Who Tells Your Story?

When my husband Scott and I went to see Hamilton, I was sobbing at the end.

Not because of what Alexander Hamilton had done for our country.

But because of what his wife Eliza did.

Hamilton ends with the song Who Lives Who Dies, which was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda but is based on a book by Ron Chernow. The lyrics describe what happened after Alexander Hamilton’s death — how Eliza Schuyler Hamilton paid off her husband’s debts, created the first private orphanage in New York City, defended her husband’s reputation, got his writing published and remembered, and raised funds for the Washington Monument.

A pretty impressive story, right?

But here’s the catch: Eliza wasn’t trying to impress us. Ron Chernow wasn’t trying to impress us either. Lin-Manuel Miranda might have been trying to impress us but what this song is really about is the difference between reach and impact.

Your reach is right now. It’s immediate — who you can reach today if you tried — friends, family, followers on social media, people who will read an article if you post it on Medium.

A lot of authors I meet want (or need) to expand their reach, and that’s cool.

But what I like to direct clients to, as a thought exercise, is impact.