189:💡Jay Acunzo’s IP Development OS — Courtesy of Creator Kitchen

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In episode 181 be irreplaceable. You heard from my creative coach Jay Acunzo about how to prioritize resonance over reach and one of my favorite reminders, don't be the best, be their favorite. I've been working with Jay for a few months now and it has completely transformed the way that I think about creating content. Primarily my two podcasts. I also have two newsletters. I do keynote speaking and events and all kinds of things. He just launched his own community Creator Kitchen and I feel very lucky to have been part of his early testers for the soft launch that he has now opened up enrollment for. One of the early videos that he shared with us in the Kitchen is a walkthrough of his intellectual property development OS or his IP development operating system. How he collects ideas, chooses which ones to pursue, and how he decides which channel of his universe they belong in. He thinks of this whole process like an idea funnel, one where he's constantly applying pressure by testing ideas, aerating them out, publishing in different formats and seeing what has legs. I loved this walkthrough and the diagram that goes with it so much, and I know you will too, that I asked Jay for special permission to share an excerpt of the video walkthrough that he did directly here on the FreeTime podcast. I know you're going to get a.

Kick out of it.

Be sure you check out the show notes to this episode so you can see what the diagram looks like. And I also give an overview of his trello board that he uses to track the life of an idea. And if you want to learn more and join us since I'm in there too in Creator Kitchen, visit creatorkitchen.com and apply promo code friendofafafriend for $100 off your membership for life that's creatorkitchen. Com. Apply promo code friendofafriend for $100 off your membership for life. One more thing. If you're listening on Spotify, or even if you just want to pop over there to share your biggest insight from this episode, I would love to hear it. You can answer the question prompt at the bottom of this episode's page on Spotify. And I've been having a lot of fun. It's like bells start ringing when I see that I oh, ooh, we got a new comment on an episode. Because normally it's so tricky to get feedback on content like this in this format. Again, even if you don't listen to most of your podcasts on Spotify, it's kind of a cool way to interact with content when it really resonates. And if you would be so kind, once you have listened to an episode over there, just go ahead and give it a rating. I mean, I won't tell you you gotta do five stars, but you don't even have to write a review. Don't have to go to the trouble. Just click on the little stars and give it some love. Without further ado, here's Jay walking us through his IP development OS.

Today. I wanted to answer a question that I've gotten a lot from members and other people publicly, which is how I organize all of my projects. I think the perception is that I do a lot, and sometimes I feel that too, but to me, it always felt like it was somewhat coherent, and I wanted to document that coherence for the first time. I've never done this, but now that I have, I can already sense that things have gotten even clearer for me. So I wanted to try to diagram my idea intake and execution process from messy, vague feeling all the way through, where it shows up in projects that I have. I call this my IP development OS, my intellectual property development operating system IPOs. So, quick backstory here. I frame my work like a journey. I see a mountain peak in the distance and I'm like, I want to go there. Because where we're standing now isn't good enough. Something is broken. Maybe I know why, maybe I don't. Maybe I can articulate what is broken. Maybe I just sense it and I want to go that direction because I see a mountain peak and maybe it's blurry or maybe it's clear. You see, it's a lot of mess at first, right? And I don't know how to get there. Because in between me and it, us, and there is a jungle and I'm hacking away with my machete. That's the creative process. That's the IP development that I go through. So my newsletter is how I do that from my perspective. My show is how I do that from others perspectives, others stories. But it's all framed in the same way. I'm going there. So that's a vague framing, right? I'm trying to act more like an explorer than an expert. And routinely, I will catch myself looking at this corner of my ceiling, because that's where the mountain peak always sits metaphorically, in my life, in my work. It's where the white molding meets the blue walls. Anyways, so the framing, it's a journey. I'm launching a quest. I learned this from Andrew Davis, a friend and mentor of mine. He also showed up in an unthinkable episode that people really loved called Leaving Expertville. You'll hear Drew lay out the idea of launching a quest to inform your creativity and your thought leadership. So how do I go from that rough idea to execution? Well, the first step is I need to get focused. Then once I have that focus, it's the mountain peak, then I need to come up with the ideas. Then I need to start aerating those ideas to sharpen them, the language I use, test