[00:00:00] Today I wanna talk about a pattern that comes up more than almost any other in my coaching calls. If you're a consultant, a facilitator, a coach, any kind of expert who creates transformation through working with other people, you've probably been struggling with this concept around platform building where you build your content or create your ip. And if that's you, this might be one of the most helpful episodes that I've done because this concept has been the most helpful for me personally. Here's what I've struggled with. For years, I had a hard time creating a content calendar ' cause I just didn't have enough ideas. So I would buy templates and try to borrow other people's way of generating ideas. And then I just thought maybe I was lazy. That wasn't the case either. I've tried programs where I was told to start with writing my ideas, but writing first for me felt like it just wasn't capturing what I wanted to say, and you might feel the same. You might feel like writing first is breaking your genius. Here's a story that kinda illustrates what I'm talking [00:01:00] about. I was on a call a few weeks ago with a client who is a brilliant facilitator. She runs workshops for organizations. Creates these incredible breakthrough moments for teams. When she's in the room, magic literally happens. People leave her workshops transformed. She's an experience facilitator, but she came to our call frustrated. She'd been trying for months to get her content together. She had a half finished course that was sitting in a Google Drive folder. She had a blog that she'd started and stopped three different times. She had notes from a book she wanted to write, scattered across notebooks and apps and voice memos, and she was feeling like a fraud because she couldn't get any of this content done. And so I asked her, when was the last time you felt completely in the zone like you were completely you? And she didn't even hesitate. said, Last Tuesday I was facilitating a team session and something clicked for the group. I saw it happen. One of the team members said something that reframed the whole problem and suddenly everyone in the room saw the path forward. . And then I asked her, did you try to write about what happened in that session? And she paused and [00:02:00] said, I thought about it, but it felt so hard to capture what actually occurred. It was like trying to explain what a sunset looks like to someone who wasn't there to see it, and that is the facilitator's content trap, and it's not her fault. In my work with the thought leadership archetypes, I've identified something called the four Frequencies. . Taking the archetypes and grouping them into the fundamental ways that different people think and create, develop their ideas, and guide transformation in others. The four frequencies are expression led. Experience led, insight led and embodiment led. If you're an expression LED frequency, you have an archetype of resonant orator, wisdom writer or visual thought architect. You think and guide transformation by expressing your ideas literally become clear through the act of sharing them. You sit down to write and you discover what you know, you start talking and the frameworks emerge for you. Creating content first makes perfect sense because content is your thinking [00:03:00] process, but if you're experience led, that means you're a transformational guide and experience facilitator or digital learning architect. Your brain works completely differently. You think you express ideas, you understand that something's working. By actually guiding people through transformation. Your ideas come from working with people in real time. You don't know what someone needs until you're with them, and so that makes it hard to articulate your methodology until you've seen it work across enough people to recognize the patterns. And here's the trap. Almost all of the advice about building a thought leadership platform, creating your ip, scaling your expertise, having passive income, all of that was written by who I believe to be expression led people. People who write the books, they're the ones who write the courses. They're the ones who build the content machines because that's their genius. They think by expressing. So when they teach you to sit down and write your framework, create your course curriculum, build out your content calendar, and [00:04:00] just start publishing consistently, they're not giving you bad advice. They're giving you their advice. It works for how they are wired, but it might be the wrong operating system for your brain, for your way of expressing yourself. Let me share another example that I think might help. I had a client earlier this year who was a coach working with entrepreneurs. She is phenomenal at helping people see the thing they cannot see about themselves. Her clients rave about her. She has a long list of people who have had genuine breakthroughs because of her work, but she felt stuck. She felt like she should be further along with her thought leadership. She'd been trying to create a signature framework, you know, the thing that she's known for. The things she could put in a book, the things she could teach from a stage, and every time she sat down to create it, she would stare at a blank screen. It felt like she had nothing to say, which to me was insane because she has incredibly valuable things to say, but she just couldn't access them in that way. So when we looked at her archetype results, her primary was transformational guide and her secondary was experience [00:05:00] facilitator. She's deeply, thoroughly experience led both of her top archetypes live in that frequency. So I said to her, stop trying to write your framework. Your framework already exists. You just haven't documented it yet. And she looked at me like I was speaking a different language because it wasn't what everyone else had been saying to her. But here's what I meant. Every time she coaches someone, she's running a process. She just hasn't named it. She might not have drawn it on a whiteboard, but there is a consistent approach that she takes. There are questions that she asks in a specific order. There are interventions she uses when someone is stuck, and there are patterns that she recognizes across clients. All of the intellectual property is already there. It's living inside the transformations she creates every single day. So she doesn't need to create her IP by writing. She needs to create her IP by facilitating and then documenting what works. That sequence matters For experience led people. The sequences