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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.
[00:00:00] I just wrapped an accelerator with a group of brilliant thought leaders, and something happened in our final session that I wanted to bring to the podcast to share with you. At the end of our group sessions together, we did a snapshot exercise. Each person looked at where they are right now across all five components of the resident thought leadership system.
[00:00:22] Their core resonance, their content and ip, their commercialization strategy, their connection strategy, and their central platform. And here's what was really fascinating. Once we got everything mapped out, we could actually see where they'd made progress and where they still had work they wanted to do.
[00:00:39] We weren't left for the massive to-do list. Instead we were left with a list of decisions to make. Decisions about priority, decisions about speed to market, decisions about what matters most right now given who they are and what they're building. And those decisions looked completely different for each person in the room.
[00:00:58] One person needed to start [00:01:00] generating revenue quickly. They have the ip, they had the clarity now in their transformation, and they needed to get offers in front of people and start testing them. For them, speed really mattered in terms of revenue they needed to be bringing in. Now, another person also wanted revenue, but when we took a step back and looked at the bigger picture, they realized they were finally giving themselves permission to do the thing they'd always wanted to do with their work.
[00:01:23] And that timeline was different because the goal was different. Then yet another person has a successful business already. They're transitioning into thought leadership as the business, not a marketing channel for the business. So their speed to market is entirely different because they have runway, they have a different set of constraints.
[00:01:43] Same system, same snapshot exercise, but we came away with completely different strategic decisions for each person. And that got me thinking about something I've been wrestling with in my own business planning as we reach the end of the year. The tension between the infinite game of thought leadership [00:02:00] and the pressure the market puts on us to constantly scale.
[00:02:03] Now, if you've been in this space for any length of time, you've heard all the messages. Scale or die, grow your list, 10 x your revenue. Build systems that run without you get passive income. And I'm not dismissing all of that. Earlier this year I talked about reading Benjamin Hardy's book, the Science of Scaling, and I truly believe there is deep wisdom in it.
[00:02:23] I did two episodes on what I learned from that book because the framework in the book frame floor focus, . It's genuinely powerful for thought leaders, for people who are the face of their business. But here's what I've noticed
[00:02:37] for some people, that language lands and it's exactly what they need to hear. For others, it creates low grade anxiety that something's wrong with them because they don't wanna build a business that runs without them. They want to be in the transformation. They want the work to be their life's work, not a faceless business like we talked about last week, that they can eventually exit.
[00:02:59] [00:03:00] Now, Simon Sinek talks about this distinction between finite and infinite games. A finite game has known players, fixed rules, a clear endpoint, winners and losers. An infinite game has changing players, evolving rules, and no final end. The goal is to keep playing and most of the thought leadership work I do with people as they're building their business is an infinite game.
[00:03:26] It's their life's work. For some, it's about lifetime impact and legacy. For others, it's connected to their business directly and their ability to lead. All of these people are the face of what they're building. They're not trying to disappear from the transformation they create. They're trying to amplify it.
[00:03:41] And when you're playing an infinite game, the metrics look different. Even though we want to generate revenue with our ideas, success isn't always, I hit seven figures this year. Success can be, I am still in the game. I am deepening my impact, and I am doing it in a way that is sustainable for who I am.
[00:03:59] [00:04:00] But, and this is the tension that I'm holding and trying to help others hold, . That doesn't mean you get to ignore the realities of building a sustainable business. So here's how I've started to reconcile these two ideas. This work, owning your impact is an infinite game.
[00:04:17] And in order to reach the impact you want to have, you have to make the decision to raise your floor and you can hold both realities. So we talk about raising your floor when Benjamin Hardy talks about raising your floor. That means eliminating the standard below, which you will not go. Most people don't scale because they keep saying yes to things below their floor, and that creates complexity that can't scale.
[00:04:44] Complex systems cannot scale. They cannot grow. And so for thought leaders, raising your floor might mean eliminating offerings that work, but don't serve your impossible goal. It might mean saying no to opportunities that are [00:05:00] fine, but they're not aligned with where you're actually going. And here's what I really want you to hear.
[00:05:05] You. Raising your floor does not require you to want what other entrepreneurs and thought leaders want. You don't have to build a massive company to generate meaningful revenue. You don't have to scale through other people. You don't have to exit.
