There’s a mission you chose to accept. Maybe you found the mission; maybe the mission found its way to you. Regardless, it’s one that a lot of people passed over . . . or haven’t even thought of yet.

Oh, and: before we get deeper into this email—Publish One Year of Bold Ideas (which is 52 weeks of writing exercises for changemakers and thought leaders) is still available for an amazing, one-time investment 🎉.

Your mission relates to helping specific people have healthier, better, fuller outcomes, right? Whether in their relationships, advocacy they want to do, health, businesses, thought processes, or in their forward motion in a goal—such as: writing a meaningful novel, getting to know themselves and their bodies again after an injury, raising creative kids, etc.

Your mission has you seeking ways to address your best fit community members' inner stories, without using those stories against them.

Your mission means you want your best fit clients to choose healthier paths for themselves, but you don’t want to manipulate or belittle them to get them there. So, none of that:

You’re on board with what I call “cruelty-free” marketing.

You might even be the captain of the club . . . and I thank you for being so. Cruelty-free marketing is something I think should be the standard, not the exception, but that’s an argument for another day.

Today is a conversation about how . . . due to the mission you’ve accepted (of being a changemaker, or being the one with the bold ideas, or being the one determined to set an industry or system on a new course), there are gaps that you’ll want to and need to fill for the people you’re helping.

Gaps you’ll need to fill for the people you’re selling to, or, the people you're asking to invest in a new, more nuanced, healthier approach.

Hint: if you are a part of Publish One Year of Bold Ideas, there’s a lesson (including: a video, captions, and a slide deck) in your Orientation section right now on these 8 gaps . . . and the 3 content angles you can organize them in to, when making perspective-shifting work.

For a mini-lesson on the 8 gaps, keep reading below.

1. Desire

This gap covers all the various things your best fit client or community member wants over the course of their journey to transformation in a specific area.

They might want: new experiences, physical items, statuses, feelings, or even new levels of control/power in their environment.

Sometimes desire is driven by curiosity or the pursuit of self-improvement, but sometimes it’s driven by lack, desperation, or even trauma (which, unfortunately, means it can be exploited).

2. Connection

This gap is about the people your best fit community or clients need to be around, be inspired by, or have as an example on their journey.

Almost every decision we make seems to be at least influenced by other people—we care about being helpful to others, being there for our loved ones, impressing people, building meaningful things for others, understanding our place in society among others, avoiding pain that can be inflicted by others, learning from others, exploring new possibilities for ourselves from what we notice in others, etc.

3. Belief

This gap covers the beliefs (or sometimes: chain of beliefs) that need to happen over time to keep your person moving toward transformation.

These beliefs range from what they believe about themselves and you, to what they believe about others, and the world/society at large. It’s also about what they want to believe and what they’ve been conditioned to believe.

Beliefs are things that can shift—some need a lot of evidence or nurturing to get there, but some just haven’t been accessed or examined in such a long time that almost as soon as they’re met with new ideas/info, they shift.

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These first three gaps (desire, connection, and belief) make up the place that many people who use "influencer content marketing" and "secret holder content marketing" decide to land, play, and stay with their content.

They often wield these gaps/themes in exploitative ways, even though there are healthy marketing expressions of desire, connection, and belief. Below is what is commonly done in the influencer/secret holder space, and I range from feeling neutral (or maybe -1) about the innocent posts to . . . 🙄 being beyond over the misleading posts.

IMO, if your goal is creating a deeply impactful body of work, the content below won't be your norm.

4. Learning/Unlearning

This gap covers both the misinformation or inherited ideas that need to be replaced for healthy progress to be made -and- the new information or ideas that will serve your best fit clients or community members.

Unlearning = realizing what’s hurting them, disconnecting or breaking up with it, and shifting to better answers for them

Learning = new knowledge that excites them and is immediately applicable and/or wildly helpful

Pro tip: Understanding the misinformation they believe and the unlearning they need to do will actually help you find your best fit people online. You’ll know what groups they’re a part of, who they follow, what topics or help they search for, and why things aren’t working for them.

5. Skills

This gap is about the tools, ideas, and abilities your best fit clients need to put into practice (and execute relatively well on) to reach a transformed state.

