The Art of Upgrading Your Life

Beneficial Intelligence

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes 17 seconds

This week, with a big upgrade coming to my video podcast Changing Minds on Monday, I want to walk you through the specific changes I’ll be making and offer you some really useful insights I’ve gained into optimization as a result. There are a few key lessons I’ve learned about the process of upgrading that I’m applying to my life and I wanted to share them with you.

I’ll start by explaining the ‘why’ behind the podcast upgrade, and then we’ll explore what it can teach us.

First, let’s understand a few terms.

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The Language of Content Creation

Let’s first define niche, content, style, source material, channel, and packaging:

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Niche is the area of focus you’re in or the audience you’re targeting.

Content is the information that you’re sharing.

Style is the way you share this information.

Source material is the area of expertise you draw from.

The channel is the medium you’re creating content in.

Packaging is how the content looks, sounds, and feels.

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For example, let’s imagine your niche is life coaches.

• A piece of content might revolve around the GROW model in coaching.
• The style might be down-to-earth and practical.
• The source material might be the psychology behind change conversations.
• The channel might be YouTube.
• The packaging might be very high-quality videos, thumbnails, titles, and hooks.

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The Quality of Content

There are plenty of people out there who create quality content. You will have come across only some of them. The rest have not become popular either because of lack of luck or lack of effective packaging.

As a consumer, the lesson here is to be precise about what you are looking for and, when following thought leaders, be open to all kinds of packaging. Sometimes real gems can come from unknown sources.

The lesson as a thought leader is to do whatever you can to spend more time on how you package up your content.

The content landscape has been transforming over the last 18 months or so. AI is now a big component of everyone’s content marketing strategy. As a result, we need to adapt if we are to thrive.

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Enter Artificial Intelligence

Two big lessons have come from AI and its impact on promoting yourself as a thought leader:

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1. Anyone can pretty much find any answer to any question they have now. They aren’t arriving on your channel for information.

2. Content out there in the world is becoming more homogenized and generic as more people rely on ChatGPT.

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What does this mean for us? To succeed, creators need to showcase their personalities more than ever. They need to cover specific content in a way that connects with the audience. They need to package themselves in a way that maximizes attention, interest, and intrigue.

You are no longer a source of information. You’re competing with ChatGPT which is way easier to use.

You are no longer just competing with other experts; you’re competing with Netflix, Instagram, and YouTube.

With this in mind, your only shot is to build a deeper connection with your followers. They have to want to consume your content because of you.

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Where I Went Wrong

For years, I focused on quantity and quality of content. I’ve been doing this for so long that it is my strength. I can create a lot of insights in a short amount of time. I’m obsessed with learning, and I’m good at sharing that learning with people in a meaningful way. But as I continued to lean into my strengths, I saw plenty of missed opportunities.

Packaging doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’ve been focused on it more and more lately. The idea is to become much more polished in every aspect. Since I’m now competing with everything, the most important thing I need to spend more time mastering is what will grab attention, set better expectations, and build better connections.

For this, I need to also lean more into my style. In the past, I’ve sometimes prioritized the quantity of content so I get straight to the point as quickly as possible but haven’t shared my personality enough. This is an important balance to strike.

Style is the ultimate way to connect with your audience. It will often polarize and attract an audience to you and repel others. The less style you showcase, the more vanilla you’ll come across. While I love vanilla ice cream, when it comes to content, it’s not seen as too good. People can get vanilla by using AI.

My ‘style’ moves from intensity to my weird sense of humor to practical explanations to storytelling at the drop of a hat. It’s not for everyone. I speak fast and love playing with words, and I’m leaning into this more than ever this season.

I have a little voice inside my head whenever I’m on stage or when I’m creating an episode. It says all sorts of wacky things as it listens to me. This time, I’m letting that voice have more air time.

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My Business

In case you were interested, here’s my content ecosystem:

• Changing Minds video podcast (YouTube)
• Changing Minds audio podcast (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc., etc.)
• Inner Propaganda newsletter
• Social media channels (LinkedIn/Instagram/TikTok/X/Facebook)

My main focus is podcasts and newsletters, and on social media it is LinkedIn. My main goal this year is to make my content extremely shareable.

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The Upgrade

The new podcast has the same name and logo as before, but all of the episodes will have quite a jump production-wise. They are produced and structured, and we have three core types of episodes, but better than you’ve ever seen them.

Solo episodes: These will involve me diving into a specific topic and finding out the why and how of something (related to psychology and high performance of course)

The work of: These will involve me diving into the work of a specific person and identifying the key learnings, insights, and lessons from it, as well as my perspective on it.

The interviews: These will involve me interviewing incredible guests as we discuss topics related to changing minds.

My goal is to make the podcast something that would be enjoyable to watch from beginning to end on YouTube. I want to make it as engaging as possible. I’m very excited to see what you think.

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Upgrading Your Life

So, what lessons did I learn from this upgrade? How have I incorporated these lessons into my life?

Even if you aren’t a content creator, you can still benefit from upgrading. First, you have to figure out what you want to upgrade. Then you need to understand what you need to do. Finally, you need to decide how you will do it.

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1. Pick the Life Niche

Pick one specific area of your life that you are planning to optimize and improve.

For example, let’s imagine you want to demonstrate executive presence in your job.

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2. Pick the Specific Improvement

Identify the specific improvement you are planning on making.

You might, for instance, decide you want to dramatically improve how effectively you get your message across and how persuasive you are.

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3. Define the Channel

Which situations and contexts do you want the improvement to be noticeable?

This could be in meetings with executives or in presentations to the rest of the company.

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4. Learn from the Source Material

What are the tools or what is the content you are using to inform this improvement?

Have you been working with a communications coach? Read a book on executive presence? Following the advice of Chat GPT?

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5. Nail the Style and Packaging

How can you make this improvement while leaning into your personality and presenting yourself in the best possible way?

For example, how will you show the best sides of your personality in your communication? How can you be more authentic while getting your message across? How do you want them to think of you? How must you dress to convey this? What do you need to do to optimize your LinkedIn profile or email style?

In a nutshell, this all comes down to being clear about exactly what you want to improve and then not just working on it but making the improvement your own.

Upgrading is about quality. It’s about setting standards for yourself that you are committed to keeping. It’s about doing it one area at a time.