Previous steps developed your framework and publishing schedule to motivate ideal clients to take action and work with you. This step will craft and share third party validation through your clients’ successes and how your unique approach contributed. These will equip you for the next step of building your network into a community.

If you’re not sure what to decide for this step, use your best guess and move on. Your perspective will develop and you can always update previous answers as you go, so don’t feel too constrained by what you’ve already written either.

Having clients you can ask to endorse your work is invaluable. They should be willing to publish a case study of your collaboration and how they benefitted.

High quality endorsements are influential, so it’s important to approach clients who can share your involvement in their success in the type of work you want.

An endorsement in a typical case study format is clear and carries weight, leading with why they worked with you (their problem), what you delivered (result), and how it was carried out (your unique approach). Save them time and ensure accuracy by providing them a proposed endorsement that you’ve written yourself.

In the last step, you validated your credibility with examples of your expertise in action. This step equips you to begin nurturing your network into a community that supports and endorses you. in the next step you’ll prepare a framework for evaluating opportunities for alignment with your direction and goals.

in the last step, you nurtured your network into a community supporting and endorsing you. Your work to simplify your expertise has given you valuable insight into what you want to focus on and the best people to work with, and developed a pipeline of opportunities. This step will help you evaluate those opportunities for alignment with, and contribution to your decided direction, and ensure they move you forward, compounding your success.

If you’re not sure what to decide for this step, use your best guess and move on. Your perspective will develop and you can always update previous answers as you go, so don’t feel too constrained by what you’ve already written either.

Creating content that shines the light on a member of your network will not only incentivize them to share it, but also result in referred credit for you, which can be more credible than claiming credit directly.

Even when a contact does the work to, say, share a testimonial, there’s no guarantee it’ll focus on the aspects that will help you most. Make it easy for everyone and provide the content you’d liketo see shared. You may only get one chance to ask, so don’t waste it.

Creating content that shines the light on your contact will not only incentivize them to share it, but also result in referred credit for you, which can be more credible than claiming credit directly.

Rather than waiting for opportunity to find you, using your experience and the steps here to help you define the work you want and pursue it helps put you at an advantage by focusing your time and building credibility through your sector’s network.

When the opportunities coming your way feel more like working for someone else on their thing, than a partnership where you are responsible for outcomes and can utilize your particular perspective, it’s time to begin building the opportunities yourself. Whether that’s in partnership or as an independent endeavor will largely be driven by the resources needed.

Carefully vetting clients and their projects will help ensure everyone is aligned before starting and expectations are met. Alignment on direction, stage of maturity, authority and resources you’ll be afforded, and the proposer’s willingness and authority to begin and approve decisions throughout, are starting examples of qualifying criteria that will help you avoid diverging during the project.

As your expertise gains prominence and authority, opportunities will come your way that may be meaningful, but not necessarily aligned with your approach. They’re a good idea, just not your great idea.

Many of us developed our unique perspective by taking these opportunities and realizing what was missing, and what was needed.

Now, with the challenge to connect more people with your vision, and drive action, each commitment takes on a new criteria: how this will contribute to my agenda.

Time on less-aligned commitments is time not invested in more rewarding endeavors. The opportunity cost is more examples of success that clearly demonstrate your idea’s value and credibility.

There are some simple questions you can use to interrogate new opportunities. Does the opportunity align with, and contribute to, my singular approach? Will I be able to share it as an example of how my expertise has benefited others? Or are they just looking to utilize my capability for their methodology?

Make your qualifying meetings more focused and effective by publicizing the nature and level of work you take on. By circulating your projects and successes through popular channels, you’ll help set expectations and pre-qualify requests and proposals you receive. You’ll also receive more proposals that are a good fit.