curious though, is if somebody is authoritative. Okay, let's just use. Use meaning.

Amanda Russell [00:27:04]: I mean, I think we're getting really down the rabbit hole of like, trying to define, define, define and take all these words and put definitions. And really, words can have many definitions. So I think the most right answer is that it depends on your definition. Some people will say an authority is by title, right? Because you're a police officer and you hold a badge, it doesn't really matter what the name of the person is or what the record is by nature of them wearing a badge and wearing the uniform. They have authority over you. They sound their alarm, you're going to pull over. So I think rather than getting caught up, I always try to figure out what is, like, what are we actually trying to solve for? And so I think the authority depends on how you define it and what I understand. Maybe our goal is really how do we become the key leader? Like, how do we define success in our industry? Does it mean being booked to speak for XX dollars? Does it mean being promoted? Like, what are we trying to achieve? And then we can decide, okay, well, what's going to make us the authority?

Dan Nestle [00:27:58]: Sure, that's a great way of putting it. And thank you for taking me kind of bringing me back out of the hole a little bit there.

Amanda Russell [00:28:03]: No, I mean, you know, and I was like, there's a lot of definitions here.

Dan Nestle [00:28:07]: We're getting philosophical, you know, and I think it is important, though, to recognize that authority can be granted or earned. And, you know, when it's granted, like you get a badge, society gives you the rules about how to follow that authority or your company does. The CEO is the CEO. Right. But what we're talking about here is building your own, like, earning your authority. And once you have that kind of. You've got that authority in your field or you have that expertise kind of laid out there. You've worked hard or you have the expertise, but you can't quite get to that level of authority. Right. How does that happen? Like, this is where I think we wanted to get to. We're solving for. Yes. What we're solving for. We're solving for the fact that there's a lot of experts out there who disappear or who are invisible. Right. We're solving for executives out there who don't have the benefit of being Andy Jassy or Jensen Huang or Whoever who have these massive reputations, but they're just at the helm of a company. Their audience is their employees primarily. But now they also have to remember their audience is also sometimes investors or other people. People out there. They may build authority. They may have earned respect and admiration and authority among their employees. But how are the investors feeling? How are the other people feeling? Right. So we need to solve for this idea that if you are a leader, if you are in a position of, you know, having to either lead an organization or your own company or be a wonderful professor, whatever it is, that you need to build authority and influence, I suppose. But. But authority has to probably come first because that demands respect. If this is helping you at all, Amanda, let me know, because I'm just trying. I'm trying to figure out, like, it's a very fascinating conversation. I happen to be writing a piece about this right now, and as we talk, I'm working out some of the little tweaks.

Amanda Russell [00:29:42]: Well, I think we're just getting a little bit common, maybe. And for me, I. Because I. Maybe because I'm easily confused, getting caught up in the terms, the definitions of authority versus influence versus. Well, let's just go back to. For everybody, that's going to be different. What means authority to one person or influence is to another, and in a different situation, it's different. So I think this is all jargon, marketing jargon and jargon. If you're sitting here listening to this or you're sitting here at home, what do you want to achieve? What does success look like? What the outcome do you want there? That's your sphere of influence. That's where you need to build authority.

Dan Nestle [00:30:12]: Yeah. So for the folks out there, right, who are, let's say you're in executive communications, right. And you are. Your deal is that you're not necessarily trying to make yourself influential, although you should be. But really your job is to make. Make your CEO influential or authoritative or make your executives, which then makes you.

Amanda Russell [00:30:29]: Influential in that sphere.

Dan Nestle [00:30:31]: Yeah, it does. Right. I think that there's a, like a misconception, right, that just by being the CEO, by being the see something, that they're going to be automatically get this kind of. This influence. But that's. That's totally not true. Right. There has to be a program behind them. There has to be a measured way of breaking through the noise and reaching the audiences. And if that's where I wanted to go is go back to the audience here.

