Grab your pre-work worksheet and spend some time going through and answering the questions.

You can answer all of them... Or just some...

You can do it in one sitting... Or come back to it over time...

This is the first of our "Genius Extractor" exercises to get the creative juices flowing! 

Before You Explore

The first stage of our process is exploration — finding sources and consuming content around topics that interest you.

But before you can explore, you must decide in what direction to strike out.

Your explorations of the topics you might choose for your thought leadership work could take you on a long and winding path, but they have to start somewhere.

This pre-work is about identifying possible starting places.

A quick note:

For our purposes, I define a thought leader as someone producing content (articles, blog posts, speeches, podcasts, videos, books, comics, etc.) with the intention of influencing the conversation in their industry.

In my opinion, the size of your audience or your impact are less important at this stage than your intention to change the conversation in some way.

So, the first question is: Do you want to influence the conversation in your industry?

Assuming the answer is yes (!), let's start brainstorming topics you might want to create content around!

Even if you've already identified one or more topics you want to explore, I encourage you to work through this list — you never know what other genius ideas you might discover in the process!

1. List 10 things “wrong” in your industry right now.
2. List 10 unpopular opinions you have about your industry or the way you work.
3. Think about the existing thought leaders and influencers in your space; where do you disagree with them?
4. When everyone in your space zigs, where do you zag?
5. Do you think other people (your audience or your colleagues) would benefit from your viewpoint, opinions, processes, methods or techniques?

But what if you aren’t sure exactly what you want to say or how you want to shift the conversation?

These questions and exercises will help open up the possibilities for you and inspire some directions you might take in your explorations.

1. What are you intensely interested in? (Go beyond business topics.)
2. What could you stay up into the wee hours of the morning talking about with like-minded people — without ever running out of things to say?
3. What makes you feel more useful?
4. Alive?
5. Strong?
6. What do you want to be known for?
7. What's been on your to read / to watch / to listen to list for too long?
8. What do people thank you for most often (in or out of business)?
9. What would people pay you $1,000 an hour to teach or talk about?
10. What are you repeatedly explaining or demonstrating to your clients? What do they want more of from you? What is your secret sauce that other people don't know?
11. What do you stand for? What are your values (in business and in life)?
12. What do you know to be true beyond any shadow of a doubt?
13. What question has had the biggest impact on your life?
14. When do you feel most powerful, passionate, free, useful, excited, or inspired?
15. How would you like to be seen, recognized, acknowledged, awarded, or praised?
16. BONUS: What have you ALREADY inspired, launched, earned, written, produced, raised, motivated, sold, purchased, given, made, won, organized, transformed or discovered?

17. When you think of the intellectual property you want to create:

• Who do you most want to share it with?
• How does it make you feel?
• What will you be able to be or do once you've created it?

18. Who is already talking about (or talking around) the topics you want to explore?

Go back through your answers above and make a list of the topics you might want to explore. Shoot for 10-12 topic ideas. (These can be questions to which you do not yet have the answers.)

For each topic, make a note if you know what form you might want your content to take initially (ie: an article, a series of articles, a book, a methodology, a webinar or speech, a course). It’s perfectly OK if you don’t know yet.

What is your goal for this program? Set your goal or intention.

In six months, at the conclusion of this experience, what will you be immensely grateful for?

Want still more??

For each of your topics, start looking for and identifying interesting sources of information that you can start to consume around that topic.

Downloads

• Pre-Work "Genius Extractor" Prompts

Lesson Activity

• Read or download your pre-work "Genius Extractor" prompts and spend some time with them.

SSS SPECIAL: Grab my slides from the presentation here.