Take your business on a Winning Streak

It's officially the summer of scoreboards. With the World Cup and Wimbledon taking over this summer, we have witnessed many elite athletes in their winning eras.

Business is often said to be like sport, but rarely are we competing to win in a specific momentum in time. Business doesn't hand out trophies like that. There's no final whistle. No referee stepping in to confirm you've won.

The sport of business just keeps… going. But we can go through Winning Streaks. We can experience times where opportunities are flowing, clients are coming through. They’re happy, we’re happy, and we get what we wanted out of our business, scoreboard or no scoreboard. I’ve been through those streaks and trust me, they are as a good as they sound.

Having now taken over 50 different business owners through the Authority Method, I’d safely call that a winning formula.

It's for solo founders who struggle to extract and express their own brilliance. The process begins by ensuring you nail your perfect positioning. We then name and claim what your Authority is, exactly, and follow that up with a One Big Idea you can own online, and from there, it's much clearer how you'll fill your practice with aligned clients. That's the work I'll be doing with the next cohort of Authority Club, starting in two weeks' time, in case you're curious.

Whether you join me to do this work or go it alone… if you’re a coach or consultant who wants to see real developments happen inside their business before 2026 is over, and go on a winning streak of clients then here’s my advice below.

Work through this list, and I’d bet your business goes on a Winning Streak:

1. Become clear on the one skillset, or combination, you want to be known for (not the six things you're capable of doing, the thing that people will remember you for uniquely).

2. Generate 10 compelling beliefs about your work that would, when posted online, generate a buzz around your work and show how much you ‘get it’

3. Tie these up with One Big Idea because the red thread that weaves what you do with why you do it, and has people repeating it back to you (like it did for Selena) make a pretty big difference to your pipeline

4. Turn the volume dial right up on your you-ness. Identify what your unique vibe and approach is, and do more of it with intention

5. Hangout in the same spots your ideal client is at, on and offline, and make genuine connections. Be yourself and bring your vibe.

6. Know which of the deeper desires your offer is really bringing to your clients' lives. Not just the outcome they get, but the primordial human needs it's solving for them too.

7. Get your Authority Statement down pat. Have it roll off your tongue. Your email signature and your bios are all reflective of this message … then make it stick.

8. Spend time with your muses. Creative, business, mentors. Whose work lights you up and encourages you to raise the bar on yours? Soak it up and see how it encourages you.

9. Plot yourself on two extremes of a positioning axis, by way of approach, vibe, or offer. Find yourself a market no one else is going after and notice the difference it makes on sales calls.

10. Settle into your marketing and sales rhythm with repeatable actions you don’t hate doing, and become a regular in those places.

11. Develop 1–3 assets — like a Hero Piece, signature series, ebook, private podcast, or other — that you're so genuinely proud of that you want to send strangers to them. Heck, you might even do a podcast tour to promote them, they're so good. You'll have a body of work, even a small one, quietly doing the convincing for you while you're not in the room.

12. Create an offer that doesn’t trade depth and nuance you offer clients, with your ability to scale. Think about IP and codification early doors, but let client demand lead the way, not just blind faith in your framework.

If you read through that and thought “yeah, I basically know all of this” or “it’s on the to-do list” — then great. We’re aligned.

But I know from experience, the temptation it so take a list like this and work through it with your ‘coach’ Claude, and save some money DIY’ing everything.

And the cautionary tale I’d share is that many a consultant has come to me 5–6 months after publishing their website with Claude’s help because, guess what, no one was buying, and no one truly got what they meant.

AI won’t push back, check your blind spots, or stop you circling the same idea for the fifth time. Experts on my LinkedIn were getting pretty angry about this, actually.

If you want to be guided by a human, alongside other humans, and have a tried and tested path to follow, the process inside Authority Club takes you through just that.

“ I absolutely underestimated the impact Authority Club would have on my business” Sarah P

"Thinking of my business today and where it was before Authority Club is like night and day" — Natalia A

“Thanks to Authority Club, this year I have so much more clarity in how I explain my work and talk to clients. I'm 90% sure I'll hit £30k next quarter” — Alan R

“The Manifesto alone was worth joining” — Jaz M

Spots for the next cohort are available and being snapped up — some might say faster than a front row seat at Atlanta stadium to watch England vs Argentina tonight. OK, not quite. But if you're ready to take your business on a winning streak over these next six months, here's your cue to join us for just £499 all in.

In six months together we’ll:

1/ Craft your Authority Story and One Big Idea. To become known, trusted, and sought after, you need a clear narrative that communicates what you do, who you serve, and why you.

2/ Develop your Body of Work. Your Authority isn't just what you say, it's what you put out into the world. You'll create content and assets that reflect your expertise and attract opportunities, whilst you sleep.

3/ Grow your clients and connections. The best businesses don't rely on cold outreach or social media hustle — they grow through trust, referrals, and reputation. You'll learn how to build the right relationships that lead to aligned clients.

If you're ready for the support to actually answer these questions and put them out into the world, the next cohort starts in two weeks' time. So come take a look at what's inside and secure your seat if you’re feeling called to do this.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

ICYMI: Ellen from The Ask

I usually send these round ups monthly but missed May whilst selling my flat, so here’s two in one!

Since May, mucho has been happening. For one, today marks one month of me being based in the Spanish island Mallorca for an extended trip, and whilst the pace of life is slower, business continues to run as usual. It’s weird being in an environment of mostly holiday makers and people whose jobs look different to being sat behind a screen all day. A beach trip at lunch between sales emails and coaching sessions though? Not too bad.

Alongside some big life moves, I’ve made big business changes, too.

New systems, tools, team and tech have been introduced, and I always under-estimate the learning curve and time these take to embed. But they’ve all been in service of launching a new way of supporting Authority-led business owners: The Practice.

I’ve been working on The Practice in earnest since March and finallyyyy it kicks off next week with an amazing cohort of founding members!

It took so long because this isn’t a flash in the pan idea for me. It’s the product of nine previous group/hybrid coaching and mentoring programmes before it. I’ve taken all the learnings about what members need, and how I like to work best. It’s also had the input of seven different experts I’ve enlisted to help bring it to life (from a design, tech, marketing or operations perspective).

When I say I look after my people I really mean it.

The other reason The Practice didn’t move faster is that I’ve been carefully considering how it fits alongside the other offers I run. What helped me to iron this out was building a diagnostic tool to map the different phases business owners are in. The Practice was the advanced level. The founding cohort deadline’s now passed, so sit tight for the next intake if you missed it.

Either way, if you’re feeling (like many I’ve spoken to during this launch) that you’ve got some foundational work to do first, that’s good news: Authority Club is built exactly for you. (Take the 2-minute quiz and it’ll show you exactly where you’re at)

If you want to unlock your perfect positioning, define your One Big Idea, name and claim your expertise online so that you can fill your practice with aligned clients, this is for you.

Cohort five kicks off on Wed 29th July and runs to end of January 2027. The investment is £499 and includes the trainings and frameworks that have unlocked aligned positioning and Signature Offers for over 60 consultants and coaches. There’s a live call with me every month to get personalised spot coaching through it, too.

“I usually hate reading things. I loved the Authority Manifesto so much I read it twice,” a client said to me last week.

Grab a spot inside Authority Club whilst they remain.

May & June Newsletter Round Up

^{Everything I shared ICYMI}

Freelancing vs Business Building

Do you know the difference?

My take on how freelancers & portfolio careerists often stay in reactive mode, responding to briefs instead of committing to one repeatable offer and what they’re missing out on as a result.

When Life Lifes

The business case for building a Body of Work

I wrote about what happened when a stressful, months-long flat sale took over my life and why my business kept running anyway.

The Body of Work Playbook

How to turn what you know into a business that grows without you

I wrote the actual playbook I use to turn scattered expertise into a business that doesn't need me chasing referrals or reinventing myself for every brief thanks to these 3 Cs.

This is what I've been building

Introducing The Practice, starting this summer

After spending £33,000 on my business last year patching together different types of support I knew there has to be a better way for experienced builders like me. Enter: The Practice.

How I'm building to multi-6 figures

A long awaited plan.

I open up about the numbers behind my business and what has kept them lower than I’d like, but how I’ve charted the path forward. If you’re planning to scale you’ll want to read this.

The writing that grows your practice

The doing, the thinking, and the parts too many practitioners skip.

I talk a lot about building your Body of Work to grow your business. But there are so many other hidden reasons to write more, and this essay breaks those down.

Community Conversations

Highlights from The Ask clients & community

1/ Inspired by the viral 100 Connections Challenge, Charlotte Horler founder of Nula offering Preventative workplace wellbeing for impact orgs, is running 100 weekday walks, off the screen, across Bristol and London. If you fancy joining Charlotte for a lunch time walk to chat all things mental health at work, get in touch.

2/ Jaz Marfo has relaunched her podcast, Making Work Work about the future of work and what it takes to exist in it as a high performer who’s over doing it via hustle and is taking guest submissions. If you’re doing a podcast circuit, Jaz is the real deal.

3/ As a founder, can a superpower become a derailer? After working with enough ‘spiky profile’ founders, people consultant Danielle Silvestro certainly thinks so. A very thought provoking essay I had the honour of supporting with some edits. Read: Spiky Founders.

4/ Donatella Caggiano was invited into one of the top business design schools in the world, Politecnico di Milano, to contribute to something deeply aligned with her practice: her approach on non-linear change for future leaders. Her Body of Work has been opening all kinds of aligned doors this year.

Work with Ellen

Support with your Authority led business

Join Authority Club’s next round starting 29th July to get 6 months’ support with your consulting or coaching practice to:

• Define your powerful positioning and Authority Statement

• Land your One Big Idea (the connective thread that runs through your work, the sticky message that travels further). P.s. many a comms professional have been through this training with me and loved the insights and clarity it led to!

• Design a Signature Offer that speaks directly to your ideal client and helps you hit your sales goals with less hustle

• Craft your Content Strategy, pillars, key messages and platforms

• Learn how to sign clients through your network, community, and online, and techniques for running effective, non salesy, discovery calls that I’ve learnt from selling hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of coaching, consulting and mentoring services

Your Authority Club membership includes a bespoke roadmap to work through for your progress, curriculum, trainings and a monthly live call with me for just £499 all in. Secure a remaining seat here.

My books are full for 1-1 ongoing coaching work until September but you can apply here to get your name on the list, or I have two intensive slots remaining before then.

It's easy to be "everywhere" when your idea is strong enough

Most advice about visibility tells you to just do more. Show up more and do all of the things!

Don't sleep on Substack. YouTube is king of content. Threads is having its moment.

You get the picture.

But consultants and coaches aren't playing the volume game. We do not need hundreds of thousands of followers to reach our goals. We like going deep with our clients and working with probably 20-40 per year in a really meaningful way.

But closing 40 clients a year, to take the top number, might need 120 sales calls. And 120 sales calls might need 1200 people to consider hopping on a call with you.

So, to take that top number, we still need a decent amount of volume for those outcomes to happen.

But being "everywhere" isn't your answer.

Instead you need to be better. And that is about being great at your craft aka the Doing, so other people will refer you, and clients will leave testimonials saying how happy they are, or stay with you longer.

But the idea behind your work actually has to be strong.

If you have a One Big Idea that's memorable, repeatable and referable you don't have to show up absolutely everywhere, because, as TED has told us: ideas spread.

Selena found this out this year.

She runs BUILD, a network for founders working on causes that matter. When she came to me, she was certainly not short of ideas. But finding the cohesive and clear idea behind her work, she'd been struggling to articulate solo.

"I knew there was something there. I knew there was traction, but just being able to explain it in a really succinct way, I was struggling with."

And before we fixed that, constantly "putting herself out there" was costing her a lot of time and energy.

"I was spending tons of time trying to close a smaller workshop, but it didn't actually lead to anything."

That looks like a lot of effort propped up with very little compounding beneath it.

Perhaps your business needs something similar to Selena.

We took her offers which existed, separately, doing their own thing, and put them under one umbrella, so they built on each other instead of competing. Then we found the one idea underneath all of it: networks will fund the future.

That idea then became her Hero Piece. A piece of writing built to carry the argument on its own, without her needing to explain it in every room or platform. And then something happened that she didn't engineer, post for, or chase…

Watch Selena describe the impact of our work together:

"I feel like I've just put out my Hero Piece, and people are using the language I put out, back. Seeing it written in other people's posts, or tagging me in it, saying 'I've seen BUILD everywhere and I really want to talk to you now'... that feeling that what I'm building is almost taking on its own life beyond me. That is what feels really, really exciting."

Selena didn't get everywhere by trying to be everywhere. We just worked on her LinkedIn and that core essay aka her Hero Piece. You can check it out here, it’s truly been transformative for her business and, is a very strong essay and well worth your time!

