When your next client asks AI who to hire, whose name comes up?
The Authority Directory™ is your expertise, structured so AI engines can read it, cite it, and recommend you. Built for you, or built by you with my method. Either way, on a codebase you own.
One conversation. We scope your directory and confirm fit. I take on three builds a month, so the work stays right. (Prefer to build it yourself? That path is on this page too.)
Run the test I wish nobody had to run.
Open ChatGPT. Type the question your ideal client would ask:
“Who should I hire to help me with [what you do]?”
If the answer names you, close this page. You don’t need me.
For almost every owner I work with, it names someone else. Often two or three someones, sometimes peers they know, sometimes people with half their depth. They sit with that result longer than they expect to.
The work didn’t get worse. The reputation didn’t shrink. What changed is the discovery layer itself.
What changed underneath you
Three years ago, search was how clients found experts. Now AI is. And AI doesn’t read the internet the way Google did.
The SEO that used to compound has plateaued. The content you publish doesn’t move the needle the way it did. The platforms that used to send traffic now send less. And when prospects ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity for help with the work you do, someone else gets named.
The experts being recommended didn’t get smarter. They didn’t work harder. They built something different: structured authority. AI engines look for clear architecture. Who specializes in what. Who answers which questions with depth. Whose expertise is captured in a form a machine can verify.
Most experts don’t have that. They have content. Testimonials. A website that loads fast and looks fine. The structural authority AI engines treat as proof of expertise, the thing that gets you recommended, isn’t there.
There’s a name for it. It’s called an Authority Directory.
A structured architecture of your expertise, designed to be read by AI engines as evidence that you’re the answer.
Not content. Not SEO. Not a marketing strategy. A structural asset, with a specific anatomy:
Pillars.
The handful of big topics your authority rests on.
Clusters.
The subtopics underneath each pillar, organized the way your market thinks about its problems.
Nodes.
Individual pages that each answer one specific question completely. The questions your clients are typing into AI at 11pm.
All of it cross-linked, marked up with schema, and implemented for AEO and GEO, the disciplines of being legible to answer engines, so AI systems can find, evaluate, and cite you the way a researcher uses a well-organized library.
And the structure compounds. Each node strengthens the architecture instead of disappearing into a content stream: authority content earns AI recognition, recognition becomes recommendation, recommendation brings qualified attention, attention produces proof, and proof feeds the next node. Your authority stops resetting to zero with every post.
One more thing worth saying plainly: this is built for humans and AI both. The same architecture that lets ChatGPT cite you confidently lets a human land on your site and get real answers fast. One foundation. Two audiences.
I didn’t invent this last year. I came back to it.
In 2014, I spent about $800 launching Craft Beverage Jobs, a job board for the craft beer industry. People in my life told me it was a stupid idea. I ignored them. With grit, stubbornness, and SEO, I grew it until it was being cited in publications like the Washington Post. Three years later, someone thought it was valuable enough to buy.
It never made me millions. But it taught me something that took a decade to fully understand: directories are systems, and systems built well keep working without you.
For the decade after I sold it, I did something different: a consulting practice helping experts build and launch their online programs. Over 70 programs. Over $100 million in collective revenue. I watched directories fade from the conversation, dismissed as a relic of early internet marketing. I wrote them off too.
Then, in early 2025, two things happened almost at once.
First, I noticed the quiet builders, the ones who post what they built without fanfare, were building directories again. Because AI loved structured data. High-quality directories were getting floods of traffic, not from search bots but from citation bots: AI systems crawling to decide who was worth recommending.
Second, I took a sales call with someone who found me because ChatGPT told them to. Perfectly qualified, perfectly ready. No pitch, no objection-handling. AI recommendation, fit conversation, yes.
I needed to understand how to make that happen on purpose. And as I sat with it, I realized the model I’d built and loved and sold in 2014 was exactly the architecture AI engines were now rewarding. I hadn’t found a new strategy. I had come full circle. The Authority Directory Method™ was born from that recognition.
Before I offered it to anyone, I built it on my own domain. You’re reading an Authority Directory right now: perfectlittlebusiness.com runs the method in production, and so does vibecodeyourleads.com. Then I deployed an early version for a private client in Hawaiʻi, a real estate broker.
Within 30 days, he received an AI-generated inquiry from someone interested in listing their $30 million property.
That’s not a claim. That’s a timeline.
Same expertise. Same business. Different architecture underneath.
- AI engines start recommending you by name when prospects ask for the kind of work you do.
- Leads arrive pre-qualified, because AI sent them on purpose, not by accident.
- Your expertise becomes a structural asset instead of being scattered across blog posts, old proposals, and your head.
- Your authority compounds. Every new node strengthens the architecture.
- Your website performs in the AI Recommendation Era the way it used to in the search era.
The directory is structural infrastructure, not the whole answer.
