Happy 2021!
Is your January starting out just as you’d hoped? Are all of your plans lining up neatly and perfectly in this magical new year? Are you a new, refreshed, hyper-productive person this week? Are you somehow impervious to the news, and humming along just as you’d planned?
Hmm.
Me, neither.
Even before this week’s events, this new year season feels very different than usual to me, and if it does to you too, there’s good reason for that. All of the challenges and uncertainty of 2020 are still very present, looming over us.
In this first work week of the new year, I found myself pushing through a fog by going back to the basics. I gave myself and my clients the same gentle pep talk: let’s refocus, and find the overlap again.
If you’re struggling to find your words and your way, here’s how I’m doing it.
Refocus
When my thought leadership clients’ priorities and messages start to feel blurry, I come back to 4 key buckets: goals, audience, ideas, and process.
✳Goals
What are you trying to accomplish this year? Are you trying to grow your existing business? Are you selling something new? Are you trying to convince people of something? Are you trying to reach new people? Are you carving a path toward more speaking, writing a book, or building a deeper relationship with a key group of people? Keep your core goal front and center.
👥Audience
Who are you talking to? Who needs to hear your message? And what’s on their minds? A lot of us default to talking to people who are just like we are — people who are facing similar challenges and working toward similar goals. But your goals probably rely on an audience that’s different than you. Is your most important audience: Your current clients? Your potential buyers? Your peers? Younger people who you’re mentoring? Your coworkers or employees? Your boss? Get clear about this audience, and the rest will become more obvious.
💡Ideas
What are the key ideas you want to develop or own? In your wildest dreams, if you were introduced as someone who “knows a lot about _____,” how would you fill in the blank? What do you want people to know? What’s missing in the current conversation that you want to add? (If you’re not clear on your key ideas yet, you might want to develop your voice while acting as a curator for the best ideas in your space.)
🗓Process
Once you know your goals, who you’re talking to, and what you want to talk about, how will you accomplish that? How can you set up a process to regularly talk to that audience about those ideas in order to meet your long-term goals? What habits and systems do you need to build? How can you successfully fit this work into your schedule? What are the must-do habits you need to do every week? (And what’s all the other stuff that you can cut out?)
If these questions feel overwhelming, take one at a time. And, by the way, I spend weeks exploring these questions for clients as part of my thought leadership strategy sessions. They’re complicated questions, but answering them will guide you forward. And once you’ve answered them, it’s easier to revisit the questions every few months and tweak your answers based on what has changed.
Find the Overlap
My other mantra right now is “find the overlap,” a concept I shared last year. I need to print a poster that says “FIND THE OVERLAP” and hang it on my office wall — that’s how important it has become to me.
The concept is simple:
➡️What does your audience need to know?
➡️What are you uniquely positioned to give them?
(And what’s the overlap between those two things?)
The overlap is your sweet spot. It’s your unique expertise, packaged for the people who need it. Anything that doesn’t fit into the overlap is not a priority.
So, let’s say you’re an expert in project management for creative work. Your audience is craving frameworks to run more successful creative projects. That’s your overlap. If you also know a little about pricing, but your audience doesn’t need help with that — or there are other people who are much more equipped to talk about pricing — then ignore it!
Lately, I’m using “find the overlap” to think about managing energy. When most people think about sharing their ideas online, they get overwhelmed by all of the platforms. I hear questions like: “Do I need to be sharing on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (and Stories, and what is Reels??), Pinterest, Medium, my blog, maybe I need to start a podcast…?”
No way. Unless you’re someone who gets energy from sharing in All of the Places, all of those platforms are just a distraction.
Instead, find the overlap.
➡️Where does your audience get information?
➡️Where do you like to spend time?
If you hate LinkedIn and find it soul-sucking, then don’t worry about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is not in your overlap.
I hope this helps you reset and calmly plan your thought leadership for the year.
If you need help, I’d love to talk.
I’m rooting for you!
