In 2023 I co-authored a best selling book, Heart Centered Leadership.
What I really want to do is write my own book.
Actually, I have two books in mind.
Both books would be personal development books, except I’d like them to be different.
I want it to be as effective as Atomic Habits (over 25 million copies sold) and as engaging as Harry Potter (over 120 million copies sold).
Maybe something akin to The Alchemist.
For one book, I’d like to tell my story.
For the second, I’d like to teach storytelling from a new lens.
I want both of these books to be part of my legacy.
Something that can change millions of people’s of lives all on their own long past my final days on this earth.
The legacy I want to leave behind are principles for pursuing a life you love. I want to empower everyone to trust themselves to take bold action in their own unique way.
One of the greatest ways I’ve been empowered to do that for myself is by being honest about what I want, owning what I want and unapologetically pursuing it. There are infinite ways to live a happy life, none of them are better than the other, it’s simply uncovering and unleashing what works for you.
The difficult part of this process is there is no blueprint for doing it your way, which means you are operating in the unknown and that’s scary. So we inherently seek safety by thinking, “I’ll do what Hormozi is doing,” yet, what makes Alex Hormozi great is that he’s been trusting himself to do it his way.
This is what I’m working on now with my clients.
It’s in this specific lens of social media that I am building my true life’s legacy which is to say, this isn’t really about content creation.
Content creation is one vehicle.
Ultimately, this is about my clients (and myself) pursuing a life of zero regrets.
Laying on your death bed knowing you fucking sent it. No living for others. No regrets.
Hmm… maybe that’s the subtitle of the book.
In any case, that’s what today’s post is about.
How I am using content creation to build my legacy.
I hope this offers you a new lens in which to see your content creation and you see why it’s not just worth prioritizing, but it’s vital.
Stacking Bricks
You are subscribed to this newsletter because you already have a strong sense of what change you want to create in the world. Your legacy.
What vehicle allows you to execute your legacy?
Is it a book? Many books?
Is it creating reform like Martin Luther King Jr civil rights movement?
Is it a framework like Byron Katie’s 4 questions?
Is it a TV show like Mr Rogers?
Is it a product like Steve Jobs?
Is it a top TED Talk like Brene Brown?
Maybe it’s even your brand on social media.
Are these examples beginning to make this work sound a lot bigger than you ever imagined?
Can you actually imagine being someone written about in the history books like MLK or Maya Angelou?
Some days I truly believe I will be the 0.000001%* who actually will immortalized in the history books of time (*don’t check my math). Like when I was a kid and, even though the percentage of becoming a professional athlete is highly unlikely, I knew I could do it.
Of course, I didn’t. But when I was a kid, I had the conviction.
As an adult, other days having thatt conviction is difficult.
What I do know that is that Legacy’s aren’t built over night.
They are built brick by brick.
Here are the bricks I’m laying so that when it comes time to write my books, there is zero doubt in my mind, they will be a masterful work of art that will change the world.
1. 100% Integrity
First of all, I am taking action for me, first.
How often do we as coaches and creators talk about what we did last year or worse 9 years ago (anyone ever hear about my bike trip in 2016. I feel like the 25 year old still rocking his letterman jacket 😆)?
Are we truly challenging ourselves to live a fully embodied life? The one we ask our clients to embody?
You may say yes, but let me ask you…
What if I asked you to post all the dirty details about the most recent thing you’ve struggled with?
Would you?
Does that sound vulnerable and scary?
What if I put a gun to your head and said, “I’ll give you until the end of the week. Then you HAVE to share the full truth about your current challenge and what you’ve been doing to manage it.”
What would the next week look like?
How much more intentional would you be about your approach to your challenge?
If you were a business coach and wanted to grow your community to 200 members by the end of the year but were only at 25 by April…. what would you do?
Would you keep doom scrolling?
Would you allow your IG screen time to be 2 hours/day?
Would you keep telling yourself you’ll follow up with your leads next week?
Would you keep staying up until midnight watching 4 episodes of Mad Men even though you know late night screen time is ruining your sleep and you keep waking up tired in the morning which makes it difficult to get your newsletter done on time which means you feel like you have to sacrifice getting all your content done even though you committed to getting 4 posts out this week and now you’re stressed out and feeling overworked and anxious even though your two words this year were fun and flow and you just don’t feel like you’re setting yourself up to fully embody those two words?
Would you want your clients to know about all that?
How would you support your client if they were doing this?
Why not support yourself the same way?
Not because it would make great content, but because if you behaved with deeper integrity you would reach your goals even faster.
Stack those bricks for you!
And yeah… all of that does make for great content.
So let’s talk about it that.
2. Mastering Communication
Now that you are in deeper integrity, living fully for yourself and in love with life, it’s time to share your stories, progress, concepts and ideas with the world.