The difference? She became clear enough that other people started saying it for her. She felt confident in her idea, and her offers, enough to keep repeating them. To build the systems around them. Not keep adding new things into the mix.

And my role in all of this? Clarity, sharpening, suggestions, editing, accountability, momentum and challenge. Selena did some of this work alongside peers in a group setting too (a supper layer that matters as much as the 1-1 time).

But often there’s resistance. Something I warn clients about, that Selena called out too: "It can feel like you're going backwards. You've been building your business for two or three years, wanting to forge ahead — but this slowing down, making sure your positioning is right, building your authority thoughtfully... it can feel like it's taking a while to click into place. And then once it clicks, there's this 'oh, this is it' moment."

Alan had the same experience from a different angle when working with me.

Ten years of not being able to say, simply, what he did. Business kept coming thanks to the depth of his craft but not in a predictable, repeatable way. Then, after being inside Authority Club, he reached out to let me know some good news last December.

He was starting 2026 at £30k revenue locked in for Q1. This level of predictability hadn't happened in a decade. And you'll see with Alan's work, he's not showing up everywhere or all of the time. But his One Big Idea has opened doors in private networks and circles that are now doing heavy lifting for him.

Natalia had been a writer for one industry, a designer for another, and a social media manager for a third. Good at all of it, but none compounding.

She said: "The difference has been night and day. For the first time in years, I found saying what I did easy, and found myself finally understanding my own business without caveats for any of its variants. I had a lot of ideas and a lot of skills, but my professional narrative was scattered”

She's since worked on the dream creative and editorial projects that had been the goal all along, inside the film industry, thanks to her Body of Work opening doors previously unimaginable before her time inside my programme.

None of this happened because Selena, Alan or Natalia are more ‘disciplined’ ‘consistent’ or ‘extroverted’.

It happened because they had somewhere to do this work with structure around it, not another course to work through alone.

That's the true design of The Practice.

A quarterly 1-1 with me to set your direction, so you're not guessing what to focus on. A weekly drop-in to talk through the decision you're stuck on right now. Depth Days, so the thinking and writing actually gets protected time instead of getting bumped by whichever client emails first. And editorial feedback on the real thing you're building, not generic advice. My feedback has been described as game-changing, and honestly, I'm underselling how powerful this part is … I've seen version one of many Hero Pieces before they came to me, and the final version after.

So if you're already doing good work, already getting results, but fed up of the "just post more" advice and you suspect your gap is clarity and cohesion of what you already know, not new stuff, or more volume… then this is exactly what The Practice is built for.

I help you make your brilliance sharper. Your business clearer. Pathways to working with you stronger. More profitable, more structured. Your Body of Work will start to do the heavy lifting for you.

Applications close tonight. Founding member spots are limited to this intake only.

Or for full details of whats inside and how things go, check out this page.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

The writing that grows your practice

Coaches, consultants, trainers are running practitioner-led businesses where the goal is quality over quantity of clients. Clients who pay well, stay longer, refer often.

Growth might look like more of these clients, or it might look like a different, more scalable structure of serving them.

Before we get into growth, something worth calling out is that the expert practitioners that I meet amongst this group love their craft.

They truly love delivering for clients. The Doing.

Coaches love the poignant questions. Consultants love finding the answers. Trainers love the penny-drop moments.

I’ve also discovered that these practitioners love thinking about the doing.

Considering deeply “How could I do this doing better?” The getting inspired from books or videos. Learning from a mentor. Mapping out a process. Planning sessions or types of transformations.

And investing time away from the Doing, to do the Thinking, soon makes the Doing better. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Steven Covey called this sharpening the saw; to step back from the work to strengthen the thing doing the work.

But there’s a third dimension that often gets overlooked. This third layer strengthens everything. That is, as you guessed it: Writing.

Writing becomes the home of the Thinking. Without writing, the Thinking remains untethered, floating, easily forgotten. And, Writing enhances the Thinking at the same time as merely capturing it. Because writing is thinking clearly.

With that Writing captured, it serves the Doing, too.

Because your clients can access your Writing in a way they can’t your Thinking.

You can share your Writing with clients before, during, or even after their experiences of working with you and experiencing your support so your Writing becomes their very own anchor for the work you’re doing with them.

It helps your clients understand their own journey better. Stay engaged between sessions. Adds another layer to the service they're receiving. Gets them more emotionally invested in the transformation they're in the middle of.

And so, as you can see, Writing sits at the intersection of the Thinking and the Doing. It strengthens both.

I noticed clients getting better results in their coaching once I added a weekly newsletter to my schedule. The weekly writing process ensured I was always thinking deeply about a problem I saw in sessions, or anticipated. Essays shared with clients then provided a value add to the service, alongside their sessions.

I’ve seen this echoed across others I’ve worked with, or been a client of. Writing truly makes your Doing better, in multiple different ways.

Donatella went through this writing and editorial process with me. She said it “brought me back into conversation and into the world. You brought me back into own curiosity. I'm getting podcasts. I'm getting talks. I'm getting all the right places where I can express myself”. Esther Perel even read her work.

But can Writing also get you more clients?

My short answer, unsurprisingly is yes. Writing regularly, undeniably grows your practice.

If you commit to writing longer form pieces regularly then you will get more clients.

Writing showcases that you’ve done your Thinking. It helps create demand for the Doing. It provides your clients a way to easily share, and refer your work to others. It creates opportunities to be presented as an expert, on other people’s platforms, or your own, and gets you in front of the right people.

However this only works, when you can say ‘yes’ to all of the following:

• Your writing references your Doing, not just about whatever’s on your mind

• Your writing is high quality and the right balance of narrative and sales-led.

• Your writing has sufficient intrigue, or teases, to get people to read it in the first place

• Your writing keeps people’s attention, as a client kindly shared with me this week “your newsletter is one of very few that I tend to read, not just skim through but read-read”.

• Your writing names the challenges and opportunities your clients truly care about

• Your writing gets discovered by the right people, aka prospective clients

It can be challenging it can be to do everything on this list well. It requires uplevelling your skill set, creating time away from clients to do deep work, and being truly confident in promoting the offer that your writing leads to.

I find many practitioners get 80-90% there with these and often stop themselves short. The overthinking, perfectionism, or indecision gets in the way. This list also asks a lot of you from a skills, capacity, and consistency perspective.

Which is why inside The Practice, members will get support with all of these things and more.

There’s support with creating or refining your offers, so you feel entirely confident that you are selling what you want to sell, and your clients want to pay for. So that you can build a business that scales without losing the depth that you love along the way.

There’s direction on what, and how to write and the accountability and protected time to do it.

There’s also editorial feedback on your Body of Work. As a member said to me this week “your feedback was tremendously helpful in convincing me that I could do better than the draft I’d submitted”.

There’s also support in getting the right people to read it, once you’re proud of it.

My guidance and the environment around you will up-level your practice. I’m designing The Practice after five different programmes that have taught me a lot about what does, and doesn’t move the needle.

But many of you will still be questioning, will this actually work for me?

I want to make you a promise.

If what you deliver to clients is genuinely good, and you commit to growing your Body of Work consistently, you will fill your practice with aligned clients. In time. But you will.

Notice I’m saying that you do actually have to be good at what you deliver to clients. But if you are, and you want to keep signing aligned clients who come to you pre-sold about working with you, then Writing is one of the best vehicles to call those clients in.

If you prefer podcasting, or video you’re welcome too. I’m long-form agnostic as the same principles apply but the reason I focus a lot on writing is that it’s free. Fast. Doesn’t require much set up. And for practitioners who do thoughtful, nuanced, complex, values-led work… it actually captures the depth of what you do in a way that many other, especially short form, mediums cannot.

If you want more aligned clients who feel called in thanks to the depth of your thinking, apply to The Practice. Your application will help us both to see how ready you are for the environment inside, and if you’re too early, I’ll share alternative options available.

If you’ve already got a lot of clients, and are at capacity, the work we’ll focus on for you inside is restructuring your offer to ensure you can keep saying yes, without burning out. We’ll double down on Codifying what you do, to leverage your frameworks and IP to design ways of working with you that require less of your time in the room, but still help your clients get a great result.

Either way - your writing will drive demand for more of you and your unique way of solving problems.

If you apply and are accepted, here's what you'll find inside:

• A quarterly 1:1 with me to set your goals and focus for the three months ahead clearing resistance, drawing the line between act now and save for later, and building a custom plan with real metrics.
  "Ellen brings both business knowledge and market thinking, but also sees the person behind the business, their skills and talents. She's good at noticing patterns and distilling complexity." — Pavlina

• A weekly drop-in coaching call to unblock whatever you're facing from mindset, creative to technical. Bring a live offer, a framework you're developing, a client challenge. Stay until your question's answered, or listen to how others are approaching their own Body of Work.
  "It's because of Ellen that I chose to niche so early, built an ongoing body of work, and realised that what felt impossible was achievable with the right support." — Emma

• The Authority Method so you never have to guess what to work on next. A curriculum built around the three Cs, with a live training dropped each month going deeper into concepts like IP development, essays that lead to clients, and scaling your systems.

• Depth Days which is protected time on the calendar to actually build your Body of Work. Four-hour sessions with your peers, muted mics, everyone working on the thing that deserves their attention.

• Body of Work Lab where you’ll submit your actual work: an essay, a framework, a sales page, a positioning statement. Get detailed editorial and strategic feedback within two working days.
  "What stands out most is Ellen's editorial feedback. You can tell she cares, brings both rigour and warmth. If you've been carrying ideas in your head and haven't been able to get them into long-form writing, Ellen will help you do it." 
  — Sadia

And founding members get an additional 1:1 in their first quarter and have their £990 quarterly rate locked in permanently against future price increases.

There's one week left to apply and we start the week of 13th July.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

How I’m building to multi-6 figures

Before today's newsletter: this Friday I'm running a free training, Scale The Unscalable.

I’ll sharing what I see as the most viable paths to scaling a coaching or consulting practice. You’ll leave with a clear sense of where your practice is capped in its growth, and the next next step to take.

This session is for you if you’re past the early stages but unclear on your longer-term growth plan. We go live at 4.30pm UK time on Friday 19th June, Sign up here.

I’ll also share how you can join The Practice (applications close in 2 weeks and half the spots are already gone, so don’t miss out if you’re curious).

And on the topic of scale….

It's been a while since I shared my own goals with you, and scale is very much on my mind right now.

Specifically what I mean when I say scale, however, deserves explanation. I mean a business that for me can:

• Show up to a BD or marketing activity and actually benefit from the surge of interest thanks to having a business model that can accommodate the volume

• Have team, automations and workflows in place so that not every task depends on me showing up (which only works once you've got repeatable activities underneath it)

• Pay me generously: settling my November corporation tax bill back in spring, investing properly in my pension, taking dividends to meet lifestyle needs

• Invest in learning, or in building a resource or training, knowing I can share the benefit with the majority of my clients because they all share similar needs

• Have a full client roster without being tied to my desk every hour of the day, so I can happily head to the beach midday in Mallorca (where I am this summer)

Those versions of scale I benefit from today.

However, I've got some way to go to reach my some other scale ambitions.

Case in point: I hit the six figure mark a long time ago. And yet, nearly four years on I've not hit multi-six.

Sure, of course, money isn’t everything. But here’s how I see it: if you take the round clean £100k revenue mark, on average after my team, support, software, marketing, pension and tax, that’s around £50k take home. Not bad, but not exactly record breaking.

There are people making six figures and not spending money on all these things, but spending on these things - personally - allows me to redistribute my earnings back into the small business economy. Which feels good. They also mean I enjoy the experience of running my own business more and provide fulfilment in ways that more money in my back pocket could not.

I also recognise that I could have a £250k turnover business for example, without spending twice on all of those things. There’s not a like-for-like correlation between team, marketing or operational spend and revenue.

The main difference between a six and multi six figure business is the business model behind it.

So why haven’t I, a business coach, cracked this code yet?

Here's the honest tour of my business journey:

• 2020: training as a coach, also doing recruitment. Distracted.

• 2021: earning well from coaching, still doing recruitment. Distracted.

• 2022: travelled the world, tried lots of things. Distracted

• 2023: went all in on one big idea and message. Doubled my income entirely from 1-1 coaching, shooting well beyond six figures

• 2024: overworked, then the devasting and unexpected death of a client. I pulled back and dabbled. Distracted.

• 2025: launched the latest Authority Club and Authority Letters, kept the 1-1s. Best year yet.

See the pattern? The years I scattered, I stalled. The years I focused, I grew.

Distraction kills momentum.

If your business isn't built on one core idea, with a core scalable offer, and a marketing plan you can actually stick to, then you won't scale.