facilitate first document, what works second. This honestly is one of the most important [00:06:00] things I've learned from working with the more than 600 people at this point who've taken the archetype assessment. Different frequencies, develop their content and their intellectual property in fundamentally different ways. If you are expression led, your pathway is expressed to discover, identify patterns, and then start structuring. You start by creating content. Talking, writing, visualizing, and your ideas become clear through the expression itself. Then you look back at what you've created and you might start to notice themes. One of my clients who is a wisdom writer. Always marvels that she's leaving breadcrumbs for herself. When she posts on social media, those breadcrumbs become the things that turn into books, and that's exactly what I mean. She, she starts by creating content and then it grows and grows. She organizes those themes. You could organize those themes into teachable frameworks. So content comes first, structure comes later. If you're experience led, the pathway is reverse. You facilitate. First. You work directly with people and focus on what actually creates breakthrough [00:07:00] moments. Then you document what works, capture the patterns, the interventions, the questions that consistently unlock insight. And then, and this is the part most experienced led people skip. You create what I call documentation bridges. These are the ways you translate your experiential magic into describable methodology so that someone can understand what you do before they actually experience it. If you're insight led, a strategic advisor, a research innovator, a category creator, you analyze and synthesize first. Your ideas develop through going deeper than others. Seeing what other people miss. Challenging assumptions. And then you build application systems. You create communication tools to share those insights. And if you're embodiment led, a principled practitioner, you test on yourself first. Your ideas only emerge through personal experimentation. You think by living it. Now, these aren't rigid boxes to work inside of. Most people are a blend, but understanding your primary frequency changes everything about how you [00:08:00] approach building your content and ip. Because if you're an experienced led person trying to follow an expression LED pathway, you'll feel stuck. You'll feel like something is wrong with you. You'll sit in front of a blank screen and wonder why everybody else seems to be able to write their ideas down when you just can't. But nothing is wrong with you. You're just running the wrong operating system. So here's the shift. If your experience led, I want you to stop creating content as step one. Instead, here is your actual path forward. First, facilitate, get in the room with people. Do the coaching calls, run the workshops, facilitate the group experience, design the learning journey, and walk people through it. This is where your genius lives, and this is where your ideas are born. You really can't skip this step. Second document what works after, not before, but after you facilitated enough transformations to see patterns start capturing what you do. What questions do you always ask when someone is stuck? What interventions consistently create breakthrough moments? And what is your natural response [00:09:00] when people hit resistance? And then finally, what does the arc of transformation look like when you guide someone through it? You don't have to write a polished blog post or a beautiful framework diagram. Just capture the patterns. Voice memos, session notes, a quick debrief after a call where you say, here is what happened and why I think it worked. This is your documentation process that eventually becomes your intellectual property. Then, third, create those documentation bridges. This is the part that makes your experiential magic purchasable. Because the challenge for experience led people, your work is so good that it almost defies description. People who've worked with, you know how transformative it is, but you struggle to explain it to someone who hasn't experienced it yet. And that's a real marketing problem. It is a feature, not a bug. A documentation bridge is how you describe your methodology without losing the magic. It might be a problem recognition guide. Here's how I diagnose what someone needs, or it might be a process framework. [00:10:00] Here's the arc of transformation. I guide people through. You could create an intervention toolkit. Here's my specific approach for common challenges. These bridges help people understand your value before experiencing it, which is what allows them to make the decision to work with you. Now I wanna be really transparent about something 'cause I think it matters. Everything you're hearing on this podcast, the systems I teach, the frameworks I use, the archetype assessment you may have taken, . None of it was created by me sitting alone at a desk writing. I have all three experience led archetypes in my top results. Transformational Guide, experience facilitator. And digital learning architect. I'm also a strategic advisor, which means I solve problems in real time, which has similar challenges. And for years I tried to build content the way I was told to build it. I tried to create an online course. Multiple times I would sit down, start writing curriculum and I would hit a wall every single time, which was extraordinarily frustrating 'cause I was a teacher, but I was a choir teacher and a lot of the things I knew [00:11:00] to teach were because I had experienced them working in the room. I wish I'd known that then. But I didn't, so instead I kept creating whiteboards full of ideas about how thought leadership worked. But I hadn't tested any of it on real people. Trying to build real authority. I thought the problem was discipline. I thought I needed to try harder. I thought I just needed to think harder. Sound familiar? Everything changed when I gave myself permission to start working with people directly. I just started coaching individuals that needed help building a platform, needed help getting their voice out in the world, and all of that eventually became the resident thought leadership system. I'm so grateful to those early clients who took a chance on. Trusting me and it was in those conversations, not in what I planned ahead for, not in my notes, but in the actual conversations, the system started to reveal itself. There were things that I repeated again and again about resonance. I was able to see what was working, and