I believe the impact you have is the direct product of the decisions you make. It isn't given to you, it isn't discovered, and nobody awards it, which means the whole thing starts with you deciding, and then deciding again after that.

This show has been called Own Your Impact for a year and a half and I have never once sat down and said what the title actually means. Dolly Parton died this week, and the tributes filling up my feed are what finally made me do it. One of them, from a woman named Krista, listed the Grammys and the CMAs and the hits and then pointed out that at the end of a life like that, nobody talks about any of it. They talk about the kind of person you were. That's the first half of what I mean. The second half is more literal, and it's the one I don't say out loud nearly enough: I also mean actual ownership, building something that pays you for being exactly who you are and still belongs to you years from now. In this episode I use one decision Dolly made in 1974 to show why those two halves hold each other up, and why the second one usually costs something.

IMPACT POINTS FROM THIS EPISODE:

⚡ Impact isn't handed to you. You decide it, and then you keep deciding it. — It doesn't arrive because you got lucky or because somebody important finally noticed you. Every tribute I read this week was really a description of somebody who was recognizably the same person in every decision she made, in the songs, in the books she mailed to children, in the theme park she built in the county she came from. The money and the meaning went the same direction because they came out of the same set of choices.

⚡ Wanting the opportunity and accepting the terms are two different things. — In 1974 Elvis Presley wanted to record "I Will Always Love You," which was the largest amplification available to a person on the planet, and the night before the session his manager said Elvis takes half the publishing on anything he records. Dolly had been building publishing companies since the sixties specifically to hold onto her own songs. She said no, and she cried all night. Eighteen years later Whitney Houston recorded it and it paid Dolly for the rest of her life. A creator named Jamie Rachelle put the distinction better than I could: she wanted the opportunity, she just didn't want the terms.

⚡ A decision that hurts is not a decision you got wrong. — The crying is the part that usually gets edited out of stories like this one, and it's the part I want you to keep. She wasn't crying because she made a mistake. She was crying because she got it right and it still cost her something she badly wanted. Every real decision cuts something off, and the cutting is the only reason there is anything left in your hands afterward.

PEOPLE & RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Dolly Parton
• Krista Demcher's (@kristademcher) tribute post on Instagram
• Jamie Rachelle's (@thisisjustjamie) tribute post on Instagram
• Loving Dolly Was Easy. Understanding Her Was Hard. by Tressie McMillan Cottom for The New York Times
• Austin L. Church and the Freelance Cake community
• You Know Your Archetype. Now What? workshop: macyrobison.com/workshop

CONNECT WITH MACY:

• Take the Thought Leadership Archetype Assessment: Find Your Archetype
• Follow on Instagram: @macyrobison
• Connect on LinkedIn: Macy Robison
• Visit: macyrobison.com

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Your support helps me reach more thought leaders who are ready to make an impact with their ideas. 🎙 Thanks for tuning in to Own Your Impact!

I believe the thing you are built to do is the thing that will feel most exposing to do in public. Not because you are bad at it, but because when it is your strongest signal there is nothing else in the room to stand behind.

My guest this week is Mark Leruste, a storytelling and leadership communication expert, a guest lecturer at INSEAD, the host of The Unconventionalists, and the author of Glow in the Dark. His primary archetype is Resonant Orator and it came back at 94%, where thirty percent is the mark at which I start paying attention at all. Mark is very good at this, and one of the things I tell him on this call is that the things he writes sound like his speaking voice, which is much harder than he makes it look. He is also generous with me here in a way I do not take for granted, because what we end up talking about is how exposing it is to do the one thing you are actually built for.

IMPACT POINTS FROM THIS EPISODE:

⚡ You can practice being exposed before it counts. — For his birthday, Mark's wife gave him a two-day folk singing retreat, and he was terrified. Years before that she gave him a six-week stand-up comedy course, which he found dreadful right up until a scruffy comedy night above a brasserie, where a desk lamp on a rope served as the stage light and all the second-half acts dropped out. He offered to fill the time with no material at all. He bombed, and he got exactly what he needed from it: "I'm just as comfortable being in front of this random crowd of people that I am in front of a crowd of founders, CEOs, speakers. I just need material." Not long after, he got up at the real show and loved it.

⚡ Whatever you hold onto on stage may be protecting you from the room. — Mark's singing teacher made him sing without his guitar, and told him that people who play and sing often use the guitar as a shield from the audience. When I turn that back to his speaking, he moves it straight onto the stage: the guitar becomes the slides, or the words you wrote down, or the structure, or the framework. It is also why he loves Q&A. There is nothing prepared to stand behind, so he has to be raw and in the moment, and in his words, he can dance in it.

⚡ Being excellent and being overlooked can both be true at once. — Mark did not get shortlisted for a speaker award, and he wrote about it publicly. His wife and close friends told him not to, because someone thinking of booking him might see it. He published anyway, because keeping it quiet felt "incredibly out of integrity" with himself and with the people he is trying to serve. He can be an exceptional speaker, and he can also not have been nominated, and both of those can sit next to each other. It is the same thing he tells the people he coaches: the story you are most afraid to share is the story your audience most needs to hear.

PEOPLE & RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Mark Leruste (markleruste.com)
• Mark Leruste on LinkedIn
• Glow In The Dark: How Sharing Your Personal Story Can Transform Your Business and Change Your Life by Mark Leruste
• Mark's TEDx talk

CONNECT WITH MACY:

• Take the Thought Leadership Archetype Assessment: Find Your Archetype
• Attend the workshop: You Know Your Archetype - Now What?
• Follow on Instagram: @macyrobison
• Connect on LinkedIn: Macy Robison
• Visit: macyrobison.com

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Your support helps me reach more thought leaders who are ready to make an impact with their ideas. 🎙 Thanks for tuning in to Own Your Impact!