I know this because I've lived both sides of it and also worked with hundreds of coaches and consultants … and watched the same thing play out every single time.

2026 into 2027 is my time to apply everything I've learned.

The Practice is my plan for hitting multiple six figures.

The delivery model behind it, plus my plans for team, framework development, authority building, back-end systems, affiliates and referral partners makes for a £300k business and beyond.

Have I arrived there yet? No. But I'm a few steps ahead of where most of my members are starting, and I'm building it in the open, reporting back as I go, not teaching you things that used to work five years ago. I'm in the trenches with you.

And because of that, I know exactly what support structures I need and would value from on my journey, and those are the exact same ones that I’ve built The Practice around.

• I need a big, expansive vision and a coach who helps me think bigger → so The Practice opens every quarter with a 1-1 with me

• I need to talk things out loud and solve problems in real time → so there's a weekly drop-in call for spot coaching

• I need clear, measurable goals and a way to track them → so there's a monthly reporting structure

• I need accountability to keep producing my Body of Work → so there's a space to submit work for detailed editorial feedback

• I need direction on designing a scalable model → so there's a monthly training for that

• I need the energy of a team and community → so it's me, my team members, and a vetted peer group

I’m designing a structured environment that allows for personalisation all at once. That allows members to benefit from scale the ways that I have. Not from viral moments, a big social media following or heavy ad spend.

But from showing up with a repeatable One Big Idea, a business model that is both personally fulfilling and financially rewarding, and the commitment to producing the Body of Work that builds demands for them both. Without distraction.

Like an investment in the stock market, little by little over time grows exponentially.

The structures I’ve put around myself have ensured that’s possible and those same structures are now what I’m providing members of The Practice.

Here’s what some of the founding cohort members have said about why they’re joining:

• "Everything relies on me. I'm doing too much delivery and not enough on marketing, systems and business development. I need to shift the business to the next stage."

• "I'm ready to share my One Big Idea with a broader audience and develop thought pieces that spell out my key pillars as a coach."

• "I'm done throwing spaghetti at the wall. Building a Body of Work feels far more sustainable than fannying about on IG reels and I want something that compounds and consistently brings in leads."

• "I want accountability on the structures that make business development less hard, and to reconsider my offers so I'm as fulfilled as possible running my business."

Nodding along?

Starting on Monday 13th July, The Practice begins. Members will have 1-1 strategic coaching, editorial and creative feedback on their Body of Work and the accountability of progress tracking and regular reviews to ensure their practice will scale. Always bespoke and personalised. To begin, a capped cohort of 12 vetted peers alongside you.

(It's not for beginners, or anyone still figuring out what work they do.)

Founding cohort member rate is £990 per quarter, locked in permanently before it rises to £1,250 for the next intake. The first Founding members also get a bonus 1-1 with me in their first quarter.

If you want to hear the full thinking and frameworks behind The Practice first, join me Friday 19th June at 4:30pm UK for Scale The Unscalable. 

But if you already know this is what you need, you can now from today, apply. Full details are on this page. Applications close in two weeks or sooner if we hit capacity.

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

This is what I’ve been building

Introducing The Practice, starting this summer

Alongside some big life changes that are happening at the moment (and I'll share the full story with you very soon!) I've been brewing something over at The Ask HQ for a few months now.

I've been able to share it with some past and current clients, many of whom have already put their hand up for it, but it's time I announced it properly.

I've been building an entirely new way of working with me.

Introducing: The Practice.

The Practice helps experienced coaches and consultants turn their unique way of solving problems into a cohesive Body of Work, so that their positioning, offers, and content all work as a system that drives inbound demand and will compound over time.

And if I'm being truly honest with you? I wish I could join The Practice.

I mean it.

Because I know what a strong Body of Work does. It's the difference between a practice that depends entirely on your daily effort and presence and one where your thinking is out in the world working for you, attracting the right clients, at the right rates, before you've even spoken to them.

The only reason I've been able to produce a consistent Body of Work over the last few years is because of the structures and accountability I've set up for myself.

These have created great forcing mechanisms for getting great work done, but they've been costly.

The coworking space, the coaches, the team support… in 2025 alone that came to £33,000. Crazy, I know. But those are the reasons I show up consistently and get work done.

Not everyone needs to, or should, pay such high outgoings.

But I do believe that structure, accountability, deadlines, and dopamine are a huge reason why entrepreneurs get their best work done. Without performance targets, promotions and pay rises to work towards, we need other external motivations. We need that which keeps us in motion.

I meet a tonne of coaches and consultants. Many are very experienced and doing great work.

But many (myself included when I don't have support) end up spending too many months or sometimes years stuck in their own heads, overthinking things, and avoiding the work that would truly change everything for their practice. The Body of Work creation and systems that support it, become another item on the never ending to do list that gets deprioritised for immediate client work, taxes or doom scrolling.

The Practice is my answer to that.

It’s the answer to doing the important work that will serve your business for months, if not years, down the line, and doing it in a way that makes sense.

An environment, and a way of working, for experienced coaches and consultants only.

Who’ll be able to say with confidence that their Body of Work is working and is the reason they are fully booked and can do work that scales what is essentially unscaleable: their thinking.

As I was writing this, a client pinged me to share their gratitude. They closed their first six figure consulting contract. Another yesterday, thanked me for my support in them recently landing a ‘10000% fit ICP’ and another, for hitting their 2026 revenue goal (108% completion) already, in May.

And starting 13th July, I'm turning these approaches into a structured environment that combines the best of my 1:1 deep strategic coaching, with the guidance to get this work out into the world. That’s my editorial and creative input and feedback (from offers, to newsletter strategy, to Hero Pieces) and the accountability that comes from progress tracking and regular reviews. This isn’t a ‘group programme’ or cookie cutter pushing you do things that aren’t a fit. It’s my bespoke, personalised decisions to you and what you need next. To keep you deciding, and then creating, the things that will grow your practice to the next level because you know you’re ready for it. (But not a good fit for beginners or anyone still figuring out what work they do). But yes, there’ll be a vetted, high quality peer group alongside you. 12 members to start.

The founding rate is £990 per quarter, locked in permanently before the price rises to £1,250 for the next intake. Either way, a fraction of cobbling together these various support structures individually. Founding members also get a bonus 1:1 with me in their first quarter to work through their big strategic moves before the year is up.

You don't have to decide today. But if you do want to hear more, including the thinking and frameworks behind The Practice, you can join me for a free training on Friday 19th June at 4:30pm UK. Sign up here: Scale The Unscaleable: The Theory Behind The Practice

You'll get a lot from the training and finish your week feeling inspired, even if you don't end up joining us inside.

In terms of joining The Practice? Some spaces have been snapped up already, and the rest will be offered first to anyone registered to the event.

Can't wait to share more soon.

Here’s the link to sign up again, and if you can’t make it live, you’ll get a 7 day replay pass.

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

The Body of Work Playbook 

How to turn what you know into a business that grows without you

Last week I told you about selling my flat (the part-time job that had consumed most of spare time for six months) and how, thankfully, my business kept going strong.

I made the case for building your Body of Work, the hardest working salesperson you’ll ever find. Except, your Body of Work isn’t a person, it’s assets. Assets that truly can help you achieve the same promise many business gurus shout; WORK LESS EARN MORE.

So how, exactly, does this Body of Work thing, work?

It’s certainly not by becoming famous. You don’t need to go viral, or achieve unparalleled growth; in fact, going viral without the business model or systems that can support demand is going to deliver a boost to your ego but not really your bank balance. It’s also not about jumping onto the content creation treadmill and not getting off until you hit the big red button having had enough.

Rather it’s a slower, deliberate, and thoughtful approach. The approach I’ve personally used on my business, and my clients. The approach that kept my client pipeline full while I was chasing solicitors and busy trying not to lose my mind.

It’s also approach that I’ve built The Practice around. You can join the waitlist to be the first to hear more very soon.

I care deeply about this because most business advice out there assumes you’re either trying to find clients from a standing start, or already scaled and running a team.

It rarely accounts for you: the person in the middle who’s booked out, highly skilled, and sitting on years of accumulated thinking. You keep getting told to niche down, use ads, or build a course or create a content strategy. None of that touches the real problem you have.

Your expertise isn’t yet a system. And until it is, everything else is just more work.

Here’s how to fix that. Your Body of work Playbook.

^{Turn what you know into a business that grows without you}

THE COHESION STAGE

1. Stop adding. Start auditing.

You have years of insight, instinct and expertise. But it’s all in fragments. Your conversations, client work, old posts, half-finished ideas scattered both literally and metaphorically. There’s no shortage of ideas here. Those ideas just exist in too many places, at too many levels of development, and nobody including you can see the whole picture at once.

‘Cohesion’ is the work of pulling those threads together and finding the through-line. The central idea underneath everything you do, and the thing you want to become known for.

Your turn: Before you build anything new, you need a clear picture of what you've already built. The answer to your scale problem is almost certainly already in your business. What are the three or four ideas that keep showing up in your client work, regardless of the brief? Is there One Big Idea that sits across all of them? If you can't answer that in under a minute, that's your starting point.

2. Name the thing that only you do

You have a method, a vibe, a way of working. And that’s why your clients keep coming back and choosing you.

Have you named that method? Is it there for them to learn about when you’re not in the room?

The gap between static ideas and your live performance is leaving money on the table. Because when you have a named framework it makes your thinking referable and people can talk about it, recommend you specifically and recognise your work in the wild.

Your turn: No need to go out and inventing something new right now. You're naming something that already exists in how you work. The descriptor of the result, the process, the map you’ve built intuitively. What's the one thing clients come back to again and again: the idea, the reframe, the way of looking at a problem that seems to land every time?

THE CODIFICATION STAGE

1. Extract your IP into something that exists without you

Once your thinking and approach is organised and cohesive, the next step is making it tangible: enter stage left ‘Codification’.

Here your thinking goes outside of your head and lives a life its own. It becomes frameworks, documented methodologies, long form essays or guides.

Things that carry your expertise forward without you needing to reconstruct everything from scratch each time.

Many confuse creating IP with building some kind of passive income empire, but it’s not about removing you from the equation entirely. It’s about ensuring your ideas have a life of their own, and that when they are discovered, the next natural step someone would choose is working with you on your unique method.

Your turn: Pick one framework you've explained on a client call in the last month. Does it exist anywhere outside that conversation? If the answer is no, that's a whole asset sitting unleveraged in your head.

2. Build one clear offer pathway

If you have 15 offers it might feel like flexibility to you and chance to mop up a range of work. But simplicity is what scales.

A confused mind never buys, is a great reminder for your sales process.

Ahead of ever speaking to you though, can a prospective client see themselves in your world, know where to navigate? And can you, once they’re in your world, retain the business and keep adding value over the long-term?

The goal is to build a pathway: a clear sequence from "I've just discovered you" to "I'm a long-term client" ensuring that every offer connects to the next one and everything points toward your core work.

Your turn: If someone landed on your website today having never heard of you, would they know immediately what to do next? Or would they have to figure it out? Most people, if they're honest, know the answer.

THE COMPOUNDING STAGE

1. Connect your content to your IP — not to the algorithm

If you get here, the hard work starts to pay back. When your thinking is cohesive and your IP is codified, you can build the systems that mean your business grows without requiring your constant presence. Content that keeps working. Demand that arrives without you chasing it and a reputation that truly does precede you.

When your content gets inbound interest from the right people that's usually because it connects back to a clear body of thinking. It's not a random, vibes post of the day.

Content that compounds teaches your specific way of seeing a problem rather than general industry advice or hot takes to please the algorithm. It showcases your particular lens, the counterintuitive diagnoses and reframes that make clients say "I've never thought about it like that."

The assets that do this best aren't social posts. They're long form e.g. a newsletter that develops your thinking in public over time, a Hero Piece that does your positioning before you're even in the room, or a signature talk that keeps racking up views.

These are the things that build real authority. And they're what people mean when they talk about a Body of Work that works without you.

When your content is connected to your IP, it attracts the right people and pre-sells your methodology at the same time.

Your turn: Look at your last five pieces of content. Could anyone in your industry have written them? Or do they teach something that is specifically, unmistakably yours? Therein lies a big difference between content that keeps you visible and content that builds authority.

2. Build demand infrastructure so you stop relying on referrals alone

Referrals are wonderful. Truly, I am so grateful for them.

But because you can't control them, predict them, or scale them they aren’t really a strategy.

Demand infrastructure doesn't need to be complicated. One clear place where your best thinking lives. One consistent way of bringing new people to it. One obvious next step for people who want to go deeper.

Your turn: If referrals dried up tomorrow, what would your pipeline look like? Be honest.

3. Protect the time to actually build it

Everything that we’ve covered so far is more than achievable. But often stays in the "I'll get to it when things quiet down" category.

