Republished: EP46 - The Culture of Thought Leadership

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to the Culture of Things podcast. I'm your host, Brendan Rogers and this is episode 46. Today I'm talking with Peter Winick. Peter is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. For the past two decades, he has helped individuals and organizations build and grow revenue streams through designing and growing their thought leadership platforms as well as acting as a guide and advisor for increasing business to business sales of thought leadership products. His clients come from a diverse set of backgrounds and specialties. They include New York Times best selling business book authors, members of the Speakers hall of Fame, recipients of the Thinkers50 award, CEOs of public and privately held companies, and academics at prestigious institutions such as Yale, Wharton, Dartmouth and London School of Business. Peter uses a combination of art, science, logic, focus, passion and creativity to transform a thought leaders great ideas into a platform and practice so they can effectively reach business leaders and executives to serve them the tools they and their organizations need. Today we're going to learn more about this concept known as thought leadership and how to become a thought leader. Peter, welcome to the Culture of Things podcast. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Brendan. [00:01:18] Speaker B: It's a pleasure. You've been doing a few podcasts of late too. You've got your own show and you've also been on some other show and I've got to raise this for our listeners. You were recently on Leadership Podcast, which is a Franklin Covey podcast and I think the number one business podcast in the world. So that was. Geez mate, that's a fantastic accolade to have. [00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, no, thank you. Yeah, it was an honor to be on that one with Scott Miller not too long ago. It's a great, fantastic podcast and I was glad to be able to contribute. [00:01:52] Speaker B: Well, look, thanks for coming on the Culture of Things podcast. Really appreciate your time. You're a man that has spent 20 plus years in this whole thought leadership space and that's what we want to learn a bit about today. So how about let's dive in because you've got a lot of nuggets of gold to share, I'm sure. What is this term? Thought leadership. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah, so I love that question because there is no uniform, common, accepted definition. So if you and I were to discuss lunch, we know that that's the meal in the middle of the day. I wouldn't show up at 2 in the morning and you wouldn't show up at 5 in the afternoon. If we were to discuss finance and balance sheet, we know what we're talking about. So first off, people throw this term around all over the place. So for me, I think it's important to have some sort of framing and definition. The one that I use, and it might not be perfect and there might be better ones, but at least as a starting point for a conversation or with the client, is there's two pieces to it. I break it in half. So number one thought, well, what does that mean? That means what you're saying is smart, is wise, is evidence based, it might be research based, experience based, but it's thoughtful. It's not, this isn't about kitschy or how would that look on Twitter or Instagram is like, there is a depth to this that is thoughtful, right? In a space that I acknowledge and respect. Others have gone before. It's very rare that a branch of thought leadership is totally new and unique. Leadership has been around, management's been around, resilience has been around, you're adding and basically standing on the proverbial shoulders of giants. The other half of the word is where it gets really interesting is the leadership. So what does leadership mean? So to me, the leadership in thought leadership is that you have the guts and the courage to lead the conversation of the discipline into a new direction, into unchartered waters, into an area they haven't looked at before. Because if you're just regurgitating what I already know, if you're just telling me the things that I've seen elsewhere, that's not leadership. It might be thoughtful, it might be great content, it might even be valuable to the right audience at the right time. But are you really leading the discipline into another area? And in order to have the courage to do that, A, you gotta get your stuff out there. But B, you have to not be worried, concerned, et cetera, with everyone has to agree with me. No, everyone doesn't have to agree with you, right? In fact, if some sub percentage of the population doesn't disagree with you, then you're doing something wrong. So that's my definition. And then the other pieces of way I look at that question is, what else is out there that people confuse with thought leadership? That's not so. There's content marketing. Content marketing is great. And we all know its purpose is to use content to market a product good or service, right? So if I'm, if I'm Staples and I sell office products, I might want to put some content out there on how not to jam up the copy machine in the office. That's great. Not thought leadership, right? Then there's subject matter expertise where there might be, you know, three people in the world that know everything there is to know about, you know, I don't know, train accidents or something like that. That's interesting. It's really not thought leadership in that the audience or the impact that that can have is fairly limited based on the specificity and the narrowness of the domain expertise. [00:05:09] Speaker B: You covered what is thought leadership and what isn't thought leadership in that definite. Which is fantastic. Thank you very much. Because I think there is always a lot of confusion about what something like thought leadership. Where did this term actually come from? I know it was way back in, I think around 1994. But what was the sort of basis around it? Are you aware of that? [00:05:28] Speaker A: I don't know the official origin because I've read multiple things that actually it was thrown around in the 50s and 60s in academia a little bit. My belief from my experience where it evolved is if you go back. Well, let me. I'll tell you my story. So if I go back, when I started the firm almost 15 years ago, the term guru made me nauseous, right? So everybody was a leadership guru or a management guru or a sales guru. And I was like, what is that? I'm not sitting cross legged on the floor in a robe teaching people about resilience or whatever. So guru was the term they came up with. And then it was like, okay, a lot of people looked at that and said, guru. I don't like that. What sounds better than that? And it sort of came out there and stuck a little bit. So I don't know exactly where it came from, but it's better than guru. But I think there has been some what I would call sort of thought leadership inflation going on in the world. [00:06:19] Speaker B: Two things. I'll make sure I don't call you guru at any point in time. The call might end abruptly. But the second thing is that thought leadership, and you referenced this, there's