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Own Your Impact equips experts and leaders to transform their expertise into meaningful influence. Host Macy Robison reveals how successful thought leaders use deliberate systems—not luck or volume—to amplify their authentic voice and create lasting impact. Through practical frameworks and strategic guidance, you'll discover how to build a self-reinforcing ecosystem of Core Resonance, structured Content, a Central Platform, strategic Connections, and intentional Commercialization. Whether you're just starting to share your expertise or scaling an existing platform, this podcast delivers the roadmap to turn your ideas into purpose-driven influence that resonates far beyond what you might imagine possible.
Macy Robison 0:00
How much of what you've built actually feels like it's yours? This is on your impact. I'm Macy Robison, and this is a show for people who are the face of their own business or the face of their own ideas, but they're building it all on somebody else's blueprint, and now they're becoming a version of themselves that they didn't actively choose. I believe the impact you really want to have is yours to decide, and it starts with the signal you're already sending. There is a gap out there that is specifically yours to fill, and I believe you don't have to guess what that is. Let's find yours, and then let's own your impact. We are on episode 81 of this show, and something happened in the world this week that made me realize I've never once really sat down and shared what the title of this podcast actually means. It's called "Own Your Impact. You know that if you've gotten this far, and I've talked around this idea a lot. I've talked about the gap you have to fill in signal and frequency and archetypes and all of that, but the title itself, the actual claim underneath the whole thing, I've sort of left just sitting there for the last year and a half and haven't addressed it directly. But it isn't just a name. It's the why of everything I do, so I want to remedy that today. Dolly Parton passed away on Tuesday earlier this week as I'm recording. She was 80 years old, and if your social media feed looked anything like mine, it filled up almost immediately with tribute after tribute after tribute. One of my favorites was from a woman named Christa Dem. I'll link it in the show notes. She posted a picture of Dolly, and on top of the picture, she wrote this: Imagine spending 80 years on the planet, writing over 300 songs, winning 11 Grammy awards, 10 CMAs, one Emmy, countless nominations, having 55 top 10 hits, and at the end of your life, no one talks about that. Instead, they talk about the kind of person you were, how you loved others well, how you stayed true to yourself, how you were generous and would champion others, and how you would inspire others to do the same. If that's not the goal, I don't know what is. Now I have not fact checked a single one of those numbers. I'm just reading you what Krista wrote, but it doesn't really matter whether it's 56 hits or 54 or 55 because the numbers aren't the point that she's making. The point is the sentence at the end. At the end of a life well lived. People mention your accomplishments, but they're changed by the impact you made. Now, when I say own your impact, I mean two things, and I think they actually hold each other up. The first one is that your impact in the world is a direct product of the decisions you make. Impact isn't given to you. It isn't discovered. It isn't awarded. It doesn't show up because you got lucky or because somebody important finally noticed you. You decide what that impact is going to be, and then you decide again and again and again after that. The second meaning of own your impact is more literal, and it's the half I don't say out loud nearly enough. I also mean actual ownership. I mean building something that pays you for being exactly who you are, and that still belongs to you for years to come. Now I said both halves of this idea of own your impact in a sentence about a week ago. I did a training inside of Austin L. Church's freelance cake community, and it was honestly the first time I'd really heard myself say it this way. We were talking about thought leadership and impact, and I said I care most of all about people having the impact that is specifically theirs to make and fully owning it, not only from a monetary standpoint if they want to, and and building a business around that unique contribution that is theirs to make, but to really own it from an agency, from a decisional standpoint as well, you're going to have an impact regardless. You need to own and decide it, and I think those two haves are actually the same move.
