How to Build Authority That Makes Business Come to You | Dana Flanagan

The MORE Show

In this episode of The MORE Show, host Justin Colby interviews Dana Flanagan, known as the 'Authority Architect,' about building genuine business authority that attracts clients

Key takeaways

• Authentic authority is built through consistent visibility and genuine human connection, not just digital presence.
• Going viral does not equate to business growth; meaningful engagement with the right audience matters more.

Main topics

• Building personal authority in business
• The CIA framework: Credibility, Influence, Authority

Notable quotes

"Trust is not transferable and you can't have AI take that over for you."

"Going viral means nothing if you are not visible to the right people."

Conclusion

Dana Flanagan emphasizes that lasting business success comes not from chasing trends or viral moments, but

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Trust is not transferable and you can't have AI take that over for you. You can build a brand through AI. You can build a trusted brand, logos, pitch decks, things like that. But as a person and as a human being, we still want to know that we're talking to a real person. We want to have a connection. If you need capital and you're having trouble getting in front of investors, you need to invest in somebody like myself that has all of those connections and is readily available to put you in front of the right people. talking about throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks and sending you 50 contacts. That's not what we do. We actually go through and understand your business, take a deep dive, and we put you and place you with people that understand your business and are going to be viable for you in moving the needle forward. Speaker 1 (0:55) Now, if you're struggling in business to figure out one simple thing, how do you build more authority, credibility, and influence? You are going to want to listen to this guest. She's absolutely phenomenal, has done hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate across the country in the commercial and global markets, but also was able to just recruit 70 agents in 90 days where I know a lot of realtors. are struggling to recruit seven agents. But the reason she did any of this and why I bring this up is because my guest also is known as the authority architect. She understood what it took to create authority for herself to reach the goals she wanted to reach. And she's here to talk to us about architecting our authority. Dana Flanagan is here. How are you? I'm Speaker 2 (1:38) great. Thanks so much for having me on the show. Speaker 1 (1:40) I'm excited about this. We've had many conversations off camera and finally we're bringing it to camera. We're bringing it to the public. And so now I want to just kind of understand this is not a podcast episode about real estate. This is a podcast episode about business authority, credibility, and how to be able to get what you want if you do this right. How, you know, take me back 15 years, 20 years. Where did this start for you where it kind of clicked? Like if I do X, I receive Y. Speaker 2 (2:12) Yeah. So that's a great question. So I started in real estate about 25 years ago as a residential real estate agent. And I started, I mean, I'm really dating myself here, but I started posting on Facebook and social media. I post on Facebook. Well, right. No, we do. Right. But this was when Facebook was like brand new. Right. So I started posting. My daily activities in real estate and my business and using it as free advertising, what that got me was visibility. And so I soon realized that it's great to run at the time we were still obviously running newspaper ads and all of those magazine ads and people did the placemats right in the little diners and things like that. But I got so much like I attracted business. That's what I found is that I was attracting business. The visibility is what got me seen and got me known for my craft and what I do. So I picked up on that early on. I mean, I was pretty young. I was in my early 20s and I just started utilizing social media to be visible everywhere. I branded myself not with the company that I was with, but as. a, you know, as what my brand name was at the time. And as that real estate agent, that is the obvious choice in your market. So when people thought, oh, I need to buy, sell or invest in real estate, I'm calling Dana. And so business came to me. That's how I built my my clientele for buyers and sellers. But then as I got into the real estate world and joined a company that had a revenue share model, which is where you get a little piece of everything that the realtors. that have signed up underneath you at that particular company. When they sell, you make a little bit of revenue from that. So I started attracting agents and agents started saying, hey, I want to do what you do. I want to work with you. I want to come to your brokerage. So it was always an attraction based model that I built. And now I teach other people how to do that. I mean, the word that you see most of the time, like on LinkedIn is business development, right? I mean, it's we want we need somebody to do business development. And I. I basically work with companies now as an executive advisor, strategic positioning, where I help businesses and individual CEOs, founders be seen, visible and in the right rooms. And we know a little bit about that, too. We sure do, Speaker 1 (4:34) don't we? Now, I want to back up. I think what you are saying, and I need everyone to go rewind that. Most of you have probably heard is be omnipresent. Speaker 2 (4:44) Before Speaker 1 (4:45) we dive in, I want to talk to you about LFS Capital. If you're looking to build passive income through multifamily real estate, LFS gives you access to exclusive apartment investments that aren't available to the public. If you want to diversify beyond stocks and create real cash flow, visit LFSCapital.com to learn more and to get on the investor list. I personally invest with LFS Capital and they have been incredible to work with. Their team is top notch. I get passive cash flow distributions to my bank account every month and I'm always in the loop. with what's happening with the apartments I'm invested in. The best thing is I don't have to worry about managing tenants or dealing with repairs. The team at Ellevest handles absolutely everything and my income is 100 % passive. And that's just the way I like it. So if you want to build wealth and passive income without all the work and additional risk, visit Ellevest.com. Now let's get to the show. Speaker 1 (5:38) That was harder when you were when you were talking about 20. That was harder then than it is today. Speaker 2 (5:44) For sure. Yeah. And Speaker 1 (5:45) now we have