lots of jazzy terms that come up and all of a sudden, especially with social media nowadays, there's people putting those jazzy terms on their profiles. So I did some research in preparation for this interview and I went through LinkedIn because I thought, well, I'm probably not going to find thought leadership on Facebook. Maybe, maybe not. But, you know, people are that professional situation. So I found over 1.3 million people with thought leadership in their title or tagline or whatever. [00:07:01] Speaker A: That's shocking and shocking and offensive to me. [00:07:05] Speaker B: Tell me why that is. [00:07:07] Speaker A: It's just not possible. First off, let me go backwards. Anybody that is calling themselves a thought leader is a jerk, period. Full stop. Right. Thought leader is also, and I should have included this in the definition, not something one bestows on oneself, but others in the field or that you admire or that are respected by others in the community that you practice bestow upon you. Hey, you know, Brendan, is a thought leadership in the area of culture. Great. As opposed to you going out there saying, hey, I'm the culture thought leader. Like, no. So, you know, I think people putting that out there on LinkedIn, whatever, 1.3 million people, like, really like, it's illegal to go out there and say you're a dentist in most countries unless you have certain qualifications and credentials, et cetera. I'm not suggesting that we need to have a test to be a thought leader, but I would ask probably 1.29 of those 1.3 million people, why do you believe that you're a thought leader? What makes you think that? What is, you know, what is it? And I think that we're living in a little bit of a time where there's. It's a sexy, cool title. I was here before it was sexy and cool where it was. It was just really just a fascinating discipline, fascinating practice area. [00:08:20] Speaker B: That's a great segue into. Because I want to really always love to get to know the inside of the mind of a guest is what got you into this space. Like, why did you think this was going to be cool? And I could actually make a really good living and helping people leverage their thought leadership to make successful businesses. [00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So there's sort of two answers to that question. The first answer is going back in my history 30 some years now. There was a time where I was young and I was an entrepreneur and I was underfunded and all those other things. And I was also at that same time and prior to that, a total dork and a nerd and a book geek. Right. But I never saw those two things as related. It's like, okay, by day entrepreneur and many times into the nights and weekends and one had time, you know, what are the books I'm reading, the magazines I'm reading and all that sort of stuff. And then those two worlds collided for me in the mid aughts when I got brought in to do a turnaround in a communications consulting firm. Actually they were based in Australia, but we took over the New York, the North American operation. And I just got brought in there through a friend. I was running a consulting company at the time. He was doing turnaround work. I'd never done turnaround work, but pretty entrepreneurial. And the first thing I learned there is, wow, this whole company, 40, $50 million, whatever it was, company globally, it's been around 50 years, is making money and employing a couple hundred people based on a book that somebody wrote in 1968 or whatever it was. That's pretty cool. That is thought leadership. That is the ip, that is the principles and all that sort of stuff. It needed to be refined and put into new modalities and all that other stuff. So I realized there's a business side to thought leadership. And I was like, wow, a lot of the things that I'm just sort of wired for as an entrepreneur or a semi savvy business person applied in that world. And then I partnered with a guy that was launching a book in 2005 called Never Read Alone, Keith Rossi, and was instrumental in the launch of the book and the business and all that. Realized, wow, there's a whole world of thought leaders that could use some assistance on the strategy side, the marketing side. There's a whole bunch of things that I and my firm do and there's a bunch of things that we don't. We don't create thought leadership. We have some of our own, but client doesn't come to us and say, oh, write a book for us. No, that's called the ghostwriter. We don't create the great ideas and the thought leaders. We're the ones that know how to develop the strategies so that you can leverage and monetize and scale for impact the thought leadership that you have. And back in 2005, don't forget, I don't think Facebook was on yet. I don't think LinkedIn was on yet. I don't think Twitter was on or if they were, they were but a shadow or shell of what they are today. There were a lot of intermediaries in the industry. There were book agents that you needed to go through, there were speaking agents that you needed to go through. And that was all changing. And I think what I saw was, wow, okay, once this opens up, the average thought leader is in deep trouble because they don't know where to go. They're not going to know where to go. They want to do their research, they want to write their books, they want to be speaking, they want to be talking to clients. They don't want to be masters of social media, with a couple of exceptions. So how do they become masters of all these things to be successful? Because it used to be if you were a great thought leader, as defined by producing great content, others could figure out how to do the distribution, all that, then that all blew up in the mid 2000s and continues to change and evolve to today. Actually. [00:11:41] Speaker B: In the hybrid working world, I've seen too many business owners and their businesses suffer because of poor performing employees leading to below average results. If you want to improve your employees performance to deliver consistent results for your business, you have to master one on one meetings. The doors to our master one on one meetings training program are opening soon. I'll teach you how to improve employee performance and deliver consistent results using one on one meetings. To be one of the first people notified when the doors open, go to leader by design AU forward slash waitlist. Don't wait, sign up now. You've sort of explained a bit about that or touched on the journey of your 20 or so years and 15 years in your company, how you've seen that evolve. What are you seeing today around the thought leaders that are really producing and coming up with excellent stuff that's really I guess, leading the field. What does that look like? And I'd love you to take that journey into your own crystal ball premonition of what you see thought leadership looking like into the future. [00:12:53] Speaker A: Let me split that because there's the good, the bad and the ugly answer to that. So part of the good is as a result of COVID and we're still more so in North America than you are. Heavily, heavily, heavily impacted by Covid. So what happened? One of the things that happened that's a positive is lots, you