[00:00:00] Welcome back to Own Your Impact. Today I wanna clear something up because I have been hearing a pattern in strategy calls, in DMs, that tells me there's something that is causing a misunderstanding about how the archetype assessment works, and I think it might be holding some of you back. Here's what happens. Someone takes the assessment, and they get their result, and their first reaction is relief. They see their primary archetype. They feel seen. They might think, "Oh, that's why that felt so hard," or, "I've been trying to build like someone I'm not." And I hope that that's the reaction. That's exactly what the assessment is designed to do. That moment of relief means that it's working. But then something else happens, and that's the part I wanna talk about today. Then they look at the archetypes where they didn't score as high, and they start building beliefs or almost building, like, a wall around themselves. They'll say things like, "Well, I'm not a wisdom writer, but I really wanted to write a book, so what does that mean?" Or, "I didn't score high in resonant orator, and I really am working on a great keynote speech. What does that mean? Maybe that's not on the [00:01:00] table." Or, "If I'm not a digital learning architect, should I not create a course?" That actually happened to me on a call very recently. Very sharp, accomplished individual, someone who has built real expertise over a real career. They looked at their results and asked me almost timidly, like they were afraid of the answer. They said, "I really have a great idea for a book, but this test says I'm not a wisdom writer, so does that mean I can't write a book?" And I would love for you to sit with that question because I have. There's real apprehension underneath it. He had taken an assessment, gotten a result, and read the result as a verdict, as a list of things he wasn't allowed to do. He saw not wisdom writer and heard writing is closed to you, and I understand why. Like, w- we're used to assessments that sort us and fence us in. You're this, therefore you're not that. So when people get their archetype results, a lot of them brace for that, that fence. But today let's take it down 'cause it was never there, and I wanna say this very [00:02:00] clearly. That's not what the assessment is telling you, and it's not what any of these archetype, archetypes mean in terms of what you want to ultimately create. So if you've been limiting your ambition based on what you didn't score high in, I wanna undo that today. S- so here's a principle I wanna carry out through this episode. Your archetype is a starting line. It's not a ceiling, and let me tell you why this matters before I tell you how it works. When you misread your archetype as a limitation or a ceiling, one of two things happen. Either you can quietly write it off because who wants a tool to tell you something you can't do? Or I think the worst thing is you believe it. You let it close doors or make decisions for you, or you think, "I wanted to write the book," and now you think you aren't allowed because a quiz told you you were something else, and both of those are a loss. Both of them come from one mix-up. People confuse with how they are wired to create something with what they are allowed to produce, and I think those are two completely different things, and this episode is about pulling them apart. So here's the [00:03:00] distinction. I wanna give you two concepts. First genesis, and then final form. Now, genesis is , the term we often use for how something gets created, where it begins, where it starts, the mode the idea comes alive in. The genesis is the messy, alive, early part. It's you at the beginning making the thing exist. The final form is the deliverable, the thing other people receive, the book, the course, the keynote, the article, the workshop, and here's the thing I need you to understand. Your archetype describes your genesis process, your creation process, how you start, how you begin. It doesn't govern the final form. Your archetype is part of what we call expression in the Resonance Compass. It's the answer to one question: how do my ideas come alive , and get into the world? It's not the answer to the question, what am I permitted to make? One of my clients said this very cleanly on a call recently. He said, "This wiring is about the genesis of something, not the final product. It could end up as a [00:04:00] keynote. It could end up as a book. It could end up at a- as anything. What we need to worry about is how we start." So think for a second about a songwriter. A song might be written at a piano, just a person and keys. That's the genesis. That's the beginning. They're great at the piano, so that's what they use to create. But that same song might end up as a full orchestral score in a film or a quiet acoustic recording No one hears a film score and says, "Wait, wait, wait. That was written at a piano, so it's only allowed to be a piano piece." , The piano was where the writing happened. It doesn't limit what the song is allowed to become. So maybe it helps to think of your archetype as you at the piano. It tells you where the creation happens for you. It doesn't tell you what the song is allowed to become. Now, let me make this concrete with an example I know best, me. , If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I'm in the process of writing a book, words on pages that people will hold in their [00:05:00] hands or read on their reader, their screen reader. And I'm not a wisdom writer. I have some points there in my results, but wisdom writer's not at the top. It's not even in the top five. My top three are transformational guide, resonant orator, and strategic advisor. Now, if I believed archetype was my ceiling, that because I'm not a wisdom writer, writing is off the table, I would not be writing a book at all. And I will be honest with you, for a long time, I didn't, because I kept trying to write it the way I thought books get written, and I do this with content online as well, sitting at a keyboard, typing, staring at a blank document or blinking cursor, waiting for words to magically arrive, and they don't arrive when I write that way. So here's the thing. - The problem was never that the book was the wrong final form for me. It's a wonderful final form for me. It's a great opportunity to get my ideas into a