Authority creates pricing power: how AI is changing trust, pricing, and negotiation with Adam Witty

Speaker A: Welcome to if Prices Could Talk, a podcast where we explore how pricing, sales, and negotiation drive growth. Brought to you by Holden Advisors. Let's dive in. Welcome to if Prices Could Talk. My name is Emily McAuley, and I'm here with Brian Doyle, President and CEO of UM, Holden Advisors. Today we're joined by Adam Witte, founder and CEO of Advantage, the Authority Company, a, ah, publishing and media firm that helps entrepreneurs and CEOs become thought leaders in their field. Today, we are going to explore the intersection of authority and pricing. How credibility gets built, how it affects what you can charge, and what's changing in a world where content is everywhere. Adam, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Emily and Brian, thank you for the invitation. We'll have some fun. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker A: Fantastic. All right, let's get rolling. So, Adam, tell us a little bit about yourself and what Advantage does.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I have a really fun job. I get to work with incredible entrepreneurs, incredible CEOs and leaders and help them tell their story at scale. And typically, those stories have lots of education embedded in them. Uh, they have lots of passion. These people have tremendous amounts of knowledge and some of the more unique experiences you'd ever hear about. And we help them turn those stories, that passion, that knowledge, into book form, into keynote speeches, into workshops, into interviews on radio, television, and in newsprint, uh, content that might be on LinkedIn or social media. We help them create and distribute and amplify a story at scale with the purpose of helping the end reader, listener, viewer, um, you know, improve their life as a result of learning and being educated by this person's story and knowledge.

Speaker A: Wow. Wonderful. That. That is fascinating. It sounds like you've worked with thousands of authors all over the world. Talk to us a little bit about the big question in the realm what. What actually builds authority in today's day and age?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, um, you're right. We've worked with close to 5,000 authors now in 30 different countries. Uh, we are the authority on authority. Uh, we will be entering our 21st year, beginning in July. So this is something that we know a lot about. So what builds authority in the world today? Well, when you think about authority, uh, you know, traditionally, authority is conveyed to a person, uh, by experience. Right? Like, oh, I've been doing this for 25 years. Oh, well, you must really know what you're doing. You're an authority. You're. You're an expert. So longevity is one way that authority is kind of conveyed. Um, degrees and certifications is another way that authority is created.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So if you're a doctor or if you're a professional that has all of the, um, initials after your name, that typically conveys some level of authority. Uh, and then, of course, you know, the other things that convey authority are title, Right? You know, CEO, you know, that is a title. Executive director, founder, you know, senior vice president. Right. Title conveys authority. So those are all the things that we would naturally think of when asked the question, well, what creates authority? But, uh, it doesn't end there. And in fact, I would say those things are increasingly less relevant to how someone views the authority that you have. So what drives authority today? Uh, message, uh, audience and authenticity drive authority today. Right? So your, your message, what is it that you have to share with others? And are you sharing that at scale? Right. So if you're a mentor to a half dozen founders in your local community, you might have great authority with those six founders, but you don't have authority at scale. So how do you do that? Right. Well, number one is you start sharing what you know with the world. Uh, now, hands down, the best way to build authority today is writing and publishing a book. When you become the author of the topic, uh, people automatically say, well, this is the authority on the topic. They wrote the book on it. Right. Today, more than ever, authority is, do you show up in the LLM answer engineering, Right. Where now most queries are going, so you are what chat GPT says you are. And does chat GPT say you're an authority or do they even know who you are? Right, so that, that matters. Um, audience, Right. Social media. It could be the number of connections you have on LinkedIn, if you're on a platform like Instagram, maybe the number of followers that you have, or the number of people that view your website, that, that read your blog, that subscribe to your newsletter, that watch your YouTube podcast video. Right? So that's, that's audience, right? The bigger the audience, the more authority and certainly the more influence you have. Uh, and then finally, like, you know, the quality of the message and its authenticity. Right? Now this is really important because AI is commoditizing content, right? You now press one button and it can create mountains of content. The problem is, it's the silver bullet. It's the easy button. And you didn't create the content. You had a machine created as if it were yours, right? So the easy button is alluring, but most consumers can spot it from a mile away, right? A machine is highly repeatable, and, uh, you simply read a couple of paragraphs and you'll say, oh, AI wrote this article or, oh, AI wrote this blog post or wrote this book. Uh, and by the way, the machines are able to recognize when machines write content, and they deprioritize that content in their answer engines. So authenticity is important. It doesn't mean that I feel AI can't be used effectively in creating content, but it's really more curating your existing content than creating fresh content from scratch. So, um, certainly the message, the audience, the authenticity, um, that's how we create authority today.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. When I think about all the things that I've read, including creative writing as it relates to AI, the things that make you feel like really make you feel are almost unequivocally created by a human being who also feels them right. And that can go. That can be related to business. It can be related to any, Any number of topics. But I want to just anchor a little bit on this. Authority and authenticity against commodity. Right. With authority is what separates you from the commodity crowd. That has to affect what you charge. Should we go there or. Brian, do you want to stay here?