know, if I would have asked a bunch of my clients a year and change ago, hey, what's on your mind? Oh geez, there's this book I want to write. Or is this program I want to update or another speaker. There's so much creative. Well, what's holding you back from doing that? Well, geez, I'm traveling and I'm on airplanes and I'm doing all this delivery and I've carved out a couple weeks over the summer to go to the cabin, whatever, whatever. And then all of a sudden the world stopped. So there is absolutely, and we're just at the tip of seeing the first wave of this, a renaissance that I think is going to continue for the next 6 to 18 to 24 months of pent up thought leadership that was partially on someone's hard drive. They've been noodling about it, but now you give a whole bunch of really, really smart, passionate people more time than they thought they would have last year. And what do they do? They create great stuff. Like that's just, you know, Give an artist a brush and a canvas, they will paint. And that's ultimately what happened. So I think that's a good thing that people, it forced people to sort of not force people. But they didn't just sit there and watch Netflix all day, right? So they said, oh good, this is good. I can carve out, you know, half of my day and work on this thing. The bag is the markets that supported them and paid them and supported the industry have totally changed many of the markets, not all. So the speaking business, where many, many, many of my clients got rich and fat and to some degree happy and lazy was pretty straightforward. Get on a plane, go to Denver, do your thing, get paid 25 grand, get on another plane, go to LA, do that, rinse, lather, repeat, do that a handful of times a month or a dozen times a month or whatever it is and you make a pretty good living. And it's not all that complicated to do in terms of operationally, in terms of a seven figure business, you need, you know, an admin and some web help and not all that tough, right? That goes away. So once we got, you know, at least here in the states into lockdown and all the events closed, oh well, where's their money coming from now? Who's paying them? Because they're not going to get, there are not getting paid the same dollars to deliver their content in a format like this on a zoom because the clients just don't see it as the same value, right? So if I, if I'm having a big conference in Scottsdale or Las Vegas or London or Sydney or whatever and bring in the big speaker, that's great, right? Because there's something about the experience of being in the same room with fill in the blank, your favorite author, seeing them deliver their stuff. Most companies don't want to pay 30 or 40 or 25,000 for that because it's like, well, I can just buy people a copy of your book or I can just go watch your TED Talk or I can get. You have so much video out there. So now what's happening is it's forcing folks that we're making a nice living in a fairly predictable, steady way to re examine strategically. Wait a minute, I still have something valuable to say, many things to say still. People that benefit and appreciate and value what I have to say, what's the economic relationship look like? How do I have to deliver that, you know, and does that mean putting it into scalable digital solutions? Does it mean consulting? Does it mean mass? There's a lot of ways that you can put content into that are of value to a different market. But you have to re examine everything. And I think one lesson that Covid has taught all of us is this isn't about resuming. We're not just going back to what we used to do. This is a forced opportunity to reinvent everything that you believe to be true and everything that you've done as an operator, as a business owner and question if it will survive, sustain, thrive or die in this environment. [00:16:30] Speaker B: With the COVID situation specifically, I suppose again, as you referred to, it's very much still look, it's in progress in Australia as well. But we're in a lot better situation, I guess, fortunately, than what you guys are in the States. But have you got an example that can really help people, really cement this understanding of thought leadership and what people are doing that I guess has stood out for you in Covid or a client you've worked with or just something you've seen through this thought leadership space of like, hey, that is just like, that's really reinventing, that's really changing the landscape. [00:17:05] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'll answer that. I feel like there's a pattern here in two ways. One is the content. Right. So first off, content, which is the basis of thought leadership, is in support of the business world, at least the world that I work in. Right. So all of my clients are B2B, right. We don't do self help and love and romance and all that stuff. It's not that it's bad. Well, some of it is, but that's just not where we choose to practice. Right. So in the B2B world, if you're putting thought leadership out into the business community, Businesses are cyclical, Right. So if you go back to the first quarter of 2020 and say, what was the thought leadership that was in the highest demand at that point in time? Only but a year ago. Right. I'm not talking about the 1800s here. It was the war for talent. The economy was on fire. Companies were fighting for the highest talent and understanding that a great engineer or a great coder is 100 times more valuable than a mediocre one. So what are they going to do about it? So there's this whole war for talent. There's work, life balance type stuff, burnout and mindfulness in the workplace. And really being mindful of are we pushing people too hard? Culture was a big one. I mean, those are just a couple of examples that come to mind. Well, fast forward within a month or two of COVID Work, life, balance, that's out the window. You know, I'm, I'm in my office and my spouse is working out of the bathroom and my kids are homeschooled. Like that ain't balance. We are out of balance right now. And putting out thought leadership about where to draw the boundaries between work and life would be tone deaf. The war for talent, when at least in this country, 10 million people, if not more lost their employment is just tone deaf. So now it's about things like that we're starting to see on the content side. How do you manage, and this probably plays into your wheelhouse, Brendan, culture in a remote world, right? So how do I recruit, hire onboard and support my culture in a world where I don't know when I'm going to see my colleagues again physically? I mean, I'll see them on remotely. That's the world that we're living in in North America right now. Like occupancy. I live in New York. Occupancy of offices, Office tenant, you know, meaning how many people come to the office building every day is the last I saw under 20%. That's huge. One out of five people are going to the office. Well, that means four out of five people aren't. Right. So your culture, how do you maintain the integrity of your culture? How do you manage your career? How do you understand there's a huge push primarily as a result of the George Floyd horrific incidences here in the state to