I was seeing where people got stuck and which pieces of the framework needed to come first and which ones I had in the [00:12:00] wrong order. The archetype assessment came to being, when I noticed call after call that different people got stuck in different ways and it really catalyzed in a conversation that I had with someone who said. Didn't you say once you were reverse engineering how thought leaders use their speaking skills or their writing skills to build a platform? And generate revenue. I would really love to see that. And I went home and looked at what I'd started and thought I did. That is what I started, and that gave me permission to dig into a little bit more and say, what is different about each of these people? And the archetypes emerged from that observation. The four frequencies I've been talking about today, those didn't exist until I was preparing for a speaking engagement last fall and realized the groups of archetypes had something fundamental in common, not just in what they did, but how they thought. Expression led experience led insight led embodiment led. That framework emerged from teaching the archetypes to a live audience and seeing the patterns click in a way that they hadn't before. [00:13:00] And this podcast, I could not have written a single episode of this show without first walking real people through this system and seeing what worked. Every episode you've heard started with a coaching conversation, a breakthrough in a workshop, a pattern I noticed across clients or myself. The content came from the transformation work, not the other way around. So when I tell you that this sequence matters that for experience led people, you facilitate first and you document second. I'm not teaching theory. I'm telling you how I've built everything you're experiencing right now. You're listening to the output of the exact process I'm asking you to trust. Now, here's what I don't want you to hear in all of this. I'm not saying experienced led people should never write, never create courses, never build content libraries. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is the sequence matters. When you start with facilitating and documenting the content creation becomes almost effortless because you're not staring at a blank page wondering what to say. You're looking at real transformation that's already been created and saying, how do I capture [00:14:00] more of this so more people can benefit from it? The content still gets created. The courses still get built, the books still get written, but they emerge from proven transformation instead of theoretical frameworks, and that makes them infinitely more powerful because they're grounded in what actually works, not what you think might work for someone. Somewhere. If you're listening and you're recognizing yourself in what I'm describing, you're great with people. You create transformation in the room, but you've been maybe beating yourself up a little bit because you can't seem to get your content together. Here is your permission slip to stop. Stop trying to write your way to a framework. Stop trying to create content in isolation. Stop following the advice that was designed for someone else wired completely differently than you. Instead, lean into your genius. Book the coaching calls, design the workshop, get in front of a group and facilitate the thing that you're amazing at. And then. And I do mean then pull out your phone afterward, not before, and hit record and talk through what just happened, what worked, what [00:15:00] patterns did you see? What catalysts occurred, what paradigm shifts happened? What did you do or what did you say that created a breakthrough in others? And that voice memo, that's your content. That reflection is the beginning of your framework, and that pattern you notice is the beginning of your underlying intellectual property that's emerging exactly the way it's supposed to for how you're wired. Now, if you've been listening to this and you're not sure whether your experience led, your first step is to take the free thought leadership archetype assessment at macyrobison.com slash quiz. It takes about 10 to 20 minutes and it will show you your primary archetype. And it'll give you a podcast episode to listen to learn a little bit more about it. That alone should help you understand why certain approaches to building your business have felt like pushing a boulder uphill. I. And if you take the assessment and you wanna go deeper, not just understand your primary archetype, but where the frequencies come in and how your full blend of archetypes work together and what that means for how you should be building your content, your offers, [00:16:00] your, your connection strategies with other people. I have two ways to do that. First, I hold virtual workshops on a regular basis where you'll get your expanded archetype analysis, one that shows you your full frequency blend, your percentages, how your top archetypes interact with one another. We'll look at real examples in the room. We'll do some hot seat work, and you'll walk out understanding not just who you are, but one thing you can do with that information. It's an experience and if you're experience led, you'll understand why I say that matters. All the details and registration for the next workshop can be found at macy robison.com/workshop. And if after that workshop or if you just wanna jump to this option and you want personalized one-on-one strategic guidance, you can book an archetype strategy call with me at macy robison.com/call. We spend 60 minutes together going through the map of your specific archetype blend and look at how it applies to your specific business. I create a personalized plan for you to get started and get moving toward that [00:17:00] specific. Advice on your specific business, your specific impact you wanna make in the world. The investment for that is $500. , And if you decide to join my resident thought leadership accelerator where we build out the full system of, for your platform within six months, that $500 investment applies to your enrollment. Your genius is real. The transformation you create really matters. You just might be trying to build your platform using an operating system that wasn't quite designed for you, and the moment you switch to the right system, everything changes. Thank you for being here. Your expertise matters. Your voice matters, and the people who need the transformation that only you create, they're out there waiting. So let's make sure you're building in a way that lets you send a signal that reaches them.