Except, you’re very good at what you do. So client delivery fills the space. Clients need you and the calendar quickly fills itself.

The businesses that make this shift go out of their way to protect the time for it. A recurring block that exists before the week fills up, treated with the same seriousness as client delivery. This sounds obvious, but so much business advice is obvious, the execution is where people trip up.

Your turn: When did you last spend a full half day working on your business rather than in it? If you have to think hard to remember, that's data.

So there you have it, building your Body of Work doesn’t have to be such a nebulous thing. Those stages reveal where to focus.

But if you’re not sure where you are with all of this? Too early, too later?

Take this Authority Entrepreneur Assessment.

If your result is "Beyond Custom Work" then know that you're exactly where this work can have the most impact.

And if you already know you want structure, support and dedicated time to build around these three Cs — The Practice will be where that happens. A small founding cohort begins 13th July. Spots are limited and waitlist members get first access before applications open widely very soon.

Thanks for reading as always.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

When Life Lifes

Last Wednesday I sold my flat in East London. Exactly seven years after moving in.

As anyone familiar with property transactions in England will attest to, the process was not simple. Throw in the fact my property was a high-rise, shared ownership, leasehold building which might give you a greater indication of the complexity in a post-Grenfell environment.

I’m telling you this because, as I joked on LinkedIn, selling my home has been my part time job since October. A public opinion poll found selling a home to be the second most stressful life event, only to topped by divorce. And even more stressful for women. Not knowing for months, when, or if, this sale would go through, has created a tonne of anxiety, and, an inability to plan things properly.

Missing last week’s newsletter and some rescheduling aside, business has largely continued as usual, though. I’ve been so grateful for these anchors in place across my work, team and systems that have meant continuing to run a fully booked 1-1 practice, two group programmes and generate new client enquiries.

That’s because the work a previous version of me did, is paying off today.

My writing, or workshop replays, or podcast recordings, completed months ago, today lead to the AI search gods listing me as a potential coach when people are looking.

Thank you, Claude, let me know what I owe you!

In recent months I’ve not had the time or mental bandwidth to show up in other people’s communities, attend networking events or post daily on social media, as I have often done in the past.

I’ve really done very little by way of true business development for a while, yet have a strong pipeline, and my calendar is full of active clients. All thanks to the clear, consistent positioning and writing online that a previous version of Ellen put in place.

This stressful period has only led to my greater conviction in the need for authority building when you work for yourself. Specifically: building your Body of Work.

Building your Body of Work is rarely urgent, it takes time, and the payoff isn’t immediately visible. But too many experienced coaches and consultants are still running businesses that depend entirely on their continued efforts day after day…. Being chronically online, or having lots of in person, or zoom coffee chats.

Which is a strategy that works when you’re working, but not when you’re off. Not when someone gets sick, you take a parental leave, a quieter summer, or move house.

It’s in these seasons that a Body of Work starts to matter most.

A Body of Work is much more than just “content.” It’s not the same as being an influencer who shares their morning routine.

A Body of Work is the accumulated evidence of how you think. It’s your frameworks, your beliefs/POV, your unique way of solving problems. And when other people know about them (and they don’t just live inside your head) then over time, many people will want to work with you before you’ve ever spoken to them.

Claude will refer you these people, because Claude’s been reading your Body of Work, too.

I see there being three distinct stages to this Body of Work building.

First comes cohesion. Most experts have years of insight, experience and instinct but it still exists in fragments: conversations, client work, old posts, workshops, notes apps and half-finished ideas.

So at some point, you have to pull these disparate threads together and identify the through-line. That’s the central idea underneath all the different ways you help people and the thing you want to become known for.

The next step is about codification. Here, your thinking becomes tangible instead of remaining trapped in your head. You name frameworks, develop clearer methodologies, create assets that communicate your thinking without you needing to personally explain everything from scratch each time.

This is also the stage where many people begin exploring more scalable ways of delivering their work because repetition starts revealing patterns worth formalising.

And eventually, if you stay with it long enough, things begin to compound. Old writing continues bringing new people in, clients start arriving already educated and your reputation becomes more specific.

You stop relying solely on effort, and start benefiting from accumulated intellectual equity.

I think this is one of the most important transitions experienced service providers can make, especially now. The internet is noisier and AI is flattening generic expertise.

Being visible isn’t the answer in and of itself. It’s your original thinking, your clear perspective and the tangibility of those things in a Body of Work that can work on your behalf, that makes the difference.

• In the clarity of your positioning

• In the language clients use to describe your work

• In the frameworks attached to your ideas

• In the articles, talks and essays that continue circulating long after you’ve published them

• In the repeatability of your delivery

• In the systems that work when you’re out living your life

• In the consistency of who finds you, and why

This is the kind of work that’s easy to postpone because it rarely screams for your attention in the immediate term. Clients always need you first. Admin and taxes have clearer deadlines. Keeping the algorithm happy becomes your second job.

But this is the work that creates the most resilience, leverage and longevity over time. That has kept me operating at over a six-figure turnover for three years running.

And that is the work The Practice has been created to help you do.

I’m creating a space for experienced coaches and consultants to step out of constant delivery mode and finally build the deeper foundations of their Body of Work with focus, structure and support.

An early, small, cohort will begin this summer. Past clients I’ve worked will be invited first, and any remaining places will be offered to the waitlist. If you’re ready to build the kind of Body of Work that continues opening doors long after you’ve logged off… join the waitlist here.

Any questions, I’m on the other side of this email.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

Freelancing vs Business Building

If you’re on the journey to becoming an Authority Entrepreneur, you have to first cross the threshold into true business building.

This is a distinction I don’t talk about enough, but here’s a handy visual:

The difference between freelance and business building is that when you're a freelancer, you're responding to briefs. You are a malleable, smart, reliable pair of hands. A pair of hands who says “yes, sir”, or, “no, sir”, to your client. In doing so, you are ultimately making their business dreams come true.

Freelancing is an incredible opportunity for those who feel hamstrung by the traditional 9-5 and are ready to escape the confines of having the same employer, routine, fixed salary and office politics for years on end. For anyone craving more flexibility and variety of clients. I'm not against freelancing.

But there becomes a point in the freelancer’s journey, that they want more. They want what a business owner has: ownership.

When you own and operate a business, you are committed to creating a certain, defined, value in the world. A value that very often, the founder of this business finds personally significant. A mission, purpose or cause that you own and are committed to developing, and being recognised for.

Business owners have to choose what that value is. They must decide what is their lane is aka what is the product or service this value revolves around.

When you have a product that needs manufacturing or building, you can't just willy-nilly change your mind what you're building from one day to the next. You've already got the goods. You've got the warehouse. You've got the supply chain. The machine is built.

But when offering a service, this isn’t exactly the case. And so what happens too often, is that service gets chopped at and changed beyond recognition. Because it’s not easy or simple or flying off the proverbial shelves. Or a service gets offered alongside a raft of others… in the hope that something will land.

This happens because there’s no overt ‘cost’ to the person offering this service.

Except there is.

Because until you build a machine around your service, your business cannot compound. And if you keep changing the service, you never give that machine the chance to work. You’re not seeing the benefits of repetition.

Benefits such as:

• Deepening your expertise and practice, through repetition

• Streamlining operations and delivery

• Productising your methodology into scalable IP

• Increasing demand, referrals and fees

• Building brand recognition and authority

• Creating predictability and profitability

Freelancers operating entirely through custom client work rarely get the benefit of true repetition, because the work keeps reshaping itself around client demand.

And, until you’ve truly decided what that service is, you cannot develop the clear, repeatable message and marketing that creates predictable demand for it. That positions you as a true Authority worth listening to.

So until you decide what service you are repeatedly delivering, who it’s for, why it works, and why you are specifically positioned to lead it, you will stay in freelance territory (regardless of your income).

Freelancing is freedom. Business-building is commitment. And Authority is what you earn as a result of that commitment, and sharing your message outside of just the clients who you deliver value for.

If this resonates, you’re in the right place. This is the work I do day in day out with clients. So keep reading over the next few weeks as I’ll be sharing more about the conditions needed for material growth in your impact and income as a consultant, coach, advisor or blend of the three.

Share this with someone who needs to hear this today.

Oh and if you haven’t already - take this assessment I’ve designed to help you find out if you've actually moved the needle on your business away from custom, scattered work, and into the land of Authority Entrepreneur:

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

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ICYMI: Ellen from The Ask

As is ever-increasingly the case as I get older, April just flew by. I’m grateful for the forcing function of this newsletter to look back and reflect on what actually took place.

First, I took a punt. I decided to compress what was initially a six week course (Authority Letters) into just five hours. As I came off the workshop yesterday on a high thanks to the engaged, curious folks in that zoom room, I realised that format really does have a big impact on the content itself. It got me thinking - what other formats (consulting, coaching, teaching, resources) might also work just as well - if not better - in a different form? That’s a question I suggest you sit on for your business, too.

I’ve been cooking up some changes at The Ask HQ across offers, tools and processes and will share meaningful ones very soon. But one that took a lot of configuration and experimentation, was building this assessment tool! Across all the consultants and coaches I’ve worked with over the years, to help them to start, grow or pivot their businesses, I’ve detected four clear stages of operations.

If you’re curious about where you’re at, and what your next move should be to grow your Authority, take the quiz and find out.

April’s Newsletter Round Up

^{Everything I shared last month to catch up on ICYMI}

1/ Most people I work with want similar results (meaningful work that fulfils them and is flexible, well paid and gives them status in the market). But their starting points into this work? They vary wildly.

READ: Where are you starting the race to Authority Status?

2/ Authority Letters In A Day took place yesterday and it was a blast. To learn the BTS thinking that went into it, and why I’m such a fan of this programme, I shared it all here.

READ:  Authority Letters is back... and this time it’s different.

3/ One of the biggest (and least spoken about) objections to Authority building is the requirement to choose a lane. That's where the resistance lives. Because of the implications of that strategy: that you'll have to stop being quite so… interesting. Are you ready for that?

READ: Are you ready to be bored?

4/ Esther Perel is the absolute GOAT when it comes to Authority building. She’s listed as the career inspiration of many who I work with. So it was very cool to not only use her case study in my business, but have her read one of Authority Letters members’ Hero Pieces!

READ:  This One Big Idea reached Esther Perel

Community Conversations

Highlights from The Ask clients & community

1/ Want the radically honest guide to building a sustainable solo media career? Isabel Woodford has put it all in one place and I’ve read it. It’s great. The Business of Freelance Journalism offers both new and established freelance writers alike, a real, guided take on making it in the industry. Go grab your copy.

2/ Internet friend Alex Smith has recently evolved his long-standing newsletter (where we first connected) into his new publication The Rare Mind. I enjoyed this essay, Welcome to the era of hyper-abundance, detailing the impact of the fact that each year goods and services created only multiply, yet our capacity to make use of them stays the same. Hyper abundance’ in the realm of coaches and consultants is real, and a big reason I tout Authority building as an antidote!

3/ Looking for headshots? A client who I introduced to brand photographer Ellie Smeaton recently had theirs done, and they were truly excellent. If your authority needs the photos to accompany it and you’re in the UK, you’d do well to check out Ellie’s services.

Work with Ellen

Support with your Authority led business

I work with founders whose ideas, judgement, and thinking are the product.

If you have been considering support but feel unsure where to begin, I created a short enquiry form to simplify the process.

How it works: Share a few details about your business and what you are working toward. I’ll reply with the support options and investment levels I believe will suit you best. If that feels aligned, we’ll schedule a chemistry call to explore working together.

This One Big Idea reached Esther Perel

Today’s newsletter is a really weird, full-circle moment for me, and for Donatella, who you’ll meet in a moment.

But first, in case you’re unfamiliar, Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, bestselling author, and one of the most widely followed Authorities on relationships worldwide.

Here’s how Esther fits into this story….

In 2024, I decided to double down and focus on helping clients to build their Authority. Before, I was a business coach but doing a range of things.

I was referring to a very specific type of Authority, which I explained in a long-form article in January 2024: The Authority Economy: Master the business lessons from 7-figure entrepreneurs like Esther Perel, James Clear and Ramit Sethi.

This article revealed my new direction and set the scene to launch coaching programmes related to Authority building that same month and in the months since.

Esther’s own story, going from psychologist to world-renowned expert, helped me explain what I meant by Authority building. And, in turn, build my own. Meta? You bet.

In 2025, I developed the programme Authority Letters, which helps its members write the very essay that will showcase their depth of expertise to the world. Their Hero Piece. Donatella Caggiano joined the November 2025 cohort and wrote her Hero Piece inside.