Amanda Russell [00:30:52]: Right.

Dan Nestle [00:30:52]: Because it does always come back to the audience, doesn't it? You have to look at the audience and say, well, what is it that they want? What is it that the audience is looking for? And all these other. You're right, you know, you are totally right, Amanda.

Amanda Russell [00:31:02]: There's many talk about wrong. Yes.

Dan Nestle [00:31:04]: Yeah, no, no, what I mean is like we're talking about an influence, we're talking about authority. And really what we should be talking about is does the audience care about what I'm saying? Right. Do they care?

Amanda Russell [00:31:13]: That's what, that's why they stick around. I always say in my class, I don't like definitions. Just pull back to what are we really trying to achieve?

Dan Nestle [00:31:19]: We're trying to achieve people like connections, relationships, right? On some level.

Amanda Russell [00:31:23]: That's the big idea. I think that's their big idea in philosophy is that influence authority, call it whatever you success is not about marketing or communication tactics. It's about relationship architecture, meaning not just relationships with, between one person and one person. One person in the audience, one person in the industry, the markets, whatever. And so we, we're constantly looking for these like tactics that we can just do, do this and we will be successful. Rather, if we teach people to design these influence ecosystems versus chasing vanity metrics, it's a lot bigger of a lift. It's more about building the foundation of a house versus just slapping up a tent. And people like fast results and we're set up to measure in like a quarterly or whatever. But real relationships, think about real relationships. A great analogy is like relationship you have with your sibling or your parent or your child. And that didn't happen overnight. Would you jump across the earth for them if they weren't needed something? Yes, most likely. Not because they are the answer because they have so much authority or influence in XX field, but because they have a relationship with you that cannot be matched. And a relationship trumps everything. Relationship built on trust and benevolence trumps everything. So I call this like the trust loop. And that's what I do with executives and business school students is you take them through this trust loop, which starts with attention to familiarity, to credibility, to loyalty. But most people are getting stuck at this attention stage. The magic of all of this happens in the later stages. But people were programmed to want fast results. My background's in endurance running. It is an endurance, for lack of a better like cheesy metaphor. It's an endurance sport and everybody wants to like right away. No, no, no, you're not going to win the, you don't win the race day one and you don't break records in a distance race without putting in an incredible amount of mileage.

Dan Nestle [00:33:20]: Okay. I'm just processing because, you know, where my head went, my head went. Maybe that gives me a whole new way to look at authority. And I don't want to go back down the authority road again. But it's interesting because you think about an endurance sport, and you think about, you know, where you finish in that sport, like, you finish first, second, third, whatever, and maybe there's multiple winners. But where you finish might be a pretty interesting way to think about how your authority shakes out. Don't know. Want to put that out there?

