Leveraging Thought Leadership

It's hard to create a successful strategy to take a book beyond the consumer market. What can you do to ensure the success of your work? Our guest today is Nick Gray, the Founder and Owner of Museum Hack and the author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings, which is the ultimate guide for hosting the perfect party to make friends and network. While The 2-Hour Cocktail Party is full of excellent insights and has hundreds of 5-star reviews, Nick still struggles to get his book into the hands of those for whom it would have the most impact. Using Nick's book as an example, Peter walks through the process of taking a book from shelf to scale. Nick has seen real-estate agents and financial advisors have great success using the content of his book, together he and Peter dive deeper into those clients to develop a clear avatar, where to find them, and how to take the content to scale by approaching associations and parent companies to license the content on a large scale. Another component to taking a book to scale is moving the contents to versatile offerings. Nick and Peter discuss how the book could become a series of videos, webinars, and training sessions that would allow great access to the material at a wide variety of price points. If you've ever wondered what it is we do at thought leadership leverage this episode is like a sneak peek at the range of consulting services we offer and how we could help you take your material to the next level. Three Key Takeaways: * A good strategy covers:1) Who do we best serve; 2) How are we going to serve them; and 3) What products, offerings, and solutions do they need? * Knowing the audience that will get the most impact (and value) from your material is critical to a book's success. * If you are thinking about sharing your story, be sure to include real stories, human moments, and a personal touch to your experience and insights. .

Writing a book can take a year or more, followed by months of planning, strategizing, and launching. Once the book hits the shelves — What's left? Jeremy Utley is the Director of Executive Educational at Stanford D.school and adjunct professor at Stanford's School of Engineering. Recently Jeremy worked with co-author Perry Klebahn to put their experience into their first book call titled "Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters." At the time of this recording, Jeremy's book had been on shelves for eight days! Jeremy expresses the gratitude he feels toward those that have come forward to thank him for the book, and the actionable ideas it contains. In addition, he shares surprises he has experienced during recording the audio version of the book. Marketing a book takes a tremendous amount of coordination, even with the resources a publisher offers. The bulk of the work lands on the author's shoulders. Jeremy talks about having to get over being self-conscious about telling people he's an author. He also explains the massive amount of help a launch team can be, in spreading the word about your book, and also in keeping you excited when your personal energy is running low. This episode has some great insights into the experience of a first time author that don't often get shared. Three Key Takeaways: · A launch team is comprised of people that are excited and happy to share the word about your book. They often come up with marketing ideas and help keep the ball rolling. · When writing a book, write the book you'd want to read. · Don't start your writing journey trying to write a book. Start with a blog, getting in the habit of writing every day to build your skill and create a wealth of material you can draw from.

Unless you are writing a book with a co-author or ghostwriter, it probably feels like a very lonely task. But what if you could find a fellowship that provided encouragement and advice? Our guest today is Jeremy Madsen, Operations Manager for BK Authors an author group affiliated with the award–winning publisher Berrett-Koehler. This group helps authors and publishers bridge the gap to bring better books to market. Jeremy starts by helping us understand what an author's group is all about. He explains that these communities, especially when supported by a publisher, can give authors a better awareness of the market and industry. In addition, mentoring is a sharing process that works best when all sides open up. Authors further down the path share advice from experience, while newer authors share information about new skills and tools that didn't exist five years ago. Finally, we discuss the timeline of publishers versus authors. Publishers have limited resources, and need to move on to the next project as soon as possible, meaning they are by your side for mere months. The author's timeline should be further-reaching, amortizing the investment over 5 – 7 years. Plus Jeremy shares the growing trend of publishers investing into a backlist of older titles, giving non-fiction books an even greater chance to see success over a longer course of years. Jeremy is deeply involved in both the writing and publishing community and brings unique insights in this episode that few others can provide. Three Key Takeaways: * Being part of an author community can be big morale booster to not be alone on the journey. * Don't be afraid to reach out to established authors who have published books in your area of expertise. You'd be surprised how generous many will be with their time and advice. * A publication date has no bearing on the importance or usefulness of a book. It is a date of reference, not an expiration.

How does the world of thought leadership intersect with the growing technology of AI? A lot of news stories lately have focused on the use of AI "bots" to answer questions, generate images, or create entire dissertations on a topic. As the technology grows closer and closer to replicating actual human thinking, we have to ask, "How will AI be used in thought leadership?" To help better understand the field we are joined by Spencer Ante. Spencer has a background in business journalism, investigative reporting and was most recently the Head of Insights at Meta. We begin the discussion by looking back at the origins of thought leadership which has been around far longer than most people assume. Spencer lays out the three phases of thought leadership he has seen from company blogs in the early days of the internet, to more sophisticated uses blending owned content with earned, paid, and social media. The through threads of all of these are honesty and trust. Spencer explains why these aspects are the foundation of good thought leadership and how you risk your reputation when your thought leadership leans into the realms of product marketing or sales enablement. As for the future of AI, Spencer share how machine learning works – that it requires humans to feed it datasets and that humans will play a key role in that learning for decades to come, working to ensure that the information it is fed is factual and verified. As AI continues to learn it will still lack concepts such as empathy, creativity and the ability to generate original ideas, the ability to connect ideas that are not obviously related remains a human quality. This means AI will serve as a great tool for thought leaders to streamline content creation, having a great new source for communication, research and marketing. This is a great conversation on a topic that is going to be relevant for many years to come. Three Key Takeaways: * The need and dependence on thought leadership will continue to grow, as trust in media and governments dwindles with an expanding world. * When creating thought leadership, lead with the problem your product solves, and not the product itself. That's how you generate an audience. * AI is clever, but it's not innovative or insightful. Thought leaders need to realize that while AI can be of use, it's their insights and experience that will really change the game.