Speaker C: Oh, I just was going to make one additional comment that it. Adam, it sure seems like it's the. The intersection. To me, it's that intersection of authenticity and audience, because it's the. As Emily was saying, it's the audience perceiving the authenticity. It's also the different mediums. And I'm using that to differentiate from just the traditional media term that if it's written, you can probably distinguish the computer from the human, but you definitely can if it's somebody up on a stage or doing some kind of Q and A or reading from their book and then, you know, expanding on it or something like that. That's where it seems to me the real connection happens between the individual human and that audience, which then in turn builds that authenticity. Sort of, you know, snowballs on itself.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's no question about that. What I would say is that, you know, content today is commoditized, and AI is driving that commoditization. True authority is a differentiator. It actually isn't a commodity. Content is a commodity. I wouldn't say that real authority is a commodity. Real authority is authentic. It's meaningful. There is an audience that deeply cares what this person thinks about. Insert the blank. And so what that means is that in today's world, a business leader has to be very intentional, very strategic, and has to put in real time and energy to creating content that is uniquely theirs in their voice and Emotively, uh, connects with the audience. You know, one of the things that it's important to remember, buyers. And we're all buyers, right? Of all kinds of things. Buyers are not logical, they are psychological. And the content that ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude create is very logical because it's a machine and machines are very logical. The problem is that buyers aren't logical, they're psychological. And that is that they are using emotion to buy, they're using emotion to sift, sort and decide. And humans are, uh, humans are emotive, machines are not. And so if you truly want your content, connect with someone in a meaningful way. And, and by the way, business content, business information can connect with people in a meaningful way, Emotive, heartwarming way, you've got to have humans that are authoring that.

Speaker C: Yeah. I always thought of it as the decision, like you said, the decision is being made with the emotion and then the logic is confirming that emotion. And so it, it, it's not. In the absence of what Chat GPT recommends, it's, gosh, these guys seem really good. I, I, I've listened to this person on the podcast, I've read their material. This seems like a really smart guy. And then Let me ask ChatGPT, oh, they showed up for ChatGPT 2. They, they must be the people they.

Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's, it's a confirmation system, more strictly a decision system.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And that's almost where trust sits, right between emotion and logic and how they come together to create stability and emotional connection. How do you think about building trust via authority?

Speaker B: Yeah, so authority directly builds trust. Right. I mean, you're not going to trust somebody that you don't believe is the subject matter expert on that topic. Right. So without authority, it's hard to build high levels of trust. Right. So authority drives believability, it drives credibility. Done well, it creates authenticity. Right. Because again, it's that emotive connection. And so authentic, believable, credible expertise makes a person or an organization very trustworthy in the eyes of the consumer. So, so you can't have high trust without high authority. They, they go hand in hand together.