room ahead of me. The problem was that I was trying to make the creation of the book or the genesis process happen at a keyboard, and a keyboard isn't where my ideas [00:06:00] come alive. They come alive when I talk This idea first came to mind when I read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic. She talked about how Brene Brown doesn't write her books at a computer. She teaches her books to her friends, and then she goes and writes down what she teaches while they sit and eat chips and, and salsa in, in the lake house that they, they rent. it's... It actually opened my mind to this idea in the first place, , the thing that we use to create, the tool that we use to create just doesn't dictate the final format of what we deliver. let me show you what my book-writing process looks like, because the contrast is the point. A wisdom writer, and I work with several, they journal, or they sit down and discover what they think through the act of writing words. Their first draft is their thinking process made visible. They need the pen in their hand, or they need to be typing to know what they believe and what they think. Writing is the creation of their thoughts that they then express and distribute. That is not how I'm writing my book. My book is being built from [00:07:00] transcripts, from conversations that I've had, from transformations I've walked people through, real coaching conversations, real strategy calls Even episodes of this podcast where I've been saying my ideas out loud and figuring out what landed based on the feedback that I get from you. I'm not sitting alone at a desk waiting for words to come. I'm looking at the work that already exists because I have been doing the work with my voice and with my conversations and with solving problems in real time with people, and I'm shaping it into written form. Now, the final product's going to look just like a wisdom writer's book would, chapters, paragraphs, a cover, but the reader's not going to know the difference. The creation, the genesis, the pathway from idea to finished thing is completely different, and it has to be because I'm wired differently. And if I tried to force myself to write like a wisdom writer does, I would still be staring at a blank page, I would feel like something was wrong with me, and I might have concluded that I'm just not a writer and given up. Or I might borrow some AI template to organize my thinking [00:08:00] or jam my ideas into someone else's written template, and I might come up with a book that way, but it wouldn't be a resonant book that represents my ideas, where you can feel who I am and what I have to say coming through the page When I sit and look at a blinking cursor, I'm not failing at writing, I'm just not a wisdom writer. Now, you might not be wired like me either, so let me widen this out, because wherever you land, the principle holds. If you're expression-led, , if you're a resonant orator, a wisdom writer, a ... visual thought architect, your ideas come alive in the act of expressing them, if you have any of those three archetypes. So you need to speak it, you need to write it, you need to draw it, or see it in space. Those are three different points, and every one of them could end up as a book, or a course, or a talk, whatever it needs to be at the end. If you're experience-led, and a lot of you who listen to me and have taken this assessment are, your ideas come alive in the room. So if you're a [00:09:00] transformational guide like me, or an experience facilitator, and you wanna build an online course, you might look at your results and think, "Well, I'm not a digital learning architect, so maybe courses aren't my thing." No, that's the wrong question. The right question is: what does the course building process look like for an experienced facilitator? It doesn't look like sitting at a desk building curriculum models in a logical sequence. That might be how a digital learning architect does it, and it's beautiful when they do, but that's not your path. Your path is to facilitate the transformation with people first. Run the workshop, lead the group, record yourself doing the real in-the-room version of what you do, and then package that into something people can access on their own. The course isn't built from a blank outline. It's built from documenting you doing what you do best. Same final form, completely different creation process. If you're insight-led, your ideas come alive against a real problem. Strategic advisors don't get clear in a vacuum. [00:10:00] They get clear when there's an actual problem to push against. So the book, the keynote, the framework, all of that has to start with a real problem, not a blank page. If you're embodiment-led, if you're a principal practitioner, your ideas come alive when you've lived them, tested them on yourself first. The book starts in what you've personally proven. Now, I have a whole episode on the four frequencies if you wanna go a little bit deeper on yours, and I'll put that in the show notes. But here's the sentence to keep: Your archetype is not telling you what you're allowed to make. It's telling you where to begin so that the making isn't miserable, and so that the final product is as resonant as it possibly can be I think sometimes the misunderstanding here might happen because of what people feel when they take the archetype assessment for the first time, and what we often talk about. We talk about how people copy and paste others' tactics, and they are frustrated. And, and so I try to focus heavily on what drains the different archetypes and what [00:11:00] energizes them so you can see yourself in them. And so many people have been forcing themselves into creation processes that don't fit their wiring, that relief of, "You don't have to do it that way," is sometimes the most important thing I can give someone. But I think somewhere in that message, people might have been hearing, "You can't do it that way," or, "That format isn't available to you," and that's not what I'm saying at all. When I'm saying a wisdom writer is drained by getting forced to do video or speaking off-the-cuff, I'm not saying that a wisdom writer can't do video. I'm saying the creation process is different. They need to write the script down first, because writing is how they discover what they think, and then they need to figure out how to