Carol Cox: I believe you are the exact messenger for
your idea and your audience.
Hear why on this episode of the Speaking Your
Brand podcast .
More and more women are making an impact by
starting businesses, running for office and
speaking up for what matters.
With my background as a political analyst,
entrepreneur and speaker,
I interview and coach purpose driven women to
shape their brands, grow their companies and
become recognized as influencers in their
field. This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi and welcome to the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. I'm your host,
Carol Cox. If you haven't yet listened to
last week's episode, you'll definitely want
to after today's.
I've gotten such great feedback from
listeners. I talked about how I almost got
stuck in the Expert Trap,
but I managed to get myself out of it before
the presentation that I delivered at a
marketing conference in July.
So I talk about what my content and my slides
look like, and then I realize,
Oh my gosh, I'm stuck in the expert trap and
how I got myself out of it and the strategies
you can use as well.
Today we're talking about why you are the
messenger for your idea and your audience and
that your audience is waiting for you.
I know that you want to have a unique take on
your topic and not sound like everyone else,
but maybe you're worried that you see other
speakers or authors or entrepreneurs out
there who have similar topics to you.
And here's the thing that will always be the
case. There are always going to be lots of
people out there who do or say something in
the same umbrella, in the same topic area as
you. And that's why this is where having an
idea is key and it's different from my topic.
Let me give you an example.
Here's a presentation topic that you could
see at a at a conference or on a lunch and
learn that you're going to something like
five ways to improve your Social media
marketing or how to save for retirement.
Those are topics.
And yes, you will see those everywhere.
If you go to a marketing conference, you'll
see five ways to do your social media
marketing. If you're going to a business or a
finance conference or an event,
you'll hear about how to do financial
planning or how to save for retirement.
Those are topics.
And they the problem with just having a topic
like that is that you become
undifferentiated.
You're what I call a commodity speaker,
which means you're interchangeable with
everyone else. So you're not going to get
those higher profile or paid speaking
engagements that you want.
You're also less likely to generate leads and
clients from your presentations.
An idea is so much more.
And that's what makes your talk interesting
and memorable.
An idea is having a unique angle or twist on
your topic, an original way to frame it so
that it's not like what everyone else says
about your topic.
And this is exactly why your audience is
waiting for you.
I've talked in the past on this podcast about
four layers of thought leadership that I've
identified. The foundational layer is your
expertise, what it is you do in your business
and your career.
The next layer on top of that is your idea,
your big idea. So what is your take on your
expertise? But you don't stop there.
The third layer is your personal story,
your personal experience,
why you care about this idea,
why this idea came to you,
and then that top layer.
The fourth layer is the emotional courage to
dig deep and to put your idea out there,
even when it feels uncertain and scary.
So I'm going to share with you in this
episode why your ideas are so important.
The two different ways that ideas can come to
you, what oftentimes stops them from doing
so, and how to activate your idea.
Because ideas look for a messenger and it's
up to you to activate it.
If you're new to speaking your brand.
And welcome. I'm so glad that you're here.
We help women entrepreneurs and leaders
create their signature talks and develop
their thought leadership platforms.
We focus on advocating and champion for
women's visibility, voices and influence
because we know it's through women's stories
and challenging the status quo that we're
going to change existing systems for the
better. If you're interested in working with
us. Enrollment in our Thought Leader Academy
is open. We have two dates left for all of
2023 August 29th and October 24th.
Those are the two start dates we have left
August 29th and October 24th.
We work with you over eight weeks to
identify, validate and activate your idea and
turn it into a powerful thought leadership
message and signature talk.
We work with you over those eight weeks and
in group Zoom calls of small groups of women,
we have usually 6 to 8 women per group.
And then you also get a one on one virtual
VIP day with us to create your signature
talk. And clients say that that process is
magical. You literally say your idea and your
talk come to life.
If you would like to join us,
you can get all of the details,
including pricing as speaking your
brand.com/academy.
Again, that's speaking your
brand.com/academy.