Amanda Russell [00:33:44]: It does, you know. Yeah. Actually, I have an analogy. And again, this is funny because it's like you're going through the same things I was literally when I started trying to teach influence, and I had this one because I use a lot of running analogies. It really is a great metaphor for life. But I did the same thing with. In a way that, you know, I could understand, which was if you look at competitive distance runners or any runners, but you look at the outcomes, right? So the marathon's really popular. Everybody want, you know, can understand 26.2 miles. Okay. There's different levels. Well, there's classified as. Very simply, I classified as three different buckets of people that do the marathon. Number one there is. I call them, like, the conversational runners. They're the ones that, like, put a marathon on their thing, and they may run a few times a week. They kind of like, check the box to just, you know, they might stop with their dog five times during their run. They might have stopped for a burger break. Like, they might miss a couple of days. It's no big deal. And they eventually get to the marathon, and they will eventually. And they might walk parts of the marathon. It might take them six hours, but they finish it. Great. That's the outcome is they finish the marathon, and that's what they set up to do. Then there is the. Like, I call them the club runners. And these are the people that sign up for marathons, and they train and they go into running. They're usually like the usual. The running group community. And they have training plans. And if you look at their training plans, it's getting a number. The outcome is measured by getting a certain number of miles a week. So each week, you progress and you progress. Right. And then you're covering the mileage. So they do their five, six runs a week, and they're. They're building up, and they're prepared for the marathon. Yes, they finished Their marathon. They might run many marathons. But then when you look at the huge gap is to go from a club runner running many marathons in a pretty decent time to an elite Olympic marathoner. The difference is, it's almost hard to even swallow if you're a runner to understand the difference in that. Like, how is a human even capable of that? But it's not necessarily talent only gets you so far. So people, oh wow, they're so talented. Actually, yes, talent is a given at that stage. It's a given. It's actually the engineering, the reverse engineering of how they got there. Yes, they were talented, okay, great. But so is everyone else. If you look at their training structure, there is not a single single day that they will even step foot in pair of sneakers and go for a run if it's not for a reason that's directly tied to an outcome. So we used to call them junk miles. You would never just go out for a five mile run just to like clock miles that day. It would be complete junk, waste of your body. Rather you're like, okay, I'm trying to hit. Every day is very strategic. I'm trying to hit this mile pace so I'm going to run slightly shorter, slightly faster than that, so I can feel how fast that pace is. And I'm going to clock this and I'm going to do this many repeats. It's very strategic and calculated. The only way you can go from like I'm running pretty good, pretty decently to extreme high elite level is by creating that infrastructure and doing the training that it requires, no matter how talented you are. So yes, some people are more talented than others, but at a certain level it's just like in business, a lot of people are qualified, a lot of people are charismatic, a lot of people know their shit. How do you get there? It's not that you have to put the time. And I think that's what people just don't see. And especially more and more in this world of AI and digital things, lower order skills can be done, they can be automated, but it's real relationships, which is what our society is built on. It's what makes us tick. I mean, we can't operate alone in this world. It is the difference. And real relationships take time to develop and they take nurturing and they take work.

Dan Nestle [00:37:09]: A lot of intentional, purposeful, methodical. You don't like to think about a relationship as a methodical thing. But then again, you don't want to put junk miles into a relationship. It makes sense. You Know, you think about, are you going to spend time with your customers and just, you can tell, you can.

Amanda Russell [00:37:21]: Tell media for the sake of social media, like, we're just going to, like, we're going to start a channel. We're going to. And it's like content for the sake of content. Okay. It's great content.

Dan Nestle [00:37:28]: Yeah. I was just going to say that's our junk, Miles. The dots just connected for me. Those are the junk. You're right. Like, you get 300 emails a day from Zenni Optical. I buy glasses once a year. Once a year. Right. And I love Zenny, don't get me wrong. All right? And yes, they're top of mind, but they're top of mind in a bad way right now because I'm getting all kinds of shit, junk, you know, junk miles from them.

Amanda Russell [00:37:48]: Right.

Dan Nestle [00:37:49]: So the door is open for somebody who's going to, you know, maybe know me better, treat me better and whatever, you know. So I see what you're saying, but I'm very glad you brought up the segue or segue into the next topic, which is, of course, AI. We had meant to talk about AI and I was gonna just sort of, sort of jump into it, but you've mentioned it, so you've opened the door. It's your fault. We're gonna move forward with AI now and, and just talk about, like you talked about building the infrastructure. You and I have loads and loads of conversations. Sometimes that's a hundred percent of what we talk about outside of these kinds of conversations. We're doing a lot with AI and we're doing a lot with AI specifically to create that content, Flywheel, that sort of the right kind of content. That's not junk, Miles. That puts in the hard yards. You know, the hard. That's a mixed metaphor, I realize that. But that puts in the hard work, the hard miles to really achieve some of the goals, because you need to build that ecosystem and it's very difficult to do that as one person. So that's where AI can come in to help. So I know you're using AI because we talk about it. You're also seeing some bigger trends, I think, when it comes to how we build our brands, how we build our influence using AI. And just to layer one more thing on, usually you peel the onion and kind of close the onion or layer it even more. The thing is, AI is so pervasive and so disruptive that you as an educator are looking at it in a different way as well. That. Wait a second, you know, like we need to really rethink some fundamentals of how we approach different parts of business because of AI and how do we prepare people for the future. So it's just a lot. It's a big fat onion. And I think it's kind of important for us to go there a little bit. So let's choose which layer that we should peel. Let's go for the effect that AI is having on your particular. Let's call it content flywheel. Cause I like that term, you call it that and then what that's taught you about what needs to get done for business.