Speaker C: Yeah. And it, it, it's, I think this is where you were headed earlier, Emily, was that when you have trust, I think it works both ways in terms of business. Like, there's trust to get the conversation, business development aspect of it. You have to trust somebody a little bit to even have the first conversation of, is this somebody I want to do Business with. And then as you were alluding to, there's this trust element of they, are they going to provide the right value that I pay for, you know, is, is the price. We always say price is aligned with value. We, we say this on the podcast in our writing, like over and over and over again. This is the first time I think maybe I've thought about price being aligned with trust

Speaker B: 100%. Right. You know, the more authority you have, the more price elasticity you have. Uh, the more trust you have in the eyes of the prospect, the eyes of the buyer, the more price elasticity you have as well.

Speaker A: How do you think about authority affecting negotiations and how you manage that in your business?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's pretty simple, right? The more authority you have, the more leverage you have from a negotiation perspective. I will also say that leverage is not that leverage is the more authority you have, the more they trust you, the more they are willing to see your point of view in a negotiation and be willing to accept it. Right. I mean, think about it this way. If you're negotiating with another party and you don't trust them, that's going to be a long, hard, bitter negotiation because you're ultimately convinced that it's a zero sum game and the negotiation is solely for their benefit. And if they win, must mean that you lose. When there is trust. And again, authority and trust go hand in hand. There is belief system amongst the other party being negotiated with that, you know, we can negotiate on the fine points, perhaps even the broader, bigger details, and negotiate it in a way where it can be win win, where both sides can be made better off. Those are the negotiations that you uh, get to a place where everybody gets something of value and in return. But, but the somebody must lose in order for me to win mentality, the zero sum mentality, that's when negotiation absolutely sucks. And when you don't trust the other party that you're negotiating with, we quickly devolve to that place.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, one thing that I want to just tee up, Brian, to talk a little bit about is when, when full then thinks about negotiation and leverage. We are often specifically thinking about drivers of trust in how price and value are aligned and how to create leverage in, in those trade offs and in those decision points where, you know, you pull one end of the rope and uh, the other end goes up and not, not, oh, you pull on one end of the rope and nothing changes, which undermines trust. But I want to have Brian talk a little bit about how, how we think of Price value alignment in negotiation and how that builds trust.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think about it a couple of different ways, Emily. Normally, our point of view is from the seller into a, uh, procurement organization that may be playing some games. And when the seller comes with a proposal and then the procurement group pushes back, if there is some trust, price, value alignment, one of the things they can do is provide a give get or a value trade off. Where the buyer says, I am, I'm unwilling to pay this full amount. The seller can say, oh, that's totally okay, here's what we can do. We can move you from the platinum version of what I was just offering to the gold version. You'll. And Adam, I know you do this in your own business, so it fits nicely. You know, we can move from platinum and gold and the price will move down in a, in a parallel path. Would you prefer less and then pay less? Because we can absolutely do that all day long. And when there is that sense of confidence associated with saying, absolutely, I'm comfortable with my value. And here's how the price aligns to. Doesn't sound like the seller is being a used car salesman. It sounds like they're just here to try to provide, as Adam said, that win, win situation. And so I think that's one of the ways it can play out. And I want Adam to react to that. And then, uh, the second comment, Emily.

Speaker A: Well, right.

Speaker B: And, and when you have, if you have low, no authority, or if you have a buyer that's playing games, then it's, hey, the price doesn't work for me. Uh, great. Well, let's take you from the platinum program to the gold program. No, no, no, no, no. I want the platinum program, but I want it for the gold price. Uh, clearly there is not alignment with value and price. And most likely there's also not any trust or a low level of trust and authority built because without authority, it is hard to command a premium price. Right. You know, one of our authors famously says, the higher you go up, uh, in the authority ladder, the more you are paid for who you are as opposed to simply what you do.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, why is it that some attorneys charge 2 hour while others only charge 200 an hour? Right. That's a 10x difference. Well, could be the value of, of the work they're doing, but most likely it's also the perceived authority of the person doing the work. Because I could go to the same law firm and find that $200 per hour lawyer. And in the same firm, just a couple doors down the hallway, find the $2,000 per hour lawyer. So what's the difference? Well, it's the authority. And the authority could be experience. The authority could be the number of years they've been doing it, but probably it's the number of books they've written, it's the number of peer reviewed white papers they've authored, it's the number of conferences that they've keynote, spoken at. It's the number of subscribers to their email newsletter or that the viewers of their blog or their podcast, you know, all of those things build, uh, authority. So it's really important that we recognize that the higher up uh, in income you go, the more you're paid for who the authority, than simply what the, the what it is that you do.