You can enroll from there or you can schedule
a zoom call with us.
We are always happy to talk to you about your
goals and to make sure the thought Leader
Academy is the best fit for you.
Now let's get on with the show.
What do I mean by an idea?
Here's what the dictionary says.
An idea is a thought plan or suggestion about
what to do or an opinion or belief.
It's also defined as an entity such as a
thought concept, sensation or image,
actually, or potentially present to
consciousness. Now, that's kind of a weird
definition. That last one was from the
Merriam-Webster dictionary.
I like to think of an identity as something
that comes to you and that you then bring to
life that you actually activate into the
world. That's why I say that ideas look for a
messenger. Ideas are like floating around out
there in in the in the in the universe,
in the ether and Jung's collective
unconscious wherever they are.
And they're waiting for us to grab on to them
and to activate them, to bring them to life.
And I have been thinking about this quite a
bit from some different movies and experience
that I've had. And then I read Elizabeth
Gilbert's non-fiction book called Big Magic.
This was several years ago.
It is a fantastic book.
You may recognize the name Elizabeth Gilbert
from Eat, Pray, Love, of course,
her memoir that became a major film.
She has written so many other things since
then that I think actually are better than
the Eat, Pray, Love. Big Magic being one of
them. I highly recommend it.
I'm going to quote now from the book about
Elizabeth Gilbert's understanding of ideas,
because it very much aligns with the way that
I think about them. Here's what she said,
quote, I believe that our planet is inhabited
not only by animals and plants and bacteria
and viruses, but also by ideas.
Ideas are in disembodied,
energetic life form.
They are completely separate from us,
but capable of interacting with us,
albeit strangely.
Ideas have no material body,
but they do have consciousness and they most
certainly have will.
Ideas are driven by a single impulse to be
made manifest, and the only way an idea can
be made manifest in our world is through
collaboration with a human partner.
It is only through a human's efforts that an
idea can be escorted out of the ether and
into the realm of the actual end quote.
And that is your job to do that,
to escort the idea out of the ether and make
it actualized.
That is why you are the messenger for your
idea and for your audience.
Now, how do those ideas come to you?
This may seem a little vague and amorphous
right now, and I understand it. So let me
give you some examples.
I see two ways that ideas can come to you.
The first way is that the idea is thrust upon
you so you don't really have a choice.
It comes to you because of a personal
experience that has happened to you.
Sometimes it can come from a positive
experience. Oftentimes,
sadly, it comes from a negative experience or
a tragedy, something that happens in your
life that you then want to share with others
to prevent the same pain that you went
through. I think about a few of my clients,
most recently, Karen Keene.
She was on the podcast in July talking about
sharing her story as a transformational
experience for herself and for her audience,
very much coming out of a tragedy that she
experienced three years ago.
If you haven't listened to that episode,
definitely go back. It is incredibly
inspiring. Another client that comes to mind
is Tammy Lally, who did a Ted Talk in 2017
that I worked with her on and has since had
over 2 million views because of a sadly,
a family tragedy that occurred to her.
But just like with Karen,
she knew that she wanted to take the pain
that she had experienced and help others with
this. So, of course, we don't want something
like this to happen to us.
I would not wish a tragedy upon anyone in
order to to get an idea out of it,
to help others.
But if it does, we can decide what we want to
do with it. And here's what I will say.
There is no right or wrong answer.
You do not have to activate an idea from
something that has happened to you, but if
you are feeling compelled to do so,
then it can be of great benefit to your
audience. In this first case,
where ideas are thrust upon you,
that story, that singular personal experience
is what gives form to the idea.
Now the second way, which is is more common
in and I probably where you're sitting,
is that the way the idea comes to you is that
you're open to the idea and actively looking
for it, and the idea comes to you based on
your overall life experience,
your expertise, your background,
your interests. So you're kind of you're
you're constantly scanning your environment,
what you're reading, what you're.
Listening to what you're watching,
conversations that you have and we start
seeing threads or start or things start to
excite you, you start to get curious about a
certain topic or a certain thing and you
wonder, huh, is this something that I can
explore more?