[00:05:19] What you do have to do is get honest about what you actually want, what you actually desire, and then plan accordingly. And this is where I see people get stuck every year in their annual planning.
[00:05:31] They sit down to map out the year, and they start with tactics, which launches should I do? How many podcast episodes? What's my content calendar? Should I do a summit? And they haven't answered the more fundamental question, which is, what am I actually building here and how fast do I need to move?
[00:05:45] Because the person who needs revenue in 90 days should be making different decisions than the person who has runway for 18 months. And the person who wants a personal brand business should be making different decisions than the person building toward a hybrid brand with team and [00:06:00] with growth and scale.
[00:06:02] These are not right or wrong paths. They're different paths. And the worst place to be is building something because you think you should, not because you actually want to. So how do you plan for the coming year in a way that honors both the infinite game of your life's work, and the real need to make progress and generate revenue?
[00:06:19] You start with alignment. Before you set goals, before you map out launches, before you decide how you're building this next year, you check in with who you are. I use the four ease of core resonance as a diagnostic tool for this exact thing. Essence is how you're naturally wired, your working genius, your energy patterns, what naturally drains you versus what gives you life.
[00:06:40] And when something isn't working in your business, it's often because you're building against your essence instead of working with it. Experience is the wisdom you carry from everything you've walked through. It's your lived authority. When you feel like you don't have permission to teach something, I check in with experience.
[00:06:56] Have you actually lived this transformation or you just teach teaching theory, [00:07:00] or is there a story there that's really rich that you're not choosing to share that could be transformational for your audience and you're keeping it inside? All of that boils down to how experience is playing out.
[00:07:12] Expression. That's how you naturally communicate and guide transformation. Your archetype is the measurement of this, the archetype test@macyrobison.com slash quiz. And when your message isn't landing, I always check with expression, are you using the wrong format for your natural communication style? Is the transformation that you're guiding in private sessions not making its way to your external messaging because you're not thinking from your archetype's point of view first.
[00:07:40] And then finally, embodiment is whether you're walking your talk. And I think this is usually where a lot of growth gets stalled. When everything feels unsustainable or mysteriously stuck, , it's usually an embodiment issue. Are you applying your wisdom that you teach to your own life? Are you using your methodology on yourself?
[00:07:59] It's been [00:08:00] fascinating over the last couple of months in several groups I'm in have been trying to give that advice. The cobbler's children don't have shoes is a really weak excuse when , I think the cobbler's children should have the best shoes in town, and what that means is.
[00:08:15] You should be the best possible example of your work. You're not gonna be a perfect example, but when you get stuck, one of the best things you can do is use your own process on yourself. If you're a marketer and you walk people through a diagnostic session, have you done that on yourself? That's usually where things are stuck, and they can get unstuck very, very rapidly.
[00:08:37] Now, here's why all of this matters for annual planning. If you set goals for 2026 for this coming year that work against your essence, you're going to burn out trying to achieve them. And if you create offerings that don't leverage your experience, you'll feel like an imposter the whole time you're doing them.
[00:08:53] If you pick platforms and content formats that fight against your natural expression, you'll dread showing up [00:09:00] or you won't feel clear and it won't land the way it should. And if you're not embodying what you teach, absolutely nothing will land the way it should. I've seen this over and over. Someone does quote all the right things, the launches, the content, the visibility, all the tactics, and it's not working.
[00:09:17] And when we dig in, we find that somewhere along the way they've copied and pasted tactics that work for someone else, and those tactics don't align with how that person is actually wired. I think the most sustainable growth comes from being the definitive expert in your area, showing up in your natural expression mode and building something that is connected to who you are that you can actually maintain.
[00:09:40] So what does this look like practically before you can make good decisions in 2026? I think you need to know where you are right now, at the end of 2025, not where you wish you were, not where you think you should be, where you actually are. That's what we did in my accelerator. We looked at each component of the thought leadership system, the resident thought leadership system.
[00:09:58] And asked, what have I [00:10:00] clarified and what needs attention next? So in core resonance it was, do I know how I'm wired and am I building around my actual strengths? There were more questions, but that's where we dug in. In content, do I have structured IP that creates transformation and are my principles or practices or processes or frameworks clear enough to teach either by me or by someone else?
