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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.
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Macy, welcome to own your impact. The podcast designed to help you transform your expertise into a platform of purpose and influence. I'm your host, Macy Robison, and I'm here to help you uncover your authentic voice, create actionable frameworks and build a scalable platform that turns your ideas into meaningful impact. What
if I told you there is a question that can cut through every piece of marketing confusion you've ever had. It's a question that makes the difference between content that converts and content that might sit there collecting digital dust, and it's a question that most people never think to ask because we're too busy trying to perfect our websites, optimize our funnel, get more leads, figure out which social media platform we should be on. This week, I'm going to show you how this single question can transform not just what you create but how people respond to your expertise. We'll talk about why most experts approach marketing backwards, why your biggest marketing problem isn't what you think it is, and how understanding this question changes everything about how you build your thought leadership platform. This isn't another marketing tactic or growth hack. This is about understanding what marketing actually is and why everything you've been taught about it might be keeping you stuck. So I'm going to start with a story that illustrates exactly what I mean. I learned about this question from reading an amazing book I've recommended incessantly from Billy broaz and Tiago forte. It's called simple marketing for smart people. Near the beginning of the book, Billy tells the story of Joe, a carpet cleaning business owner in Ohio who was dead broke because no one was buying his services. He tried offering discounts, he tried offering coupons, but even when people took the deals, Joe was not making any profit, because it was cutting into his profit margin with the coupon. So he was not building a sustainable business. Joe was stuck in what I see all the time with experts. He was trying to solve a marketing problem with tactics instead of addressing the real issue. Then Joe had a realization his potential customers did not understand the real value of cleaning their carpets, especially on a regular basis. They didn't know that carpets are so much dirtier than anything else in your house. They didn't know that carpets could harbor mold that's harmful to their health, or that carpets can be one of the leading causes of asthma because of the dust that gets trapped. Joe's prospects couldn't see the importance of what he was offering because they didn't have the beliefs necessary to value his service. So Joe stopped trying to sell carpet cleaning, and instead started educating people about why carpet cleaning matters. He wrote articles explaining the health risks of dirty carpets, how often carpets should be cleaned, and how to know if your carpets are actually clean. Almost immediately, Joe's phone started ringing. People weren't just calling, the book says they were pleading for Joe to come clean their carpets as soon as possible. He went from struggling business owner to running a million dollar company. So what changed?
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Joe discovered the one question that makes marketing simple.
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The question is this,
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what does my prospect need to believe in order to buy?
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Let me say that again, because this is the entire episode.
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What does my prospect need to believe in order to buy? Not? What do they need to know? Not? How can I convince them not? What features should I highlight? What do they need to believe? Here is why this changes everything. Most experts approach marketing by talking about what they can do, the process, their credentials, their results. But before someone can evaluate your process or care about your credentials, they have to believe they have a problem worth solving, and that your approach is a viable solution for the transformation that they are hoping you can provide Joe's prospects. Didn't need to know more about carpet cleaning techniques. They needed to believe that dirty carpets were dangerous to their health. Once, they believed that hiring a carpet cleaner isn't a nice to have, it's urgent and necessary. This is what Billy broaz calls belief building, and it's the missing piece in most marketing, but especially in most expertise based marketing.
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Think about your own expertise for a moment. What beliefs do people need to hold for your work to make sense for them? Not what do they need to know about your methods. But what do they need to believe about the problem you solve, the approach you take, the transformation you create?
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Here's where most people, especially most experts, really, really smart people, go wrong with marketing. They focus on downstream activities instead of upstream activities. We've talked about this a lot. Billy calls the downstream activities, the tactics, the activities that you do as a marketer and upstream foundations are the decisions you need to make. So this metaphor he uses, it's a river upstream is your core message, the fundamental beliefs people need in order to value what you offer. Midstream are the channels that you choose to show.
