Glossary
The vocabulary of public authority
The terms Own Your Story uses deliberately — and the terms we replace. Vocabulary decides the work; definitions decide the vocabulary.
The words you use to describe authority work decide what the work actually becomes.
Most of the vocabulary professionals reach for to describe authority comes from marketing. Brand. Positioning. Content strategy. Those words are useful — personal branding is how most people first become visible. But they describe how the work is seen, not what has to hold underneath it when a role, an offer or a company changes.
The OYS vocabulary names that lasting layer. The terms below are used deliberately. They describe what authority branding builds — body of work, authority fingerprint, public authority — the part of a personal brand that carries over. The vocabulary is the discipline.
The glossary defines each term, explains why we use it rather than the more common alternative, and links out to where the concept fits in the broader practice.
Seven defined terms
The glossary
Authority Architect
Read definition →The discipline of designing the structural foundation of a professional's public authority — and the role ianka fleerackers occupies inside the O.W.N® practice.
Narrative positioning
Read definition →The structural articulation of where a professional stands in their field — not through market category and message, but through the narrative line that connects their substance, conviction and body of work.
Authority fingerprint
Read definition →The structural signature a professional leaves across their body of work — recognisable across contexts because the same substance produced all of it. The lasting core of a personal brand.
Body of work
Read definition →The accumulated, defended, structurally coherent output of a professional across decades. Not a content archive, not a portfolio — the unit a serious career actually rests on.
Public authority
Read definition →The right a professional has earned to be heard on questions in their field — built from substance, recognisable outside any specific organisation, structurally durable across roles and decades.
Signature Story
Read definition →The central narrative a professional has earned and rehearsed in front of non-client publics — the story that anchors their public authority. Also the name of the OYS program built to develop it.
Career portfolio
Read definition →One body of expertise expressed in many public formats — consultant, speaker, author, advisor — connected by one authority fingerprint that makes it recognisable across every expression. The substance OYS works on with experts.
Longevity career
Read definition →A working life designed to last decades — architected across multiple businesses, roles and vehicles, sequentially or in parallel, with one coherent body of work running through all of them. The strategic horizon a career portfolio sits inside.
Read next
Frameworks
The proprietary tools of the O.W.N® method — Congruence Wheel™, Toneprint™, Authority Archetype Mix™ and more.
The O.W.N® Practice
The method behind the vocabulary — Ownership, Wisdom, Narrative — and the proprietary frameworks built on top of it.
For Experts
Every way to work one-to-one with ianka fleerackers, from a single session to a standing partnership.