NORTH: A System Big Thinkers Follow to Find Clarity and Build a Platform of Impact
The difference between experts with scattered ideas and voices with passionate fans isn't talent—it's clarity. More specifically, it's the system of clarity they use. They don't act like experts. They act like explorers.
I'm thinking of those authors, speakers, and business leaders who build entire platforms around one powerful idea. They use a process I call NORTH: Notice, Organize, Refine, Translate, Harvest.
To understand this process and start to use it, let's first consider what happened to me as a kid when I heard any number of common phrases from adults, like these:
"Six the one, half dozen the other."
"She cut off her nose to spite her face."
"I can't see the forest for the trees."
I remember hearing phrases like that and having three reactions:
I'd see something right away in my mind: six eggs (because "dozen"), a big nose just sitting there like a rubber prop, and a person deep in a forest, squinting through the trees to try and see out.
I'd then slowly sense my understanding forming. I'd move from something I noticed about the phrase to something I understood about its meaning.
But then, although I could sense my understanding of the idea, I could never actually articulate it.
Call those the degrees of understanding. We see something, sense something, say something. (This almost turned into a safety campaign.) For most of us in most things in life, it's enough to stop at the second bullet. We "get it." But we don't force ourselves to articulate it. If we did, we'd discover we don't really get it, nor is what we're saying helping others get it either.
The most inspiring voices don't start by assuming they understand. They start assuming they don't. Then, they launch an investigation to understand what they see, first implicitly, then overtly—by articulating it. Over and over again. Basically, they set up their own "idea refinery," so their ideas appear BIG and POWERFUL and DIFFERENT and RESONANT to us. But that's because their ideas are actually something else: clear.
Once they have that big, powerful, different, resonant, CLEAR idea, these thinkers and entrepreneurs then build an entire platform through and around that one premise: books, newsletters, podcasts, social content, free assessments, paid offerings, and even design elements and other aspects of their brands—it all feels like one coherent and memorable platform.
I call that a platform of impact. When you experience one, you just know it, and you feel the urge to take an action, like subscribe, buy, and share. Or you instantly know, "This isn't for me," which is also great for their business.
Building a platform of impact isn't luck. It's not a lightning strike moment either. It's a craft. Mostly, it's a choice. You see the world as an expert does. You've learned things and you know things and you can do things too—maybe even do them well. But now, I want you to do something else.
Notice things.
That's the first piece of the process of building your platform of impact: NORTH. N is for Notice.
1) Notice
FROM looking for answers TO asking better questions.
I was interviewed for a podcast the other day, and the host said to me, "Jeff...." and I said, "My name is Jay," and they said, "Oh, sorry, you're not that famous." And I said, "That's okay, you should see how much I repel my readers with unnecessary asides. It's no wonder I'm not famous." And then they said, "Jay, what is the ONE skill you wish more entrepreneurs would take seriously?"
And I said, "Sarah" (her name is Christina), "it's simple: be a noticer."
When developing your platform of impact, you're sharing YOUR vision and YOUR perspective. You turn your perspective into your premise for it all. In doing so, everything you share is a means of conveying how YOU see things. But that means you need to ... see things. Most don't. Sounds silly, but it's sadly true.
Most of us have become numb to the world around us. We allow things to wash over us, like a wave of content, most of the day. We have routines and responsibilities too. All of this combines to grind away our sensitivity to things, but the best thinkers and visionary voices are extremely sensitive. That doesn't mean they see a dying flower and start to cry. It means they sense the world around them. They notice stuff others don't. Best of all, they actually take their observations seriously.
Noticers notice...
Things about the audience
Things about their field
Things about other fields
Things about their own thoughts and feelings
Crucially, noticers document everything without judgment. They're gathering threads to pull later. Raw material to refine.
Being a better noticer begins by ensuring you're calibrating your create/consume ratio. If you're always pointing your nose down at your phone, you don't have the gap time to let your subconscious work on interesting problems and connect disparate ideas. Noticers go for walks. They journal in the morning. They daydream. They watch others work. They scan the feed, sure, but not too often, and not to learn so much as observe what's happening and what others seem to be doing or saying. Then they ask simple questions, like why?
Noticers are more curious. They embrace the Ted Lasso-ism: "Be curious, not judgmental." I like to joke that everything is inspiration if you're open to it. Everything can be a story, an idea, or just a question. Even your own frustrations (especially those) are powerful if you make them productive, turning them into questions and content later.
Notice things. Sense your frustration. Sense your curiosity. Document it all. Only evaluate and decide to use or not use it later.
The difference between generic experts and sought-after voices begins with noticing what others miss. Your daily observations give you better raw material to make things that matter.
Next in our acronym NORTH, we have the O:
2) Organize
FROM implicit understanding TO structured knowledge.
Back to those phrases I heard a lot as a kid. After picturing some kind of visual (eggs, nose, trees), I'd shift from the literal to the meaning underneath it all. (Oh, wait, I understand what you might mean by, "Can't see the forest because of the trees.") But I would rarely if ever try to articulate my understanding, and I certainly didn't concern myself with whether I could teach it to others. But that is THE work you and I have chosen to pursue.