Building skills that help a person with transformation requires a few things:

• The person needs to know which skills to build (meaning: they have to understand the path they need to take and things they’ll need to get done on that path)
• The person can’t be scared of trying these new things, or, the potential benefit needs to outweigh the fear, embarrassment, or discomfort
• The person needs to be able to execute on these things well (a.k.a skillfully) or know who to hire to help them

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These two gaps (learning/unlearning and skills) make up the land that many people who use "expert content marketing" get stuck in.

Don't get me wrong: these gaps are important—in fact, all 8 gaps are—but getting stuck creating "how to" pieces and tutorials until the end of time, is not the best move for people on a mission that requires thought-shifting work.

The last three gaps are where thought leaders and changemakers operate best . . . and where they create the most distance between their content and other people’s: (6) safety, (7) architecture, and (8) systems thinking.

Again, all 8 gaps are important and must be filled to varying degrees, but these last 3 are the often ignored, and harder, gaps to fill. But they're where you create some of the most meaningful and memorable experiences for people. They're how you write those essays or host those workshops that people are still talking about years later.

6. Safety

This gap covers a few areas:

• How safe your best fit community members, clients, and/or audience is in the spaces you create
• How safe they are as they work toward important objectives and pursue their goals (think through: societal pressure, how safe they are with family/friends, etc.)
• How safe/supported they are as they advocate for themselves or others, share their opinions, make changes, and simply exist in this world

Basically: Do your people have champions in their everyday environment or hecklers/enemies? Can they interact with the world without fear or judgment?

(And yes, there are extremely meaningful ways you can build safety into your articles, workshops, books, social media content, videos, and more.)

7. Architecture

This gap is about how the organization, design, and layout of your information, ideas, and roadmaps either help or hurt your best fit community’s movement toward transformation.

Architecture is about information design and experience design.

Can the design alone help make things make more sense to them? Make things more possible for them?

When done well, it allows people to get the full benefit from your ideas and have the best (learning/user) experience.

8. Systems Thinking

This gap covers how deeply your best fit clients understand the patterns, bigger picture, and systems they’re a part of—systems that are affecting their progress toward transformation.

Systems thinking is about not just troubleshooting, putting out fires, or rushing at “problems” or opportunities, and instead observing the wider system they’re a part of.

When done well you will have a more holistic approach to helping people, observing the relationships between elements, recognizing patterns in your industry, and discovering the underlying structural problems that prevent change or the hidden opportunities for progress.

So, those are the 8 gaps to transformation that your people need filled, to varying degrees. No two people will fill in these marketing gaps the exact same way.

Regardless, once the gaps are filled in at the right ratios/quantities for your people, you've built a bridge that brings them to the sales/investment moment with you.

Pro tip: After the sales moment, you'll move to fulfilling your promise (of service, or curriculum) and the person will transition to implementing it. And guess what? You'll fill the exact same eight gaps in your course or service, just in different ways and to new degrees.

But I digress.

The reality of these gaps is:

• The way your content, publishing, and marketing will stand out the most is by filling the often ignored gaps and harder gaps to fill (#6, 7, and 8—safety, architecture, and systems thinking).
• You’ll also create memorable, meaningful experiences by filling the “easy” gaps in generous, cruelty-free ways (#1, 2, and 3—desire, connection, and belief).
• And, you'll create a well-rounded experience & intro to the way you help people solve problems by filling in the more obvious gaps in smart ways based on where your people are at in their journey (#4 and 5—learning/unlearning and skills).

But . . . how do you do that? Create content for the belief gap on Sundays, skills on Mondays, safety and unlearning on Tuesdays, and so on?

You could. And I believe you'd be creating helpful pieces.

I think an even more helpful approach is to group some of the gaps together into content angles.

And since this email is already long-story-long, I'll follow up with another email soon to talk a bit about 3 content angles that help you create beautiful, perspective-shifting pieces.

Hint: If you join us (or have already joined us) for Publish One Year of Bold Ideas, then each prompt, formula, and full writing exercise is categorized under one of the three content angles for changemakers, and tagged under the specific gaps it's designed to fill.

As I said at the beginning of this email: There’s a mission you chose to accept. Maybe you found the mission; maybe the mission found its way to you. Regardless, it’s one you want to work on to the best of your abilities.

It's one that I (and so many other people who don't even know it yet) want you to work on to the best of your abilities. It's how things will change, improve, reset, and grow.

If you want some support on your mission, I'd love to see you inside Publish One Year of Bold Ideas (if you haven't already joined us).

I'll be back in your inbox with another mini-lesson soon.
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​Regina out.

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