So let me give you an example from one of my
favorite Broadway musicals.
Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda is the creator of
of Hamilton the Musical,
and he got that idea when he was reading a
biography about Alexander Hamilton.
He says he was on vacation with his wife.
He was sitting there under the beach umbrella
on the lounger, reading this biography,
and all of a sudden it's like that that
proverbial light bulb goes off in his head
and he realizes that he could create
something based on this material.
And then, of course, he took his unique angle
on it to make it into a hip hop musical,
not just the play, but actually creating a
musical, but a hip hop musical that had never
been done before on Broadway.
So he was open to the idea.
He was actively scanning the environment to
see. And then when he knew this one struck
him, this was the one for him.
But like Elizabeth Gilbert talked about,
if he decided not to activate that idea,
if it came to him and he just said,
Oh, this isn't for me,
or I feel a little uncertain about this,
or if this has never been done, how is this
going to work out?
Maybe I'll fail at it.
And he decided not to activate it.
Then the idea very likely could have gone and
found someone else instead because idea wants
to be made manifest and until it is,
it will keep looking for someone to do that.
If you think about all of the amazing
discoveries and art and creativity and
innovation that has happened,
a lot of times what happens is what's called
multiple or simultaneous discovery,
from calculus to the theory of evolution to
the discovery of oxygen,
to the invention of the telephone,
different people independent of each other.
There was no communication between them. They
had no idea that the other person was working
on this in different places at around the
same time, came up with the same idea.
And I believe this happens because of a
confluence of factors where it's like the
right time, it is the right time for that
idea to be made manifest.
So it's looking for the person to do that.
And sometimes it will find multiple people to
do that in Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert
shares a story where she talks about how she
had an idea for a new novel,
and she worked on it for a while,
maybe a year.
She was writing out the characters and the
plot. She she knew what it was going to be,
but then it kind of lost.
She lost interest in it,
that her curiosity wasn't going any further.
So she set it aside and she didn't look at it
for a while.
And then she happened to meet the other
novelist Ann Patchett at a book event that
they were both at. They had never met in
person before, and she describes in the book
how they kind of, you know,
when they when they met and then when they
said goodbye, they kind of gave each other a
kiss on the cheek.
And then they continued to correspond with
each other, actually through handwritten
letters. That's how they corresponded.
And it wasn't too long after that that
Elizabeth Gilbert decided that the original
novel that she had been working on with the
plot, the characters, everything she had
mapped out, she was just it was not for her.
Instead, she had an idea for a completely
different novel. She decided to work on that
new one instead.
And what happened, unbeknownst to Elizabeth
Gilbert, is that Ann Patchett all of a sudden
came up with an idea for a new novel of her
own that was almost the same plot location,
characters, even character names,
as an original novel that Elizabeth Gilbert
had had plotted out, but then had set aside
and eventually had abandoned.
And Elizabeth Gilbert says in the book that
she believes that that kiss that they shared
on the cheek literally passed the idea of
that novel from Elizabeth Gilbert to Ann
Patchett, because that idea wanted to be made
manifest and a realized with Elizabeth
Gilbert's permission that it wasn't going to
be her anymore that was going to make that
idea manifest.
Oh, I actually get goosebumps every time that
I think about that story.
And then when I read that story in Big Magic.
Let me give you a third example of how ideas
can come to you.
I recently saw the new Barbie movie.
Perhaps you have, too.
I loved it.
I had a feeling that I was going to like it,
but it was. It was funny,
It was witty, it was creative.
All the set design, the musical numbers,
the costumes, and of course,
the message that is embedded in it.
Greta Gerwig is the screenwriter and the
director, and she did an incredible job with
that movie. And the idea for the Barbie
movie, the way the Barbie movie would have to
be done in the year 2023.
Greta Gerwig was the messenger for that idea.
Mattel, the toy company,
had decided.