We have to move from our own internal, sensed understanding (we "get it") to overt communication (so they do too). In other words, we have to move from noticing things to organizing them. We have to turn our implicit understanding into structure knowledge. The thinkers we admire do something simple to get better at that: they make it an obligation. They force themselves to articulate their ideas, over and over and over again. In other words, they use writing for what it really is. It's not just a means to distribute what you already know. It's an even more powerful tool to improve your own understanding.
In school, we're taught that writing is an assessment tool for others to judge what we know. Do we have the correct answers? Do we know?
But what if you're trying to know? To know something better, to articulate something more clearly and concisely, in a way that connects?
Writing is better for that. The voices who build entire platforms of high-impact work begin simply: they have a writing practice (or video series, or podcast, or however they process information, written or spoken). They force themselves to ship on a deadline, purely to get better at understanding something by moving from a mess of material into structured articulation of their ideas.
In your work, you likely sense your understanding of lots of stuff right now. You know your message and perspective. You know your value and why others should pick you. But do you know how to articulate that? Do you understand them so well, you can tell me succinctly and in ways others adore?
Now let me ask you: do you have a creative practice? Do you ship at least weekly to work things out, making the reward hitting Publish on deadline, or are you only sharing things when you're trying to trigger a business outcome? That's the problem for most professionals. Our content is purely marketing to others, when really, it begins as learning for ourselves.
The creators of powerful platforms don't just share ideas—they shape them through the act of communication. If you want the things you say to be better, you have to say them. A lot. That's what those people who have greater impact do: they write and speak to clarify their own thinking first and foremost. We all want clarity of our ideas, our messages, our stories, but we don't do THE thing that brings us clarity. So we get stuck in our heads. We ought to get it out onto the page and, even better, into the world. Unlike most professionals who only create content as marketing, these thought leaders see writing as their own process of discovery. They're not just experts. They're explorers. That applies beyond noticing things. It applies to creating things too.
Notice things. Sense your frustrations and questions. Then communicate about them. Not so you can showcase what you know, but so you can try to better understand. Move from noticing to structuring, from implicit understanding to organized thinking.
While the Notice phase is about raw clay, the Organize phase is about the initial shaping of it. This is entirely about our own internal understanding of our ideas, even if much of the work unfolds publicly. But eventually, we do need to start focusing on the audience too.
That's the next step.
3) Refine
FROM rough concepts TO resonant message
I need a feedback loop, and that's why I write so much. But we all need a feedback loop. We want to build towards that platform of impact, starting with whatever premise we're exploring, extending into lots of time spent with others.
The thing is, that time spent doesn't only occur once you've got it all figured out. It can't! You won't learn a darn thing nor show up much at all. So you have to get ready to get out there before you've "nailed" your message.
So now the emphasis shifts from your own thoughts being the driver of the feedback loop (Noticing and Organizing) to the audience mattering much more.
In brief, you need to put your ideas in front of others.
These first three steps (Notice, Organize, Refine) can unfold in a period of days, maybe even hours. You don't need to secure a lucrative book advance, then go in a hole to notice, organize, and refine. You can do it all in a single day. What matters most is you hit each step, taking great care to separate the phase when you're making sense of your own ideas for the first time ... and the part where you start caring about results.
Comedians do this better than anyone. Standup comics will notice things, then write them down in their notebooks. But then they need to refine that stuff into proven material. To do that, they switch to caring about the audience. They've taken it as far as they can in their own minds and in their own writing, so they head to comedy clubs and essentially ask, "Is this anything?" They tell the joke, observe the response, then refine the joke. Whereas most of us lack conviction in our ideas, dropping them the moment we DON'T get a response, comedians give it a few stabs. They're convinced of the idea, they just need to find a way to sharpen it so it connects.
In the Refine phase, your goals are simple: pay attention to the audience's response. (BTW, not every response is created equal, so I created a scoring system you can use.) Earlier in NORTH (the N and the O), you were only vaguely concerned with the audience. Mostly, you focused on your own internal need to find clarity (because if you can't find it, they won't feel it). You'd write something purely to get out of your head and into creative flow, which meant that posting to LinkedIn, shipping a newsletter, or shipping an article was entirely focused on hitting Publish. Nothing more. The feedback loop was all in your head, you-to-you. But in the Refine sage, you really do want to pay attention to if and how others respond to your words. You're now at the comedy club trying to turn stuff YOU like into proven material THEY love.
So far, we've Noticed plenty. We've Organized our thinking around some of what we noticed, processing our ideas through the written and/or spoken word (maybe in private, but ideally in public too). Now, we need to get better. Is this anything? Do they hear it the same way? Do they get it too? What doesn't make sense—to me but also to others?
The refinement process transforms good thinking into powerful messaging. It's the difference between being correct and being convincing, between being informative and being influential.