Speaker C: Hm. Yeah, that's interesting. And it, it reminds me of this uh, uh, this other point I was thinking about. And, and Adam, you're, you're, you're shedding light on something that we talk about all. But, but you're looking at it from a different angle, which is really interesting. And, and one of those different angles is that when, when I put myself in the shoes of a procurement group or some sophisticated buyer sourcing whatever you want to call them, I think the number one fear is that they're going to get swindled, that this seller is selling them a bill of goods and they're, they're going to mess this up for their company. And it's super important that they do this right. And so therefore they distrust the seller. And when the seller is not confident with the gift, gets with other things, with their value, how they speak about it, they, it's, it's affirming or confirming that, yeah, this guy's just full of it and he's selling me something. But when they come with authority and the procurement group recognizes that as like this guy really does know what he's talking about. This is very clear. It's more of a negotiation of equals. And not a super smart procurement group and a seller, but two folks that are on the same level. And that I think is where you can have what I would refer to as a more adult conversation and get to that win win that you were referring to before.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. You know, when you have authority and authority comes in lots of different ways. Right? Uh, I'll give an example. So Advantage the Authority company. One of our businesses is business book publishing. We help entrepreneurs and CEOs become the defining author in their field. And we have multiple brands that you can be published through. Our flagship brand is Forbes. Books. Um, people, probably everybody listening to this podcast knows Forbes, Forbes magazine. And of course it's a brand that's 100 and almost 10 years old. It is seen as one of the most prestigious business brands in the world. And to be published by Forbes is a really big deal, right? Well, our Advantage brand, which is our namesake brand, uh, produces a very high quality book. But Advantage, uh, is not Forbes, let's face it. And so if I simply put Advantage and Forbes right next to each other and, and largely the quality of the book that we're going to create is, is pretty comparable. The amount that someone would cheerfully invest to be published by Forbes is of what they would invest to be published by Advantage. And it's simply because with brands that are known and respected and valued, people suspend rational judgment, right? It's no different than walking into a Louis Vuitton store and paying $8,000 for a beautiful leather purse that you could probably buy in a shop down the street for maybe 500 to $800. Louis Vuitton is able to 10x the price because of the power of the brand, right? People suspend rational belief when in front of brands that they admire, respect, and aspire to be linked with. And that is authority, right? Forbes is a brand with major authority. Louis is a brand with incredible authority. Right? And because of that, it creates great price elasticity. So I share a real life example in our business to say that authority matters for you as a entrepreneur, CEO, business leader, because you have a personal brand yourself. And remember, people buy people, they don't buy corporations. People still ultimately do business with people. So the more authority your personal brand has, the more pricing power you have. And then you know your corporate brand, the organizational brand, right? Whether it be Forbes, whether it be Advantage, whether it be Holden, those brands have authority too. And if you have a high authority personal brand combined with a high authority organizational brand, this can be a one plus one equals 10 when it comes to pricing power. But it's not just the price, it's the terms, right? It is the buyer willing to accept the terms that you put forward. It's the ability to say, hey, there's no negotiating. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. When you have brands with high authority, it gives you negotiating power not just in price, but also in terms which of course, you guys know better than any. Sometimes terms are more important.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker B: Than the price.

Speaker C: That's right. You, you name the price, I'll name the terms.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and what? I love what you guys do, Adam, at your company is that, you know, there is the Louis Vuitton and the Forbes that are established brands. So what you said, absolutely true. You know, Forbes commands that, that higher price. There's a whole bunch of us who are trying to get from unknown where Forbes was 160 years ago, trying to get from unknown to known to an authority. And what I see you guys doing, which drives pricing power, which drives a negotiation ability, which drives all these things we're talking about, is helping folks move personally in that positive direction in terms of their credibility and their authority and their company in parallel. And just like you said, when both things end up in the right place, that's when you really have the pricing power. And what you guys are doing is you're, you're helping unknowns move to knowns, so to speak. And knowns in a very positive sense.