up level diversity, inclusion, training. Right. Like it has to mean something else. There's a huge push for frontline managers to have an awareness that they never needed to have before of mental health. And it's not to say that we need to take every frontline manager and make them a PhD in psychology, but it used to be as a manager you were trained. And If I've got 10 people and it looks like Brendan's in a bit of a rut. Here we go. Have a coffee. What's wrong, Brendan? I noticed that your work quality isn't good. We say, oh gee, well, I'm going through a rough patch, divorce, whatever the issue, health or illness or whatever. And then I could figure out how to accommodate you as best I can as a manager. Now I got everybody on the teams going through mental health issues, whether they admit it or not. The stress is up, the anxiety is up, we're worried about our physical safety, all that stuff. So those are new genres. Not new genres, but things that there's more focus on today that we wouldn't have predicted. But a year and change ago. So that's answering your question through the lens of content, through the lens of format, which I think was the other. You sort of touched on both. Well, if I can't deliver it in person, how else can I deliver it? And where is there value? So we're seeing a lot of digitization, elearning, digitization, microlearning, all that sort of thing happening. I think that's great. I think that's all Covid did at one level is accelerate the inevitable there. So the days of the three day workshop, which were waning anyway, are waning even more, moving our logic from push learning to pull. So push is I'm going to shove everything I know about negotiations through this device into your brain, Brendan, and then this way you'll be a better negotiator. Well, what we know now from an adult learning perspective is there's some things I do need to push. If we're going to talk about a framework on negotiation, I have to give you some language and models and definitions that's pushed. But pull, which is, oh, tomorrow Brendan has to have a negotiation with a potential client. You're going to want to pull down some refresher videos or whatever that are very contextual and very relevant because at 2 o' clock tomorrow you have an issue that this relates to. So this combination of push and pull learning is changing peer to peer. We've learned that, hey, we're all going, we can all learn from one another. It doesn't have to be the smartest or most credentialed guy in the room or the zoom. How do I share knowledge with you? How do you share expertise with me? How do we support one another that way? So I think the modalities are changing a lot. How you capture value in that market is a little bit different. [00:21:59] Speaker B: Our interview will continue after this. An expression of gratitude or reciprocity, no matter how large or small, is an important part of a healthy culture and relationships. Our friends at Jangler have a great app that allows you to send a gift card with a personal video, voice message or funny gif you can send right away or schedule to send on the perfect day and time set and forget. I like that I have found it perfect for clients, employees, birthdays or any celebration where I can't be there in person. It's quick, easy to send and you can spend instantly in store or or online when you receive a card, check it out@jangler.com au I'm going to be a bit selfish here, Pete and I'm going to say, hey, you help me. You're an expert in this thought leadership space. You've got your thought leadership leverage, business successful. Some of the people in your gallery, I can't profess to know heaps and heaps of the names, but some of the names I'm looking at where Peter's sitting next to Jack Welsh, Brian Tracy, Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, Richard Branson, Stephen Mr. Covey. I mean, there's some pretty high level names there. So I'm going to say, right, this is where I get selfish Peter. I'm just normal, ordinary Brendan Rogers. I do some leadership teamwork, culture, work with organizations and leaders. I've got a podcast. I want to become a thought leader. How does that happen? First of all, is that even realistic? Like, is that something that I need to put in my head and what do I do? How do you help me? [00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So the irony is more of my clients look like you than look like the folks that you mentioned in the pictures I've been in. Some of those are events, some of those have been clients, et cetera. But, you know, quite frankly, Daniel Pink doesn't need my help. I love his work. You know, we've met several times. I don't, I don't know that we friends, but we've been at similar events, we email once in a while, et cetera. He's doing all right, you know, probably doesn't need my help right now. Maybe, maybe. Actually, I don't know the state of the speaking business, but he's got it, got it working. Covey knows how to do it. More of my clients are more aspirational where, you know, you have domain expertise, you have a certain platform on the podcast, you have goals and objectives. So what I would say to someone like you, Brian, which Brendan, that looks more and more like my clients, is great. Let's talk about that. What are the goals that you're trying to achieve that you think thought leadership would help? Is it. Are you looking to monetize the thought leadership directly, like many of my clients? Are you looking to use the thought leadership as an entree into other things or to monetize your content or monetize something else, that you've got another business? Right. So are you using it for that way? What does that look like for you? What are the constraints that you have? Skills, capability, time, resources, whatever. Who's out there that you admire a lot in a similar domain or a similar space? And what is it that they're doing that's of interest to you, because what you don't want to do, I mean, one thing is almost all of our clients are entrepreneurs. And to some, that is a self proclaimed I am an entrepreneur. To others, the reason behind that is because you're such an outlier that no company would ever allow you to work for them for more than 90 days. You're disagreeable, you're grumpy, you don't follow the rules, you're an outlier, you don't whatever. So there's voluntary and involuntary entrepreneurs. So I always work with our clients and say, okay, I don't want to create a role that looks like one you're either not qualified for or would hate getting out of bed for every day to go. What jazzes you, what excites you? What is it about the perception of being a thought leader that's sexy to you, that's interesting, that's intrinsically gratifying to you? [00:25:36] Speaker B: And obviously looking at myself, you know, there's reference to an individual. So the question that comes up for me is, does thought leadership need to be around an individual? Like some of those names I've mentioned, Can a company be a thought leading company? Is there a difference in the two? [00:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah. So I would say that it's a catch 22 with how much of it does it have to be the burden of me as an individual and then how