them, whether or not I should proceed or invest more in them, et cetera. Then once they're proven, or at least I sense that they could be good or could be worthwhile, I'll pursue them more in higher friction, higher stakes projects. The first thing I need is a focus. I need a certain colored pair of glasses to see the world through. That's the lens through which I see everything. So if I'm wandering around all day, anything could be a story, anything could be material. Anything could be a metaphor. Anything could be useful because I'm seeing the world a certain way. I know in the back of my mind, this is what I'm up to. This is what I stand for. This is where I'm focusing. And so now inspiration is not a problem, because inspiration is everywhere. The focusing stage is just what is the mission to me? It's been clear since probably the beginning of the pandemic, when I started to write this out on my website. But it'd been vaguely clear to me for a while. My mission is to help you make what matters most to your career, your company, and your community. So what this means is I'm exploring and then become known for ideas like resonance. Story marketing or content marketing. Creativity and content. So this is the mission and the sort of messy bag of topics that help me execute or explore or advance that mission. Now that I have that focus, it's like I've colored my glasses a certain way to see the world. That's the first step. I think that's a problem that a lot of us have because when we don't have inspiration or we can't see how a personal memory of ours or an observation of ours applies to the work, it's because I don't think we're seeing the world through a focused lens, through a mission, through a message, through one idea that we're exploring. I don't think we see the mountain peak. So I tried to write it out. This is the mountain peak that's focusing. This is the feeling stage. This is where I'll start when the ideas I already have, documented and saved somewhere feel kind of meh, like nothing is lighting me up in my idea backlog. So that's where I start. When the ideas feel meh, I'm going to just try to feel something about the topics that I'm writing about or the world I occupy. The way that happens is the interplay between my frustration and my curiosity. Let's start with frustration. When you think about that journey metaphor, when you're standing here, before you enter the jungle, you're saying, something is under explored, something is broken. The status quo isn't good enough. We have to go away from here towards something better. Thought leader, you're leading people away from something towards something better. So what is currently happening in their life? What is the status quo that you would like to change, to improve, to lead people away from? It starts there for me all the time. That's just the way I'm wired. I'm Sicilian. When you're born Sicilian, there's a little chip in your shoulder bone that you carry with you for the rest of your life. I have a giant chip on my shoulder always. So frustration, emotions, that's my bag. So it starts there for me. Oftentimes I observe something. I don't quite know why I don't like it. I just know this feels awful. I don't like that at all. The way we're describing story is like the way we describe running an Instagram ad. It's like a tactic with a blueprint. I don't like it. There's something missing here. What's going on? The way we describe AI, the way we describe obsessing over reach, the way people approach content marketing or creativity, Something is gross, something is icky, something is frustrating. So I Start there. That's like lighting a match. And the object of lighting your match of frustration is not to hold it, it's to light some kindling so you have a fire of creativity. The kindling is your curiosity. The curiosity is when you start to ask questions. Curiosity is when you turn the frustration into something productive instead of destructive. Why is it this way? How did we get here? Like, I literally wrote a post about how we got here with the whole AI causing fear in some creators thing. Like, it's just a question I have, and I had no idea how to answer that until I started to write. So I arrived with more questions than answers. I tried to find an answer within and then that led to more questions, which leads to more ideas, more content, et cetera. So the frustration leads to curiosity. But I don't want to be prescriptive about how you treat it. It might go both ways. You might start with a question and then you identify, oh, there's a pain here, there's some tension here, there's a problem here. We benefit from having both frustration and curiosity. So this is where it starts. I'm feeling my way forward. I know the mission. I run up against something in the world and I'm frustrated by it or curious about something. Here's a bunch of problems I'm going to write about that. Here's a rant that I have, or it could be, I have a question or I'm going to launch a little investigation. But this collection of the feeling stage leads to an idea. Now, sometimes I've done the first two steps because again, it's just the way I see the world. Intentionally so, right? It's built. It's not just a natural gift that I have. It's like, okay, this is the lens. Let me sense things, frustration, curiosity, et