Let’s do it now while it’s not perfect because nobody is going to remember today’s post one year from now.
Do you even remember your post from a year ago? Seriously… without looking, tell me exactly what you said.
You can’t.
And if you can’t, I promise you, nobody else can.
The only way to make the perfect omelette is to make 10,000 shitty ones.
The perfect omelette is your legacy and the 10,000 shitty omelette’s are your content. Each post is another rep.
I didn’t just wake up one day with the StoryGrowth Framework?
aka the anti-niche guide
aka the Brand Framework
Look at all these iterations throughout the years!
October 4, 2022
My first attempt at sharing my concept of being your multi-passionate self.
Here’s a screen shot from later in that reel. The concept is messy.
5 moths later I launched the first program, “Unleash Your Zone of Genius”
Now I had more concepts of the 5 types of content to create.
6 months later I was launching again and repost my original video from October 4, 2022 but with a new intro and hook. This time I used the caption to expand on the 5 types of content and this 70:30 concept I was working on. This was “The Brand Framework”
More recently you’ve heard me talk about the anti-niche. It’s the same concept with some new iterations and ways for people to uncover their core identities.
Here’s a post from October 24, 2024.
A few weeks ago, I launched the 3rd cohort of the StoryGrowth Framework.
Which is the same thing as “Unleash Your Zone of Genius” and “The Brand Framework” and the Anti-Niche concept.
Here’s a post form my stories a few weeks ago. As you have just seen, it has taken me over 2 years of really, truly deeply understanding this concept and implementing it for myself.
Jerry Seinfeld says, “I don’t judge my jokes, the audience does.”
Even if Seinfeld LOVES a joke and thinks it’s incredible, if he performs it at 10 shows and nobody laughs, it’s not a good joke. Or maybe it just needs to be reworked.
It’s not that he’s not funny, he simply isn’t communicating his ideas effectively.
That’s all content and the “vanity metrics” are. Information and feedback.
It’s probably my favorite part of posting on social media.
It’s not the algorithm.
Instagram doesn’t hate you.
It also doesn’t necessarily mean your ideas suck.
You simply haven’t uncovered an effective way to communicate them.
Or maybe your ideas do suck.
You get to say, “I’m so happy I’m getting this feedback! I look forward to thinking about this concept more clearly.”
This is also why simply having an idea in your head on writing it in your journal isn’t enough.
You don’t really know if this idea resonates.
We don’t quote Einstein because he was a genius.
We quote Einstein because he could communicate complex ideas simply and they resonated.
Just as Edison said. “I haven’t failed. I just found 1,000 ways to not make a lightbulb.”
The lightbulb is [one of] Edison’s legacies. Nobody remembers or even knows about the other 1,000 not-lightbulbs.
When in doubt, remember concept 1. This is for you. Each post is an opportunity for you to become the legacy. It’s a brick you stack to fulfill your desire of leaving a legacy.
If you knew it only took 1,000 posts to nail your legacy that would change millions of lives and live forever in time, how fast would you make 1,000 posts?
Building in public is the fastest way I’ve learned to master my communication so I can get feedback on my ideas, itterate and improve, so that when it’s time to write my books, it will be seemless.
Stacking bricks.
Now that you are using your content to improve your communication which will lead to your ultimate legacy, you are becoming the legacy now.
3. Becoming
Be → Do → Have
You may be familiar with this concept.
However, this idea is an over simplification of life.
it states that most people live life as ‘Have → Do → Be’
For example, once I have a a strong health body, then I will work out more, then I will be confident.
It’s pretty clear to see how ‘Have → Do → Be’ doesn’t really make sense in this example.
The ‘Be → Do → Have’ model would state you must become a confident person first, then you go to the gym consistently, then you have a strong body.
To me, that can be just as difficult and unobtainable.
How do you become confident enough to get yourself to gym in the first place?
Wouldn’t we all agree that if you committed to going to the gym ONE time that you would prove to yourself that you can do it.
Here’s how I see it.
You are at the bottom. Being here requires you to know exactly where you are to be honest about your current situation.
Your current situation is a direct reflection of who you are.
You behaviors, habits, actions and thoughts.
You know that your desired situation requires you to do things you are not currently doing.
Since you’re not doing those things, it’s fair to say you are not that person.
Pretending you are and affirmation-ing your way there doesn’t work because you don’t believe it.
It’s definitely easier to do affirmations because it’s the safe and easy place to be.
The hard thing is to take the bold action because when you actually do… well… that’s the moment when you will, without a doubt, come face to face with your deepest fears.
You will fail.
You will get rejected.
People will call you a stupid idiot.
Your inherent worthiness will be questioned.
People will let you know, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
And you may just end up alone… at least for a little… until you find new friends who hold new standards and values. The one’s you’ve always wanted for yourself.