do I get away from that? So I would say there's a trajectory where we have clients, where our initial objective is to make them really, really, really, really relevant. So get more people to be aware of them. Get them out there, get them out there, get them out there. Then we have other clients that are sort of at that spot and they're like, okay, I'm tired. I don't have a business that scales. I have a practice. How do we make me irrelevant? And 3x or 5x the top line of the company. So at the risk of sounding like a consultant, it depends. There's a time and place in the career to say no, we need to make you more relevant. You need to be the rock star, you need to be the face of the brand. Then there are other times that say, you know what? How do we make sure that the intellectual property, the thought leadership is able to extract value for you without you being in the room or these days in the zoom. That's the real goal, is to be in that place where dollars are changing hand and impact is happening irregardless of what your calendar looks like on a particular day of the week. [00:26:57] Speaker B: Going back to what you Said around, is there someone that I follow? I use a number of people's work. Patrick Lencioni is someone I'm really keen on in the work around culture, leadership and teamwork. Now recently he's released something called the six Working Geniuses and I've done that assessment. I'm starting to use that with my clients. Part of my geniuses is enablement and discernment. Now there's a genius of invention and what I started to think about again and thinking about you and the experience you have, is there a type of person or in that case a type of genius or a type of personality profile that fits the thought leadership bill more so than somebody else that is a really good practitioner of other people's stuff? [00:27:45] Speaker A: I think that's a great question. There's different categories that we've come up with. There's someone that's focused on impact and legacy. There's a growth minded CEO. Right. So it really depends on sort of how does that person do what they do. Academics are an odd bird for most academics. They spend their days and their weeks and their months writing articles that nobody reads and debating and arguing with people that nobody cares about. That's just, that's that world. Then there's a very, very small subset of academics that break out into the mainstream. Think Adam Grant or Dan Ariely or a couple others that aren't coming to mind right now that go mainstream. What is it about someone that has their roots in academia but can translate it into a general business piece? That's a gift, you know? So I don't, I don't know that to be a thought leader you have to be the inventor type, right? A lot of times it's the connecting. What you can't be is just the charisma guy or gal, right? You can't just be a bundle of energy that's called a great facilitator on Red Bull. That's great. There's a market for that. That's not thought leadership. Those are the people that can deliver somebody else's content at a good to great level. Okay, that's great. The world needs those people and God bless them. And they're lovely and they're wonderful, but they're not really adding things. They're just. There are people that can play Macbeth and they're people that can't. [00:29:05] Speaker B: Sort of the motivational speaker coming to mind. But I guess there can be motivational speakers that can be thought leaders, but a chunk of them are just getting people motivated about something for a short period. [00:29:16] Speaker A: And I think that the litmus test there is, Listen, there's a market for entertainment. It's shrinking right now from a thought leadership perspective. But I always say, as a result of the ideal avatar, the ideal target market, being exposed to your work, having some intervention with your work, what's the before and after? What's the observable change? Right. So if you are the culture guru, you're the culture expert, right. And you're going to work with a company, I assume that their starting point is their culture isn't where it wants to be. It's lacking. Maybe it's toxic, maybe it's not clearly identified. And the end point, the after, is, wow, everybody here knows about this culture. We use it as a guiding principle. It helps us make business decisions, it helps us attract. It's part of who we are. You can't undo the culture from how we operate as a business. That's the before and after. That's the promise. If all you're doing is getting up there and talking about, oh, here's five reasons why having a great culture is powerful, that's interesting, but that's not impactful. [00:30:16] Speaker B: One of the things I refer to a bit is teamwork being the ultimate competitive advantage, how people interact, and that drives so much in organizations. One of the things you refer to is thought leadership is a strategic competitive advantage. Tell us more about that. Why is that so? [00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think that the world that we're living in now, forget Covid. I mean, this is a non Covid related issue. Everyone, everything, everybody, whether it's product based or service based, is being commoditized at a far faster rate than any time in history, period. Right? So it doesn't matter if you're the best, the biggest small, there's a race. Just commoditization is happening. So how does one fight commoditization? Because commoditization also means you get really bad pricing. You don't stand out, you're replaceable, you're interchangeable. There is no loyalty, there's no repeat. Like, most thought leaders don't aspire to be a commodity. Oh, I'm a culture guy. I'm just as good as the other one or the other one. Like just pick one, go to the phone book and triple A plumbing shows up first. What we don't want is AAA culture person, but that's the way you have to think about it. So how do I stand out and differentiate? So to me it's thought leadership. Because one of the things that thought leadership does is you Might not have the biggest brand, you might not have the biggest reach, you might not have the biggest balance sheet. But if you got a decent brain, you could punch far above your weight vis a vis thought leadership and show the world how smart you are, how good you are, how impactful you are, and outmaneuver your competitors. And also a notch or 2 or 3 above in terms of size, tenure in the marketplace, reputation for others. So I always think of good investments of thought leadership is an investment in your brand, in your marketing, and the ROI is net new client acquisition. How many new clients will be attracted to you based on what they've seen, read, heard, whatever about who you are. [00:32:11] Speaker B: And what you do, Referring back to culture. And I'll bring this obviously back into thought leadership. There's a lot of people out there that I find that don't believe that they can codify their culture. And there's not frameworks around culture or how I can lead better or how I can have people interacting in teams better. There is, and it really supports a good journey. Is there the same thing around thought leadership again? Are there principles? Are there frameworks? Is there