[00:10:20] Commercialization. What am I selling and who am I selling it to? And does the business model that I've built align with my core resonance and my goals for connection? We were asking questions like, am I building relationships with people who are truly in my audience, people who can buy or amplify or both?
[00:10:38] Or am I frustrated because I'm trying to collect followers? And then central platform does my digital home base, my website, the places where I show up online, my email list, does all of that work on my behalf? And is it clear what I do and who I help when someone lands on my website, are the words clear?
[00:10:55] So when you can see all of this at once, something really interesting happens. Instead of [00:11:00] feeling overwhelmed with everything you could do or everything you should do, you start to see what needs to happen next. The thing that needs to happen next is based on where we are right now, current foundation, the constraints we have, the timeline, the goals, and not someone else's playbook that we've just copied.
[00:11:18] So here's what I would love for you to take away from this episode. Annual planning for a thought leadership business like this isn't just about setting goals. It's about making decisions. Decisions about your priority and how this fits into your life. What component of the platform that you're building needs attention first.
[00:11:35] Is it core resonance that needs clarifying? Is it your IP that needs to be structured better? Because if you're the face of your business, you've gotta have a focus that you're teaching is a commercialization that needs fixing because you have an audience. But no sustainable offers. Or do you need to be making decisions about speed?
[00:11:51] How fast do you need to move? And why is that speed driven by financial necessity or is it fueled by the story you're telling yourself about where you should be right now? [00:12:00] Decisions about what you're building.
[00:12:02] Are you building a personal brand business where you're the product? Are you building a hybrid brand where your thought leadership opens doors for team delivered transformation? None of these are wrong, but building one while secretly wanting another is just a recipe for resentment.
[00:12:19] Thought leaders who build sustainable impact over decades aren't the ones who follow every tactic and chase every trend. They're the ones who understand their unique contribution. They build everything around that core, and then they play this infinite game and scale balanced decision making, focused on their expertise to reach more of the right people.
[00:12:38] That takes deep self knowledge and it takes honesty about what you actually want, and then it takes the willingness to make decisions and move accordingly even when you can't see the whole path. If you are heading into the new year and you want help doing this kind of planning work, I am putting together something special I've never done before.
[00:12:57] Next week, I am hosting a [00:13:00] workshop on December 19th. For thought leaders who want to plan their year according to how they're wired, not according to someone else's playbook. We're not gonna start with goals and tactics. We're gonna start with a check-in on how all of this aligns with who you are, your four E's, your archetype, your core resonance, and then we're gonna look at the thought leadership momentum model and figure out what decisions you need to make about priority and speed to market given where you actually are and what you're actually building.
[00:13:29] Now, if you've worked with me in any paid capacity over the last year, whether that's the accelerator, the the lab, the sprint , a strategy call for your archetype session, you're invited to attend for free. This is my gift to you as we close out the year, and you'll get an email from me with all the details , and I hope you can attend.
[00:13:47] And if you haven't had a chance to work with me yet, it's $197 for a three hour workshop plus a follow up q and a call the week after Christmas where you can bring your specific questions and get this plan ironed out. Go to [00:14:00] macy robison.com/workshop for all the details. Would love to see you there.
[00:14:06] I'm really excited about what this will unlock in terms of what. Decisions you can make to move the needle on 2026 and get closer to what you wanna build. Because your work is an infinite game. You're going to keep iterating, you're going to keep learning, and you're going to keep growing. The question is, as you do that, are you making decisions that actually honor who you are and what you're building?
[00:14:28] We can figure that out together.
[00:14:30] If this episode resonated with you, you're not sure where to start with your own core resonance in figuring out how to build all of this. The first step is to take the archetype assessment@macyrobison.com slash quiz that will help you figure out your expression, , how you teach, how you express yourself, how you guide transformation.
[00:14:48] It's free and it's going to give you language for how you naturally express your ideas and guide transformation. Your expertise matters. Your voice matters. We need it. And the [00:15:00] transformation that you create for others because of that deeply matters. So let's make sure you're building in a way that lets you do this work for a lifetime.