Macy Robison 4:17
You make decisions from who you really resonantly are, and then you build on top of those decisions, and then what you build on top of those decisions can be yours to own. I think that's the part people skip: leading yourself with your own resonance and your own knowledge, and making decisions from there is the path to impact. It isn't just a nice feeling to have about yourself. It's a way of choosing, which brings me to another story I read this week about Dolly. A different creator on Instagram, Jamie Rachelle, posted a story I'd known for years, but hadn't thought about in these terms. So I want to share it with you. You've probably seen it too, and then I want to take it somewhere Jamie didn't. Now, in 1974, Elvis Presley wanted to record Dolly's. At the time, she'd already recorded it. It was a number one hit. I will always love you. Now, 1974, Elvis. If you're a songwriter in Nashville in 1974, and Elvis Presley wants to record your song, that's the single biggest amplifier amount of amplification available to a human being on the planet, especially in the music industry. There's really nothing bigger. There's no version of that phone call you turned down. And Dolly was thrilled. Elvis wanted to sing her song, and then the night before the session, his manager Colonel Tom Parker, called, and he told her that Elvis doesn't record anything without getting at least half of the publishing rights. Now, Dolly had been building publishing companies since the '60s, and she'd been holding on specifically to these songs she'd been writing. Tressy McMillan Cottom wrote a piece about Dolly in the Times this week, and she put it better than I could. She said, "At a time when women and poor people signed away their intellectual property for a shot at stardom, Dolly started a series of successful publishing companies to retain those rights. And so Dolly said, "No, it had already been a hit. Her words to Colonel Tom were that this song was the most important copyright in her whole publishing company, and she couldn't give half of it away, so she said no, and then she cried all night. Now I want to be careful here because I think the crying is the important part, and it's the part that often gets edited out of stories like this. She wasn't crying because she got it wrong; she was crying because she got it right, and it still cost her something she wanted very badly. Now here's the line from Jamie's post that I keep coming back to. Jamie said, "Dolly wanted the opportunity with Elvis. She just didn't want the terms. Those are not the same thing. And what that decision made possible 18 years later, when Whitney Houston recorded it, that song paid Dolly Parton for the rest of her life. There's a story that that Dolly put the money from from that specific song alone into a property in Nashville that she called the House that Whitney built. Dolly had no idea any of that was coming when she said no to Elvis. She just knew what she wasn't willing to hand over. That was a decision, and decisions are hard because decision means to cut off. It's right there in the word, the etymology of the word. It comes from the Latin to cut. It's the same root we get incision from. Every real decision feels like a cut, and I think that's the hardest part of being the face of your own business-it's the hardest part of owning your impact. But that decision, that ability to make a guided, resonant decision, is also the thing that gives you something you can own. Now, I want to say that again because I think we hear the first half and stop. The cutting off, the deciding is hard, but the cutting off is the only reason there's anything left in your hands afterward to do something with. If Dolly had said yes to those terms in 1974, she'd have gotten Elvis. She'd have gotten amplification. She'd have gotten the biggest moment of her career at that point. And in 1992, when Whitney Houston made that song into the one of most recognizable recordings in the entire world, half of it wouldn't have been dollies. Sometimes the deciding, sometimes the no, is what makes the yes worth anything at all.
Macy Robison 8:26
So come back to the tributes for a second, because I hope now you can see what they're evidence of. Nobody's been talking about the Grammys she's won this week. They were talking about a person who is recognizably the same person in every single decision that she made. You can see it in the songs. You can see it in the books she mailed to children. The personal stories of interaction that people have had. You can see it in showing up as a voice for people who didn't have one. You can see it in the sequins and the big hair and the fact that she never once apologized for any of it or filed it down to make somebody more comfortable, you can see it in the posts that are coming from diametrically opposed groups of people who loved her and loved what she stood for. Her theme park, the people she championed, building that theme park in the county that she came from, the money and the meaning for her went in the same direction because they came out of the same set of decisions, and that's what I mean when I talk about core resonance and knowing who you are and knowing what signal you're sending and knowing where it's coming from. Resonance is really a vehicle for truth. When something resonates with us, we're saying, "Oh, that's true about you. That's true about me too. And then when you choose to embody that truth everywhere you go, in the small decisions and the big ones, until anyone looking at your choices from