something around that that says, you know what, I'm starting to understand this concept of thought leadership much better. Peter's been really helpful with that. But how do I support myself? It's not just a fluffy thought thing. There's some substance behind that. Is there something like that in the thought leadership space? [00:32:53] Speaker A: Well, we've developed over the years a whole suite of models, frameworks, methodologies, and tools. It's not a one size. So, you know, again, the consultant's favorite answer is, it depends. But it depends, right? So we have a suite of various products and frameworks and models that we use to help people with the thought leadership. Now, it depends on, is it early on, are we helping you actually develop it and get your thinking? Really tight model work and all that sort of stuff. Is it to deploy it? Is it to accelerate the monetization of it? What's the goal? But we have models and things that we use for each of those because they're not all the same. Some people have a lot of, you know, they might be an expert in management, whatever that means, right? Hey, I'm a management expert. Okay, but that doesn't mean you're a thought leader in management. So what is it that you believe is the kernel of your thought leadership? Oh, I'm a manager that believes that the power of management is connected to listening to every generation in the way they want to be heard. Okay. So it's intergenerational listening skills is your secret sauce of management. Okay, that's interesting. Let's play with that for a little bit. And then we would take them through like, does that hold water? Is that true? How do we know that that is true? Is that of interest to anybody? Does the market care? Because the other thing that a lot of thought leaders do is it's easy to be the loner and to create an isolation and, you know, nose to the grindstone and go, go, go, go, go without getting the feedback. I would rather have somebody tell me that is a really stupid idea. And, and there is no value to something I spent an hour writing a 500 word blog than something that I spent a year writing a 300 page book. So I think the quicker you can get stuff out there to get feedback, market validation or invalidation, it's just feedback. And it's equally, if not more valuable than spending a lot of time, energy and money deploying things that have no market mate. [00:34:42] Speaker B: You would have worked with a number of people, a large number of people over the time you've been involved in having your own business. In the thought leadership space, it's always a hard one. Is there a project or a story that you have that sort of for you just stands out above all else? It might not be the success of it, but just the journey and the process of it that really got your juices flowing. You thought, this is just, this is why I do this stuff. [00:35:06] Speaker A: There have been so many. I mean, that's like asking a favorite kid question, right? So there have been many over the years. And again, not everybody has the same goal. So we have worked with clients that are, when we started with them, were fairly small by design, single shingle practitioners in a domain that they're really, really good at. And when we ended, they might have still wanted to have that because they don't want to manage people, they're not good at that. But they can be making three to four times the money and be more well known and have clients coming to them begging to be on the wait list than them going from gig to gig to gig, that's incredibly successful. We've had other ends of the continuum of where we've worked with folks that have sold zillions of books and their names are now part of the common language of business. And that's great too. And then we've had others where you don't really see the impact. So one of the issues with B2B that's interesting is it's not as visible to the regular population. So when you look at some of the work that we do, we could 10x somebody's business by taking the work that they've got codified in a book that they had in a speech that turning it into programs that then gets licensed into Google or Nike or JP Morgan or whatever. But there's no visibility to that. But it's really powerful and impactful. And you know, the way we try to understand where people are is being really clear upfront with them around what their goals are and goals are. Usually there's intrinsic goals like hey, I've already made all the money in the world. I just love getting an email from someone saying, well, you changed the way I think. And you know, like that's why I'm doing this. Right. That's cool. That's a different yardstick. Right. There's another set of goals that say, well, I just want to be able to make a living doing my work, not delivering other people's work. Okay, we can get there. And then there are others where I want to take my life's work that I've spent 20, 30, 40 years on and start the process of converting those into other assets that can be sold off so the work lives beyond me and I can go off into the sunset or whatever the case is. And if you put the wrong set of goals or apply the wrong frameworks to an outcome that isn't of interest to you, you can be quote, successful, but be a total failure to your client. [00:37:13] Speaker B: Right. Thank you for explaining that. And again, a very diplomatic answer. I like what you said about it's like asking for the favorite child thing. So well, well done in answering that. You didn't reveal any favorite child. [00:37:25] Speaker A: Well, the diplomacy has been out of favor in the States for quite some time. Small doses if I can. [00:37:32] Speaker B: Another area I really do want to ask and pick your brain on is that I know you made reference and the thing that resonated with me around some of the interviews you've done before is you made a reference at some point, I think more than once actually to sarcastically the whole 23 year old life coach scenario that really resonated with me. But then when I turned it around to thought leadership and helping me understand the concept of thought leadership better, where do people need to be in their career journey to start to be, I guess note made aware that they are, like you said, they're not. They can't really call themselves a thought leader. That's not it. But other people are referring to them as thought leaders. [00:38:12] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad you're going to maybe change your mind on the diplomacy comment in a moment. I mean, we use this with our clients all the time. Why in the hell would anyone listen to anything you said? You know, state your case. And some of them say, well, I've been doing this for 40 years and I invented the wheel and I. Okay, well that's a reason. I've worked with some of the biggest and best company. Okay, that's a reason. You know, I was the founder of Uber. Okay, that's a reason. Oh, because I like it. You know, like, so there are reasons that are reasons and then there are reasons that are not reasons. So why would anyone listen to you? More importantly, why would anyone pay you and does what you say do what it says it's going to do? So again, I mean I joke about the 23 year old life coach because I