Amanda Russell [00:39:34]: Gosh, there's so much here, so many different ways of AI, I think. So in terms of, I think asking about the authority angle, which is like, what does it mean for my. Well, I started a YouTube channel, you know, here I am 15, 16 years later, just this past spring, because I know it's changed so much and what I've learned, which is incredible, that agencies and people and you'll still see on your feeds that they're advertising great content. Great content. What I learned in the past few months is that AI, so they should say that the social media has like democratized media, AI has democratized content creation. That means that influence and authority will is increasingly going to come from the relationship people have, not necessarily the tie to them, what you make people feel, not, not the volume. Add to that though that social media platforms are no longer what they were. So if you're trying to get organic growth without spending a lot of ad dollars, you're just not. We have to find new ways to reach audiences, which I think we almost come full circle in trying to get back into those private communities or in person communities. Because if you think about it, most of what really drives a lot of like viral type success for everything from Harry Potter is a few major key people that are really active online. They may or may not even be experts in that field. And so I think the leaders who thrive will be those who use AI to amplify their unique insights, not replace their thinking. And in that vein, we understand, right, that AI doesn't replace judgment, it actually amplifies it. It's actually forcing us to do higher order human skills, in my opinion, because the technology helps you see, scale your thinking. But only humans can still ask the questions, discern it, where did it come from? How do we interpret that? How do we read people's behavior? There are certain things that AI cannot replace.

Dan Nestle [00:41:21]: Oh yeah, and we've tried and we've tried and I have tried, but it's.

Amanda Russell [00:41:25]: Like, you know, AI can help you create, but only experience can help you create the wisdom. And then you're only going to be trusted if your audience feels like you have their best interest, heart, you know, what you're talking about on the subject matter, all of these factors.

Dan Nestle [00:41:38]: First of all, I couldn't agree with you more, but last week I had a guest on who talked about basically, hey, look, congratulations, you have Claude now. She likes Claude, like me, but congratulations, you have Claude now. You've just got a promotion. You are now a content and writing supervisor. You have an assistant. Congratulations, go forth. And now write great stuff. And the idea there is that, yeah, for like, for just regular marketing and communications content that, like, you're talking about corporate communication stuff, you can leave a lot of that to AI for sure. But when it comes to developing domain expertise, or to sort of not developing it, but to enhancing or amplifying your own domain expertise, AI is not there to give you that expertise. The AI is there to help you unlock it. And it's there to help you exactly as you said, enhance your capability to communicate that. And when you start to dig in deeper, yes, AI can certainly and does help you see the insights and the connections within your content or within your thoughts that you might not necessarily see on your own with no outside input. Kind of replaces the brainstorming room a little bit. And it replaces some of the kind of view if you're an executive and you had a team of people who was helping you, you know, that's what it replaces. But it's not going to. And it can make you into something that you're not. So you have to be the human here and be the ethical person and say, no, I'm not going to talk about that. Yeah.

Amanda Russell [00:42:52]: And it's right, you're the input still. Like, think about it. It's your insights and then AI is scaling those insights and, and then AI plus your insights equal relationship capital at like, at speed. Right. And the key is that the technology amplifies what you put into it and then what you iterate, you're constantly iterating, iterating, iterating. So if you just have garbage insights and you're just going to get garbage content faster, AI is still not spinning out at 100% accuracy and you still have to correct it. So I think, like, just to sum it up, AI doesn't make you an expert, but if you're already an expert, it makes you unstoppable if you know how to, if you know what to Do. Right.

