Your body of work is an organizational framework for your intellectual property. It ensures that everything you contribute to, create, or develop — from the services you offer to the articles you write, the presentations you give, the resources you develop, and the posts you share on LinkedIn — works together to tell the story of who you are, what you do, and how you think.

To build a reputation as an authoritative expert, every element of your body of work must be aligned. If it’s not, you risk confusing your audience and damaging your reputation.

Defining the parameters of your body of work requires you to identify the one thing for which you want to be regarded as an authoritative expert. And focusing on that one thing by eliminating anything that doesn’t enhance the reputation you seek to build.

What is a body of work?

Your body of work is an interconnected and cohesive system. Think of it as a forest. A forest is a cohesive ecosystem defined by the canopy, which must be sufficiently dense and cover a sufficient number of acres, and the mycorrhizal network, the underground fungal network that connects all the trees and shrubs in the forest.

Download the Defining Your Body of Work infographic.

Just like the parameters of a forest are defined by the canopy, the parameters of your body of work are defined by your BIG idea, the bold, insightful, and galvanizing idea upon which you are building your business and reputation. It is the idea for which you want to be known; it is your area of authoritative expertise.

The canopy is supported by mother trees, the oldest and largest trees in the forest. Think of the mother trees as the core themes of your body of work; they lend structure and support to your BIG idea.

Each mother tree is surrounded by hundreds of the smaller trees and shrubs. These are the topics that give form and substance to each of your core themes.

Finally, the thread-like structures of fungi that connect the trees and shrubs to one another form the mycorrhizal network. What ties your themes and topics together? You and your experience-based expertise.

How do you define your body of work?

Organizing your intellectual property into a body of work requires two related cognitive processes. Top-down processing looks at the big picture and breaks down each element in logical, sequential order. Bottom-up processing starts with the details, allowing the big picture to reveal itself.

According to an article about the cognitive journey written by metacognition researcher Paul Main, “[t]he interplay between these two processes occurs in a continuous loop. As new sensory information is processed bottom-up, it can influence and update the top-down understanding of the task, and vice versa.”

Lindsay Mackereth, a licensed professional clinical counselor, notes that most advice about accomplishing complex goals assumes that everyone will approach their work by starting with the goal and working backwards to figure out how to get there. But that doesn’t work for everyone.

How you start organizing your intellectual property depends in large part on which of these two processes is more aligned with your natural processing style.

If you’re a natural top-down processor, you will adopt a linear, step-by-step approach to defining your body of work. You might start by clarifying your BIG idea — the one thing for which you want to be known as an authoritative expert. From there, you might use a mind map or simply brainstorm a list of themes that support your BIG idea. The topics that you explore then flow logically from those themes.

If you are a natural bottom-up processor, the approach will be reversed. You might have a good idea of the reputation you wish to build, but you may not have fleshed out your BIG idea. Instead of imposing a structure on your body of work, you start by inventorying your intellectual property, capturing every offer, blog post, article, resource document, LinkedIn post, and presentation. Only after you’ve catalogued your intellectual property do meaning and structure emerge as you identify the topics covered in each piece and use top-down processing to organize those topics into themes.

If you are a bottom-up processor, consider inventorying your intellectual property. Download a copy of the Intellectual Property Inventory template to get started.

Regardless of how you start this process, your goal is to identify three to 10 themes, each of which will be home to an unlimited number of topics. However, topics and themes often feel interchangeable, especially when a topic has several subtopics. Distinguishing between the two will likely require you to toggle between top-down and bottom-up processing. If you have more than 10 themes, you might rely on bottom-up processing to find new patterns and ways to group your topics. If, on the other hand, you have clearly identified your themes, perhaps because you have a signature method, you might rely on top-down processing to come up with a list of topics for each theme.

As you progress, make sure you incorporate everything you’ve already created into your body of work. If a piece of intellectual property doesn’t fit into a topic within a theme, you’ll either need to refine your themes or remove that piece from your body of work so you don’t confuse your audience. Think of the articles you write, the presentations you give, and the offers you make as trail markers. These markers let people know where they are and that they are in the right forest. It allows prospective clients and partners to feel safe, and that safety leads to trust.

The final element of your body of work — the thing that ties it all together — is your experience-based expertise. When you share your experience through stories, illustrative examples, or scripts, it helps your audience understand how to apply your ideas to their situation and positions you as a trustworthy and authoritative expert. What client experiences illustrate each theme? What personal anecdotes help you make your point? What scripts can you share that will make it easier for your audience to take action?

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As you start putting parameters around your body of work and defining each of the elements, you’ll find that there are several ways to organize it. The key is to discover something that works for you and to test and refine it as necessary.

Start with whichever process feels most natural to you. It’s okay if the process is messy. When I defined my body of work, I had Post-it notes all over my office. (It looked like John Nash’s office in A Beautiful Mind.) Some of my clients adopt this analog approach. Others use Miro or Notion to organize their body of work.

There are countless right ways to organize your body of work. Take the time to find the one that is right for you.