Because I’m running Authority Letters again next week (it’s not too late for you to join), I decided to share Esther’s story again in a marketing email, which said:

“Did you know just one essay - aka Hero Piece of her own - is what shot Esther Perel into the spotlight? For years, she was doing the work behind closed doors with clients. Gathering insights and spotting patterns. But her expertise lived inside those conversations. Not many knew her name. That was, until she wrote one essay. “In Search of Erotic Intelligence.” That one piece turned a private insight into a public idea and idea that spread.

Donatella replied to my email;

I’m very familiar with Donatella’s work on belonging, and am in no way surprised she’s caught Esther’s attention, and she’s subscribed for more!

Donatella’s Hero Piece, Change doesn’t have to break us apart, it can be what binds us, is a beautifully written piece on belonging design, revealing her depth of expertise in guiding organisations through challenging, relational periods.

If you go and subscribe to her newsletter belonging in between then know that you’ll be amongst very good company. I’ve shared this story with her permission, and she’s excited to connect with anyone who also cares about transforming transitions into belonging.

Do you see the theme?

• Writing about her work took Esther Perel from obscurity into the limelight.

• Writing about my take on Authority - using Esther as an example - led to my ability to become known for that, and run multiple scalable coaching programmes, and meet amazing clients like Donatella.

• Donatella, writing her Hero Piece inside my programme Authority Letters, caught the attention of an absolute icon in the field of relationships, Esther Perel, someone with millions of followers, a TED talk with 30 million views, and a waiting list most therapists would retire for.

All of our ideas, once put into writing, were able to travel far enough to land in front of the people who could make a true difference to our businesses.

All without us in the room, explaining.

Cohesion is the first thing you need to grow your Authority. Cohesion comes from the clarity about what all your work ladders up to, and I've been building a diagnostic to help you figure out exactly where you stand on growing yours. 

It places you in one of four stages on the path to becoming what I call an Authority Entrepreneur. You can take it here: www.the-ask.uk/quiz

It only takes a few minutes, and you'll get a personalised email with a deeper read on your specific stage, what's likely holding you back, and what to focus on next.

And, if you came out with one of the first two results, then joining Authority Letters next week would be wise. Your investment is just $300, and we’ll be getting the work done together in one day! Secure a remaining place here.

I know you too are experienced and credible, but without a clear, repeatable idea anchoring everything, there’s some work to do. If you've been in business for a while, have real depth and expertise, but still feel like things aren't quite clicking the way they should, then there's a good chance you're in what I think of as the messy middle. I want to help you out of it.

Until next time,

Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

Quick announcement: Authority Letters is back on 5th May.

Complete all of Authority Letters trainings with me and a small group of peers, in just one day. Yes that’s right. No more waiting weeks to get the clarity unlock you’ve been waiting for.

Join us on 5th May for a day of:

• Landing on your One Big Idea, once and for all

• Choosing the Hero Piece that will drive inbound demand for your service for months, if not years to come, leaving with a clear outline

• Identify the right channels, people, and platforms who’ll help your message spread

Past Authority Letters participants weren’t quite prepared for the visibility and demand they got once their Hero Pieces went live. A nice problem to have right?!

Already signed up we have brand strategists, ed-tech founders, innovation advisors, communications consultants, and more.

Secure a spot whilst they last, for just $300 all in.

Are you ready to be bored?

One of the biggest (and least spoken about) objections to Authority building is the requirement to choose a lane.

And with that lane comes your direction, and, the commitment to staying in it.

For a lot of the founders I work with, that's where the resistance lives. Because of the implications of that strategy: that you'll have to stop being quite so… interesting.

If you looked at my bookshelf, my YouTube history, or my music library, you'd see someone who loves variety. Someone who changes things up. Who has, over the years, developed a very well-worn habit of beginning new projects with great enthusiasm and not always finishing them.

And yet the best business decision I've made … and the one I now help clients make … is to go in one coherent direction.

To build assets, frameworks, IP and systems that compound.

To stop creating new things, and get better at refining existing ones.

I still love the 0–1 process of a new beginning and don’t think that will ever change, it feels core to who I am.

But I’ve trained myself now, to stay in my lane and innovate within it, rather than constantly stepping outside of it.

The cost of keeping things interesting

The cost of keeping things ‘interesting’ is that nothing really builds.

I was speaking with another expert on Authority building this week and our conversation was very much along these lines. We ourselves know that the right move isn't to keep changing it up or reinventing the wheel. Or to build new things every month.

Because a smaller number of offers, assets, articles, done better, is what really makes a difference.

But for a certain type of founder this can feel like a kind of slow death. And I’ve seen this particular flavour of resistance everywhere. I see it in discovery calls. I see it in coaching sessions. I saw it very clearly in a recent conversation with a client, let's call her Maya.

Maya had been circling the decision of what her business’ core promise would be for the better part of a year before we worked together. She's sharp, credible, and genuinely excellent at what she does. But every time we got close to naming the lane, she’d build around, resistance would show up. Another new idea or “but what about…"

When we finally got underneath it, the thing she said was: "I think I'm scared it'll get boring."

And I understood exactly what she meant.

Because there is some truth here.

You’ll end up saying similar things more consistently. You refine the same frameworks instead of building new ones. You’ll have to resist the pull of the shiny new idea in favour of the thing that's already proven.

A boring business. An interesting life.

Here's the reframe that's helped me, and that seemed to land for Maya too.

Your business doesn't have to be the most interesting, varied part of your life.

When your business is reliable (when leads show up consistently, when you're not reinventing your positioning every six months, when you have systems you can train people to run, frameworks that hold, content that compounds)… you get something in return.

You get your time and your headspace back.

And then the interesting stuff gets to happen around the edges.

The hobbies, the travel, the projects that have absolutely nothing to do with work. The things that light you up but have been perpetually deprioritised because the business kept demanding your full creative energy just to stay afloat.

Your business gets more boring and your life gets to be more interesting in return.

I've lived this.

The last 6 months or so, a lot has been navigated. I'll share more on that when the time is right but what I can say now is that the business held because my foundations were there. Because I'd done the work of letting go of things that didn’t serve me, and building something that didn't entirely depend on my daily energy and enthusiasm to keep standing.

That's what authority building gives you, if you let it. Not a restrictive box. More like a foundation.

So yes, you might have to be a bit bored

For those of you who want a business that scales beyond your time and a reputable brand in the market. Who want systems you can rely on, frameworks that last, blog posts that serve you for years to come…. then authority building is the path.

But you might have to make peace with the process being a little less exciting than you'd like.

Stop creating. Start refining. Choose the lane. Build the thing that lasts.

And then go and live a very interesting life with the time that frees up.

I'd love to know, are you ready to be bored?

Hit reply and let me know. Or if you want my support actually doing the thing: you can apply for support doing just that, here.

Until next time, Ellen

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

Authority Letters is back... and this time it's different.

At the risk of making myself sound entirely unrelatable I came up with one of my best programme ideas whilst lounging next to a pool, in the sunshine, in Malaga last September.

I was taking time ‘off’ but suddenly everything clicked in my head.

The combination of the rooftop views and perspective I had looking over the city… all helped me tap into a bigger vision and see possibilities. (Seeking a similar ‘aha’ moment? I shared some suggestions for getting them, here).

Searching my camera roll, I just found this selfie from the same morning of this idea. Clearly happy with myself! And, yes, I’m a corny Newsletter Enthusiast.

But anyway…back to this programme in question.

The name came to me in that moment too: Authority Letters.

Authority Letters helps coaches, consultants and advisors turn their depth of insight into their clients’ needs and experiences into a clear thesis. Their One Big Idea. They take their intuition, pattern recognition and principles about their work and turn it into the written word.

And not just any writing. Writing that will call in more of their ideal clients who truly value this depth of thinking. This is much more than ‘content marketing’. This is about creating a cohesive articulation of your best thinking, which is valuable in its own right.

It’s then externalising that thinking in the form of a narrative essay you are proud to stand behind. One that acts as a bat signal for clients, collaborators and referrers to find you.

Authority Letters is many many things to me:

• Its the culmination of a lot of my beliefs, ideas and perspectives

• It reflects my unique skills, interests and strengths in one container

• Its the exact programme many of my ideal clients need, and, honestly, one I’ve needed myself

When you do work that truly aligns with who you are (as I’m always encouraging you to do), you’ll know how rare and powerful that feeling of alignment is when you find it.

I’m really grateful to share that 20 business owners have now been through the Authority Letters process.

With each cohort, the work has deepened both in how I teach it and how it lands. The second cohort produced incredibly strong first drafts of their Hero Pieces, which felt like a real reflection of that evolution.

And you can see how this work starts to ripple out. Because when your thinking becomes clearer, so does your work (your offers, how you deliver, how you sell yourself). It all gets simpler, more focused, and far more like you.

Some feedback from Cohort 2:

All this to say….

Without clarity on what I stand for in the first place, and the exact work I want to be doing from a skills and business model perspective, none of these things would have fallen into place.

And that’s why I am honestly so proud of the work that has gone into Authority Letters because I know, with certainty, that what members get is way more than just an ‘essay’.

Here’s some of the reactions that members of cohort 1 have shared having following their Hero Pieces being out in the world:

So… you’ve been warned. This work creates traction.

If you are thinking “this is what I need” then I have an exciting update…..

Authority Letters is back, next month!

But this time, with a twist.

You can get access to all the Authority Letters trainings, templates, Q&A time with me, the Hero Piece AI bot and a peer group…. for just $300.

Yes, that is a third of the investment of last time.

And, the other twist…. we’re going to do this work in just one day. On May 5th.

Too many people told me they wished they could have join previous cohorts but the timing wasn’t right or they couldn’t make that investment possible. So I’ve removed both of those barriers.

I believe in this process so much, and I need you to see what’s possible when you go through it. Having a dedicated day do this work, show up live to all the trainings, and ask questions as you go, will make a tonne of clarity and direction possible. Anything that needs to be taught live will be, anything else, will go into your workbook and Hero Piece template for you to work through after.

And the first five sign ups will also get a round of my edits and feedback on their Hero Pieces, too (worth $300). [In this compressed format, my edits are not included as standard but I want to reward you if you’re ready to commit to doing this work].

You can join me and a small peer group of others on 5th May. Sign up and secure your spot here.

Alice said “Just joined Authority Letters in May! This 4-hour format will be more sustainable for me at the moment, can't wait”

Got questions before signing up? I’m right on the other side of this email. Just ask!

Thanks for reading as always.

Ellen from The Ask is brought to you by Ellen Donnelly, Founder of The Ask, offering strategic business coaching & mentorship to Authority Entrepreneurs ready to grow a profitable business in a way that feels true to them.

Where are you starting the race to Authority Status?

I work with solo founders building lean practices around themselves, Authority Entrepreneurs whose ideas, judgement, and thinking are the product. Mostly coaches and consultants who want the Authority Entrepreneur status I’ve so often talked about in this newsletter.

As well as who they are, there is a shared desire amongst them.

They all crave businesses that are personally and creatively fulfilling, well-suited to their strengths, values and capacity, and that pay them well in return. I personally seek that very same outcome, too.

But even if they’re heading to the same destination, they all move towards it from very different starting points.

Here are the five distinct starting points I’ve identified that clients come to me, before our work together.

Have a read and let me know which starting block you are at. Reply with a number 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 (or perhaps a blend). In return, you’ll be first in line for a (free) diagnostic tool I’m building, designed to help you plot your journey much more clearly.

Which one are you?

1. The Reluctant Generalist

You’re credible, experienced and already getting work and referrals because you’re a reliable pair of hands, and your depth of experience reveals itself at every turn in client proposals and delivery in equal measure.

Along the way, your practice has stayed broad. Somewhat shapeless. If it were a colour, it might be “grey”, not because it’s boring, but because it’s malleable. You can easily say yes to opportunities that get sent your way.

But in not wanting to narrow, to name a lane, or to fully commit to what you want to be known for lies a very subtle cost of:

• Inability to grow or compound in any one direction

• A Body of Work that feels scattered and, in turn, leads to random work 

• A revenue or growth trajectory that plateaus instead of deepens

You know that on the other side of the scary decision to narrow, likely lies better opportunities that will breathe new life into your practice. That you might finally be able to grow, produce better assets, and bring others in more cleanly.

2. The Resetting Expert

You’re experienced and love your work - you identify very strongly with who you are in your practice and the work you do.

Except, something has been off for a while now. You’re no longer who you once were. An identity shift has taken you into new directions on a personal level, but now your business no longer reflects who you have become. Perhaps the market has moved on too, and the work you once did has lost some edge.

This evolution is natural, exciting, and encouraged. 

But when you haven’t yet defined what comes next, there are many ways you’re held back:

• You’re attracting clients that don’t quite fit anymore

• You’re hesitating to fully show up because it doesn’t feel true

• You struggle to make big decisions (or small ones for that matter) because you haven’t reoriented to what comes next 

You know you can’t keep growing a business that no longer feels like yours and are ready for a reset to align on what the next iteration should be.