cetera. Dumping it into a trello board, my list of ideas. Okay, now I get to the idea itself. I move from feeling to thinking. And I start here looking for ideas that feel exciting to me. I use the word feel again because that's how I operate. But now I'm going to have to think about that idea and sort of flesh it out. I need to vet some form of stat, an article. I found an observation, I made a voice memo. I recorded and saved a mess of stuff. This is the IP Trello board. The place where it really starts for me. It's where I put ideas and there's all these ideas currently here. And I try to start there. But if nothing happens to light me up that day, or if something else I thought about and observed in the feeling stage lit me up that day. I'll pursue that instead. If you're trying to knock over a brick wall, it's a lot easier. Rather than brute force your way forward to just start pressing bricks and see which one of them budges. That's what I'm doing. I'm pressing bricks and I'm like, does any of these feel easy to execute on today? Because I'm excited about it. I'm intrinsically motivated by it. No. Okay, I have to go back to the feeling stage. What currently has me feeling a certain way or. Yes, this one has me feeling a certain way. It's already the idea that I had logged in Trello. Okay, now here's what I do next. I move to talking it out. I gotta figure out what is this idea about. I'm sort of feeling my way forward in the moment. I'm aerating it in front of other people. But I'm also trying to sharpen my idea to myself. I mean, the creative process is perfect for that. It's how you learn and improve your ideas. It's not where you share perfectly baked ideas necessarily all the time. The best place to do that for me is chef's table here in the kitchen. I frame chef's table as a tell and show. I'm going to tell you the theory. So I've been thinking about this. I've been frustrated by this. I've been curious about this. I've had this idea and now I'm going to show you how that's showing up in my practice or my world. That's the very first place I go. And so back in Trello, of the ideas that I like, I will approve them to myself and move them over to chef's table. So let's take this example. I A is greater than AI. I was having a conversation with a guy named Joshua Levy. He's the founder and CEO of a very cool digital platform for publishing expert level books called Holloway. We were having a chat, just a virtual coffee. And he was telling me about his relationship with Doug Engelbart, one of the people credited with inventing the mouse and very many other technological advances that allows us to use personal computers today. And he always talked to Joshua and other people around him about the belief in I A. Not a I, I A Intelligence augmentation, not artificial intelligence. I love that. I love, love, love, love that. And when we talked a little bit, Josh, he was lighting me up. And I was like, I got to document that. This is an idea. I dropped it into Trello while we were speaking and this is what I wrote. Legendary technologist Doug Engelbart, who I didn't know before Josh turned me on to him, always advocated for IA instead of AI. And then I realized, okay, a potential insight I have here is you creative person. Are I a for other people? So go be ia. I wrote before that there's a problem. Creators are acting like bots, Creators are acting like AI, so they might be replaced by AI. What you should be doing, however, is augmenting others intelligence or your own. That's what I'm trying to do with my ideas. That's what you're trying to do with your ideas. So I want to explore this. I want to tell the story about Doug a little bit. I want to obviously hat tip to Josh because I didn't find it, he gave it to me. I want to explore what Doug said about this idea of ia and then I want to bring it home to some kind of insight. That's the thing about ia. It's not just about code that does this or apps that provides this. It's also about creators. It's about you. And try to flesh that out a little bit more.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Okay, so let's say I show up to work, it's time to write and I like this idea a lot. I'm going to move it over as approved for Chef's Table and maybe I execute it today or maybe I'm just bank next idea. Now I'm going to go and record something for Chef's Table and when I'm done, I schedule it and I move it over. So I'm moving from thinking to talking. I got to talk it out. Chef's table. It's a tell in show. Here's what I'm frustrated by or curious about. Here's my idea. I'm telling you. I. And then let me take you into my craft and show you where it shows up, because it's the absolute easiest way for me to communicate something, because I don't have to go out and search. I'm just showing you what I do day to day. And it's also the intention behind chef's table to begin with. Great. Now that I've done that, I have a decision. Do I need to explore this further? Is this just something that I feel needs a deeper exploration? It's almost like hacking through the jungle. I successfully cut through some brambles, cut through some ferns, cut through some. You insert your favorite plant here, I guess. And now that's the chef's table post. But it reveals to me something I've noticed that I want to go further in