5 Laws of Atomic Influence ⎸ Milly Tamati

Hiya 👋 No matter your job, industry, or passion... every professional will have a digital presence to some degree. But not all digital presence is made equal.

When you make developing your influence a part of your career-flow, you'll unlock more opportunity, land better jobs, build a more robust network, do meaningful work, & make more money.

And when you figure out how to leverage it? That my friend, is atomic influence.

By the end of this essay, you’ll learn:

I welcome you to screenshot your fave bits & share them on LinkedIn (tag @generalistworld so I can say hi!)

As always, can’t wait to hear what you think.

Milly 👋

There’s a new asset class emerging. Atomic influence is one of the most powerful assets you can control. But because it’s relatively so new, we don’t have a great grasp on how to leverage it.

Up until now, you might think of digital presence as ‘audience’. Someone with an enormous audience like Mr Beast, but this is at the extreme end of the influence spectrum, and isn’t what we’ll explore today.

My thesis is that everyone will have a digital presence, and those who integrate it into their workflows will experience enhanced employability, more opportunities and a more robust network. Those who leverage it, will develop an Atomic Influence.

Atomic influence is the 2024 version of having a seat at the table.

But I’m also not talking about ‘personal brand’ here. I see atomic influence as the natural evolution of personal brand (but don’t worry, we’ll leave the icky bits behind).

In this essay I’ll argue:

Let’s go!

Every new business is a digital business. There are few companies emerging today that don’t have some form of digital connectivity attached. Mom n Pop shops are now online. The trades leverage tech to sell more services. Even in schools, kids have access to iPad’s as readily as they do pens and paper (shoutout to the people of my generation who remember playing on Paint and talking to the Word Paperclip for your allocated 20 mins a week!)

Digital is now just plain ordinary.

So if the vehicle we all work through is digital, what does this mean for how we grow our careers, connect, and share information about ourselves?

20 years ago you had the trusty phonebook. Thousands of pages of businesses in a single directory.

Today, we only have to look as far as LinkedIn to see how far we’ve come. LinkedIn recently passed 1 billion users (to put that into perspective, our world’s population is 8.1billion).

122 million people received an interview through LinkedIn with 35.5 million having been hired by a person they connected with on the site. LinkedIn is the evolution of the business phonebook. It’s an always-growing entity that proves how deep we are in the digital presence age, and how we are most certainly not going back.

But most of LinkedIn’s 1 billiion users are not using the platform with digital presence in mind.

And to understand this, we need a reframe:

LinkedIn is not a social media platform, it's a marketplace.

And when you shift your framing from social to marketplace, your view of how you fit in changes, too.

50 years ago, real estate was one of the most valuable assets you can own. Arguably, it still is. The problem? For so many young people, getting on the real estate ladder is now next to impossible very difficult. For reasons often vastly outside of your control, owning & benefiting from real estate can take decades to become a reality.

But what if I told you there was an asset you can own, that you control, that grows with you, that compounds exponentially over time, that costs only your energy and creativity?

I’m talking about: your reputation. And in today’s complex, interconnected world—your online reputation, which I call your—digital influence.

Now before you throw “but I hateeee personal branding” at me, hear me out..

1- Long-term games. Personal brand often prioritises short-term gain (attention, monetisation, rapid growth). But Digital Influence never goes away. It’s the sustainable approach, it’s the long game. It’s asking yourself, can I keep this up for the next 10, 20 years? And a long game requires a different strategy.

2- Problem > Niche. Personal brand usually means picking one singular thing to talk about, the more niche the better. Digital presence runs in the exact opposite direction. It stems from the belief that as your career grows, the problems you care about will shift and change too. When you orientate your presence around problems, rather than a singular niche, you become more resilient to change (both market and algorithm)

3- Cultural resonance VS technical resonance: A thought exercise you can run to see if you’re focusing on personal brand or digital presence is to ask yourself this question: does this culturally resonate or technically resonate? In a world of AI content, growth hacks, & skills becoming redundant, I’d argue it’s a smart move to lean into the latter. When you can culturally resonate with a group of people, that is, beyond teaching a very narrow skill, this is worth its weight in gold.

Alright so we get that digital presence is important, and it’s different to personal brand. And we know that atomic presence is the goal. Great. But now what?

If you don’t wanna have to spend 10 miserable hours a week scheduling posts ‘cos you feel like you have to, and replying to comments from strangers on the internet for some untold potential payoff in the future—this chapter is for you.

The biggest mistake people make when first developing their presence is they create unrealistic goals and expectations, and then give up before they’ve actually begun. This is why you need an Operating Influence Rhythm. Your OPR is totally unique to you, and it’s about finding your mechanism, your cadence, and your voice.

The beauty of Atomic Influence is it isn’t bound by traditional laws: get creative. Think outside the traditional box of ‘I’ve gotta post on LinkedIn.’ What’s something you’d happily do for the next 10, 20 years? Do that.

Maybe it’s hosting an IRL dinner group. Maybe it’s running a podcast. Maybe it’s starting a youtube channel, or leading a Saturday run club.

At this point you might say, hang on Milly, but hosting IRL dinners isn’t digital? How does this contribute to my digital presence? To that I’d remind you—everything is digital. When you host an IRL event, you’re deepening your invisible web of connections or what I call, you’re Sphere of Influence (we’ll come to this soon!)

