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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] Last week I was in Nashville for the StoryBrand Your Business Live workshop. Now, I have been certified as a StoryBrand guide for about 10 years now. For 3 of those 10 years, I've worked inside the organization. I was the director of the certified guide program. I still help train the guides and do a lot with training and development.
If there's one framework I should be able to run on my own business in my sleep, it's StoryBrand. Now, somewhere in the middle of last week, I realized that I haven't done it, not on this version of my business, the version I've been building for the last 18 months, the assessment, the Resonance Compass, the Resonance Conservatory, the podcast you're listening to right now.
I've run it on my own business before, I've run it on hundreds of other people's businesses, but I realized I've never sat down and deliberately done a messaging pass on the thing I'm actually doing now. And I think deep down I knew it. I've found myself reaching for language to talk about what I do for [00:01:00] months.
I talked about that a little bit on the podcast a few episodes ago, where I really fumbled on my one-liner. I got some help with that, which is great, but even still, I would start to answer a question about my work and feel it not land, feel it not resonate, and I would just tell myself, "Well, it's hard for a transformational guide to talk about what they do externally," which is true.
It's hard. What I do looks different for every single person I work with as a result, and so that's genuinely difficult to put into one sentence. But, "It's hard," had quietly become the reason I think I hadn't done the work, and those are two different things. So what actually moved and prompted this episode today was a conversation.
When I was in Nashville, I got to reconnect at the workshop with my friend Dr. JJ Peterson I was on his podcast a few months ago. He took the assessment. And I was just mentioning to him I realized I hadn't been deliberately thinking through the language to talk about what I do and it had really been a struggle.[00:02:00]
And he said, "Well, let me just tell you what I tell people when I hear someone say, 'I've tried everything and I don't know how to show up online,' or, 'I'm really frustrated with social and I don't feel like I can be myself when I'm showing up online,' or some version of that." He said, "I tell them to take your assessment."
And I'd never heard anyone put it exactly that way. Like, he said, "That's where it helped me. I didn't know how to show up. I knew that, yeah, should I have an email list? Sure. Should I-"
Be blogging? Absolutely. Are there all these things I could do and should do? Definitely. But he said, "I have limited time, and when you told me I need to be in rooms, on stages, in front of people, that's what I've prioritized, and that's made all the difference in my business. I know how to show up as myself now."
I was like, "Oh, I know how to show up as myself," or, "I didn't know how to show up as myself. Great. I have some language that I can use that..." That was it. That was the whole intervention. [00:03:00] He put one of the situations that a potential client might find themselves in, into really clear terms for me. He did it in about 30 seconds because he was standing outside of it, and I was standing inside of it.
As marketers, we always say you can't read your own label from inside the jar. I said, I've said it to other people, and I said it to myself in that hallway in Nashville. And just that little conversation gave me permission to start testing it and to talk about what I do using those words. I help people who've tried everything and still don't know how to show up as themselves.
The conversations got easier. Not perfect, easier. People nodded before I finished the sentence instead of after, which if you've had to introduce yourself, you know that's everything. They're recognizing themself as you're talking instead of trying to nod in confusion after you finish. And that decision to start testing, to start using something that I'm certified in, using my own medicine on myself, has been paying off every day since I got [00:04:00] home.
What I didn't expect is the reason that this is an episode and not just a story I'm telling over dinner sometime. That one deliberate pass didn't fix my messaging, but it did expose something I had been doing that was continuing to hinder my progress. Because the minute I had the right words, I had the reason to reach out to people, and the minute I had a reason to reach out to people, I noticed that I hadn't been.
I hadn't been sending my newsletter regularly. I haven't been doing my daily five. I have a system where I try to reach out to five people every day. It's one of the things I literally teach and I'm gonna be talking about more in coming months.
I haven't been writing things down for my content drawer. I haven't been posting on LinkedIn three times a week like I want to. I haven't been leaving comments or reaching out to the people I haven't spoken to in three to six months just to share something helpful. Every one of those things is something I would normally do if I was truly trying to walk my talk and use my own system on myself in service of impact, in service of resonance, in service of visibility.
And so having those [00:05:00] words exposed the system that I wasn't running. And I wanna be clear about what I mean. This isn't a StoryBrand episode, but StoryBrand was the door. What was on the other side of the door was mine, the Resonance Compass, the four E's, and the embodiment piece of the four E's specifically, the one that asks, "Are you walking your talk?
Are you taking the medicine that you give to other people?" The Marsha Method, which is part of those daily five, the radical service and discipline consistency, I built those. I teach those to clients every week, and a deliberate pass through a framework that I'm certified in showed me how many of my own systems I'd let go quiet So I want to say the thing that I don't know if anyone says out loud, 'cause it's embarrassing.
We maybe say it to ourselves. You can have the diagnosis, you can teach the diagnostic, and you can still not act on it. This is not a knowledge problem. I know what I mean when I say embodiment. I have episodes about it. [00:06:00] I'd said to a client the week before, and I meant it, that when I get stuck in my own business, it's always the embodiment piece of my framework that is the problem.
When you're walking your talk, when you're taking the medicine that you... You know, I always say your mess becomes your medicine, and that's the medicine you need to give to other people, and you have to take it yourself. When you do that, everything gets unstuck. I can draw a diagram. I can explain it 10 different ways, but knowing it wasn't the thing that was missing.
Teaching it wasn't even the thing that was missing. There's a difference between knowing and doing, and I think learning and knowing feels really good. And so we give ourselves permission to keep learning and keep growing in that way so we know more. We get another book on our shelf. We get another certification, another framework.