this direction. I don't want to, like, turn and pivot and hack away that way. I'm like, yes, let me take more swings because I think this might be fruitful to go this way, to get to the mountain peak. Okay, so now I need to move from just talking it out to talking to storytelling. Do I feel the need to explore this further? If not, it's on to the next idea. I go right back up top. If, yes, I have two ways I can do this. Do I have a lot of questions? Do I feel the need to explore this further? Yes, and I have a lot of questions still. In other words, I can sense that we want to continue, but I don't have a ton that I know I want to say or want to say with confidence yet. So let's make an episode of Unthinkable, because that's where we turn to other people and tell their stories. And by telling someone else's story, either they give us the insight, or I can observe what they said or did and extract my own insights. So I have a lot more questions than answers here. So I'm going to make it into an episode, or, yes, I want to explore it further. And I have a lot to say myself. That's going to be my newsletter. So my podcast is always, let me gather the stories that we need to conduct this investigation or journey to develop my IP secondhand, Other people, second person. You tell me about what you did. My newsletter is the same journey, possibly even the same idea. But from a first person perspective. And unlike Chef's Table, First Person, where I'm like giving you examples in my craft, this one I'm trying to zoom out a little bit and make it more universal for others. I'm really trying to write my own stories about it. That's the difference. Chef's Table isn't really like necessarily storytelling, but my newsletter is. Okay, so it's scheduled and done. Again, do I need to explore this further? No. Next idea. Okay, this one's done. I'm just killing it off right there. No more growth on that vine. And I go back to my ideas list. Or if I'm like, okay, great, I actually do need to explore this further. Well, here we go. I'm going to continue it. It's going to be an upcoming edition of Playing Favorites. Or I'm going to go over to the unthinkable Trello board, which is different because I share it with Alana and I'm going to add it to our idea backlog and. Or I'm so bullish on it, I'm going to slot it into pre production because I'm just going to go ahead and decide we got to do this even before talking it out with Alana. So then I write it as a newsletter and I think, you know what? It's done here. All done. But if I write it, I'm like, ooh, this is powerful. This is one of the stronger ideas. And maybe you respond with passion. I'm like, yeah, it is. I validated. This is a really strong idea. Now I'm going to move the idea to basically a holding tank for future projects. So the holding tank is this is a strongest idea or among the strongest idea or strongest story. Right. So is it a concept? Is it a narrative? If it's a concept, if it's a story, I will label it. You see, problems change, solution, solution, solution. That's the way I structure a keynote. That's the way I structure a book. It's the way I develop a big idea. There's certain beats we have to hit to make a big change in an audience's life seem inescapable and obvious to them so that they understand and get on board, so that it resonates. And so I'm going to mark it where in that dialogue outline, and I already know what all the stages are. Is this idea going to fit? And I'll mark it. I'll be like, okay, IA versus AI. Let's see. That's talking more about the problems with Status Quo. That's a section of the dialogue outline. Bam. I'll drop it down to be among the problems. And there we go. When I go and write the book and I'm like, hey, we got a problem. Status quo, not good. If I want to write about AI, I'm going to go to this piece and pull from it, maybe even excerpt it, quote it directly, or just, you know, use it, because I don't have to quote myself. All right, so that's the evolution of an idea or a concept. If it were a story, then I would put it under strongest stories. And there's only two types of stories. A lead story, something illustrative told end to end. That's like, let me show you what this idea looks like when put to action. It's the story of the Savannah Bananas. It's a relatively understood business type baseball. It is not super niche and super technical. So a lot of people can understand it. I've done coffee brands, I've done a dictionary brand, I've done a nonprofit helping with the environment, and I've done a baseball team. So that's a lead story that I've captured. That's a universal, understood type of thing. And it also is an illustration of my ideas end to end when put to action, or the ideas I'm exploring when put to action. So it's the case study, really. The supporting stories are much more narrowly focused and they might support pieces of a methodology that I someday develop. And the last thing is frameworks and models I've developed. This is the third and final holding tank, so to speak. These are things like definitions, pithy phrases or categories. I create templates and prompts that I create, visuals that I create to support whatever ideas I'm publishing. I am not placing judgment on these things. Aside from the fact that I'm like, there's something here, I think it's