Once you do that, you have a mountain of words and maybe a decent enough premise to begin to build that into an entire platform of impact. That's when you move to the next stage.
4) Translate
FROM expert voice TO powerful platform
Translation is about two essential things:
simplicity: can you make the complicated simple?
packaging: do you offer a cohesive, memorable experience?
If you want your ideas to spread more easily to new people, you'll need both.
Up until this point of NORTH, I don't personally care if my ideas are spreading. I just want to notice things, organize them for my own understanding, and then refine them with people already following me. But if you want your ideas to stick in people's minds, spread to others, and generate results for your business or cause, then you'll need to make them more accessible and memorable. That's what simplicity and packaging are about.
Making complicated ideas simpler makes them more accessible and memorable. So do the design, the naming, the flow and feel of things—the packaging.
I've observed a lot about big thinkers over the years, documenting that into my notebook (N).
A couple days ago, I decided to sketch out some acronyms to organize what I noticed and move from my own implicit understanding to organized thinking (O).
Today, I'm trying to sharpen this idea by sharing it with you and across social media to refine things (R).
But after some iteration and improvements, I'll want this idea to do some WORK for me, if it's validated enough to invest in further. I'll need to turn this into follow-up posts, maybe writing about use cases based on business models or communication archetypes. I'll design a graphic to share it. I'll put it into my slides for my next keynote, perhaps. I'll effectively log this idea mentally (though since I'm obsessive, also in my Notion) as part of my IP. Basically, I'll busy myself with this next stage: Translate. I have to translate this initial explanation across mediums, channels, presentations, and moments.
From a mess of words (you're in them now), to something simpler and better packaged, to compounding value from that one idea.
In short, it's about IP. Translate means you shift from creating content to creating IP.
Your IP (intellectual property) is all the raw material behind your premise that allows you to explore, distribute, own, and monetize it:
Clear messaging tailored to different points in their buyer's journey
Visual frameworks that make abstract concepts concrete
Signature stories and signature talks that translate your thinking into emotional meaning and deeper connection
Distinctive brand elements that make your ideas instantly recognizable
Across mediums and containers, we translate the same thinking and ideas into all necessary parts, bit by bit, to evolve from expert sharing content to leading voice building a whole platform of impact.
Translation turns your expertise into things others can easily grasp, remember, and—most importantly—apply. It's not enough to refine your thinking (the previous step). You have to help others access it, use it, benefit from it, and refer others to it.
The most powerful ideas aren't the most complex—they're the ones others can quickly understand and deeply FEEL. Your ability to translate your thinking into instant clarity and emotional connection is what turns your expertise into higher-impact work. Maybe even a platform full of it.
We're now at the last part of NORTH, which is the part we all crave when we build a business, but now it'll actually happen for us:
5) Harvest
FROM scattered ideas TO cohesive clarity
When you do more than share expertise, when you have (and own) a distinct premise and develop subsequent IP around it, everything snaps into place. Your message feels clear and inspires action. Your content flows easily and connects deeper. Crafting speeches feels easier, like arranging various, validated elements of your IP into a single argument for change (what a speech should be, IMO). Even your sellable offers are pieces of your IP.
Sure, we don't just open our laptops, spread our arms, and get pelted by those those little moneybag emojis. That would be nice, but we still have work to do. But rather than rush around the kitchen and scramble to whip something up, it feels like we calmly dish out what we've already cooked. Service with a smile!
The Harvest stage is about the strategic usage of your IP for marketing and sales benefits.
For instance, by using NORTH across several key ideas this past year, I am ready to roll out an entire comprehensive methodology to help you:
Find and articulate your big idea as a distinct premise for your work
Use your premise to craft IP, so you can own your ideas in their minds (and benefit from them in your marketing)
Turn it all into stronger messaging and more effective speeches
By exploring similar topics for awhile and using NORTH the whole time, I'm thisclose to having a method to transform your business through my ideas. It feels SO exciting, but at the same time, it also feels like a relief. If I want to try and expand my revenue or fix a problem, I can dip into my proven IP to do so. For example, next month, I'm going to roll out a smaller offer than my consulting packages, both to capture revenue from folks who can't afford my larger offer AND to give folks who can afford me an easier first step towards hiring me as a strategist later. It's an audit, and you will assume it's a new thing I invented.
But no, I'm just breaking off the first 8-10% of my methodology to sell it as a standalone thing.
The bloat we all feel with our ideas and the stress we all endure to find clarity in our words and with our offers can be mitigated. I'm trying to help you do it, but I'm also making sure I actually use it.
The harvest is richer when what you plant is better.
Find your true NORTH
This process transforms how you develop and share your ideas with the world. It takes you on a journey, across a few days, months, or even years if you'll let it:
From ideas you sense to ideas they adore.
From scattered expertise to a focused, high-impact platform.
From getting lost in the trees to seeing—and helping others see—the forest.
This is how the voices we admire build their platforms of impact. This is how you can build yours too.
Find your true NORTH, and make your most powerful business asset the very thing that feels most elusive most of the time: clarity.