The ONLY WAY to become that confident bold person who has all the things you dream of is to take the bold action and then to deal with the consequences.
That’s you get to do the real work. The work of becoming.
When you get rejected, who do you become?
How do you handle the rejection?
What actions do you take next?
Do you become the same person who has everything you have now?
Or do you become someone different?
Kailey Bruyere referred to this on the StoryGrowth podcast as your Trust Bank.
Every action you take is another deposit into your trust bank. Fill that bitch up because with every action comes dealing with the consequences. Every time you successfully deal with difficult consequences, you take another step closer to becoming the legacy.
So… post your shitty content.
Add one coin to the trust bank today.
Seinfeld doesn’t wait to have a perfect joke written before telling it to an audinece. He tells it. When the audience doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t quit. He sits down with his notepad and reworks the joke and tries again.
That’s what the man who creates the most successful TV show in history does.
Do → Be → Do → Be → Do…
Building a legacy means doing things different.
Doing things different means you’re going to challenge people’s model of the world which is wrapped up neatly with their identity. When you challenge their identity they will get upset and some of them are going to let you know.
I’m talking about the haters.
The trolls.
Are you afraid of that?
Can you handle that?
Lets find out.
Post your truth and get your first hater.
Let that hater ruin your week.
Do the work.
Come back and post your truth again.
Get another hater.
That hater only ruins your day.
Do the work.
Come back and post again.
On and on until a few haters don’t really bother you much.
One day you get 50 haters on your post and watch as you remain completely relaxed.
You see, now you are becoming the legacy.
You have increased your capacity to handle the amount of resistance that’s required to create world-wide change.
It’s not all doom and gloom either.
Your capacity to relax is directly correlated to your capacity to receive.
Which means this process is increasing your capacity to receive die-hard fans.
To receive Love.
Don’t you see, building in public and stacking these bricks are for you to become exactly who you want to be.
4. Building Your Audience
Your Legacy won’t magically appear on your lap, and even if it did, who would care?
James Clear began writing his blog in 2012 and amassed over 400,000 subscribers.
Then in 2018 he published Atomic Habits which has sold over 25 million copies.
He didn’t wait to perfect his legacy before creating it. Every blog was a rep toward building what would eventually become Atomic Habits.
The best part, with every blog post he was building his audience.
Who do you think were the first in line to buy his book?
Let’s pretend James could have written Atomic Habits without ever posting content, who would have read it and spread the word that allowed him to sell over 25 million copies?
As you post content in pursuit of deepening your understanding of your legacy you are building your true fans so that when you publish your book, step on the TED Stage, release your program, you already have been ready to endorse the book, fill the room or sign up.
The strategy of sharing a concept online, seeing how it performs and making it better is exactly what will help you amass a larger following.
It’s the repetition of trying out concepts that build your audience, not the perfection of them.
As you stack these bricks you build top of mind awareness.
When your friend tells you, “I’d love to create truly authentic content but I hate the idea of niching down.”
If I’m doing my job well, you would immediately say, “Oh you should follow Matt Allyn!”
That is top of mind awareness, which is not built through waiting for perfection.
Ready for the meta moment.
As my new messaging around ‘building your legacy’ becomes a more frequent topic in my content, the goal is that you will begin to associate me with that language. Building your Legacy.
Guess what?
This is my first attempt at using “Legacy” language, but if you’ve been here a while, this is not the first time I’ve spoken about “content being the number 1 personal growth tool.”
I’m so happy I have been talking about that because it’s making this Legacy concept super simple to articulate today.
Maybe the title of the book is “Building a Legacy”
Who knows… but we’re getting closer with every post and as I share my journey about leaving a legacy with you, we are deepening our relationship together and hopefully, I am getting you excited about this concept and my future book.
I hope you are equally as excited to build your legacy as you are to watch me build mine.
If so, who’s gonna be the first people to buy that book when it’s published?
Probably you.
Stacking bricks.
Do I like the walls I’ve built?
The goal here isn’t really to HAVE anything.
As you have no doubt experienced in life, you get something you wanted and you only want more of it or something different. It’s the age old human condition.
That being said, having things is also fun and I don’t want to shame you (or myself) for having desires and enjoying the fruits of life.
Finally, having things is also a very clear tangible indicator of our current truths (as mentioned above) and you’re going to be getting shit all along your journey of doing and being and doing and being.
The question you get to ask yourself is, “Do I like what I’m getting and is what I’m getting helping me leave a legacy I’m excited to leave?”
If it is, great! Stack another brick.
If not, great! Stack a different brick.
Do → Be → Do → Be → Do
That it.
Live life in integrity for you first.
Share those stories, lessons and concepts online.
Become the Legacy.
Iterate and improve until one day it’s time.
Leave your Legacy.
I hope you enjoyed this.
Matt
PS – You one year from now when you stop worrying about being perfect.
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