For it to work, you also need real expertise (the architecture amplifies what’s true; it can’t manufacture depth), substantive content (real answers, not thin filler), and an off-page presence (what other places say about you still matters; AI engines read that too).
The directory is what makes those things compose. It gives your expertise a structure, your content a place to live, and your mentions something to point to. If the depth is there, this is what makes it add up to recommendations.
The Full Build
Your foundation, captured efficiently.
We start with a focused intake: your Source of Truth and your dossier. Your offer, your convictions, your differentiation, and the questions your market is asking AI. Captured in working conversation, not homework packets. The dossier is the build; everything downstream runs from it.
The directory itself.
Sixty to one hundred twenty nodes, calibrated to your problem-and-solution architecture. Pillars, clusters, and cross-linking so the whole body compounds. Schema, AEO, and GEO implementation throughout. Deployed and launched on your own codebase, in your own repository.
A mid-build review gate.
You see and approve the content direction partway through, before the full build runs. Then unlimited revisions within scope until it’s right. The revision model is the guarantee.
Training to run it with AI.
Adding nodes, updating content, keeping your perimeter current, with AI doing the friction work. The directory keeps growing after I leave, because you can grow it.
You own all of it: codebase, repo, dossier, directory. On your infrastructure, no gate, no retainer.
The project, or the outcome.
I don’t believe in locking anyone into more delivery than they need. The same method is available two ways; the honest difference is whether you want the project or the outcome.
$997
one time · The Dossier + Codebase
For the self-reliant owner who wants the methodology applied to her business without buying delivery.
- The Launchpad apps: five guided foundation tools (Avatar, Convictions, Problem → Solution, Brand Style, Source of Truth). The apps do the work with you; this is not a course.
- Your Authority Directory dossier: your offer, convictions, differentiation, and the questions your market asks AI.
- Your directory codebase, the same foundation every full build starts from.
- You install and deploy on your own infrastructure, guided by tutorials, and build your nodes on the architecture at your own pace.
Complete on its own. No cohort, no pressure, no upsell gate. Yours from day one.
The Full Build. For the owner whose highest-leverage work is not building her own directory.
- The intake: Source of Truth + dossier, captured in conversation
- 60 to 120 nodes written in your voice
- Schema, AEO, and GEO architecture throughout
- Deployed and launched on your own codebase, in your own repository
- Mid-build review gate + unlimited revisions within scope
- Training to run and grow it with AI
About 30 days; three builds a month, capped. Pricing is standardized; scope comes first. We cover it on the call.
The DIY foundation is the same dossier and codebase the Full Build starts from. Start self-reliant and upgrade later, and you arrive pre-foundationed; the work carries forward, full credit to your momentum. Choose by temperament and calendar, not by fear of choosing wrong.
“How is this different from SEO or hiring a content agency?”
Agencies produce volume for human scrollers. This builds structure for machine readers: citable answers, cluster architecture, schema. Past investments in SEO and content aren’t wasted, either; the directory is the architecture that makes them compose instead of scatter.
“Do I need to replace my existing website?”
Not to start. Your directory can live alongside your current site, on a subdomain or as its own property. Most clients begin there. Once they see how easy the directory is to manage, many migrate the rest of the site onto the same foundation. That’s a choice for later; the directory works regardless.
“What exactly is the difference between the two paths?”
The DIY delivers the foundation: your dossier and your configured codebase, with tutorials to deploy and build on it. The nodes are yours to write, with the architecture holding you up. The Full Build delivers the finished thing: every node written in your voice, deployed and operating, with training. Foundation versus finished directory.
“Do I have to write anything?” (Full Build)
No. The intake captures your expertise in conversation. You review and react; we write and build.
“What if the content doesn’t sound like me?” (Full Build)
The mid-build gate exists so we catch that early, and revisions within scope are unlimited until it’s right.
“Can I start DIY and upgrade?”
Yes, and it’s a designed path, not a loophole. The foundation carries forward; you’d be buying the build, not re-buying the groundwork.
“What happens after launch?”
You run it, with the training included (Full Build) or the tutorials (DIY). If you want it run and grown for you, that’s a different engagement. If you want the whole foundation rebuilt around it, that’s the complete AI-Native Business build.
The number worth thinking about isn’t on this page.
It’s the one you don’t see: every quarter without your authority architecture is another quarter of AI engines indexing experts in your field and choosing one of them, instead of you, to recommend. The broker’s $30 million inquiry wasn’t an accident. It was the engineered outcome of having the structure in place when AI went looking for someone to recommend.
Every directory built is a recommendation slot claimed in someone’s field. I’d like the one in yours to be yours, whichever way you build it.
One call, if you want it built: we look at what AI currently says about you, scope what your directory requires, and decide together. Or skip the call and start building today. Both doors are open; neither has a countdown timer on it.
Freedom isn’t found. It’s engineered.