Dan Nestle [00:43:30]: Exactly. And if you know how to. Oh, gosh, I'm going to print that out, what you just said. Just throw it, slap it up there. Because it does. You need to understand how to systematically transform your expertise into information that reaches your audiences into that relation. He's called it relationship capital. I really like that.

Amanda Russell [00:43:46]: I was thinking about that for my next book, Relationship Capital and a program.

Dan Nestle [00:43:49]: You heard it here first, Relationship Capital. My gosh.

Amanda Russell [00:43:52]: I'm actually working on an MBA curriculum, business curriculum for executives that talks about this relationship capital in an AI world.

Dan Nestle [00:43:59]: Well, I mean, in the last minute or so, we have Amanda, you want to just give a quick overview and I apologize the audience, because I could keep going on with this conversation. And in this great world of ours, Amanda is far busier than I am. So she's got to run soon. So while we still have her. Yeah, while we still got you. Do you want to talk about your new adventure in education? Like where you're going with that?

Amanda Russell [00:44:20]: Sure. Yes. Essentially, I've been working on a new model for business education around a similar premise is what we're talking about here, which is this is like, doesn't matter where. If you're under, if you're an MBA student, young student, if you're senior, C suite in a career, if you're middle management, whatever. I think it's applicable because everyone's facing the same challenge. And that is the real question isn't what to teach or what content to put out there. And it's what can't be commoditized because content, product, everything's commoditized. Now, it's not how to outperform AI, but how do we teach people how to systematically use it optimally, but how to be irreplaceable alongside it, which is, to me, those are three major things. That's relationship capital. That's influence architecture along the ecosystem and the art of reading rooms. Not just reports being the in person component, the experiential component. And I think those are really the key three things. If you were to. Again, you could use other words for this, but to me, it's relationship capital, influence architecture, and how to navigate power structures with intention.

Dan Nestle [00:45:24]: That last part is probably the hardest and certainly the most human that only wisdom and experience probably can teach you or somebody who knows how to do it can teach you. Right.

Amanda Russell [00:45:31]: Yep.

Dan Nestle [00:45:32]: And, boy, I'm looking forward to hearing more about that course.

Amanda Russell [00:45:34]: Thank you.

Dan Nestle [00:45:34]: And we all will when we have Amanda on again at some point to talk about it or we'll look out for her new book that's going to come out.

Amanda Russell [00:45:40]: Hopefully we'll do another episode, Dan.

Dan Nestle [00:45:42]: We'll do another episode for sure. Before we split, I just want to let everybody know you can find Amanda on LinkedIn. Of course. Just look for Amanda Russell. There's more than one Amanda Russell's out there. But now that there's only one Amanda.

Amanda Russell [00:45:51]: Russell and I send you'll see here weekly newsletter. Sign up for Amanda and I promise you I'm selling nothing except for my thoughts.

Dan Nestle [00:45:59]: I can vouch. And here we're seeing the trust relationship happen because if you trust me, you'll know that her content's terrific. She newsletter are these really cool vignettes and stories that give lessons on influence and on attention on the things that we've been talking about today. Amanda's Playbook. Look up Amanda's. Just go for Amanda Russell on YouTube or Amanda's Playbook on YouTube. You'll find it substack Amanda Russell. That's where you'll get her newsletter. Did I miss anything, Amanda? About where where people can find you. We're all good.

Amanda Russell [00:46:24]: Thank you so much for having me.

Dan Nestle [00:46:25]: Amanda, you're the best. Thank you so much for coming on.

Amanda Russell [00:46:28]: Thank you so much. All right, take care.

Dan Nestle [00:46:37]: Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know@dantrendingcommunicator.com thanks again for listening to the trending communicator, Sam.