really strong. I'm not saying it'll definitely be in the book or the speech or the workshop, but there's something. There's a there there. And it can further the exploration of the ip, including any capstone projects that I have, the book, the speech, the course, et cetera. So that is how I bring it home all the way. At the bottom, I have productizing. So from storytelling for some ideas to productizing even fewer of those ideas, they make their way into the speech. They make their way into some live session for the creator, kitchen members. They make their way into an eventual book. And so what you get is this idea funneled. And I'm applying pressure by Aerating it, constantly validating to myself and to others that this idea is worth pursuing further as they're developed and aerated. Most ideas prove themselves not worth an additional investment, and that's fine. It's a lot of trying things on for size, a lot of trial and error. So to wrap this all up, my object is to get us all to the mountain peak. My job is to develop IP capable of doing that. I'm trying to help us all feel inspired and empowered to go through this jungle together. That's the ongoing development of my content. Once we reach the mountain peak, I want to report back. I want to hold up a flag and say, I made it. That's the book, that's the speech, that's the session, et cetera. But to get there is a whole lot of hacking away through the jungle. And I have a lot of projects, AKA a lot of directions or little sub steps or motions that I could be taking. And it has to feel coherent, otherwise I'm going to get exhausted by hacking away. So the first thing is to focus on the mountain peak. Do you have your mission? The second thing is to just understand that this is a way for you to understand intrinsically or intuitively or subconsciously that everything is inspiration, everything's material, you see the world a certain way or running in the background is I'm exploring this mission and so everything suddenly feels potentially useful, and then you sense things. I'm frustrated by that. I have a lot of problems with that. I've identified problems. I want to rant against it and that helps me clarify my thinking and that leads to curiosity or vice versa. I'm curious about this. Why? Oh, because it sucks. I'm frustrated by it. So frustration and curiosity, this spark and kindling and starting with a question because you genuinely don't know is a wonderful way to pursue your work. Acting like an explorer, not an expert, that's what I'm doing when I'm heading over there. Then you have a bunch of ideas that are logged somewhere. I like Trello, and I start there every time I show up to create. But if nothing is lighting me up, if nothing feels exciting, if none of those bricks are budging that day, I'm going to go back up to the feeling phase and just feel something, ask something, wonder something, dislike something, get frustrated, get curious. Typically, I don't have to do that consciously because I arrive having saw something or heard something on a podcast or whatever in my morning commute, but I am actually able to say, oh, I'm coming to write this today because, man, I can't stop thinking about this. And if nothing happens, if that doesn't happen before I sit down, I'll go to my idea backlog. So now I've selected the idea, I want to talk it out with you. It's a tell and show. Here's the theory. Here's how it applies to my life, my craft, my work. What do you think? Did that feel right? Is there more I have to say? Do I need to explore this further? No, I'm done. Next idea. Yes. Okay. Do I need to capture it from other people's perspectives? Is there a story to be found and heard and then insights to be extracted from it? Let's consider it for an episode. If I have more to say, if I want to write an opinion piece and use personal storytelling for that piece, great. That's a newsletter and some of those things are like, wow, super powerful. I'm going to log them in that holding tank section of Trello because it's a really strong idea or something, or I want to get there and so I need to, whatever, write it even more. These two things cross pollinate all the time. My newsletter becomes an episode, my episode becomes a newsletter, et cetera. Okay. It is proven fantastic. It's going to the holding tank. It is a strong idea, it is a strong story, or it is a reusable framework or heuristic or definition that I've created. So now that it's there and I'm about to develop a speech, a session, or a book, I can dip into that proven material to do so. So that is how I develop my ip. That's how I run my entire, I guess, business. Although I'm not seeing it that way. I'm seeing it as, this is how I go on a consistent, flow focused, powerful journey for myself, but I hope also for you. If you have any questions at all, please leave a comment on this post. I love talking about this kind of thing, especially the framing of our work as that of an explorer, not an expert. But this is the first time I've put two words how I actually organize my life, my work, my career. And so I'm really excited to hear from you to know, is this useful? And also, is there anything I can answer about it? All right. I hope it helps. Keep making what matters and I'll talk to you soon.

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