Do Your Ideas Pass the Permanent Ink Test?
I've hosted something like 800 interviews in my career, spanning a whole heck of a lot of jobs and projects: internships in PR and many more as a sportswriter, personal blog posts written to 12 people, company posts reaching millions, panels I've emceed on stages, webinars and web series and docuseries and of course, podcasts. Lots and lots of podcasts.
Throughout all of that, I've learned there are two types of questions: opening questions and follow-ups. It's easy to assume the right opening questions make or break an interview, but the gripping flow an audience feels, the powerful insights they get, and the memorable stories that take shape during an interview mostly emerge thanks to your follow-ups. I want to be clear: I believe that's how great interviews really unfold.
But sometimes, you happen upon an opening question so good, so capable of sparking deeper thought, it's worth keeping in your back pocket.
Today, I'm here to share one of mine with you. I think it can serve you in two ways: when you interview others to create any experience or content and when you're interrogating your own thinking to strengthen it and show up better publicly as a result. (Happily, this question is quite a powerful personal exercise to try. It will help you unlock precisely what you've been trying to say all along. In fact, I often start client engagements with this question when I can tell people have been trying to say something meaningful publicly for awhile but haven't quite found "it.")
The question is simply this:
What one thing would you write in permanent ink on your audience's desks?
Let me explain why I love this question, then share what I would personally write on your desk if given the chance.
I love this question because it forces you to think about the one thing you most want people to know. But it's not just any one thing. It's the initial window into your entire worldview. That's when this question works. It prompts you to think hard about what others need to first hear from you to understand the rest of your thinking, as well as something they need to constantly remember, since it'll be on their desk forever.
That's hard to figure out, but it's transformative to your thinking.
When you're early in the process of developing your premise and surrounding IP, the inky scribble is likely not "it" just yet. But it's what you are capable of articulating right now, which then gives you a crucial starting point—and for my clients, gives me a useful thread to start pulling.
If you follow my work, you might guess what I'd write in permanent ink on the desk of my audience: "Resonance over reach."
But no, that's not it.
If you've seen my website, maybe you'd think I'd write the various phrases appearing near the top: "Don't market more. Matter more." Or if you've seen me speak, maybe you'd assume I'd write, "Don't be the best. Be their favorite."
These are obviously different than me stating my premise of Resonance over Reach. That's because a premise is a lens through which you see everything. It's a defensible assertion you make, which informs the rest of the work. Yes, you'll probably state your premise out loud in various places, but it's not necessarily the best messaging to use. Your messaging needs to instantly align with others and help them start a journey towards mutual understanding. They see it how you see it, whatever your "it" might be. I position my premise of resonance over reach on my website by saying, "Don't market more. Matter more." That's right at the top.
But again, nope, I wouldn't write that message on your desk in permanent ink. Instead, I'd be thinking about that thing which can pull double-duty for you: it can be useful for you to hear first before the rest of my work (that is, the message sits upstream from everything I teach you) AND it's a useful reminder to see again and again (it's evergreen).
What I'd write wouldn't be a phrase at all. It would be a chart. It's not a chart I use in my speeches or my client engagements, but it does indeed sit upstream from everything I want to help you achieve, while serving as a crucial reminder we all need from time to time as we do this work.
To understand the chart, first understand my audience as I see you. (By the way, feel free to reply to correct me, add to this, or tell me I nailed it!)
You want to make things that matter to your career and your community. You are disillusioned by the status quo around you and feel the urge to raise your hand and lead through your words. You want to tell stronger stories and stand out online, perhaps even build an audience, earn trust, and become more known. But you want to do that without resorting to the grimy tactics you see perpetuated across social media and elsewhere in the business world. You like the benefits of what thought leadership brings to people (maybe what you see me to be), but even that word brings some ick-factor.
You don't just want to arbitrage an opportunity or trend. You want to serve others deeply and well, with integrity and creativity at the core, and to you, there's little difference between "creating content because it's fun, fulfilling, and enjoyable" and "creating content because it's good for business."
In short, you are a leader, and you plan to lead through creativity and storytelling.
The problem is, while you bring good intentions to the work and intend on differentiating and resonating with what you create, when you meet friction (to start, or after you've started), it's easy to start questioning things, to resort to approaches you don't necessarily love, to follow gurus searching for secrets, or to stop entirely. You dilute what you create and no longer ship work that feels entirely like you, or if you're trying to do so, it's not feeling quite like you've nailed it. You know, hovering below the surface, is what you've been trying to say all along. This is emotional labor, and there's plenty of fear, frustration, and also fulfillment tied into what you're doing.
And finally, you're trying to reconcile all of (waves hands wildly) that with the need to deliver results for your business.