3. The Impatient Builder

You’re newer to working for yourself. Like a baby, your business age might still be counted in months. But your growth ambitions run deep.

So whilst you’re capable, confident, and executing quickly (and people have taken notice of your entrance into this market, perhaps thanks to a powerful brand or previous reputation from corporate), you soon realise, you don’t actually know what you don’t know. You’re trying on business strategies for size that don’t quite fit, because they were built for those with years behind them, or large audiences to rely on. You feel behind when you only just started. Guessing only gets you so far without a solid foundation to build from.

And the costs include:

• Investing time and money, but not always in the right places

• Busy work that isn’t translating into a reliable stream of clients yet

• Reactive decisions (offers, pricing, content), you wonder how long they will last because the business feels a bit unstructured, already

You wonder if there is in fact a clear, simple path you could follow. To be shown which potholes to avoid. You realise you’d sooner spend your precious time doing the right things in the right order, not just more busywork to feel productive.

4. The Best Kept Secret

You’ve got clients. You’re nearly fully booked, in fact. And thanks to the volume of experience you’ve had, you have a huge amount of context about what your clients need and how you can best serve them.

But no one except your clients know about it. You don’t really have a visible, external presence that demonstrates this work to the extent that it could. Perhaps because you’ve been receiving referrals or getting work through associate platforms, you don’t actually have that much time to go and create all those assets. But you’re realising that you want to be known more widely. That having more people know about you is an insurance policy for your business, and will allow you to control your own pipeline more.

So until you do that you:

• Rely solely on word of mouth or associate platforms, but feel your prices are capped, and you have no leverage. You couldn’t run a group programme, for example

• Feel frustrated when you see other experts online claiming expertise that feels like yours, perhaps with less nuance or substance than you have, except there’s no trail of digital evidence to point back to you

• You feel that growth will burn you out. But you’re tired of having to start from scratch with each new client engagement, and crave a clear channel from which to communicate your brilliance

You realise that with a bit of deliberate space and planning, you could raise your profile, raise your prices, and do less, but more aligned work, after all.

5. The Expansive Builder

You’re a force. A world builder. People love your work, and you’re likely already very visible, with a Body of Work to show for it (podcasts, LinkedIn posts, Substacks… you name it, you’ve tried it!).

In the efforts taken to get where you are today and grow that digital footprint, you’ve realised that your efforts are, in fact, not compounding. You’ve created a bit of a beast, and it’s not exactly simple. Different platforms, offers, programmes and price points.

You want a business that feels simpler and more scalable, but you’re in no way ready to lose the depth of what you’ve created. Your mission is too important to let go of any of its parts.

But in holding on to it all, you:

• Leave money on the table, because you’re ‘everywhere’, your processes aren’t optimised. You are leaking opportunities as you can’t hold it all properly

• Have a calendar chock full of invites, clients, experiences, creating content time blocks… but your bank account in no way reflects how busy you are

• People LOVE your vibe but can’t fully articulate what you do, exactly, which frustrates you, but you realise you can’t always keep up either even though you’re the one in the driving seat.

You have started to realise that letting go of some things, and truly choosing a centre of gravity for your business is the next most important step on your journey. But this has to be handled carefully so your depth and track record gets protected.

Which of the five do you see yourself in?

Hit reply, and you’ll be first in line for a free tool that will help you chart your path forward from here.

Thanks as always for reading today.

If you are feeling the pull to grow a business that reflects your current level of thinking and capability, to move forward with certainty, and stop the second-guessing, this is exactly what The Ask coaching is here to help you do. If you’re curious about 1-1 support, you can apply for coaching here. Or if it’s a group programme like Authority Club or Authority Letters that’s caught your eye, sign up to this waitlist for upcoming dates.

Until next time,

Ellen

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ICYMI: Ellen from The Ask

March was an interesting month. It began with something I’ve never done before: I took a whole week off client sessions and used that time to catch up on some deep thinking, reading and planning. I even shared some of those insights in a newsletter, which I’ve linked below.

One of those decisions was to stop relying so much on AI for content creation. Since that decision, my LinkedIn impressions are up 84% compared to the month before!

I don’t obsess over these numbers. With the algorithm being so unreliable and the fact that impressions don’t pay the bills, but it was still an interesting experiment. I’ve also enjoyed writing this newsletter more in recent weeks, without the crutch of a robot dictating taste back to me in conversation.

March also involved running cohort two of Authority Letters, which has been very rewarding. I’m so excited to be editing another set of members’ Hero Pieces in the upcoming days (example Hero Pieces linked below, and you can enquire about upcoming cohorts here).

I also travelled to Mallorca in March, landed back in London yesterday and woken today realising it’s April. The fact we’ve done a quarter of the year already is a bit wild, right? Whenever I have those feelings of time slipping away it reminds me why I choose to double down on paying for support in the form of team and coaches. Much as I offer to my clients, this support holds me accountable to the grand visions and timelines I set for myself, not to mention the shared mental load that it provides.

April and Q2? I’ll be executing on some of those areas of the business I’ve been rethinking, and writing some of my own Hero Pieces!

March’s Newsletter Round Up

^{Everything I shared last month to catch up on ICYMI}

1/ Business is a constant evolution. In this newsletter edition I shared the details of four things I’ve been rethinking that are happening behind the scenes of The Ask offers, systems and yep, use of AI. This one had a lot of kind replies like this one:

It’s easy to assume that being an authority means having certainty when in practice, it often looks like being willing to question what you thought you knew.

READ: Some things I’ve been rethinking

2/ An insights into how Authority gets built, in practice. Hear a client case study, Kate, who grew her Psychological Coaching business alongside her NHS work supporting patients across anxiety, phobias and illness recovery.

READ:  From the Coach’s Chair: from the NHS to psychological fitness

3/ If your thinking is the product - which is the case for many authority-led businesses I work with - then business can feel flimsy. Where does this business start? Where does it end? I shared why businesses can evade even the person in charge as to their whereabouts.

READ: Why your business feels so amorphous

4/ From February, the most popular post was about why your client insights, depth and years of expertise don’t automatically translate to the online arena and secure the attention they deserve — and what to do about that.

READ:  The first step to building authority

Community Conversations

Highlights from The Ask clients & community

1/ Past Authority Letters member Hayley Dawson, shared her Hero Piece The smartest career move you can make is learning to work with people. She described Authority Letters as the most transformative thing that solidified her thinking, and landed her 57 waitlist sign ups for her Human Skills School cohort, which you can find details of and join the next one here.

2/ Another Hero Piece in the wild in March (which I hear led to an uptick in connections and visibility) out from Sarah Pritzl: Possibility is a Muscle Many High-Achievers Forget to Train. She writes beautifully about how ‘creative possibility’ is a muscle that when trained, unlocks endless opportunities those who dare to dream.

3/ Founder of BUILD networks for good, Selena Coles, is running the Network-Led Revenue Sprint in April for founders of social impact organisations ready to build predictable income outside of grant funding. Applications and details here if that sounds like you!

Work with Ellen

Support with your Authority led business

I work with founders whose ideas, judgement, and thinking are the product.

If you have been considering support but feel unsure where to begin, I created a short enquiry form to simplify the process.

How it works: Share a few details about your business and what you are working toward. I’ll reply with the support options and investment levels I believe will suit you best. If that feels aligned, we’ll schedule a chemistry call to explore working together.

The flimsy nature of ideas-based businesses

That is: your lived experiences, education and training in your field.

As a coach or consultant, your thinking is the product you sell.

Clients pay for your ideas, beliefs and perspectives and there are many benefits to running this kind of operation. Benefits such as location independence (I’m writing from Mallorca right now, for example). Benefits such as low overhead costs, minimal set up fees and a lack of physical ‘stuff’ to manage, carry around, keep track of.

But I’ve seen a very common problem under the surface of these businesses, having run one for six years and supported many founders to run theirs.

Founders of ideas-based businesses often struggle to hold onto their business.

They can feel amorphous. Ephemeral. Flimsy.

Without hard, physical edges, teams, offices or equipment to hold onto, they can evade even the person in charge as to their whereabouts.

Where does this business start?

Where does it end?

Where does it live?

A business like this shape shifts. Its weight, shape and gravity depend on the day or month in question. As its founder, your brain, self-belief and energy are the very make up of the business.

The cost of being amorphous

If you’re moving through moments of doubt or a lack of clarity, the amorphous nature of the business really reveals itself.

I see this in coaching sessions.

Take a recent client example, let’s call her Rachel but she’s one of many similar conversations.

Rachel and I were making great progress on her business plans in sessions. We’d landed on her positioning, One Big Idea, plans for an event series, a launch campaign and how to reach the people she most wanted to serve.

Her private coaching space in Notion was fast filling up, with notes, comments, documents and the momentum was palpable.

Then she took a break, went away with her family, and came back to our sessions, feeling a bit lost. The clarity and conviction she’d had had erased itself gradually during the days away. Not a complete 180 turn, but a feeling of distance had crept in.

During our conversation, we rebuilt that clarity, the plans resurfaced, and so did her conviction.

She told me “I feel like I lost touch with this mission and my role, but I’ve been reminded of it again today”.

How is that possible? Just a short break, and the entire foundation of the business faltered.

It’s possible because when the business lives in your head, when it’s built on your ideas, it’s liable to float away if you don’t weigh it down. It can get swept up and away with other obligations, stresses or worries.

I distinctly remember saying to my own coach in 2020: “I don’t really know what constitutes my business. Is it just this Instagram page?” to which she laughed and asked me, "Well, where does your business live?”

Clients have asked for my help building a ‘centre of gravity’ for their Authority-led business. Wanting somewhere to go to see it, touch it, understand it.

Without this centre of gravity, following any period of challenge, it becomes all too easy to lose sight of the work. If you lose two main clients one after the other, it can feel like your clothes got swept away with the tide whilst you were swimming at sea. Out there, naked and exposed.

Your ideas need a home for you to come back to, to remind yourself of your own grand vision, beliefs and brilliance. To stay in motion even when things feel uncertain (and they will, because welcome to entrepreneurship). To build on the progress you’ve built with your work, with clients, with advancing your thinking, learning and capacity.

Without it, the line between being a badass business owner, and someone looking for work, gets far too thin.

Your ideas need anchors.

You can weigh down your amorphous, ideas-based business with anchors.

Thankfully, Rachel’s plans did have a home outside of her. They lived in our shared Notion page and in my head, too. I was there to share the mental load.

I think of these as anchors.

Honestly, this is a very big part of what coaching offers: another brain and human perspective to hold space for your ideas, beliefs and perspectives. A mirror reflecting your brilliance back to you.

As you can see in Rachel’s case, with her relatively new business, there was not much else to anchor it because these plans were not yet fulfilled. But in time, they will be, and her business will have other anchors.

So what are those potential anchors?

If you’ve been nodding along at the ephemeral nature of your own business and desire to hold it down, here’s some suggested anchors you might want to consider.

• Your clients.

  • The work you do with clients is your main anchor. There should always be a shared space for you to keep reflections and progress notes about what you’re doing with them. For their benefit of course, but as we’ve seen, also for yours.

• Your network

  • The people you encounter on this journey are all individual anchors, if they know about you and your business. The more people who know you, the heavier the shared mental load becomes. How are you tracking these relationships? A CRM? Email list?

• Your Body of Work

  • When you sell your thinking as the product, you’ll want to showcase that thinking for others to try before they buy. Your Body of Work plays this role. More than just ‘content’, it's your thinking in the form of articles or even books, assets, whitepapers, series, etc. This mega guide is not only part of my own Body of Work but teaches you how to build yours. I also encourage all Authority Entrepreneurs to write their Hero Piece, aka the essay that articulates their One Big Idea in long-form.

• Your Frameworks

  • Related to your Body of Work, is the methodology or approach you use to take your clients through. One of the most rewarding moves I made last year was ‘immortalising’ my ideas in the form of The Authority Manifesto. 80+ pages of guidance on growing your Authority-led business. Currently only available to Authority Club members, leave your details to stay in the loop for upcoming opportunities to get involved.

• Your Events

  • Whether online or offline, any time you bring people together, you’re creating a shared anchor and tangible reason to share your ideas and perspectives.

• Your Space

  • Whether you work from home or an office, you can build a space for your work that reflects your depth of thought. Collating books, postcards, client thank yous, awards, etc., in one place will give you a sense of pride from which to anchor.

• Your Online Presence

  • Your website, social media, branding, and photos all exist to showcase your clear positioning, approach, and vision for your business, as well as hopefully case studies and testimonials from happy clients. Many make the mistake of thinking a beautiful brand is the business itself, but it's pure decoration without these other anchors in place.