Back in the past decade or so that they
wanted to do more with their intellectual
property, with their IP,
like Barbie. Margot Robbie,
the actor who plays Barbie in the movie,
had been talking to Mattel about licensing it
to create a movie.
So that had been going. The conversations had
been going on for a little while. In the
meantime, Greta Gerwig had made the movie's
Lady Bird and the Little Women and had gotten
wide acclaim for them,
including Oscar nominations.
So now here is Greta Gerwig,
who was in the right place in her career
where she had done some,
quote unquote, smaller movies. And what
something like a Barbie summer blockbuster
would be. She had done smaller movies.
She had learned her craft.
She had honed her craft as a screenwriter and
director. She was now ready to be the perfect
messenger for the idea of the present day
Barbie movie.
And when Greta Gerwig met with Margot Robbie
to talk about it, originally Greta Gerwig was
going to write the screenplay with her
partner, Noah Baumbach,
but then she wasn't sure she was going to
direct it. But once they wrote the
screenplay, she realized that this was an
idea that she had to make manifest by also
being the director of it.
Again, it's an incredible movie. You haven't
seen it yet. I highly recommend going to see
it, but that's another example.
Sometimes ideas come to you because someone
comes to you and says,
I've seen this other this other work you've
done, and I think you'd be the perfect person
to do this. And you may have some self-doubt
or some uncertainty, but really think about
and sit with whether you are indeed the
perfect messenger for that idea,
for that audience at this time.
And that's why when an idea comes to you,
when you have an experience,
when you see something that's going on in
your industry and the area that you work in
and you think things could be better,
things could be different,
things could be there could be a change here
to make things better for people.
Once you start having that inclination,
then it's up to you to activate it because
you are the messenger for that idea and you
are the one that your audience is waiting
for. Now, sometimes this can be challenging.
What gets in the way of activating ideas that
come to us are fear and perfectionism.
The fear often times shows up as What if
other people don't like it?
What if I try it and it doesn't resonate?
What if I try it and it fails?
It doesn't get the reception that I want.
The other side of fear.
Is you do it.
And then what if it's not as good as you
imagine? What if the fantasy of acting,
the idea doesn't turn out to be the reality?
So that is one thing that gets in the way of
activating the ideas fear.
The other thing that gets in the way is
perfectionism.
And I'm going to quote again from Elizabeth
Gilbert and Big Magic,
because I think she says this so well.
And of course, she's a beautiful writer, so
I'm going to go with her words.
Here's what she says. Quote,
Perfectionism is a particularly evil lure for
women who I believe hold themselves to an
even higher standard of performance than do
men. There are many reasons why women's
voices and visions are not more widely
represented today in creative fields.
Some of that exclusion is due to regular old
misogyny. But it's also true that all too
often women are the ones holding themselves
back from participating in the first place,
holding back their ideas,
holding back their contributions,
holding back their leadership and their
talents. Too many women still seem to believe
that they're not allowed to put themselves
forward at all until both they and their work
are perfect and beyond criticism.
And I know for for so many of us,
we have this feeling like it's never going to
be good enough.
And guess what?
You're right. It's never going to feel good
enough. It's never going to feel 100%
perfect. It's never going to feel 100% ready.
The people don't want perfection.
Your audience doesn't want perfection from
you. They want creativity and authenticity
and effort.
I've been thinking a lot about this idea of
effort. I recently took a trip to New York
City to celebrate my birthday,
and we went to a Broadway musical,
which I always like to see a performance when
I'm there because I love performing.
I love watching performances and and watching
people do the best that they can in their
craft. And I believe as humans,
we like to see other humans doing things that
we know take effort.
And of course, when you have someone as high
caliber as a performance on Broadway,
what they're doing takes extraordinary
effort, but they make it look easy.
It's kind of like an Olympic gymnast,
you know that It's so what they do is so
hard, but they make it seem so easy.
And we like to see humans doing other things
that we know take effort.
And it's okay if it's not 100% perfect
because we like the authenticity and the
creativity that comes with it.
It's the effort that captivates us and
inspires us.