Let’s break down how to develop your OPR:

Publishing great content alone will not future-proof your digital presence. The most concrete thing you can do is: invest in being helpful.

One of my morning journal prompts is: how will I be of service to the world today? Very meta, but one of my points today was to carve out deep work time to write this very essay. In turn, thousands of people will hopefully find the tools and confidence to craft their digital presence.

That’s helpfulness at scale!

Anyways…

I think being helpful is one of the most underrated, overlooked skills that you can sharpen at no-cost. When you consistently provide helpful value to others, you begin to build a deeper level of trust. You’re not just someone who knows something about a subject, but you’re someone who’s genuinely helpful. This is a fast-track to standing out. And standing out in today’s crowded world is a superpower.

But what is helpfulness, really? Let’s start with what it isn’t….

What helpfulness is not:

What helpfulness is:

Find your first 5 true fans by being helpful

Find & nurture your 50 true fans

The core message of the 1000 true fans theory is that you probably need less reach than you think. From a product perspective, 1000 true fans can be enough to give you escape velocity; for word of mouth to kick in and for organic virality to spread.

The good news? The ‘atomic influence’ equivalent of this is much less. I think you need 50 true fans to build a rock-solid foundation.

A true fan is:

At first glance, these two intersections may seem like an odd meeting point. But I believe they’re deeply interconnected. Here’s why:

We know that things come in and out of fashion. Platforms. Algorithms. Ways of connecting. These will change throughout our careers. One thing that never goes out of fashion, and we don’t speak about enough is: integrity.

At its core, integrity is the values you choose to live by.

This essay serves not just as a way of thinking about developing digital presence, but what it means to have it.

With atomic influence comes power. You have a platform. And without having integrity and clear values that you live by, this becomes dangerous. As the old saying goes: if you stand for nothing you’ll fall for anything.

Misinformation, scams, bringing negativity to the world etc.

With power comes responsibility. You’re responsible for shaping not only the message you put out into the world, but the people in your sphere of influence who see it, spread it, and support it.

If you’re able to get clear on your boundaries and your values when your sphere of influence is small, it’ll be much easier to have integrity, make decisions, and feel proud of the work you do when it grows.

Building trust, by nature, requires time. This is the element lots of people skip, eager to grow their presence as fast as possible. This is one approach, and in my opinion, is the risky one.

“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair”. If you destroy it before you’ve even built it, people remember this.

I’ve been building Generalist World for 2+ years, and in that time, I’ve posted nearly every week day. But my posts are known not for showcasing the highlight reel, but sharing the lessons, the hard parts, the questions I’m unsure of. Showing vulnerability and humanity is how you build trust.

In this same thread though, I disagree with the notion that you should ‘bring your whole self to work’. I’ve never posted a picture of my husband, for example, and rarely mention him. My relationship is a boundary I choose not to share with the world. You’ll have your own, and it’s important to note that building trust & being vulnerable does not mean ‘giving away everything of yourself’.

Building trust is a muscle. You strengthen it not by lifting one heavy weight once or twice. But through hundreds, and thousands, of lighter lifts. Combine this with being someone who is helpful, and has integrity, and your atomic presence really starts to stand on its own two feet.

Doing what everyone else is doing is generally a waste of time. If you look, sound, and act like carbon copies of people on the internet, how can you expect others to differentiate you? The beauty is, this isn’t about reinventing the wheel. Think about figures who you look up to, I guarantee, they have an edge that sticks out. We call this: spikiness.

Spiky careers are made up of spiky opinions, perspectives, and experiences. They’re marked by putting your flag in the ground, and standing for something. For me, it’s that generalist’s are immensely valuable and underutilized in the labour market. Every day, I advocate for, and champion this perspective, and work to make a change.

Not only does this give me an edge, but it brings great meaning.

At some point in history, it became acceptable that work is just something you had to it. That it was devoid of meaning. Sure, everyone has parts of their work that they just have to splash some cold water on their face and get it done, but having a spiky opinion on the work you do can give you a competitive edge, helping you to stand out, and also carry a sense of purpose. You’re working 40 hours a week toward something. And that something is a change, no matter how small, that you want to see in the world.

This is a very personal question, that I can’t give a blanket answer to. But perhaps this analogy for how I think about my own presence will be helpful.

Atomic Influence is like a holding company. It’s the umbrella entity that encompasses your other assets (skills, knowledge, network etc).

The holding company can take risks (to monetize) by creating smaller bets that are separate entities to itself. For example, my influence is connected to, but separate from, how I make a living. I don’t directly monetize ‘Milly Tamati’ but ‘Milly Tamati’ does certainly help Generalist World make revenue.

By now, I hope you have clarity on what atomic influence is, and how you can leverage it in your own career this year. This concept has been brewing in my mind for many years, as I’ve been a part of the generation who ‘came online’ in their teens.

My intuition says whilst personal brand will be a part of the next 5+ years, atomic influence will be where the winners will be found. Those who can intertwine their digital presence with their 1-1 relationships and IRL endeavours, will be best-positioned to be resilient in the future of work.

Pssssttttt: If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably my kinda person! So here’s a little secret… we’ve been quietly creating the learning experience I wish I had way earlier in my generalist career. It’s the Operating System every generalist needs to tell your story, level up, translate your value, & unlock better opportunities. Interest piqued? 👇