• A Digital Home

  • Maintaining your business operations with the right systems, workflows and tools is key for getting work done, of course, but also offers you a window to peer into and see all that you’ve created. I use Notion for this and have plenty of Notion consultants to recommend who can help if you’re trying to get yours in place.

• Your Team

  • Hiring help, mentors, coaches and suppliers are powerful anchors. They remind you of your greatness, share the mental load, and help usher in momentum and progress you can’t hope to only achieve solo

All of this takes work, of course it does and it should.

Good businesses are built by founders who have put in the reps, time and time again. Who have built something with substance. Just because your business is your ideas, that doesn’t make it intangible.

As writer of Working Theories, Anu wrote in this viral essay Make Something Heavy, “We're creating more than ever, but it weighs nothing”. She says we don’t just make heavy things, but we become someone who is able to make heavy things in the process.

Make your business heavy so that you can point to it, feel its shape, and let your business carry you on down days or hard times. Let it show you proof of your own prior brilliance.

This business might just be your life’s work.

Let’s anchor it down properly, shall we?

If you’re curious about 1-1 support, you can apply for coaching here. Or if its a group programme like Authority Club or Authority Letters that’s caught your eye, sign up to this waitlist for upcoming dates.

Until next time,

Ellen

What’s actually changing behind the scenes of a business that’s working

I wasn’t sure if I would write this today.

There’s a lot going on in the business right now and I feel a bit like the house-proud neighbour who says, “don’t look around, it’s a mess!”

Things aren’t a mess exactly, but there are moving parts.

Parts I’d planned to share as a polished, “come look at this thing I did” announcement but in reality, it feels more useful to show you how these decisions and changes are actually being made.

Because business is a constant evolution.

You learn so much across so many different data points each month or year you build, and at the same time, the market shifts around you. You have to keep editing else you’ll get complacent, bored or miss the mark.

So I share some of my “mess” in the form of four things, to illustrate that even when things look stable from the outside, underneath there’s often a constant recalibration.

And, honestly, I find business to be a creatively fulfilling playground and get quite a kick out of all this ‘thinking’, anyway!

Thing 1: Am I using AI correctly?

I’m using it, for sure. Cooking, life admin, finances... it’s become my helping hand. But when it comes to work I’m starting to feel like I’m not quite getting the balance right.

There are obvious gaps. For example, I’ve never used Claude, never vibe coded. The Claude Cowork hype hasn’t evaded me, I just haven’t actioned anything.

Then in other ways, I feel I should use it much less. I’ve decided to stop using it for any LinkedIn posts — like not even a tiny bit. My post today is currently sitting at 45 impressions so that’s great.

But honestly, I’m done with sense-checking stuff with ChatGPT. It filters and changes me every time. Not once does it say “This is clear, you’re great, send the damn thing!”

It only ever suggests changes. I’ve started to lose confidence in my voice, and that, my friend, isn’t okay.

(Also I feel conscious that em dash just made it’s way onto the page. I often use them naturally. Are we allowed to include them more? Help!)

Thing 2: I’ve been handing out OBIs.

I’ve been handing out OBIs (One Big Ideas) more than ever.

Often it’s my exact words, something I say mid-conversation or write in a client’s notes, that becomes the central idea they build their work around.

There’s one particular client who took my editorial direction and went on to achieve an insane amount of engagement and opportunities with it in a very short space of time.

Am I frustrated I’m not referenced? Not at all.

They paid me for these exact insights. That’s what my services include, even if I don’t promise someone a copy perfect tagline (I’m not an advertising agency), I do often end up having the exact words and sentiment that clients love and end up using.

I’m the behind-the-scenes partner to big thinkers. Their authority exists, I just help to sharpen it and make it more commercially usable.

Another reason I’m happy this happened, is it confirms my belief that words and ideas alone, are not enough. The very reason this client has been so successful was their execution of this idea. It’s been flawless. They’ve been showing up for months with a tonne of excellent content. Their OBI was timely. They didn’t sleep on the opportunity, they ran with the plan we made. An idea alone is worth nothing without execution and repetition.

Too many OBIs gather digital dust, which saddens me.

Why do I share this? Because I’m wondering if I should be more vocal about this creative editorial role I play with clients. It’s very different to just a ‘coach’ label.

For now, I’m not going hard on it. I see it more an added bonus that clients get alongside the structure, commercial direction, and emotional support my work provides. But I could be wrong on this. Let’s see.

Thing 3: My offers

Authority Letters and Authority Club are in full swing.

Across those, plus 1:1 clients, I’m working with around 50 people which means there’s now a lot of data to look at.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I see that the best results happen for those who access both support programmes, and some 1-1 time, too.

Which has led me to explore my offers once again, and how I might ‘cut it’. There’s absolutely something brewing and that’s exciting.

But these decisions are not fast. They require deliberate review of how to structure everything in ways that both serve client’s needs and optimise for results, and make sense alongside active programmes that are in flow. And, they have to optimise for my own needs. Specifically, the need to do work that energises me, in ways that are sustainable in the long haul.

I’m certain that protecting my energy is part of my job, so that I can give, guide and lead at my best.

Thankfully, pretty much everything I do today gives me energy and I can work at a high capacity, and want to protect that. I have created time back since moving to scaled, group offers. Most weeks, I have two non client days on the calendar. It’s been great exploring how to use this time for strategic projects, partnerships or something more serendipitous that might come in.

Thing 4 - Creaky Systems

With that volume, my systems are starting to feel it.

Many of which I’ve strung together. I use Beehiiv for this newsletter, Slack for internal comms, Circle for Authority Club, Maven for Authority Letters, Notion for ops and CRM and other finance tools, too.

As my team member Esme is well aware, we have some cracks: missed enquiries, small gaps during launches, things not quite syncing.

Nothing catastrophic just enough to know it needs attention and we’re now testing new setups to find out what will hold at the next level.

Those are my things!

In terms of working through them? I took a week “off” at the start of March to read, think and explore some options. This provided me space for a completely new set of ideas to come through and some obvious things to ‘click’.

I also have people in my corner I speak to regularly, and the structure and support of a business mentorship programme.

With these in place, I know that all my ‘things’ will get sorted pretty quick. Until new ones emerge, of course!

If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear what’s on your mind too. I read and reply to every email.

Until next time,

Ellen

Back in your inbox today with some insights into how Authority gets built, in practice.

Excited to share Kate Hurst’s Authority Story as well as an (edited) coaching conversation.

I hope the guidance and the inspiration are helpful to you but as always, if you crave personalised, deep support you can apply to work together, here.

From The Coach’s Chair

This [edited] conversation came from a client looking to understand if they needed to reposition, following enquiries from lots of non-ideal clients.

Ellen, what if my offer isn’t the problem, my entire positioning is?

Your people are trying to answer one simple question: is this for me?

And if your messaging makes them work too hard to figure that out, the wrong people drift in, the right people drift past your offers.

So very often, the real problem is that your positioning. If it’s hard to place you, enquiries get messy, and you yourself become confused about who you’re helping because the conversational remit you’re having is so broad.

What to focus on first: The clearest, most urgent problem you want to be known for solving. There are, of course, many problems you can solve, but what is the one you want to lead with? What of all the various conversations you’re having gives you the most energy?

Because positioning comes first, and the offer should feel like the natural next step from the problem you’ve identified. They should go map together perfectly.

Try this test to know where you sit:

• If people are curious but not committing, your positioning may not have landed on a timely, urgent need.

• If people understand what you do but still don’t buy, the offer itself (or how show up when you sell it) may need work.

• If the wrong people keep enquiring, your positioning is probably too broad or misaligned.

The decision to choose something clearer, for many, can at first feel restrictive, but it’s what makes the right people recognise themselves. Be okay with magnetising the right people and repelling the wrong ones.

Takeaway: If your enquiries feel off, don’t rewrite the whole business. First, check whether your positioning is trying to say too many things at once and get an external eye on it. Then tweak the offer after that point.

If anything struck a chord with you reading this, I’d love to hear your own take or questions.

Authority Stories

From NHS to mindset coaching, meet Kate Hurst

Hear from an entrepreneur who experienced coaching and went on to grow their Authority and business in a meaningful way.

Kate’s coaching engagement took place across most of 2024, not long after Kate started her practice. Since then, she has gone on to operate a fully booked business and deliver talks focused on making mental fitness mainstream.

Read Kate’s coaching experience, what she’s gone on to achieve since, and her advice for anyone wanting to grow their own Authority.

Enjoy!

Kate Hurst is a London-based NHS Psychologist and Life Coach.

She holds an MSc and Doctorate in Health Psychology and has spent nine years in specialist psychological services in the NHS - supporting patients across anxiety, phobias and illness recovery and providing training and publishing research that advances evidence-based practice.

Alongside her NHS work, Kate runs her own Psychological Coaching business, blending psychological expertise with an action-oriented approach. Kate also delivers interactive, practical talks and workshops, teaching evidence-based strategies to help people build mental fitness, apply mindset tools to everyday life, and step into the best version of themselves.

Q. Tell us about your business, your mission and Authority area?

I’m an NHS Psychologist and Life Coach. Through my clinical training and experience, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful it can be when individuals begin to understand and manage their own thoughts, emotions and behaviours, and learn practical ways to work with their mind rather than against it.

Over time, I also became increasingly aware of something that felt slightly unbalanced. Physical wellbeing has (importantly) become very normalised and accessible - we talk openly about strength training, protein intake, step counts, run clubs and supplements. But the mental side of wellbeing often remains reactive rather than proactive.

Many people only seek psychological support when they are at breaking point, or when they meet criteria for clinical services. I believe we can have all the ice baths and green juices we like, but if we don’t know how to manage our own minds, build self-trust, get clear on our values, and consciously choose how we want to show up each day, we will struggle to feel truly fulfilled. Mental fitness is just as important as physical fitness, yet it isn’t treated in the same way.

Without it, we can go through life on autopilot, reacting to situations rather than responding intentionally, feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or disconnected from what truly matters to us. Mental fitness gives us the tools to handle stress, make values-aligned decisions and create a life that feels energising and purposeful.

This belief is what led me to start my own business. My Psychological Coaching helps people build confidence and self-trust, reconnect with their values, and create lives that feel fulfilling and aligned rather than living on autopilot.

I also deliver interactive talks and workshops to provide evidence-based tools that can immediately be applied in people’s everyday lives to feel calmer and more in control.

My mission is to make training your mind as normalised as training your body - helping people understand themselves more deeply, strengthen their mental fitness, rebuild confidence and feel aligned and excited about the life they are creating.

Q. How has your Authority evolved since your coaching with Ellen?

I reached out to work with Ellen at a pivotal point in my career. At the time, I was working full-time in the NHS and coaching a small number of clients in the evenings and weekends. I knew I wanted to take my coaching into a more central role in my career rather than it being something I squeezed into the margins of my life but I couldn’t fully see how that would be possible.

What mainly shifted through our work together was clarity in my direction, mission, and (most importantly) my unique standpoint. I had the qualifications, experience and passion, but I hadn’t fully articulated what differentiated me or how to confidently position myself. Ellen supported me to define a genuine point of authority and the brand that best represented my mission and approach.

With that clear, I took practical, step-by-step action to build momentum in my business with far more confidence. That clarity has allowed me to support my 1:1 clients at a much deeper level, resulting in powerful and lasting transformations.

I’ve now transitioned to working part-time in the NHS and part-time in my coaching business - something that once felt unrealistic.

It’s also enabled me to be consistently fully booked with 1:1 clients and to be invited to deliver talks and workshops focused on making mindset work and mental fitness more accessible, empowering and engaging - which I feel very grateful for!

Q. Why did you choose to have coaching with Ellen, specifically?

After reading Ellen’s newsletters for years, when I knew I wanted a coach, she was the first person I thought of. Her approach always felt focused, actionable and clear, but also relatable and grounded, which aligns closely with how I like to work myself.

I had a quiet but consistent glimmer of a dream that one day I could create a working week where I continued practising as a Psychologist and also built a successful coaching business alongside it. I wanted to do both! But I had no idea how to make that work in reality, structurally, financially or practically.

Our work together helped me turn my idea into something concrete. Ellen helped me draw out my ambition, capability and ideas clearly enough to act on them and I don’t think I would have accessed that level of clarity or momentum on my own.

The structure and strategic thinking was missing, I had authority in my field - years of training and NHS experience had given me that - but I didn’t know how to communicate it confidently within the coaching space.

I gained both strategic direction and confidence to step into that version of myself. I got clearer in my mission, more decisive in my direction and more willing to take action rather than staying in overthinking. At the time, some of the questions and pushes felt uncomfortable but looking back, they definitely pushed me to think bigger, get more clarity in the long-term and act more decisively.