And this is why I believe that I created
content. And art will have its limits.
Yes, we will probably get to the point where
they will be. I created TV shows where it's
all digital actors and all of the scripts
were written by AI, and all of the visuals
were created by AI and the music was created
by AI, and there will definitely be a time
where that will be that will seem exciting
and novel. But then I think we're really
going to want to get back to watching humans
make the effort to be great actors and
singers and dancers and performers and
athletes as well as great speakers,
because activating ideas does take effort.
If you think about having a unique angle or
twist on your material,
that original way to frame it so that it's
not like what everyone else says about your
topic, that definitely does take thinking
about what what is it that you want to say?
You want to bring in your particular
background and experiences.
What unique set of circumstances led you to
this topic? You don't want to just
regurgitate what others have said. You want
to bring something new to the conversation.
Let me give you an example of a talk that I
gave back in October of 2016.
I was invited to a local TEDx women's event
as about 50 women who were going to be in the
audience. And I was asked to to give a talk
at that event. So I wanted to talk about,
since I'm a political analyst on TV news
during election seasons, and I've been doing
that since 2005.
So this was 2016.
Obviously a big year for politics at the
time. And, you know, we could see how much
sexism and misogyny was going on in that
election cycle.
So I wanted to talk about it in this talk.
And I remember it was an evening in August
2016, and I know sitting down working on the
talk that I knew I needed to deliver in about
six weeks from them.
And I sat staring at my computer and I was
working on that talk. And it was about women
in leadership in politics,
and I knew it was missing something.
My first draft was good.
It was about the benefits of having more
women in elected office,
the gender stereotypes that female candidates
face, and some statistics thrown in for good
measure. It was informative,
but it wasn't really all that interesting.
I can imagine the women in the audience
nodding their heads along with what I was
saying. But I wasn't sharing anything they
didn't already know.
I needed a hook, a twist,
something that sparked curiosity.
I needed to get to the core of my topic to
find that aha moment.
So as I sat at my computer,
I stopped researching and typing,
and instead I let my mind wander.
Sifting through all the years I spent
studying women's history and gender theory
and undergrad and graduate school,
the years I've spent working in politics and
business. So I was just open.
I was open to the ideas that were floating
out into the ether and wondering,
was there one that in particular was going to
be resonant to me?
And then I saw it.
And I not just saw it,
but I felt it.
And it became so clear that my hands could
barely keep up with my thoughts as I
hurriedly wrote it all down,
scribbled it down and then started typing it
out. Now, if you want to hear what that idea
was, you can listen to that talk in episode
92 of this podcast.
That was back. Oh gosh,
Episode 92 must have been in 2018 that I did
that. So you can there's a link in the show
notes, but you can also just go back and find
episode 92.
That is what it means to be open to ideas,
but not only being open to ideas,
but also be willing to activate them.
Now, I had some trepidation,
some uncertainty, some self-doubt about this
talk that I was putting together,
the content of it and the delivery of it,
and you'll hear more about that. Also an
episode 92.
But I also realized that I was the chosen
messenger for that idea and for that audience
because there was no one else that had the
unique set of circumstances that I had with
history, politics, business,
technology that could bring all of that
together in a unique and interesting way.
So it was up to me to activate it because my
audience was waiting for it and your audience
is waiting for you.
And this is exactly what we do when we work
with our clients. And the Thought Leader
Academy is we provide them that coaching and
that feedback and that guidance on the
development of their ideas and their
signature talks.
But along with the coaching and feedback,
it really is also validation of their ideas,
letting them know, yes,
you're on the right path,
keep going, keep digging in there,
providing that encouragement and that
support. Because like I said in the
beginning, those four layers of thought
leadership, your expertise,
your big idea, your personal story and
experience and that emotional courage,
all of those are necessary to put yourself
out there to become the thought leader that
you want to be and to make an impact on your
audience. Again, if you would like to join us
in the Thought Leader Academy, you can get
all the details at speaking your
brand.com/academy.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
And don't forget, your audience is waiting
for you.