Speaker A: Can we get dig into that a little bit and go on a little side quest? When, and I want to ask about this question. When you think about selling to someone, uh, with low authority in their field versus high authority in their field, what does that do to the negotiation and willingness to pay? And then, Brian, we're going to talk about it from your shoes because it's going to look really different.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, you know, let's take an example of Forbes. So Forbes books, our tagline is we, we publish the best in business. Right. So someone that has no authority, uh, someone that is completely unknown, likely would not be able to be published by Forbes anyways. But let's just say for a minute that they were right. The more authority you have, the greater ability you have to walk away and, and whoever is able to walk away more readily. It creates leverage in any negotiation and, and powerful brands have. Right. Um, with Forbes, the person that has more authority, candidly may need Forbes less than person that has low to no authority, that really needs the association with the brand to build them up. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah, that's, that's value appetite right there.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So, so that can directly translate into pricing power, uh, the power of dictating terms, etc. Right. So when you are a buyer, the more authority you have, your brand and yourself individually, the more power you have as a buyer. Similar on the, on the opposite shoe, which is being a seller. The more authority you have personally, the more authority your organization has, the more leverage you have as a seller as well. So, you know, authority is one of those things where it helps you when you're the buyer, but it also helps you when you're the seller. The more authority you have. It's an incoming tide that lifts all boats. Personally and professional.

Speaker A: Absolutely. All right, Brian, let's talk about it from your perspective, because I think the authority thread falls through. But when we're dealing with clients who are selling into folks with low authority, the, everything becomes tougher because the willingness to pay is often lower. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker C: Yeah, there's. So there's two elements. Uh, I'll speak to the lower authority and then the higher authority. So to answer your question, Emily, selling into someone who I'm almost. I'm starting to equate authority sometimes with confidence, and somebody with low authority and low confidence in themselves, they don't believe that they can hit their number this year. They don't believe that new business is coming in. They don't believe that they're going to grow. And so sometimes they take this perspective of scarcity where they say, I don't want to pay for your product or your service because even though paying you $100,000 will make me a million dollars, $5 million, and these numbers are not crazy, oftentimes it looks like this. I don't know if I have a hundred thousand dollars to spend because I'm just, I'm. I'm afraid I don't have the authority to go command more business from my clientele. So I'm not going to buy this and I'm just going to, you know, crawl along and not grow as quickly as I could. So I think, I think there's that on the, on the low authority side of things. And then when you're selling into somebody high authority, we have clients who, who sell to and negotiate with the at least two of the top three, uh, world's top three retailers, names you would immediately recognize. And those companies think to themselves, we, we will crush you. You know, you will listen to everything we have to say, and you will cut your prices and, and you will cut your terms and we will get everything we want. There is an element here that if we can get our clients that not only have the skill to negotiate like that, but to have the confidence in themselves to say, you know what, I actually have some authority in this space and I'm going to stick up for myself. We've seen that play out where the pendulum swings. I mean, it starts with, I'm the world's largest retailer and I will crush you. And by the end of the negotiation, this pendulum has swung back to, geez, really, we need these folks and we are Willing to pay what? Asking. And so I can see it working both ways. And it's interesting, I had not thought of authority and confidence together up until this point. But Adam, based on your comments, there's some common elements that I'm appreciating here on, uh, those connection points.