present that on camera so their written words sing. The idea is born in writing, but the final form can be anything. When I say a transformational guide is drained by creating content in isolation, I'm not saying they can't create content. I'm saying there's a different path. Their content starts with the actual transformation work, [00:12:00] the actual conversations when they are advising people or coaching people or co-creating with people. They walk someone through something first, and then the content gets built from what happened in the room. The creation happens in the conversation. The content can take any form it needs to. So your archetype is about that creative genesis signal process, where the signal originates from, not the final form that it actually takes. Now I wanna go one level deeper, because you might be thinking, "Okay, okay, fine. If I can get to the same final form anyway, does the starting point really matter? Can I not just push through and write the book at the keyboard, even if it's hard?" Well, here's why it matters more than you think. When you start in the wrong place, one of two things happen. The first, I hope, is obvious. The work just doesn't get made. , I've been helping people create and ideate and produce and market books for years. And I haven't written one. That friction has been so high that I've been [00:13:00] stalling, and then I might assume I have a discipline problem, when really I have a genesis problem, a creation problem. I think the second one is sneakier, and it's a little worse. Because sometimes you do push through, and you force it, and the work gets made, and technically it's fine, but it doesn't land. It doesn't ring true, 'cause it doesn't feel exactly like you. Here's an example of what I mean. I worked with a client once on a course, and I wrote a lot of the curriculum and the content for it, and the scripts were great, and the words were good, and the course was, on paper, totally correct. My client recorded the videos to teach, and we packaged it up, and we launched it out, and it just didn't sell very well. And for a long time, I didn't understand why, but I do now. It didn't sell as well, I believe, because it wasn't resonant. She was delivering words that came from my words, my mouth, my pen, not hers. The final form was complete, but the [00:14:00] creation process was wrong. It didn't start in her. It didn't start with her writing her words. It didn't start with her speaking her way that she is so known for speaking. People could feel that, even if they couldn't name it, and I think that's the real cost. Because genesis, that creation, that starting with your own archetype, that's not where... That's not just where the work is easiest to make, it's where the work connects with your signal. Start the work in the wrong place, and even a finished, polished, final form will quietly sound like someone else. If you're really good at writing music on the piano, and you decide one day randomly to compose something with your flute, it's just not gonna feel the same. Where you're skilled, where it feels natural, that's how you need to start Now, what I usually ask clients is this. When something starts to feel heavy or like a grind, I don't ask, "Should I quit doing this?" I ask, "What's the natural starting medium?" 'Cause the way you finish [00:15:00] doesn't have to be the way you start. There are paths anywhere. If you've been told you really should be on YouTube, and you don't feel wired to create content that way, we can figure it out. The way we finish doesn't have to be the way we start. You can finish in writing, but you may need to start by talking. You can finish with a course, but you may need to start in a room with the same person. You can finish on video, but you might need to start with another conversation that leads to you returning and reporting what you solved in the room. If you find the natural starting medium, the whole thing gets a little bit lighter. So if you've been putting off taking the archetype assessment because some part of you is afraid it's gonna hand you a list of things you're not, I want you to take a deep breath and set that down. It can't do that. It doesn't have that power. It's not a guardrail. It's ... Doesn't close doors. All it can tell you is, if you answer it honestly, where you're wired to begin And if you've already taken it, and your result's been sitting there feeling a [00:16:00] little like a box you didn't wanna be in, I would say this: You don't need to read it as a ceiling. Go back and read it as a starting line. It was never the list of what you can't do, it's the map of where to begin. My client who asked if they were allowed to write a book, of course, they can write a book. They're just not going to write it the way a wisdom writer does. They're gonna start where their ideas actually come alive, and then shape what comes out of that into the book they want. Same final form to hand to someone, but their own creation process, their own genesis. So here's what I want you to do. If you've not had a chance to take the archetype assessment yet, that's where you start. It's free. Go to macyrobison.com/quiz. Takes about 10 to 15 minutes, and I want you to take it the way it's meant to be taken, not as a verdict on what you are, but a map where you begin. And once you have your results, the next step is to actually work with them, and that is what my weekly workshops are for, Find Your Frequency. We take your wiring, and we get specific about your [00:17:00] pathway, the thing you're actually trying to build, and you can find the schedule at macyrobison.com/workshop. I limit those workshops to 10 people per session, so that we have time to dive in a little bit to your individual results, and you can get some real direction on what you should be doing with the way you're wired. But all of it starts with the assessment. You can't design the pathway until you know how you're wired, and that wiring is not a ceiling, it's a part of the compass to direct you down the path you're meant to forge. Your ideas matter, and they have the ability to have an impact in the world. The book, the talk, the course, whatever final form you've been dreaming about, it is available to you. You just have to stop trying to begin in someone else's path. Begin where you actually naturally come alive, and the form will follow