It is important for CEOs to have a personal brand that supports their organizational brand. That's why smart CEOs build their personal thought leadership early on, and maintain it throughout their careers. Today we are joined by Raoul Davis, the Founder, and CEO of Ascendant Group Branding one of the first and most integrated CEO branding firms. In addition Raoul is the author of Firestarters: How Innovators, Instigators, and Initiators Can Inspire You to Ignite Your Own Life which is based on interviews with entrepreneurs and leaders in many walks of life, this self-help book gives readers the tools for finding success in their careers, businesses, organizations, and private lives. Raoul starts by laying out the various types of branding you can build, such as personal and organizational. We learn how a CEO with a strong personal brand can create a sense of connection and commonality with customers, making them trust and want to interact with the company as an extension of the CEO. Building such a strong trusted brand can be accomplished best with thought leadership, which can be institutionalized across the organization as a way of demonstrating leadership in an organic way that is more powerful than traditional marketing. Raoul explains how thought leadership can be evergreen lasting far after you've finished paying for traditional marketing. It's never too early to start building your thought leadership and your brand. Raoul shares advice for those early in their career on where they can start, such as by finding a niche within a larger area of expertise to drill down on and become an expert in. By sharing your thoughts and ideas on the subject on social and within your organization you can become the go-to person for that subject, which can open new doors of opportunity. This conversation provides excellent advice for starting or sharpening a personal and organizational brand that is useful to professionals at any stage of their career. Three Key Takeaways: · It is important for a CEO to have a brand that supports the brand of their organization. · Talk in terms of the interests of the audience, this allows you to communicate in a way that will provide value to them. · There is an authenticity to thought leadership when you are sharing what you know simply so others can benefit from it.

Producing consistent thought leadership is hard work! Thought leaders have to be deeply insightful in addition to a full plate of work, social life, and everything else. But as the best TL's know, consistent content is the only way to make sure your message gets out there and sticks. To discuss building and maintaining the momentum of thought leadership content, I've invited Verity Craft to join me for today's podcast. Verity is General Manager and Storyteller for Intelligent Ink where she helps purpose-driven experts become thought leaders that have a greater impact. Verity explains how thought leadership is like investing; it works best when you start early and stay consistent, even if you start small. Starting out you'll need to use modest resources and grow, but you'll also want to start as early in your career as possible, to maximize your returns down the road. Next, we discuss some common traps that people fall into that become a barrier to entry and consistency. Thought leadership means doing a lot of experimenting, while this might sound a bit frightening it means not having to have perfect ideas out of the gate. You can put your ideas out and refine them through discourse with your peers and followers. We don't have to have a perfect idea or even know everything to start the journey. With some ideas in hand, we can start to create consistent content. Verity shares how you can keep on track by scheduling time to work on thought leadership with someone else. This creates a sense of responsibility and accountability that is harder to push aside. In addition, we learn how a single piece of content can be stripped down and repurposed for blog posts, social media posts, and even videos allowing your work to go further and reach a wider audience by using multiple modalities. If you are struggling to keep a consistent release schedule or feel like you're not able to leverage your content properly this episode is full of great advice that will help you out. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought leadership is about trying things, testing things, refining things. And consistently working to make your insights sharper. * The strongest thought leadership creates a system of community and accountability, to ensure your content stays on track. * Experiment with breaking down your content, to be used on other mediums. The more ways people can access your content, the more it will spread.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are problems that require long term work in order to provide long term impact. So, why do companies keep seeking "quick fixes" and flashy solutions that just won't work? To understand the issues the industry is facing in DEI, and the hard work needed to change organizations, we've invited Lily Zheng to join us. Lily is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion speaker, strategist, and organizational consultant. Recently, they wrote DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right, a definitive foundational text for critically analyzing and applying actionable DEI techniques and strategies. DEI is an ongoing issue for most organizations, so it's baffling to think of it as a subject that ebbs and flows with trends. Lily explains why this continues to happen, and the dangers it poses to the long term success of DEI in the workplace. We learn that there are no short term fixes or hacks to solving the problem. It's going to take hard data and hard work to concretely change the way people think and act. Lily further shares how they help companies assess their workforce and understand what is going on beneath the surface. By collecting data on employee engagement, retention, promotion rates, and access to opportunity, Lily is able to get a clear picture of the problems the company is facing and provide solutions that change culture in a lasting manner. With so few best-practices and many underdeveloped strategies out there, Lily took it upon themselves to literally write the book on DEI. Today, they share how they hope the book can teach companies to hold themselves accountable, and also provide a critical resource for budding practitioners in the industry. Three Key Takeaways: * Complex problems such as DEI don't have quick fixes. It's the nature of the beast. * Thought leadership is a way to up-skill your audience, allowing those who work with you to "skip the baby steps" and spend more time on the hard stuff. * Data has to be the core of problem solving. You can't provide a solution, when you don't understand the problem.

