I’ve known and worked with Jonathan Milligan for several years. He has been a huge influence in the shaping of my Encore Career. I’ve relied on his knowledge and wisdom time and time again.

Jonathan’s book, Your Message Matters, is a great place to start if you’re crafting your Encore Career. In it, Jonathan overviews the four parts to understanding, believing, and applying the theme of the book: your message matters. 

I had the chance to overview these four parts on Leading the Factory Forward recently. Here is what I covered:

Part 1: Believe Your Message

There are 5 parts to believing your message:

1. Understand what a messenger is: someone who is creative, transformational, a learner, and

future-focused.

2. Know why your message matters: your message is your gift and people need to hear it from you. To start understanding this deeper, write about questions you want to answer for five minutes.

3. The secret to building a business and life you love is to measure actions, not results.

4. Build a business by sharing your advice because this allows you to work where you want, when you want, and at the pace you want.

5. Know and believe The Messenger Manifesto by Jonathan: “As I begin my day, I will choose to work from a place of mission and not fear, service and not greed, humility and not pride. I choose today to offer hope to the discouraged, purpose to the doubting, and direction to the confused. May this be my vision as I work today to build the business.”

Part 2: Define Your Message

Define your message with the ignite your message framework:

1. Purpose: What is your unique gift?

2. People: Who do you want to help? Who would you love to work with?

3. Passion: What problem will you solve? What could you work on for 10 years?

4. Mission Control: Establish your home base. Where will you “speak” from? 

Part 3: Market Your Message

Extraordinary focus leads to success. Success is sequential, not simultaneous. Therefore, do the following to market your message:

1. Create: Get your message out to the masses by giving value first.

2. Capture: The artful exchange of value for email addresses. You are opening a relationship with this.

3. Compile: Package your knowledge into products and services.

4. Connect: Attract your audience to your message.

The entire journey is value > trust > attention > profit.

Live Your Message

There are 3 parts Jonathan provides for living your message. They are the messenger’s game plan for success.

• Encouraging hearts: moving people from discouragement to hope 

• Educating heads: moving people from doubt to confidence 

• Empowering hands: moving people from delay to action 

Jonathan has a tremendous breadth and depth of knowledge and training. Listen to the full episode to receive help with implementing what he shares in his book.