We listen to another podcast episode. It feels productive, and it feels responsible. And I'm not saying any of those things are bad or wrong, but often what would really move the needle is if we would just do [00:07:00] something, if we would just take action. One of my friends, Evan, talks to our new StoryBrand guides about this idea.
He will say, "When you're starting out your business, you go back and forth between two different hats, the learner hat," which feels really good to wear. It's fun to learn new things. It's fun to feel like we are acquiring knowledge and, and making ourselves feel smarter and giving ourselves permission to do things by learning.
But what we need to do sometimes is put on our leader hat and lead our businesses. And a thought leader is someone who has thoughts that can be helpful and has made the deliberate decision to lead, to step into visibility and lead. And I wasn't wearing that leader hat. I wasn't embodying the things that I teach.
I wasn't walking my talk, and then I started to. that one conversation with JJ, having the right words to get myself in motion, to start having the conversations, [00:08:00] and actually walking my talk kind of unstuck everything. In the last week, in a couple of days, a flurry of things I have been thinking about, studying about, not taking action on for months started moving. I built a new tool to track and measure progress. It's called the Resonance Compass Snapshot, and having that in my hands has given me even further permission to reach out to people who are interested in working with me and further that conversation.
, I even came up with a, an updated offer for clients who didn't quite fit the Resonance Conservatory, and I'm moving on goals that have just been sitting there. So many things that, like, just that little bit of movement unleashed. So six months of I need to figure that out, and a couple of days of action got it moving and done.
And the thing that changed it wasn't a new strategy, it was taking action
So let me say this as clearly as I can. The fastest path out of being stuck is running your own system on yourself. Not learning more about it, [00:09:00] not refining it one more time before you're ready to live it, running it, trying it, testing it on you deliberately this week It's the thing I said to that client.
When I'm stuck, when any client is stuck, I try to look at embodiment first. If you're walking your talk, everything gets unstuck. You're moving from a place of truth, and that truth vibrates out toward people in the signal that you're sending Taking imperfect action beats perfect planning and learning every single day. I've said this in some form or another to business owners and StoryBrand guides over the years, and on day three of our training with our StoryBrand guides last week, my friend Tyler said the same thing, essentially, that everyone gets really nervous about putting up their website and putting their words out into the world, and a B-minus or a C-plus website that's live is way more effective to grow your business than a perfect website that never gets published.
Taking imperfect [00:10:00] action beats perfect planning every single day. And I'm not saying that embodiment needs to be done perfectly. You don't have to do every single thing that you teach perfectly. I certainly don't. I'm gonna use some of this new messaging. I'm gonna try to get my newsletter out. I'm gonna post things on LinkedIn. Not every single one of those things is gonna be perfect or flawless. There's something about the energy that gets generated when you're trying to live the principle, the actual truth of the principles that you teach, that opens up more possibility, and it strengthens the signal you're already wired to send.
I've said on this show that when... That people can feel it when you aren't taking your own medicine, and they lean away. They know that you're not walking your talk. They can just feel it. And the reverse is also true. When you're genuinely trying to do the best you can to walk your talk, they lean in, and they listen more intently, and they're more interested, and half the time they couldn't even tell [00:11:00] you why And all of this I know it's easier said than done. I know it is. We want to be careful. We don't want to stick out and stand out. Our brains are trying to keep us safe, and safe can look like one more round of preparation, one more round of testing.
It's genuinely easier to do things for people than to do things for ourselves, because doing it for ourselves means we have to make decisions, and that also feels scary and unsafe. Nobody's handing any of this to us. So here's what I'd love for you to sit with this week. What is the system that you teach?
What is the system that you sell? What is the thing that you do that you maybe haven't deliberately run on yourself, or you haven't done it in a while? Maybe it's something you're certified in. Maybe it's something that you built from scratch. Maybe it's a process or a framework that you have developed in working with people over the years.
Maybe it's the thing you teach every week and you would never let a client skip, and you're skipping it every day. What would you tell a client who walked in, and they're exactly where you are right now? What would you tell them [00:12:00] to do? Are you doing that thing?
It might be a whole list of things that you would tell that client who is exactly where you are right now. So just pick one. Do one thing, one deliberate pass on your own business this week. Give yourself an hour on your calendar. Do one thing that is going to be something you would teach, something you would tell someone else to do, and do it.
And pay attention It may not completely fix the problem you're trying to solve, but I'll bet it opens up a door to three other things you stopped doing, and that gives you more opportunity to walk your talk
That's this process starting to work and get that resonance moving and flowing
You've had the diagnosis all along, most of us do, but making a deliberate pass at living it is really the biggest move you can make, and it is yours to make.
And when making those decisions gets easier, it gets easier and more aligned to [00:13:00] just naturally show up as yourself. That, that becomes the operating condition and not the thing we're striving for. And if what JJ talked about sounds like the situation you're in, if you've tried everything and you don't know how to show up as yourself online
My free assessment and workshop are the place to start. Gives you some direction, gives you some things to test and try to start walking your talk. The workshop is still free. It's called You Know Your Archetype, Now What? It's an hour. You'll leave with your expanded results from the assessment, and you'll have a place to begin.
The link to sign up is at macyrobison.com/workshop. I run it at different times every single week, and I would love to have you come and learn a little bit more about how you express yourself, how you're wired, so you can decide differently about how to walk your talk and show up online or in your business.
If you're further along than that, if you already have your assessment results and you already know [00:14:00] what you teach, and the thing that you're missing is the running it on yourself part and having a system to, to track and see progress and actually do that, that commitment to being visible, to being a thought leader in your own business, is what the Resonance Conservatory is for.
The next one starts at the end of September. Come do this work in a room where you can resonate with other people who are doing it, too, and really dial in who you are and how you're meant to serve.
Until next time, here's to walking your talk, and I'll be over here trying to walk mine