Speaker B: The more authority you have, the more confidence you have in yourself. I mean that makes all the sense in the world. Yeah, the, the more authority the brand that you represent has, the, the more confident your account managers are. Right. I mean, think about it like, you know, why do so many people want to work with, you know, if you're in the tech industry, Apple or Google, if quick service restaurants, why do people want to work at Chick Fil A? Maybe not burger King or McDonald's.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, why do brands have authority that others don't? And why does that then make them a, uh, magnet for high quality talent? Right. High quality people want to work for high quality organizations and they want a brand that they're proud of, that they admire and gives them a shield of authority in the work that they do.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. I mean like, let's just about salespeople, right. So salespeople every day are in the market, you know, doing battle with buyers, procurement officers whose number one job is to beat you down on price, on terms, on everything you can think about. Yeah, well, you know, being a great salesperson is one thing, but representing a brand with high authority is another thing. And I would submit to you that the lesser salesperson with the great brand has more pricing power than the exceptional salesperson with the little known brand. Simply because the authoritative brand is the shield of armor that the procurement officer just can't slice through. Because the truth is we really need GE MRI machines and the GE MRI machines are a lot better than all the alternatives. I'd love to get a better price, but we can't not have ge. Right. So if you work for a company that has high brand authority, it's not only a competitive moat, uh, but it's also one where the best want to work with the best brands. Right. So, so the more authority your organization has, the, the more pricing power you have with selling, but also the higher quality talent you're going to attract for all areas of the business.

Speaker C: I give you a case study, Adam. I worked at uh, General Electric Insurance, TE Capital, and then the insurance division. And we uh, spun out of GE and became Genworth Financial, selling the exact same insurance with the exact same people. And our pricing power went down in a month because uh, we Weren't GE anymore. We were somebody that, you know, the tagline said, you know, offspring of GE or whatever it used to say, but it was not the same. And, and it was just, it was, I wouldn't call it day and night, but it made a difference because you were just another one of these insurance providers that was like, I don't know, uh, these guys are kind of all the same. It's not Jack Welch's ge.

Speaker B: Right, Wonderful point, certainly.

Speaker A: And we, we see the almost, um, the opposite of that art all the time, where when things go poorly in implementation and delivery, the post sale, it undermines the seller across the board to defend the value of their product, of their brand. But I want to just pivot briefly. We've talked a lot about a lot of different industries and I want to hear a little bit about what your, uh, what you're seeing right now in terms of trends, concerns across the globe in terms of authority.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I would say trend wise, uh, building authority has never been more important because LLMs are trying to commoditize all knowledge and they are making the decision of whether you show up and are visible or whether you are not. And if you Simply let the LLMs do your work or do do the work, then you will suffer whatever decisions they make. Whereas if you as a leader intentionally build your authority and intentionally do the right things that LLMs value, you will be discoverable. So I will say this. Writing and publishing a book is highly valuable when it comes to being discovered by LLMs. Right. Look, it's a known fact all the LLMs have broken copyright law to search and scour every book known to man and educate their models. Okay, but it means that if you do a search on authority, marketing or building authority, it has crawled Adam Witty's 280 page book, the Authority Advantage, which means I am likely to show up in an answer engine. The second thing is, um, LLMs greatly value recency when it comes to sorting and answers in their engine. So, uh, the press release is having a heyday. You know, that's something they talk about in PR circles all the time because it's recent. But also the quantity and quality of earned media that you're receiving and the recency of that goes a long way in prioritizing you in an answer engine above peers or competitors. Right. So the F you were on the Today show or you were featured in the Wall street journal in 2006, the Wall Street Journal logo on your website, but that's now been 20 years. It's not going to do anything for you when it comes to relevancy in answer engines. So that would be another big uh, trend. And then another trend is just this importance of authenticity. Right? I mean, machines can spot content created by machines better, even better than humans can. And Google OpenAI anthropic, they have said, you know, we put precedent and priority over authentically generated content by humans versus machines. And that's what's getting indexed in the LLM for answers to queries that people, people uh, put into it. So creating real authentic content, uh, is important today. And if you simply delegate it to Chat GPT, um, it's not going to really improve the results that you're seeking.