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Up on the platforms and places where you share your message and downstream are your tactics, the specific techniques you use to optimize and amplify
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as we've talked about most advice, most marketing advice focuses on downstream tactics. Use this headline formula, post it this time to get the best results. Try this funnel structure, create reels instead of posts on your Instagram. But if your upstream message isn't clear, if people don't hold the beliefs necessary to value your work, all those downstream tactics are noise. When you get your upstream message right, when you understand what beliefs people need, and you create content that builds those beliefs. Everything that comes downstream works better. Your social media posts get more engagement, your emails get higher open rates, your sales conversations become easier because people already understand why they need what you offer. Can you see how this connects to everything we've been talking about in the resident thought leadership system? This isn't separate from building your core resonance or creating your content, this is how you can think strategically about every component. Let me walk through how this looks in practice, because I think this will make the concept a little bit more concrete. Let's say you're a leadership coach. Before someone will hire you, they need to believe several things. First, they need to believe they have a leadership challenge that's worth addressing. Maybe they think their team's problems are just about hiring better people, not about their leadership style. Second, they need to believe that leadership skills can be learned or can be improved. Maybe they think leadership is just something you're born with. Third, they need to believe that working with a coach is more effective than trying to figure it out on their own or reading leadership books.
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And fourth, they need to believe that investing in leadership development will actually impact their business results. The bottom line not just make them feel better about themselves. Each of these is a belief, and if any of them is missing, you don't get hired, no matter how good your coaching process is, no matter how much you lay it out or how impressive your credentials are, traditional marketing would have you focus on explaining your coaching methodology or sharing client testimonials, and you should do those things, but when you add belief building to the equation, you're able to create content that addresses each required belief. Systematically. You might write an article about the hidden costs of leadership blind spots that shows potential clients they have a problem worth solving.
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You might share research about how leadership skills develop, proving they can be learned. You might tell stories about the difference between self directed learning and guided coaching. Notice the difference. You're not talking about yourself or your services. You're building a foundation of belief that makes your services valuable.
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This is the biggest transformation opportunity for most of the experts I work with honestly. This is something I need to work on, too. If you've been creating content to demonstrate your expertise, but haven't been thinking strategically about what beliefs your content needs to build, I would take a step back and do that, the experts who break through aren't necessarily the smartest or the most credentialed. They're the ones who understand that their job is not to impress people with what they know their job is to help people believe something new about their problem and their possibility. I think one of the most compelling things about this book is Billy wrote it with Tiago forte. Tiago is the author of a book building a second brain is completely brilliant. Has such great strategies for helping you offload all the information that is coming at us every day that you want to keep and refer to later, but don't have a good system for storing it. He's got great courses. He's got great books, and they weren't selling. Billy was able to come to him with this belief building structure and say, most people don't believe that they need this kind of help to deal with all of the information that's pummeling them right now. We need to approach your marketing this way, and it's completely changed everything for Tiago business, and he talks about that in the book as Billy is teaching. It's really, really a great book, because one thing I've learned in working with thought leaders is that before someone will invest in building their platform, they need to believe their expertise is worth sharing. Many brilliant people suffer from what I call expertise and visibility. They can't see the value in what they know because it feels obvious to them. One of the reasons I start with core resonance is to help people understand the transformation they're already creating. The frameworks that we walk through help people see their own knowledge with fresh eyes, and then we're able to build a platform that feels like them. From there, I'm building belief that their expertise matters and it needs to be shared, that they have impact they can own. Before we talk about how to share it, here's how you can start applying this right away. Pick one thing you help people with one area of your expertise, one service you already provide. And then ask yourself, What would someone need to believe for this to be obviously valuable to them? Don't think about what they need to know about your methodology. Think about what they need to believe about.
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The problem, the solution category and the importance of addressing it. Write down five to 10 beliefs that need to be in place. Then look at your content, your social media, posts, your newsletter, your website, how much of your content is actually building these beliefs versus demonstrating knowledge or demonstrating the efficacy of your approach? I think this diagnostic can completely transform your approach to marketing. Now here's the part I want to make sure you understand. This is not about manipulation. Good marketing is not about manipulation ever.
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It's about finding the key things we need to repeat again and again, making sure they're true, and building trust with people, building a relationship with people. We don't want to manipulate. We don't want to talk people into things they don't need. This is all about education and alignment. The beliefs you're building should be true, and they should be beliefs you genuinely hold that accurately represent the value that you can create.