think you need to have a little bit more life under your belt before you're coaching others. But that's one man's opinion, right? It doesn't mean that you can't be a life coach until you're, you know, 38.5 years old. Like, like maybe there are 23 year old life coaches that actually I'm certified in this methodology. I've studied this, I've studied that. Okay, I get it. You know, that makes your case. But, but in an unregulated universe, right? So even, you know, if you take coaching as an example, there are coaches that are very qualified, very, very well, studied very well, whatever. And then there are others that yesterday might have been a mortgage broker and today they're a coach. That's not how I would pick a doctor, but my shorthand would be. Why would anyone listen to you? Why would anyone pay for you and does what you do say what it promises to do? [00:39:37] Speaker B: What's the biggest challenge or the biggest problem that you see for the thought leadership space? [00:39:45] Speaker A: I don't really see problems, I see opportunities. I mean, I think at an individual level I always am very excited about what are the new modalities? How are people consuming content? How are they paying for content? You know, human nature is such like, listen, we were writing on the walls in the caves because that's what we wanted to do. And then, you know, we've read books and now it's TED Talks and now it's, you know, microlearning and TikTok. Like there's so many ways you can't even like, I mean clubhouse has just exploded as an example in the last 45 to 60 days. If somebody would have told me a year ago in the presume era because of COVID oh, there's going to be this app and you go on and it's audio only, people would have laughed at that. Right. But maybe there's something about the pulse of where we are today that we're zoom fatigued, if that's a thing. And like, I want to be able to turn the camera off and, you know, not have to look my best or, you know, whatever. So I don't see really threats. I think that the market gets smarter. The days of the cheesy motivational guy selling, you know, snake oil. One of the powers of the Internet is people will call BS pretty quickly if you're making claims, if you're plagiarizing, if you're doing all these horrible things that people have done for a long time, you will get found out pretty quickly. [00:40:56] Speaker B: You mentioned clubhouse. So I got to ask a question because one of the thoughts that came into my mind when I've played with that app a little bit is have you ever thought about you've got your own podcast, just opening up a room and recording the podcast like this, but having sort of clubhouse there? So you've got a room open for the people listening to the live podcast. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So clubhouse, you know, I've downloaded the app not that long ago, I got invited, blah, blah, blah. It's on my list of things to do by the end of the month is to at least not to be a master, but to have an understanding. And then once I have an understanding, then make a decision of does it fit into the strategy of the business? Because I think what happens? And we eat our own dog food. Because people come to us all the time, say, oh, TikTok. And I'm like, wait a minute, hold on. You're a leadership professor at a world renowned university. Do you see what's going on on TikTok? It's fun, it's cute, it's entertaining, whatever. Do you really think your market is there and you really think that's aligned with your brand? You don't have to be everywhere. You have to be where the people that matter to you will see you. You know, Instagram is lovely, but to me, unless you're in something that's highly visual, most thought leaders don't need to have a heavy presence on Instagram. But if you were a florist or an interior decorator or a baker, and you're not, shame on you. That's a beautiful medium for that. [00:42:10] Speaker B: Is there a platform that most works or most resonates in this space of thought? A social media platform that most resonates around the thought leadership space? [00:42:21] Speaker A: What we're seeing right now in the last 18 months, two years, is it used to be very, very fragmented. You had Twitter and you had share slide and there were so many things. It appears that LinkedIn is winning the race and potentially has won the race. So it is the place and because of the network effect and all that, where it's not about broadcasting but narrow casting, you could find your tribe on LinkedIn, you could deliver very bespoke content to that market in multiple ways. You can do it on video, you can do the written word and you can also find your audience. We're not living in the world of there's three channels on television. It's infinite number of things that we can be consuming. So we're the people that matter most to me. Pulling down their content and spending their time and devoting their attention, that's where I need to be. And you need to get over yourself. And what I mean by that is some people say, oh geez, I hate the sound of my voice, I don't want to do video. Or I just, you know, I'm a writer, I just like to write, you know, 3,000 words. Okay, well, if you're only putting out long form articles and your market is a market that will only read short form articles and like short form video, you're going to lose. So you can stay doing what you like or you can adjust what you do to reach the market that matters to you so that you can actually drive your business to the next level. [00:43:38] Speaker B: I want to start to close this up. So I want to get to your point of again, you've got unbelievable experience in this thought leadership space. What advice would you give to people out there that again, have this thinking they're on this journey, they have maybe some ambition of being known as a thought leader at some point. Where do they start? What advice would you give them to start them on a journey that may well develop them into that space? It may well not. There's a lot of steps to take along that journey, obviously. [00:44:10] Speaker A: So it sounds like the obvious answer to that question would be, oh, just start, just start writing, just start doing, just start that. But that's not the answer I'm going to give you. The answer is, what is the strategy? What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to reach? How do they consume content? What is it? Have you done a Competitive analysis. A lot of people say, oh, no, I've got this brand new idea on leadership. More great. Have you looked at. And I don't mean competitor in a Coke and Pepsi, win, lose, but what else is already out there in the marketplace is what you're saying different, better, quicker, faster. So I think it's about having a strategy in place that supports you. And sometimes constraints and restraints are the best thing we can have. Because then it says, ah, it's obvious to me I shouldn't do that. And it's obvious to me I should do this. And you use it as a way to make decisions and to gauge your progress along the way. A lot of people just sort of dive in very tactically. Oh, clubhouse is the thing. Let me get on clubhouse and I'll start. 