Speaker C: If it feels like what you're saying, Adam, is that we have to differentiate ourselves if we want to be better than everybody else, we have to differentiate ourselves from the easy way out, which is to say, hey chatgpt, write me a bunch of stuff, put it out there and I'm gonna go, you know, quantity over quality. And what I hear you saying is if you can differentiate yourself, writing a book is one of the very best ways to do that. Then even the machine recognizes you better uh, than itself. Right? It's going to look out there, it's going to say, ah, my Chat GPT cousin wrote this stuff. This is very powerful. I'm not going to cite it to my client, so to speak, but this person wrote a book and that, that carries weight with me as it does with the humans. And so it's that, that differentiating um, from, from easy and um, inauthentic to more effort, more thought and authenticity that

Speaker B: I would add two other things that I firmly believe. And these are two things that create a competitive moat for an individual, uh, and also for an organization. And that competitive mode for an individual could be, I'm a top producing salesperson. Right? How in an age of AI where you know it, it is much of everything around it. And those two things are, number one, interpersonal communication, right? So in a world of AI, um, if you want to be the best, you really double down on the human skills, which are interpersonal communication skills, emotional quotient, the ability to listen, the ability to connect, the ability to empathize, the ability to truly hear and interpret what somebody is saying to you, whether that be a boss, whether that be an employee that reports to you, whether that be a prospect or a customer. Right. Interpersonal communication skills are going to become far more important in the future. In this age of AI and a lot of younger people who are number One digital native where all communication is this or now ChatGPT is just the easy button and they don't cognitively think that could be a great detriment to them. The second thing that I would say is that, uh, relationships are going to become even more important. Human to human relationships in the context of business especially, right. Going back to pricing power, right. If, if you have a relationship with a salesperson, if you have a relationship with a company that is deep, that is multifaceted, that has longevity behind it, and that company has intentionally invested in maintaining that relationship, it's going to be really hard to leave it. Uh, but if there is no relationship, then you leave it on moments notice. And if there's a cheaper, better, quicker option, you just go, you don't even have to think twice about it. So that for businesses, um, in an age of AI, investing more money is going to be a competitive advantage. We know that when any of our people get in front of one of our authors, human to human, that relationship is stronger. Why does a stronger relationship matter? Well, when things go wrong, and sometimes they go wrong, when there's a relationship, there's an easier recovery cycle, right. They're willing to give you a second shot. When there's a relationship. When there's a relationship upsell, repeat purchase opportunities are more frequent. Of course, referrals are more frequent as well. Uh, ah, that in an age of AI, you're going to also need to really double down on building authentic quality relationships with your customers. And that can't be done just on zoom calls. Breaking bread, getting in the car and literally breaking bread with a customer, I think is going to become even more important. And as so many people spend more and more time just doing this all day, uh, those quality relationships are going to become, uh, more rare. Which if you're doubling down on it, will put you really in a category of what?

Speaker A: All right, wonderful. Go ahead.

Speaker C: I'm convinced I'm coming down to Charleston to see you. I know.

Speaker B: And I put a premium on it as a buyer, right. When, when someone makes an investment to come see me or come see our company, I immediately put a premium on it. And as a seller, front of people in person too.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, well said.

Speaker A: So in our last few minutes here, two questions. One for anyone listening right now, who knows they need to be building authority, but maybe isn't sure where to start, what are they going to do today to get rolling?

Speaker B: Yeah. So today the, uh, first thing you need to do, if you don't already own it, is to buy so for me, it's Adam witty dot com. If you don't own your first name, last name, dot com, go buy it right now because that is the biggest marketplace in the world and that is your personal brand that you don't own and you don't control. Uh, is I've, we have lots of resources with great educational content that can be helpful and you can find that@theauthoritycompany.com you can find some of that@adamwiddy.com I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. And then for anybody listening, if you were to send me a message directly by email, I would reply. And it's awidyauthority company.com.

Speaker A: fabulous that you covered both my questions. The second one was going to be where can people find you? But now we have already hit that and unless there's anything else you would like to end us off with, uh, this has been a wonderful conversation. I've learned so much. Thank you so much for joining us at if Price is Good talk.

Speaker B: Well, it, it's been big fun. I've enjoyed it. And, and let me say this. Authority is not a luxury. It really, in this new age, a new world is a necessity. And if you don't have authority for yourself, if you don't have authority for your organization, you will perish. So this isn't a nice to do. This is a must do.

Speaker A: I completely agree and I like authority over the term influence. So thank you for introducing our listeners to it and I, uh, hope that you'll come back and join us again.

Speaker B: Would love to.

Speaker A: Thank you.