everything. I mean, not to mention AI. And I could put you everywhere on all platforms in like six seconds. But what I actually said, you know, I did a keynote speech around this in some level, but I called it CIA credibility, influence and authority. And if people don't know you or know what you do, it is very hard for them to give you what you want. Speaker 2 (6:09) Yep. Very true. Speaker 1 (6:11) So going back, you understood this in a very young age and very young into business. And it just leaned into your success that you see today. Now you have these large companies hiring you to come in and show these executives how to do this exact same thing. You talk a lot about. You know, a lot of people now are using it incorrectly about like having success on paper. Right. But in reality, you're stuck. You're frustrated. I, by the way, so, you know, and you know this, but I did the same thing. I was called out for it by what I would call like my big brother. He's been my mentor for years. He's just like my big brother. And I was called out on it. You know, what does that look like? You know, what is success on paper look like? that isn't actually the same thing as winning in the business space. Speaker 2 (6:59) Yeah. So it really comes down to credibility. And this is actually one of my keynotes, which is like visibility versus credibility and the five C's of credibility. I'm not going to go through them all right now, but one of them is character. You know, who are you when nobody's watching? And, you know, community. Who knows you? Who knows, likes and trusts you enough to recommend you? Who's worked with you? So I actually. wrote a, I wrote a chapter for a collaboration book and it was called your broken glow stick moment. It was all women. And what I talked about was how I actually got scammed by this person that I went into business with because his visibility online was amazing. He had the Forbes covers, which I'm sure he purchased, you know, you can buy those, you know, all the little like. visible things online that you would look at this guy and go, wow, what an extreme success. And then come to find out the guy didn't have any money to pay his employees, to pay anybody that he was working with. In fact, when a large sum of money came in from a client that I had brought in, that his bank account was so negative that it ate up the deposit that came in. And unfortunately, none of us got paid. So it was at that point in time that I said, you know what? I'm tired of putting my future in other people's hands. And I always want to, you know, I always want to help everybody, right? Like I want, you know, to collaborate with people and do good business with good people. And that's what I thought that it was. But when I really took a step back and removed myself from, you know, that and looked at it from like a 10,000 foot view, he was really visible online, but nobody really worked with him. Like he didn't have like a lot of like. Real relationships. He's one of those people that go around and collects business cards at an event, but never truly connects. Right. So, yeah. So, you know, it was one of those things where his visibility got me and we see it all the time. You know, you can talk about imposter syndrome online where you look at someone and you're like, wow, if I could just get where they are or man, they really got it all together. But do they, though? Like, do they really, you know? Speaker 1 (9:05) Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:06) I mean, it's really true. And so that's why I, you know, I created my company, number one, because I wanted to call the shots and I wanted to run the show. And the people that got burned by this guy actually came over. We all work together now. They're on. They're part of my team. You know, so something good came out of it. But a lot of businesses struggle to be visible in the first place. They have a great idea, great product, great service. But if you're not getting it in front of the people that need to see it. it's falling on deaf ears, right? So all of that's great. But if you need capital and you're having trouble getting in front of investors, you need to invest in somebody like myself that has all of those connections and is readily available to put you in front of the right people. We're not talking about throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks and sending you 50 contacts. That's not what we do. We actually... go through and understand your business, take a deep dive, and we put you and place you with people that understand your business and are going to be viable for you in moving the needle forward. So that's what we do when it comes to that. It's really that credibility is coming from me because I built those relationships over years. That's what you're paying for. You're not paying for a connection. You're paying for the time that I invested all those years to have those relationships to be able to say, hey, you need to take a look at this product. here's the, you know, here's the financials, here's the pro forma. And they're going to listen to me before they're going to pick up the phone from somebody that they don't know. Speaker 1 (10:31) Borrowed credibility is when, I mean, you're just highlighting something that like just doesn't get talked about enough. Speaker 2 (10:37) I Speaker 1 (10:37) will happily borrow Dana's credibility. Speaker 2 (10:40) Yeah. I don't have Speaker 1 (10:41) that relationship with Fred. Dana does. Why, why would I go call Fred just because someone gave me his number? He doesn't know me, what I do, what I'm looking at. But Dana says, Fred, I need you to meet Justin. Justin has this. Fred, you do that. Like borrowed credibility. Everyone needs to write that down. People do not talk about that enough. That is brilliant. Just brilliant. Now you gave us two of the five C's. I might make you strip out all the C's because I love this because I believe in the same thing. How do you gain credibility? How do you gain influence? I call it CIA. How do you gain authority? Speaker 1 (11:15) While it is simple, it isn't always easy for people. It is simple. You and I could go do a masterclass on how you can go meet people and network. But like your five C's, I want to strip them out a little bit. What were the first two that you mentioned? Speaker 2 (11:31) Character. Speaker 1 (11:32) Character. Yeah. Who Speaker 2 (11:34) are you when nobody's watching? Your community. Speaker 1 (11:38) Uh-huh. Speaker 2 (11:39) Your community. Contribution. Like what value do you bring? You know, like I want to stop you. I love these three. Keep going. Speaker 1 (11:45) Keep going. Speaker 2 (11:46) Yeah. So, you know, like contribution, like I always say, come from contribution, right? Like when I meet somebody in an event, I always say, what are you looking for