32 rooms and I'm a clubhouse rockster. Okay, what were your business goals? What's the strategy? What is clubhouse supposed to do for you? And if you can't answer that, other than curiosity and something to do to spend your time, don't kid yourself that you expect to just sort of randomly do a lot of stuff and expect magic and unicorns and rainbows to happen. [00:45:23] Speaker B: It's pretty hard to find those unicorns and rainbows when you need them, isn't it? [00:45:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I kind of stopped looking. We get some rainbows after a good rain, but unicorns, I'm still looking. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What does the next sort of 12, 24 months look like for you? Your podcast, Thought Leadership Leverage. Like, what are you excited about for the future? [00:45:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So we launched a new practice area a year and change ago. So right pre Covid called the organizational thought leader. And what that is is not the most uniquely named practice area, but what that means is traditionally we've worked with author speakers, thought leaders, small consultancies, academics, et cetera. And what we found is there is a market, is actually a massive market for thought leadership in very large organizations. Think high tech, think professional services, think financial services, institutions, et cetera, that need to develop and deploy thought leadership, not to monetize it directly, but to get their word and their message out there because they have another model for the business. So using that for marketing purposes. So that's a practice area in the business that I'm really excited. It's growing, it's growing quickly. We're picking up new clients all the time and I think that's going to be a high growth area for us. [00:46:34] Speaker B: Well, look, I've only known you for a short Time. But in that short time, you're a very, very astute chap with a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge. So I'm sure whatever you put your mind to will work out pretty well sometimes. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Usually. [00:46:45] Speaker B: But we all need a few fails from time to time, don't we? [00:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, that's the other thing is that thought leadership at some level is a low risk game to put your stuff out there and realize, like, it doesn't require a ton of capital, it requires more courage than capital to get your stuff out there. [00:47:02] Speaker B: Great point. Love that. More courage than capital, mate. How can people get hold of you? [00:47:08] Speaker A: I just like being called mate. I think this is very, very cool. There you go. [00:47:11] Speaker B: That's the official term? [00:47:13] Speaker A: That's the official term, yeah. Yeah. Best way to get hold of me is to email me, which is Peter thought leadershipleverage.com. so that's Peter thought leadershipleverage.com it actually goes to me. Not a robot or an AI or someone in Singapore or whatever. You could check out the website thought leadershipleverage.com, the podcast is leveraging thought leadership, which is on Spotify, itunes and wherever else you get your podcast from. And the usual social places, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. [00:47:39] Speaker B: Awesome. And that's how we connected. Now I just got to ask you, do prefer me calling you mate than guru? [00:47:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, God, yes. Yes. [00:47:46] Speaker B: Fantastic. I'm safe then. [00:47:48] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time today, Peter. As I said, we met through LinkedIn. You've been really open and really generous with your time and I just want to thank you so much for that's given me so much more of a better understanding around thought leadership and what it's about, and particularly what it's not about, so that, you know, even I can have a little bit more robust conversations about people calling themselves thought leaders. But, mate, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thanks for being a fantastic guest on the Culture of Things podcast today. [00:48:17] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, Brendan. Appreciate it. [00:48:29] Speaker B: Peter has had the opportunity to meet and work with so many high profile thought leaders over the last two decades. He's a man who obviously knows his stuff around thought leadership and how to leverage these thoughts and ideas in order to reach the masses and add value to so many people. It was a privilege talking to him and diving into his own thoughts and perspectives around what would seem to be an overused term, thought leadership. There was a particular statement that Peter said during the interview with, which really stuck with me. Thought leadership is a low risk game. It requires more courage than capital. How many of you have the courage to attempt to get on a path of thought leadership? These were my three key takeaways from my conversation with Peter. My first key takeaway Thought leadership is bestowed on you by others. It isn't or shouldn't be something that you start calling yourself with social media platforms today. It seems an all too common occurrence where individuals can give themselves a sexy title. Potentially. There are well over 1 million people on LinkedIn alone who are doing just that around thought leadership. If you are a true thought leader, people will naturally refer to you as one. My second key takeaway Content is the basis of thought leadership. This doesn't mean if you produce or push out lots of content that you are instantly a thought leader. You have to consume content and take either a unique perspective, have a unique experience, or or can provide some unique resources around a subject matter you are immersed in. If you do this and it builds credibility, trust and loyalty with your audience, then your content may just be considered by them to be thought leading. My third key takeaway Thought leadership is a strategic competitive advantage. I didn't think that anything could rival teamwork as a competitive advantage, but based on how Peter explained his perspective on thought leadership, I was wrong. Teamwork and thought leadership both provide that extra something that can help boost business results and drive success in the chosen market. Thought leadership is definitely another strategic competitive advantage. So in summary, my three key takeaways were Thought leadership is bestowed on you by others, content is the basis of thought leadership and thought leadership is a strategic competitive advantage. I want to give a massive shout out to my good friend Shay Whittig. Shay is the lead copywriter for the Culture of Things and has been with me on the journey since day one. Shay's recently secured her dream opportunity at Eco Tourism Australia. Well done Shady. Well, your hard work and dedication is definitely paying off and thankfully for me, Shay has also agreed to continue to be part of the journey at the Culture of Things. If you have any questions or feedback about this episode, if you please feel free to send me a Message@Brendan brendanrogers.comau thank you for listening. Stay safe. Until next time.