It's time to free your best ideas and advice from the prison of one on one conversations, and give them freedom to impact people out in the wider world.
Lately I've been talking a lot about "scaling your genius" - the idea of freeing your best ideas and advice from the prison of one on one conversations, and giving them the freedom to impact people out in the wider world instead.
I've been obsessed with this topic because so many of us are are harboring unrecognized brilliance that could help many more people.
And if we're thinking only in terms of our own self interest, this isn't so bad when we're not on the hunt for new opportunities.
But it becomes a BIG problem the second we want to activate our networks or start a new job search.
Scaling your genius simply means taking the expertise you're already sharing and packaging it for consumption by a wider audience.
I continue to have mind-blowing conversations with experts in a variety of fields - corporate executives, consultants, physicians and therapists - people who are making daily impact in the lives of their patients and clients.
The impact of their work already has built-in scale; the more lives they touch, the more lives are changed.
For example, the brilliant therapist whose insight shifts the mindset of her struggling female patient also impacts that patient's family, friends and colleagues.
After one particularly helpful session, the patient takes her newfound perspective into each facet of her life and the impact permeates to each of her relationships and to the outer layers of her personal community.
But what if the brilliant therapist could take that same conversation with her struggling patient and effectively reach 10, 100 or 1000 people in the same amount of time?
What if she could get the same life-changing ideas into the heads and hearts of 1000 women who would then go on to shift their 1000 mindsets and watch their newfound perspectives permeate 1000 communities?
That's scale.
And it may sound impossible, but it has never been easier and more practical to do.
By taking the ideas you already have and packaging them up through your writing, you effectively scale your brilliance so you can reach more people, faster.
An example:
Let's say you teach people how to navigate career transitions through a series of 5 core steps.
You've identified the five steps by observing the recommendations you make most often to clients who are navigating career transition.
You want to book 100 new longterm coaching clients in the next 8 weeks, and know that you need to get in front of about 1,000 prospects in order to meet your target.
How long would it take you to have 1,000 one-hour one-on-one coaching sessions with the people who could most benefit from your expertise?
I went ahead and did the math.
1,000 hours = roughly 42 days straight or
125 eight-hour work days or
25 forty-hour work weeks.
It would take you nearly SIX MONTHS to reach 1,000 people one on one.
In contrast, it would also take you an hour (or one day if you take your time) to write an article detailing the 5 core steps of navigating career transition.
Which exercise sounds like a better use of your time?
Can you afford to spend every working day of the next six months flitting from prospect to prospect sharing your breakthrough insights?
If packaged well, those ideas could spread to that same number of people in much less time with much less effort on your part.