Have Your Lighthouse Strategy in Place for Building Brand

The point of a lighthouse is there’s someone that is the higher authority and is better known, has a bigger audience, and has more perceived expertise in a particular area because you’re co-creating content. It confers authority on you.

So their audience respects you because they already respect the person that is a lighthouse.

A lighthouse is where you can teach by quoting someone that is the higher authority by what they have done, and you interview them. It’s not because they’re testimonials.

Here’s some advice that I have for you.

If you’re talking to clients, a professional, or an expert in some area, you must have your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram page. It would help if you built a foundation for the first month and then put the content there. Then you need to boost and optimize it, generating leads. So this is a 90-day process.

We are building training for Tommy Mello, the home service expert. We’re taking our 90-day challenge to build a personal brand, which anyone, a home service person, plumber, or roofer, can go through.

It’s under Tommy’s name, and he is happy to do this because this attracts more talent to his team as he’s growing across the nation.

We’re also doing 90-day challenges for Justen Martin of iHomes Colorado. So if you’re a real estate agent struggling to generate leads, come in and go through the different phases of 90-day challenges, and the system will send you notes saying, hey, congratulations on setting up your website. Now make your videos.

And the autoresponder or nag, in this case, Justen, who is the figurehead, has already prerecorded these different messages along the way that Infusionsoft will send. So we’ve co-created this training with Justin and Tommy to take something already working well and allow these folks to verticalize it for their industry, using their examples.

Lighthouse is excellent because I could teach my example, my course for real estate agents, and how we’ve applied a one-minute video for a dollar a day.

So even though other people will have a checklist for driving more leads. We have a proven model.

Why is lighthouse an excellent strategy?

Lighthouse is an excellent strategy as if someone is trying to sell you stuff and there’s no lighthouse behind it. There’s no authority – – meaning I need to see proof that you’ve done the work. What would you do?

You would not blindly follow their path. You need to see some proof and success stories behind it.

For example, I need to see someone well-known in the space of mortgage, like Barry Habib, who is the number one guy and is our lighthouse for a mortgage.

The beauty of your lighthouse is that when you’re doing this with people who are well known in that particular industry, showcasing how you delivered that result, all the other people will come to you.

So the lighthouse model allows us to leverage existing audiences to drive warm leads via the authority of the people that our target clients respect. 

The lighthouse is also the inception model, as you’re planting the highest authority content.

It’s exquisite because you do not have to reach your consumer or target client. You have to go to the people your target audience respects and then create content with those people. Then you can publish that content as a course or a book.

We have the number one best-selling book on social media, which is still on Amazon because they’re spending a dollar a day on it, creating massive authority.

Everything around here is about building authority, and the lighthouse model is how you concentrate power. 

lighthouse

Key for lighthouse model

I want to show you that I’m a living, breathing example of how we do lighthouses. It doesn’t require that you become famous.

The first reaction I hear from many people when I explain the lighthouse is, “I don’t have the kind of connections you do. I don’t have 30 years in the industry.”

You don’t need 30 years. You need a couple of people you can co-create content with you. The most potent part of lighthouses is meetings.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone to be in business if they haven’t demonstrated that they can deliver the result that they promise. 

If you haven’t partnered with somebody, be an apprentice, get your skill level up, and be an employee at an agency to get the experience. So when you’re doing this, you’ll be able to create lighthouses. 

Like Tommy Mello, Caleb Williams, and Justin Martin. They are our real estate lighthouse, and they have 240 locations. Our lighthouse, Matthew Januszek, is the CEO of Escape Fitness

You should not have someone who will say good things for commission. They have to have credibility.

Sometimes people want to own businesses and do not focus on building the brand, but you must focus on making it as it gives word of mouth.

Remember: If you have a lighthouse strategy, your stuff and landing pages don’t have to work. They will know you are living proof of building connections and trust your expertise. 

Dennis Yu

About the Author

Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads.  He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations.You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel.You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.