Q. What was an unexpected takeaway from the coaching?

One unexpected takeaway was how much I valued the accountability and structure which created a consistent space to think strategically.

I always genuinely looked forward to them because I knew I would leave with more clarity, direction and energy than I arrived with. It was so powerful having that dedicated time to think properly, and rhythm helped me build momentum.

I also really appreciated the introductions Ellen made to other clients she felt I’d connect well with. Those conversations became more than just networking - they were supportive, like-minded relationships with others building their own businesses. Some of those connections are ones I still value and stay in touch with today!

Q. What are you proudest of in your business since coaching?

The feedback I receive from my clients will always be what I value most in my business. It’s the most rewarding part of the work and the reason I do what I do.

Of course, there are the big, visible shifts like career changes, promotions, starting businesses, moving and starting a life in their dream country, finally pursuing something they’ve always wanted to do.

But often it’s the quieter, daily changes that mean the most: a client noticing they feel more energised on a daily basis, someone realising they can set boundaries without guilt, being able to manage stress in the moment rather than letting it take over their whole day, speaking up in a meeting or conversation they would normally have stayed silent in, choosing to spend their time in ways that truly align with their values or feeling confident enough to put themselves forward for opportunities they previously avoided.

I’m also really proud of the fact that in my business, everything starts as an idea, and I now trust myself to bring those ideas to life. It still feels slightly surreal to go from a concept in my head to something tangible and impactful, and it’s something I don’t take for granted! A big example of this is creating 'Mindset Reset' sessions within a yoga and Pilates studio - a weekly space where people can book in to work on their mind in the same way they book a Pilates class.

I guide the group through reflections and evidence-based tools like breathwork, visualisation and intention-setting, helping them tune in, get clear on who they want to be and take aligned action. They leave with strategies they can apply in their daily lives. The sessions are fully booked each week, which feels like the start of a movement making mental fitness accessible, proactive, and part of everyday wellbeing. I’m excited to continue expanding this into more spaces!

Q. What's your vision for your business in the next few years?

My vision is to make mental fitness as normalised and accessible as physical fitness.

I want to create more spaces where people can actively work on their mindset, build confidence, learn practical tools, and create a life that feels genuinely aligned and energising - with incredible 1:1 clients, talks and workshops and partnerships.

And this year, I’m planning to launch my own community membership platform, where people can learn more about themselves, build self-awareness, and feel empowered with tools and strategies to reset their own mindset and build mental fitness into everyday life through evidence-based practices, psychoeducation, workshops, real conversations, events and accountability… watch this space.

I’m also committed to forever learning so I have more to give my clients by way of evidence-based, practical and impactful support.

Q. Any advice you might have for someone reading this, who wants to become an authority in their space?

1. Get really clear on your core values (what truly matters to you and what you stand for), and then make your decisions and take your actions from that place, because when you operate in alignment with your values, you rarely find yourself second guessing or questioning what you’re doing because it is true to you

2. Confidence doesn’t just appear on its own - it’s something you build over time through taking action. Action = momentum and momentum naturally builds a sense of confidence and clarity in what you’re doing

3. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. People aren’t going to know who you are or what you do, or an idea you have unless you put it out there. Opportunities rarely land in your lap - you need to make them visible, start the conversation and take small steps to invite them in.

4. Patience and consistency are everything. You plant a seed, nurture it and give it space to grow. Progress often feels slow - but small, consistent actions compound over time in ways you can’t immediately see. Results often show up in unexpected ways, so stay committed and keep showing up - even when it feels uncertain or like you aren’t moving forward, because trust me, you will be!!

Connect with Kate Hurst and check out her work:

Instagram: @katehurstcoaching_

Website: www.katehurst.co.uk

ICYMI: Ellen from The Ask

Much of February and this first week of March have been dedicated to launching the second cohort of Authority Letters.

This time, we are running it on Maven (the platform built specifically for professional cohort-based courses). A small milestone I felt proud of this week; we are trending in the founder category! Top four at the time of writing.

Over the past few years, long-form writing like this has generated hundreds of thousands of pounds in client work for my own business and helped many of my clients do the same.

This programme distils that process, and Authority Letters sits close to my heart for other reasons, too.

The vision for the programme came to me in a flash of inspiration in September 2025. A month that was significant for personal reasons, too. The kind of month where a lot fell into place, and my 2026 and beyond started forming.

Everything inside Authority Letters feels like the accumulation of work I care about most:

• When an idea sharpens into something clear and ownable, the market begins to respond.

• Running this inside a five-week sprint creates the conditions for real progress.

• The moment an idea becomes clear, and the market begins to respond.

The momentum that builds when these two align reminds me how much impact this work can have. And the five-week sprint creates real progress.

The first cohort of Authority Letters had eleven incredible thinkers inside. Founders, consultants and coaches who wanted their ideas to be understood, not buried across scattered posts and client documents. This second cohort is shaping up in a similarly exciting way.

If you have been circling this idea for a while, consider this one of your final nudges. Authority Letters is a five-week sprint to clarify your One Big Idea and publish the Hero Piece that represents your thinking properly. The kind of piece you send when someone asks what you do.

Doors close Sunday 8th March and we start Monday.

You can secure one of the remaining seats here.

Or, begin with the workshop replay here if you want to understand the thinking first.

The replay has been getting a lot of love since the live session.

February’s Newsletter Round Up

^{Everything I shared last month to catch up on ICYMI}

1/ So many smart founders continue to survive without creating any assets with long-lasting leverage. But the sooner you do, you’ll find that people start spending real time with your thinking before they ever speak to you and arrive pre-aligned, primed and ready for you.

READ: Converting Without Being In The Room

2/ If you sell judgment, pattern recognition, or strategic perspective as a coach or consultant, then showing up with fragmented posts flattens authority. I share my story of creating a ‘weighty’ piece of work and generating me $100k in sales revenue.

READ: Authority needs a centre of gravity.

3/ Consultants and coaches have depth and years of client insights at their fingertips. But their thinking doesn’t automatically translate to the online arena and secure the attention it deserves. The first step required? Creating coherence.

READ: The first step to building authority.

4/ From January, the most popular post on this newsletter was about aligning the stars ahem I mean conditions that you need in place to make your best work happen in 2026.

READ:  How to do your best work this year

Community Conversations

Highlights from The Ask friends & clients

• The highly talented Lauren Currie has a new book Be UPFRONT, out tomorrow. Drawing on over a decade of work with thousands of women, Lauren writes to help women speak up and trust themselves. If you’re ready to take up more space, here’s a powerful and practical guide to practising confidence in real life. Pre-order your copy here. 

• London journos unite! Freelance Journalist Isabel Woodford is hosting a candid masterclass on tackling your freelance media career from her own experiences landing pitches for The Atlantic, FT, The Times and more. On 16th March in Angel this is an off-the-record discussion tackling the most challenging - often taboo - parts of this industry. (I’ll be there to support!). Grab a ticket. 

• Danielle Silvestro has worked with founding teams for over ten years, her powerful Hero Piece about Organisational Ghosts (the imprint founders leave on startups) is now out in the world. Here’s what she had to say about her experience inside Authority Letters: “Having just finished a year of PhD research, I joined Authority Letters to build my commercial framing of it. It ended up being better than I expected! Ellen's feedback really sharpened and helped develop my Hero Piece. Defining my OBI gave me confidence that what I had to say would truly resonate. I loved the group aspect, too. Being in a space with thoughtful, creative, values led people who you think are amazing and then realising they have the same doubts you do, was actually very grounding for me. I have a block about putting myself out there online, and Authority Letters gave me both the accountability and the confidence to actually do it.”

Work with Ellen

Support with your Authority led business

I work with founders whose ideas, judgement, and thinking are the product.

If you have been considering support but feel unsure where to begin, I created a short enquiry form to simplify the process.

How it works: Share a few details about your business and what you are working toward. I’ll reply with the support options and investment levels I believe will suit you best. If that feels aligned, we’ll schedule a 45 min chemistry call to explore working together.

If Authority Letters feels like the right starting point, timing is tighter as doors close this Sunday. Email me if you’d like arrange a 15-minute fit-check conversation before the weekend.

A quick one - I’ve been chosen by the education platform Maven to bring my teaching to their people(!) If you want to join us tomorrow 4pm GMT, I’ll be sharing a practical version of today’s newsletter for you to work through in real time.

RSVP for free.

The first step to building authority

Authority-led business owners are tuned into the macro shift of the past decade that has de-institutionalised expertise.

The internet quietly removed the gatekeepers.

Today, no longer do you need:

• A publisher to choose your words
• A newsroom to share updates
• A university platform to gain a degree
• A large firm behind your name to make good money

You have a direct line to your audience from your laptop, which in reality, is extraordinary.

Except, of course, when everyone can publish, no one is automatically trusted.

Authority today gets deliberately constructed by individuals who decide that they want it, as much as it is bestowed by institutions.

For experienced coaches and consultants, this creates a strange tension.

You do have depth, results and years of client insights at your fingertips. But your thinking doesn’t automatically translate to the online arena.

The trust you’ve built lives inside client documents, workshop decks and the odd post that did well but never quite laddered up to anything bigger. So people only get to see parts of your expertise, and rarely the whole.

It’s complex. And when it’s complex, it’s hard for it to be coherent.

In a world where expertise is decentralised, coherence is what cuts through the noise.

Coherence happens when your ideas click in other people’s minds, not just in your own.

It lies in having a clear idea that ties your work together. So rarely do you need more content. You need a through-line that holds your Body of Work together.

Because when you’re clear on that one big idea that connects everything:

• Naming your Substack becomes obvious.

• Your group programme sharpens because people share the sentiment they’re buying into.

• Clients connect the dots between your past career and what you do now even if its’s not a straight line through.

• Sales conversations shorten

And something else happens: people start repeating your ideas back to you.

When an idea is coherent, it travels without you, becomes language others can use and becomes shorthand in referrals.

My clients are seeing this. I’m seeing this.

We get to directly impact our own client creation, outside of the algorithms.

A founder I work with, described a recent deal as “the best sales call possible.”

No longer was he scrambling to explain his work and story. No convincing was needed. He’d worked on his One Big Idea and his Authority Story, so the energy flowed from that level of conviction he had, and led to a huge deal.

This matters because while the internet promised democracy and a “direct line to your audience”…

In reality, platforms became dictators.

They chant:

“Don’t include that link.”
“Don’t take time off, stay consistent”
“Don’t use that word, it’s censored”

How can we expect to build something sustainable on platforms that constantly shift, reward and punish attention?

Even if you do gain attention, shares and likes alone rarely produce a meaningful and sustainable income stream. It’s clients that give us that.

Authority-led businesses solve real problems. They are led by practitioners doing the work and then creating content to articulate and attract around that work. So the true measure of authority isn’t followers but the number of clients and peers who regularly refer business to you.

And referrals become simpler when positioning is clear and your idea sticks.

If you’re ready to move beyond the fleeting nature of content creation and build something that endures (and produces real results along the way), it’s time to hone your Authority Foundations.

Successful authority-led businesses share these foundations:

• Own a clear area of expertise
• Have a compelling idea that sticks
• Stay in their lane and deepen it over years, not months

Depth of insight about client’s problems is great, but you need the added layer of communicating that depth of insight in a way that moves others to hire you, yes, but also to care, to repeat, to refer.

The most effective way I’ve seen this happen with clients is through developing their One Big Idea; an OBI.

That’s the cornerstone of your authority platform and the lens through which all your work is viewed. It’s what my client Alan described as “a spearhead for the work I do.” He went on to have their biggest quarter in business yet, as a result of this clarification.

The OBI is an expression of your myriad ideas, distilled. Many authority-led business owners worry this is like “dumbing down” your thinking. It isn’t.

As Patrick Wyman put it, “We’re not dealing with a crisis of expertise itself as much as a crisis of explanation.”

In the early days, your OBI might sit on your LinkedIn.

But in later years… becomes your book. Your TED talk. Your movement.

But it’s incredibly hard to think your way into this clarity alone. From inside your own head, everything feels nuanced, too obvious or already clear.

Shaping an idea so that it clicks instantly for someone else is a different skill.

That’s a skill of translation I’ve been doing for years, and tomorrow I’m running a free live session: Build One Idea That Attracts Better Clients.

In 45 minutes, I’ll guide you to:

• Define your One Big Idea; that’s the organising principle your work already revolves around
• Identify the red thread across your services, content and results
• Outline the long-form Hero Piece of writing that can do this kind of heavy lifting for you

If your expertise feels stronger than your positioning currently communicates… I’d love to invite you to join us here.

Even if you feel you’ve done this work before, this will help you pressure-test how well your idea is actually working for you.

Shall we together build something that lasts?

Ellen