I love helping people like you, but I need to draw something in permanent ink on your desk. This chart helps us keep doing this hard, emotional work as leaders. Because as a leader, we give others what they need, even before they want it. As storytellers, we show others why they would. And both of these things, both of these roles we play, do not bring us much certainty. There are no assurances what we do, the way we plan to do it, will work.
I believe so many people I'm trying to help end up diminishing their power NOT because of market forces or other external factors but because of their own internal head trash and maker monsters. It's a matter of feeling safe doing work that is uncertain. Somehow. At the same time.
I like to say that any storyteller faces a paradox every time they show up: to connect deeper externally, you have to turn deeper internally. We have to face our true thoughts and feelings, then share them freely. That can be scary. Trying new things is scary. Creative work is scary. Even if we don't feel "scared," we often wish we had greater certainty, so we might drift towards the conventional approaches because that's "what works."
But no matter what you're doing—writing, public speaking, podcasting, pitching yourself, organizing a community, jumping out of an airplane—there are only two ways to feel safe: don't do it at all → or do it a ton.
Some of us recognize this. We start out with the right intentions and plenty of creative energy. But as we meet resistance or silence, we back track or dilute our work, or else we stop entirely. If we can't, because results are on the line, then maybe we turn towards the false gurus and their oversimplified systems, or perhaps we just rely on "how we've always done things around here." But I'm begging you to please get in touch with the person you were when you started. You had something meaningful inside you, like a fire in your chest. It felt urgent to get it out and to create this blaze of creativity around you.
Is that what the work feels like now? Maybe not. But the issue is almost never that you did something and it didn't work. The issue is you didn't do it enough.
I get some resistance to that idea from some clients who hire me to develop their premise, IP, and signature speeches, most notably when I tell them they need to rehearse their talk a TON, at full volume, standing up in their offices.
"I don't want to sound rehearsed," they'll sometimes say.
"Great, I don't want that for you either," I'll reply. "But if you sound rehearsed, it's because you haven't rehearsed enough."
Sure, you can feel natural by not practicing. You'll also feel sloppy, uncertain, and less effective and powerful. You'll be less able to react and customize things to the moment or take risks that delight others, because you'll either be winging it entirely or be so focused on getting your content and performance "correct," that you can't focus on being awesome at delivering it. OR you can practice a lot and ensure your bits, stories, and maybe the entire speech is SO internalized, it's like a supersuit tailored perfectly to you. You can walk up on stage and just ... be ... as well as be awesome. You're safe if you never rehearse, clinging to the amateurish idea that "well, I don't want to sound rehearsed," or you can be a professional and rehearse often, which means you'll also feel natural. You'll also be more effective.
Want to feel fluent, masterful, in control, powerful, even safe doing anything creative? Don't do it at all → or do it a ton.
The choice is yours.
A lot of people won't do this. They'll try it a little, then conclude it won't work or the practice isn't paying off. But that's because the practice doesn't pay off until here:
It can be hard to get there, so what we need to do is focus on the things we can control before we start to feel safe again. Initially, you don't have a brilliance problem or even a results problem. You have a momentum problem. So solve the problem you have. What can you control that brings you greater momentum? It's not "make a thing so awesome, people adore it and share it and buy because of it, right now."
Nope. What we control are (A) whether or not we pay attention to and pursue our curiosity, (B) whether or not we create consistently, and (C) whether not we approach our work with confidence, so we can stop holding back from what we're trying to say and how we're trying to say it.
In my experience, these three things combine to help you feel momentum.
Your practice starts to pay off. You're on the path. Then, think about how do you run and jump do awesome air-kicks.
As Ira Glass has said, beginners face a gap between what they imagine creating and what they're actually able to create. The only way through the gap is to create a body of work. Pursue your curiosity. Create consistently. Do it confidently, because most will dilute their work or stop.
The thing is, because we are leaders and storytellers, we don't just face that gap at the beginning. We face it all the time. There's always some new gap in what we're trying to create and achieve. We are always pushing forward, outside our comfort zone, beyond the conventional wisdom of an industry or niche, bringing those we lead along with us. That's your job and mine. That's what actual thought leadership is supposed to do.
That's why I'd draw this chart on your desk in permanent ink. Because we are permanently there. Yes, it is the most upstream piece of anything I want to teach you, but it is also the most evergreen. It's the most reliable, necessary reminder to all of us who want to make things that matter.
The job isn't to "be creative." The job is to create. Nothing we want happens unless we're able to do that first.
Pursue curiosity.
Create consistently.
Do it confidently, your way.
Remember this visual. Heck, draw it in permanent ink. This is the work, for all of us, always. Every instance of head trash, every maker monster clutching our hearts, every new project we want to craft or moment we plan to meet in our service to others benefits from this reminder.
That's how I'd answer the permanent ink question.
What about you?