the outside can tell it's you making them, that's when everything starts to sing. And honestly, like any great writer, Dolly said it better than I can, and she said it about herself. She said everything that she does is about finding out who you. And doing it on purpose, and she did it. That's the job, you know. I got asked recently to define thought leadership, and I think it feels like a loaded term. I think everyone is a thought leader and has thought leadership in them. We all have an impact we want to make. I kind of wish there was a better term than thought leader because the I think it sometimes conjures up shallow copying and pasting and trumpeting ideas that aren't fully formed yet. It feels shallow to some people because of what their experience on the other side of it has been, and so they don't want to show up that way. But I believe if we have thoughts that can be impactful in the lives of others, and then we're willing to take the choice and make the decision to step out and lead with them, the result is helping someone find a better path, and that leads to impact. That's the job. A thought leader is a guide, someone who shows up with empathy and authority, and points us with a plan to a better way. They have a framework. They have a plan in hand. They have a blueprint. They have the mess that they've walked through that becomes the medicine they're willing to hand to you, so that you can have a better life, and that's where impact comes from. You don't have to be famous to do that. Famous is fine, visible is fine, and honestly, Dolly was about as visible as a person can get. So I'm not standing here telling you that visibility is the problem. It never was, but what makes Dolly different, and what I hope can start to make all of us different, is refusing to hand over what makes us us in order to get more visibility. Here's the thing I'd love for you to take with you today: we don't have to wait until we're gone to find out what our impact actually was. You don't have to hope that the room is full and somebody stands up and says the exact right thing about you. You get to choose the impact you make. Now this week and the next decision you make, most of them will be small. None of them are going to feel historic while you're making them. Decide. Decide to send the signal that is yours to send. Decide to do the thing that is yours to do, because you get to choose all of it.
Macy Robison 12:04
Some of those decisions are going to feel like cuts, and some of them are going to hurt, and maybe you'll cry all night the way Dolly did. But remember, that's not a sign that you got the decision wrong. Sometimes those tears are just what the right decision costs. At the end of the day, there is a specific gap out there that only you can fill. It's yours. It's not a bigger version of somebody else. It's yours to fill, and you get to decide. You get to choose to go fill it as you, on purpose, just like Dolly did. Now, if you're sitting there thinking, well, that's a lovely idea, but you have no way of knowing how big or small or medium sized the gap is that is yours to fill, or what it could turn into, or what it possibly could be, and the whole thing feels completely insurmountable. What I hope I share in this podcast every week is that you don't have to guess. I think impact is ownable, and I think resonance and tapping into that is the way you own it. And resonance can be measured. Measuring that signal is the first diagnostic I use with anyone, and it's the archetype assessment. It's right there to take. It's free. More than 1100 people have taken it as of this recording, so there's a good chance you might be one of them. Now, the free results you get after you take it tell you a lot about what signal you're sending and what that gap is that you're supposed to fill. The expanded results that I use with clients tell you some of the specifics. So, I'd love to invite you, maybe, to make this decision, take the next step in understanding the shape of the impact that's yours to make. I've had a lot of people coming to the workshop to find that out. It's called "You Know Your Archetype. Now what? It's free. It's a live hour where we go past your primary archetype into the specific signal and blend that's yours, and what it means for how you're showing up and what signal you're sending right now, and if you decide to stay for the whole hour as a thank you for investing that time with me, you'll get a PDF of your expanded results. If you haven't taken the assessment yet and you're wondering about the impact and the signal you're sending, start there. It takes about 10 minutes, and both the links to the workshop, also to the assessment, are in the show notes. You don't have to wait to be discovered. You just have to decide, and then keep deciding and deciding and deciding to own the impact that is specifically yours to make. I hope that's what you are hearing today, and I hope it helps you choose to send a clearer signal this week. Do it for yourself, and if not for yourself, do it for Dolly. There are people out there right now who need exactly what you know in exactly the way you will share it. So before the week gets away from you, make one decision you didn't. Copy and paste from somebody else. It doesn't have to be a big one. It just has to be yours to start owning the impact that is already yours. Your ideas don't need more luck. Your ideas don't need more volume. They need more resonance. I'm Macy Robison, and this is Own Your Impact.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai