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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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[00:00:00] Now, last week I told you I was heading to a conference and I was going to try something. I'd been practicing how to introduce myself, how to talk about my work in a way that actually rings, that actually resonates, if you will, and I said I would return and report. So this is the report, and it did not go the way I planned.
It ended up going better than I planned, and certainly not because of anything I did alone. But I'm gonna back up because you have to understand, I mentioned this a little bit in last week's episode, but how long this particular thing has been a thorn in my side. I've struggled to introduce myself for years, which is embarrassing to admit, because I have been a certified StoryBrand guide for a decade.
I worked inside of StoryBrand headquarters for three of those years as the senior director of the guide program, and I've trained hundreds of guides, and if anyone on this earth should be able to walk up to a stranger and say what they do in a clear, compelling way, it should be [00:01:00] me.
I've taught other people how to do it. I've helped clients do it. I've coached people through it. And every single time I'm at a conference and someone says, "What do you do?" I feel myself freeze inside. I stumble. I often overexplain. I watch their eyes glaze over, and I can feel it knocking me out of my own resonance because I don't have a clean way to hand someone the transformation I actually offer.
Now, part of that is how I'm wired. I'm a transformational guide on my own test, and what a transformational guide does is often different for every single person in front of them. I'll often talk with clients about how it feels like lightning in a bottle, and how do you talk about lightning in a bottle if you weren't there to see it?
The full transformation makes it genuinely hard to put into one tidy sentence, and that is not an excuse. It's a real feature of that wiring, that expression, and it's made introducing myself one of the hardest things I do. But I prepared. I was going to Craft [00:02:00] and Commerce, which is Kit's user conference they have every year.
I was going for the first time. I really thought about it ahead of time. I tried to get a one-liner to introduce myself on a business card. I had a QR code for people to take my test. Super optimistic about it. I even made a video of myself walking out the door that day that I didn't end up sharing on social media because I bombed so bad, and because of what's, what happened that I'm gonna tell you about in this episode today.
Because for the first day and a half, I walked out of the door with a lot of confidence, and I bombed. I started talking, and I was feeling myself overdoing it. I was watching eyes glaze over. I was going too long. I was trying too hard. I was pushing my resonance too hard, like we talked about in the last episode, the exact thing I would tell other people not to do.
I was over singing the room. But it turned on the second day, and it didn't turn because I found the words on my own. It turned because I was in a room full of people, and I allowed them to help me. Now, there were a lot of, a lot of my clients and friends at this conference. That's one of the reasons I went.[00:03:00]
And very often, when I introduced myself and I started to fumble it, they would jump in. "No, it's amazing. You have to take this assessment. It's been life-changing for me. She's the 1% that has unlocked the 100% of what's possible." Like, all these direct quotes, and it was such a blessing, and I was so grateful for their kindness in that moment because it not only helped recover my confidence, but It was giving me the opportunity to hear them describe some of the things I do and the transformation I provide better than I was able to describe it.
So I was like half listening and half trying to steal their words. That was helpful
But then my friend Madi did something I'm so grateful for. We were at lunch on day two, and we were with a whole bunch of people that were part of, , Mike Pacchione's speech club that I've been in. And a guy came up, his name's Clay Hebert. He's brilliant at this. He spoke at Craft at Commerce last year.
He has a perfect intro, a perfect pitch formula that he teaches. He's [00:04:00] writing a book on it. He's just really brilliant at this, at distilling a pitch down to something that's really clean And he was talking about what he does as he was introducing himself, and Madi looked at him and said, "Macy's bad at this.
You need to fix it. Let her tell you what she does." And, you know, I kind of chuckled and said, "Okay, great. I'm gonna explain what I do. I'm gonna take longer, but let me try to talk, talk it through. This is not what I say, but just so you have some context for what I do."
And I started talking about resonance and my assessment, and I used some of my introduction that I'd prepared, and I got about a minute in, and I kind of stalled out. And Madi was standing there encouraging me and, and trying to give me some, some wing man help, and Clay kind of affirmed that and said, "Man, sometimes the best intro is a wing man intro.
Like, have people come with you and introduce you on, , on your behalf." And I'm, "That's great. These people can't follow me everywhere." And as we were kind of talking that through, on the other side of Clay from Madi was my friend Layla, and Layla said, [00:05:00] "Macy, did you tell them about the opera thing?" And she had heard me tell the singer's formant story.
It's a story that I use in my keynote. It's a story that I use in my workshops, and she just thought that was so cool that opera singers don't use microphones, and she said, " Did you tell them about the opera thing?" And I said, "No, I didn't tell them about the opera thing." She's like, "Tell them about the opera thing."
So I did. I told them the opera story. I, I've told it on the podcast before, the one about how an opera singer's voice, when properly trained, can carry over a full orchestra with no microphone. And Clay's whole face changed, and he said, "That's how you introduce yourself." I was like, "What are you talking about?"
He said, "It's perfectly acceptable when someone asks what you do to answer with a question. And so what you do when someone says, 'What do you do?' say, 'Well, let me ask you, how much do you know about opera?' Or something like, 'How much do you know about how opera singers create sound?'" And then he kind of coached me through the rest of it, and that [00:06:00] was it.
That was the thing the approach and the wording that I had not been able to find on my own for years. I was able to use that version of an introduction for the rest of the conference, and it just took a huge weight off my shoulder. And I wanna be really honest about what happened ' cause it's the point of this episode.
I had tried so hard to figure out my own introduction for years, and I wasn't really able to do it in a way that landed. A room full of people figured it out with me. Madi saw that I was stuck, and she refused to let me stay stuck. My clients in other spots during the conference reflected what my work had done for them and were able to help me and give that signal back to me.
You know, Layla had heard me work on my talk and remembered part of my own story that I'd left out, and Clay took all of that and handed me the solution. We often say in marketing that we can't read our own label from inside the jar, [00:07:00] and that's why you need other people around you. Resonance needs other people to be felt, and having other people around you to work with you on things is so critical.
When I'm going to a singing lesson, it's really nice to have another human to respond to the thing that I'm singing. I have a recorder there, I practice on my own, but having someone respond is really valuable. Singing and having other people that are watching and responding is really valuable. Having other people to resonate with just makes such a huge difference, and I cannot tell you the difference it made for the second day and a half to have that approach to introduce myself.
When people would ask, "What do you do?" And I led with the question, " how much do you know about opera?" Or, "How much do you know about how opera singers create sound?" Everything in my body felt different. I can't even describe it to you. I wasn't performing an introduction or - scraping for words anymore.
I was inviting someone into a conversation in a way that [00:08:00] felt weirdly like me, even though I'm talking about opera. Now, did this land with everyone? No. I could see it not landing with people, and that was completely okay, 'cause for the first time, I was sending out the signal I was actually supposed to send, and the right people leaned in.
"Tell me more. How do you do that?" "Well, I have an assessment. I'd love for you to take it. Here's a card." Some people took the assessment, like, within 10 minutes of getting the card from me. It was the same me, and the only thing that changed was that other people helped me find the signal I couldn't find by myself, and I was able to absorb that and calibrate it right away and start using it.
So here's what I've come to believe, and it's bigger than just me figuring out my introduction for the first time, which is huge. You can't find your own clearest signal entirely on your own. So much of my work is about getting clear on who you are, but getting clear on the inside and being able to hear yourself from the outside are two different things, and the second part requires other people.[00:09:00]
You're inside your own instrument. You can feel it, but you can't hear it always in the way a room can hear it. I keep relearning this again and again. Every time I've gotten in the room with other people in person, my business has accelerated, and I think it's in part because it's the mechanism for growth.
It's not a nice coincidence. When I'm in a room with other people who know my work, who can co-sign for me, who can introduce me, that's really great. That's something I genuinely can't manufacture on my own. But being able to strengthen my own signal in that environment is just so, so valuable
Me not being able to hear and talk about what I was doing, I think that's not a weakness. I think it's true for almost everyone. We're not meant to do this in isolation or sit and type to Claude all day. Underneath the introduction, underneath the conference, underneath all of it, the work is not about having the perfect introduction or the perfect pitch.
It's about the perfect invitation, [00:10:00] the ability to guide people, building a relationship with somebody. That's the whole job. And what I got from being at Craft and Commerce, I got a lot more than this, but this was really critical. It wasn't just a clever line. It was the ability to do that one thing that has just eluded me in an aligned way for the first time, to walk up to a stranger and invite someone instead of over-explaining myself, instead of, like, performing and feeling frantic and trying to figure out what to do.
So let me give you something to do with this this week If you've been sitting and talking to, to Claude about the things you're doing and trying to find your own words all on your own in a document, you've probably been doing what I was doing, trying to sit down and write out or construct the perfect version of how you do things or how you describe your work.
It's okay to put that down for a second. Get in a room with real people, whether it's a real room in person or a virtual [00:11:00] room, actual people who've experienced your work. Ask them questions. Get them to talk about you. Get testimonials. Ask a client what's changed for them and listen to the words they use, 'cause those are your words.
They're the ones that are too close for you to see, but they, they've absorbed those words and ... made them their own, and when they can reflect them back and, and share what they've experienced with you, you'll hear things about your own signal that you can't hear from the inside. But in order for people to be able to reflect that back, you've gotta have something clear enough to reflect.
The room can only show you what's actually there. The inside work and the outside work go hand in hand. And so that inside work, take the assessment. It gives you that clear, measurable read on how you're wired to express and to guide other people, so you have something real for a room to react to and talk about, instead of guessing in the dark by yourself or answering a bunch of questions that you feel fuzzy about.
It's free. It takes about 10 minutes. You can go to [00:12:00] macyrobison.com/quiz. And if you don't know what room to be in, I'd love for you to come to one of my workshops, , Find Your Frequency. I do them every week. It's a live hour with me and up to 10 people, and we take what the assessment shows you and start tuning it out loud with other people reflecting back to you.
If you can come to the workshop with someone you know, even better. I had two co-founders there a couple weeks ago, and it was awesome to hear the back and forth as we went through their archetype assessment together. It's $99, and that credit applies to any further work with me.
If you go to macyrobison.com/workshop, you can see all the dates that are available for the next few weeks. But here's the big thing I want you to remember: You don't find your voice by yourself in a quiet room. You start in the room, but then you need to get where other people can hear what you can't, so that you can strengthen your own signal and your own resonance and carry it back out to even more people and own your [00:13:00] impact from there
Here's to sending a clearer signal