If you expect your book publisher to handle your marketing strategy, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. So what are your other options? Today, we have a pair of authors who have written 16 books between them, and they're here to help our audience better understand the world of publishing and marketing, and how to create a well-rounded platform for add-on offerings. Lee J. Colan is an Organizational Psychologist, CEO Advisor, Leadership Author, and Co-Founder of the L Group, Inc. Julie Davis-Colan is a CEO Advisor, Corporate Health Strategist, Leadership Author, Executive Coach, and Co-Founder of the L Group, Inc. Lee shares how they used the mid-size publisher Cornerstone Leadership Institute to publish their newest book Healthy Leadership: How to Thrive in the New World of Work. This publisher offers both publishing and marketing allowing them to get large quantities of the book cheaply and via their direct mail sampling method put the book on the desk of the right people. Next, we learn how Lee and Julie have recently written a book about creating a compelling purpose, engaging teams, culture, positive coaching, and more. All of which deal with aspects known as Growth Factors. All of these factors are built around the focus of Healthy Leadership. By focusing on Healthy Leadership as the core concept, they've been able to make their offerings cleaner and decisions easier. A great book with useful ideas won't get far if it isn't in the hands of the right people. We discover what the target audience loos like for Lee and Julie's offerings. Finding the perfect client goes beyond the size of a company or the position they hold. You have to drill down to the mindset, finding the people that want to adopt your views and who are already investing in the education of themselves and their teams. Three Key Takeaways: * You need to find where your passion meets the needs of the market. * You can't have clear writing or clean speaking without clear thinking. * The right client is more about their mindset than the size of their company, or the position they hold.

The best and biggest ventures start by having a dream, and taking risks. Knowing when to keep your feet on the ground, and when to make a leap of faith, is a critical skill. But how do you know when it's time to jump? Our guest on today's podcast is Luke Battye, the founder of Sprint Valley, a change consultancy that helps teams enact their vision, navigate risks, and make bolder moves! In a bold move, Luke starts our conversation off with a fascinating thought experiment he has never done in an audio medium, in order to help us understand how people make decisions under uncertainty. In our conversation, Luke tells us more about human brain functions, and how the choices we make are based on system 1 and system 2 responses and those are what Luke targets to create change. Luke explains how Sprint Valley is merging the science of behavior change with the art of design thinking, to find ways to help people work hand in hand in order to solve complex problems. The amazing insights found in academia are put into tangible practice, turning the natural patterns of brain function into a model that can be understood and used in business. Often, the language of academia gets so specific it leaves the client out of the conversation. Luke shares his insights about the critical principle he calls, "taking the time to teach." By bridging the gap between learning and implementation, teams can instantly apply newly-discovered insights to challenges they are currently addressing. This episode is a deep dive into how the human brain functions, how consumers make choices, and the levers we can use to influence buyer intent. Three Key Takeaways: * Ideas are only useful if they're functional. Don't fill your thought leadership with verbiage that will leave your audience baffled. * By making your methodologies open source you allow others to understand what you do and force yourself to be constantly innovating for the future. * Take the time to teach your audience. Don't assume they understand the concepts or models you are discussing.

As a consultant, Bill Sherman has had the privilege of working with countless incredible thought leaders over the past twenty years, helping them elevate their ideas. That work has given him the insight to create the Four Elements, a framework for thought leadership that helps sharpen thinking and communicate ideas effectively. The first element is Ideas. Ideas are the building blocks of thought leadership. An idea is a short, provocative statement that catches the attention of your target audience and gets them invested in learning more. Our next element is Content. Content encompasses the stories, data, anecdotes, case studies, and examples that support your ideas. Ideas provoke discussion; Content offers persuasive support. A content library should be well organized and well documented, so that it can support your thought leadership in reaching scale. The third element is Offerings. Offerings turn your insights into a deliverable package, leading with value and signaling your relevance to the audience. You don't want to offer whitepaper to a Gen Z audience, or short-form video to readers of the Harvard Business Review. The final element is Platform. Platform is often overlooked, but it's critical to your content - strong platforms give your insights traction in the market. Your platform needs to answer questions like "What are these ideas about?", "What problems do they solve?" and "Who should use them?" all without you being in the room. For more information on the Four Elements, read the whitepaper mentioned in the episode. It's located on Bill's LinkedIn. Three Key Takeaways: * Every interaction has a transaction cost of time. If you want a fraction of your audience's time you need to provide value. * When working with a team it is important to have your content organized so that each member can access and deploy content without the need to ask where to find it or what it means. * The number of ways you can package your content is endless but the interest and time of your audience are not. Lead with value and relevance.