Use The ‘7 Systems of Influence’ to Dramatically Increase Your Business Productivity & Your Personal Fulfilment

What initially appears as failure, can often be the catalysts to our greatest discoveries. Josh Steimle had an apparent failure — in 2013, he was nearly out of business. A bad hire at his marketing agency had brought him to the brink of bankruptcy.

Struggling and almost out of cash, Josh needed customers, quickly. He started writing articles about marketing through the Forbes contributor program. This led to a TEDx talk, as well as other writing opportunities with various other publications.

Prospects began reading his content and started contacting him to learn more about his agency.

Fast-forward to the present, and his agency (MWi) is thriving, he started a second business (Influencer Inc.), and he’s now publishing a book called The 7 Systems of Influence, to show others how they can copy his successes (and avoid his failures).

We invited Josh on the Lead to Grow podcast to share the premise for his new book, and we caught the whole interview right here.

Let’s dive into the 7 systems:

System 1: Vision

Vision encapsulates your big idea — the impact you wish to leave on the world. Your vision may vary for different areas of your life (personal, family, physical, spiritual, business.)

Example: For Josh, his vision for his business after the near-collapse in 2013, was to have an international marketing firm.

System 2: Genius Zone

The genius zone is the overlapping areas of all your expertise. For instance, Josh has years of knowledge and a lot of expertise in marketing. However, there are probably 100,000 people in the world with this same level of skill.

Also, Josh knows a lot about skateboarding. He ran a skateboarding shop when he was younger, and was a talented skateboarder. In that area, 100,000 others also likely match Josh with their knowledge base.

But, Josh is probably only 1 of 10 people who knows as much about marketing and skateboarding, allowing him to leverage that skillset to help anyone who is marketing skateboarding equipment.

System 3: Audience

Once you’ve determined your vision and uncovered your genius zone, the next question is … who cares?

The answer is: Many people do. Yet, there is likely a targeted group who will benefit more than anyone else from your knowledge and skill set.

Discovering your audience is similar to unearthing your genius zones: You envision the spheres of your audience that your talents and skills would benefit, and find where the most overlap is.

For example: Josh has a colleague who understands the Chinese market from an entrepreneurial perspective.

Any entrepreneur entering China could benefit from her understanding. But more specifically, an entrepreneur, who is female, who is trying to enter into the Chinese market, would be the ultimate audience choice for her.

System 4: Content

A lot of people jump straight to the content system without considering the other steps first. Josh says he made that mistake in 2013 when he first started writing for Forbes. He was writing a lot of material, and a lot of people enjoyed it. But nothing has improved much, business-wise.

Once he realized the content he was producing should link back to the first three systems, his whole strategy changed. He focused on generating content that was inline with his vision, that was within his genius zone, and was for his best-fit audience.

After re-focusing his writing energies, his company can now track $5 million in revenue to articles he’s written since 2014.

System 5: Action

This one is fairly straightforward. (It’s the “doing” part that’s hard!)

You must have an action step to walk-out your strategy from the first three systems. Then, you have to stick to it.

System 6: Collaboration

Collaboration exponentially increases your output.

Once you know your own strengths, you can combine your efforts with someone else’s talents.

With this approach, you can have 10x or 100x more impact than you could accomplish on your own.

System 7: Love

Once Josh finished the first six systems, he knew something was still missing.

Then, he thought about his kids.

It dawned on him: He can make a lot of mistakes as a parent, but love covers a multitude of those mistakes.

I’ve seen the same thing in my own business — if you get caught up in all the action without any of the inspiration behind it … it falls on deaf ears. You must focus on serving others. For me, this has to be a daily, integral part of all I do, otherwise the results will be hollow for me.

If Someone Had Lunch With You, What’s the Key Thing You’d Want Them to Walk Away With?

Josh said he loves people. He loves uncovering the story behind the person, and he loves listening and asking questions.

His ultimate goal is that each person walks away thinking, “Wow. Josh really cares about me.”

This blogpost is from a podcast interview with Josh Steimle, Founder of MWi, and Author of the 7 Systems of Influence. He’s publishing the book in public, in sections as its written, on Medium. Check it out here.

Click here to hear this full episode. If you don’t use iTunes, you can also find the full list of episodes by clicking this link.