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Joe the carpet cleaner, wasn't lying about how dirty carpets are. The statistics he was sharing about carpet bacteria were real, and his expertise in proper carpet cleaning was genuine. He was helping people understand something that was true, but that they had not previously considered. And when you approach marketing as belief building, you become an educator instead of a persuader, which I think is what we all want to be anyway. You're helping people see what's actually true about their situation and their options so they can make better decisions. You're building understanding, not manufacturing desire and convincing people. That's why this works so well. It aligns with your natural desire to help people make better decisions, instead of feeling like you have to reduce everything to a sound bite or push your services on people who don't need them, most of the people I've worked with really hate marketing, which is one of the reasons I loved the title of the book so much. Simple marketing for smart people, we either avoid it entirely, or we over complicate it, and if you can instead structure things so that you're helping the right people recognize that they need your help. Man, that's when everything starts clicking into place. When you focus on building accurate, helpful beliefs, you attract better clients, people who work with you because they understand the value of what you offer are more committed, more successful and more likely to refer other people. So let's connect this back to the resonant thought leadership system, because this amplifies everything we've talked about. Your core resonance becomes more powerful when you understand what beliefs people need in order to connect with your authentic voice. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, you focus on the people who are ready for the beliefs you naturally embody. Your content strategy becomes more strategic when your IP is designed around building beliefs to share what you know. You move from random thought leadership to systematic belief building your connection efforts become more effective when you understand that relationships form around shared beliefs. That way, you're not randomly networking. You're finding people who already hold some of the beliefs necessary to value the work that you're putting out in the world. Your commercialization becomes easier when people already believe what they need to believe before you even present an offer. You're not convincing people to buy. You're making it easy for pre sold prospects to take the next step, and your central platform gains so much coherence when everything is organized around building the beliefs that make your expertise valuable. Can you see how this question gives you a filter for every decision about your marketing? So here's what I want you to do this week. Like I said, choose one area of your expertise and do this exercise, identify the key beliefs someone would need in order to value your expertise. Think about beliefs about the problem, beliefs about solutions, beliefs about the importance of addressing it, beliefs about working with someone like you. And look at your recent content honestly, assess how much of it actually builds those beliefs. And then choose one belief you think is missing or weak and create a piece of content specifically designed to build that belief. Don't talk about services, don't talk about processes. Help people understand something new about their situation, and then pay attention to how they respond differently when you focus on belief building instead of knowledge sharing. The most successful thought leaders aren't necessarily the ones with the best techniques or the most impressive credentials, they're the ones who understand that their job is to help people believe something new about the possibilities, about the transformation. Your expertise is valuable, but its value is not self evident. Your job as a thought leader is to help the right people recognize that value by building beliefs that make it obvious. When you start by asking, what do people need to believe in order to buy everything about marketing all the things you hated before becomes clearer, more strategic and more aligned with how you already want to help people. The question isn't whether you should market yourself. You must market yourself. You.
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You are not Yoda alone in the woods, and people magically come find you. You need to let people know what you are doing and how you can help. The question is whether you're going to help people understand why your expertise matters or let them mysteriously figure it out on your own. And I think we both know which one is going to serve more people in the long run. Next week, we're going to dive into another concept from Billy's book that I think will help transform how you think about the complexity trap that catches so many smart people. But for now, I want you to start with this one question, what do people need to believe in order to buy from you?
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If you're ready to dive deeper into building thought leadership that feels authentically like you take the archetype quiz at Macy robison.com forward slash quiz, and then make sure you join me for one of my workshops. They're free through the end of 2025 or we're going to explore how your natural way of thinking and communicating shapes every aspect of building your platform. We're talking about how your archetype applies to sales, how you can approach marketing more strategically by asking this one question, how to build an audience the right way. There's four different topics we rotate each week. Would love to have you join me. Go to Macy robison.com, forward slash workshop,
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and remember your expertise exists for a reason. Your job is to help the right people believe that it matters.
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Thank you for joining me on own. Your impact. Remember, there are people out there right now who need exactly what you know, exactly how you'll say it. Your voice matters. Your expertise matters. And most importantly, the transformation you can help others create matters. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to become part of our growing community of thought leaders who are committed to creating meaningful impact. Subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share this episode with someone you know who is ready to amplify their voice. And if you're ready to dive deeper, visit Macy robison.com for additional resources, frameworks and tools to help you build your thought leadership platform with intention and purpose, and remember, your ideas don't need more luck. Your ideas don't need more volume. Your ideas need a system, and I'm here every week to help you build it. I'm Macy Robison, and this is own your impact you.