After years of working with successful authors and coaches, improving or creating their digital infrastructure, it gave me the opportunity to examine how a thought leader builds a successful business on their teachings.

There were a number of similarities. (I call them Cornerstones.) Once I identified what these similarities were, and how the most successful platforms worked, I resolved to make a platform for myself.

I made the wrong platform.

My intentions were noble, at least. I did some really deep soul searching, and I asked myself: how could I have the most positive impact on the world? Not just today, or in ten years, but in a hundred years – how could my work provide the most positive benefit to humanity, one century from now?

I settled on fatherhood.

If I could help men become better fathers, then they would raise better children. Better kids grow up to become better people, and better people make a better world. This was the area I identified as having the maximum impact for my life’s work, so I built a platform around it.

I made a logo, and a brand, and a website for BeTheBetterDad.com. I started blogging about the habits that make me a better father, and I made a free online course, the 5-Day Father Fitness Program. That gave me some customers, which meant I could ask them about the problems they face, and structure my offerings around solving those problems. I made Customer Avatars, and discovered, to my surprise, that I was in no way qualified to help this audience.

The problems that modern dads are facing – divorce, depression, having kids living in separate households – I wasn’t equipped to help them with that. I’ve got no experience with divorce, and I’m not a therapist or a relationship coach – I’m a guy who has a good handle on his habits, and I tried to share some of those.

But what this audience actually needed was not something I could provide.

So I went back to the drawing board. I asked myself, “What am I uniquely good at doing?”

I looked over the entire infrastructure that I created for Father Fitness, and I thought, “I can do that. I can make a platform.”

Stellar Platforms was created so that I can help people with what I do best: create the branding and automation infrastructure that financially supports a thought leader as they grow their audience.

The Four Cornerstones

Like many polymaths, I’m not an expert in any one thing, but I have a modest level of mastery in some very different things. It turns out this variety of skills is especially useful for the 4 Cornerstones of a Stellar Platform.

• My theatrical training gave me an artistic flair in creating characters, which I use when making Customer Avatars.
• My sales training has given me the psychological understanding of why people buy, which I use to make Sales Funnels.
• My time as a writer gave me the ability to produce and disseminate ideas clearly, which is a core component of Content Marketing.
• My freelance web design business taught me how to integrate complicated platforms together, which is essential for eCommerce.

I never thought these separate areas of my interests would combine anywhere. I only pursued the interests that appealed to me most at the time. Now I have the opportunity to use each of these areas of mastery as a Cornerstone to my own Stellar Platform. That’s why I started this business.

Stellar Platforms are for Rising Stars.

The kinds of people who need these four Cornerstones are the thought leaders and authors who have a message, and have an audience, but they don’t yet have a platform to enable them to make a living by simply spreading their message.

If you are one of the Illuminators of Tomorrow, let’s work together.