I shared this tip as an instagram live video this week, pulling out insights from a client session I had that day. 

This tip really embodies a methodology shift to gain clarity in anything that we do & create positive impact with anything we share. 

1️⃣ DO YOUR INTERNAL (STORY)WORK

✅️ Audit your life, extract anecdotes & evidence, and get a bird's-eye-view of your journey/timeline. 

When you spend the time to sit with your stories and systematically extract the themes, lessons, and messages within, you begin the creation process from a place of surplus instead of deficit. 

This step helps you overcome the scramble of figuring out how to convince your audience of something whenever you attempt a piece of persuasive writing.

In my work with students, I teach how to leverage a story bank system to streamline your anecdotes, insights, and evidence. It makes creating anything so much easier. 

✅️ Get crystal clear on your VALUES & MISSION. A POV is the MAIN THING that will make you STAND OUT in 2024. 

Beyond a general passion, you need to have a specific take on how to solve a problem or make something better. 

The key to finding our people is creating clarity in their minds that a relationship with us is a no-brainer win-win.

To stand out from the rest of the crowd who are also making bids for attention, we need to be willing to repel as much as we attract. 

Take the time to become clear, bold, & unapologetic in what you stand for. Those who are fighting for the same values & vision will flock to you. 

✅️ Become self-validating in your mission. 

Your purpose behind this mission should override your ego, anxiety, and inaction every time. 

Go through the process to get locked-into your purpose & be validated by that clarity. Write it down somewhere. Make it accessible.

Every time you find yourself seeking external validation, pause before you phone a friend. Instead, revisit your mission statement and find a way to clarify your steps forward internally. 

You will put yourself out there and SEEK opportunities for people to say yes or no to you, because you’ll be so clear on your need to carry out this mission in this lifetime for those who need you.

Now, we’ll get into the second phase of this process:

2️⃣ CRAFT YOUR AUDIENCE-FACING MESSAGING

🚫 Do not push out your internal story work to your audience AS IS! 

For one, you'll lose them in your biography. Don't make them work harder than you to understand why their collaboration with you is necessary. 

Another reason you want to do some crafting work before you share, is to establish a good practice of: deciding what is meant to be sacred and being intentional about what you share with whom and when, where, & why.  

This entire decision-making process helps establish a sense of authority & wisdom in how you see yourself as a communicator. It helps establish safety in your nervous system. And sets you up to trust yourself in how you represent your mission & communicate your story, message, and vision. 

✅️ Make it EASY. Persuasive writing structure 101:

Every paragraph you share  should be a mini-loop of this cycle:

1. Argument --Introduce your unique value to them.
2. Evidence --Paint the picture of this value using your perfectly paired anecdotes.
3. The "So What" --Reinforce why this collaboration/ hire/acceptance would be a DREAM. Explain what impact it would make on both of your missions.

🚫 Don't make your writing CHRONOLOGICALLY DRIVEN. 

Your timeline is irrelevant to your audience, unless you make it relevant. 

(UNLESS it is KEY to their transformation journey, like a step 1, step 2, step 3 type process, a chronological order is not necessarily the driving factor in our story/argument arc). 

When we draw from personal experience, we tend to think of it as a sequence of events in the order that we experienced it. 

However, if we stay in that chronological lens, we often miss the chance to extract overarching themes or more compelling entry points to the transformation, unique values, or the mission we want to persuade our audience to take a chance on. 

✅️ Make it MISSION/ VALUES/ OUTCOME DRIVEN. 

Take your audience on a journey of DEEPENING their understanding of the impact & necessity of your mission. 

Paint the picture of the OUTCOME when they say YES to you. 

Position your values/unique qualities to shape this journey in a way that is UNFORGETTABLE & emotionally compelling.

🚫 Don't share your brain dump with zero organization & too many ideas.

✅️ SIMPLY & CLARIFY. While you don't want to be over repetitive with your WORD CHOICE, you do want to be COHESIVE (repetitive) with your MAIN MESSAGE. 

This is how they 1) understand your argument then 2) are persuaded to agree with you.

Make your message simple & memorable. You should have ONE clear message from top to bottom.

Find illustrative, clear, & powerful words to express your message. But make sure your message is evident throughout and that anecdote, imagery, and example ties back to & supports your message. 

THE SECRET TO BEING BOLD

As someone who used to run to the phone lines (or sadly, a facebook wall…yikes)  to seek guidance & validation before making any moves in my life, learning this process helped me step into my authentic power in a profound way.

When you seek external validation before doing your internal work, you set yourself up to be tossed around in the waves. 

Folks will project their life experiences (often in an unhealed form), judgments, and largely unresearched opinions onto you. 

What’s more, unless you’ve cultivated an intentional community of highly-aligned & expansive mentors & peers, most people will have no idea what your unique purpose is that your soul calls you to daily. 

Friend, that’s our work. We gotta get clear for ourselves. Then, when we’ve crafted & designed our masterplan & accompanying messages, we can simply invite the world to celebrate & rock with us in our bold, beautiful missions. 

I’m so glad I’ve cultivated this practice over the last decade and a half of my life. I can bear witness to this just within the timeline of my relationship with my husband. 

Our relationship has always been marked by unconventionality. We met on Tinder. He moved in with me a month later. We got pregnant 4 months later. Government married 6 months later. 

I fully manifested this partnership and our story played out in complete alignment to that manifestation.

But because I hadn’t fully detoxed from my reliance on external validation & because I hadn’t gained the muscle memory yet of this internal-before-external process, I found myself going to my circle prematurely, setting myself up for judgment and confusion.

Fast forward to 7 years into our relationship. We’ve gone through a lot together and come out stronger. The strength of our relationship is founded on our commitments to our creativity, service, and love of family, community, and our planet. 

When we began hatching the plan to leave our stable jobs, sell our Southern California home, and move to Taiwan, we took the time to internally (individually then as a couple) clarify and validate our plan. 

We became unshakeable in our path forward. For 9 months, we moved forward with our plan without sharing it with anyone.

Then we crafted our announcement. We invited people (family, friends, colleagues, students, neighbors) to celebrate our bold move. 

We presented our message with absolute clarity and no need for their input. 

There were those who were shocked, concerned, and intrigued. But the space we made for our audience was intentional. The invitation was to celebrate & support. 

And those who were aligned to our vision came through to support in a beautiful way. Everyone else took a back seat. 

I HOPE THIS HELPS

Consider the next plan, story, message, or pitch you need to put out into the world. 

Think about what it would feel like to be crystal clear in your plan, your worth, your message, and your delivery.  

To me, it feels like floating. I wish this on everyone. 

I hope this chat today helps. Let me know how it goes!