Leveraging Thought Leadership

This was originally a LinkedIn Live recorded on October 6th, 2021 In our first Leveraging Thought Leadership Live session, we invited two amazing guests to speak with us about challenges and the grit it takes to overcome them. Jan Rutherford is a former Green Beret, and the founder of Self-Reliant Leadership. He's also the author of The Littlest Green Beret: On Self-Reliant Leadership. Shanon Huffman-Polson is one of the first female Apache helicopter pilots, and also the founder of The Grit Institute and author of The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male Dominated Organization in the World. Together, these two brilliant leaders, vets, and authors, discuss with us the importance of laying down a strategic plan early in your thought leadership journey. We discuss how they found ways to convey their leadership experience in methods that help others learn from it, and developing avatars to help reach the audience who needs you the most. The conversation covers the need to iterate in order to stay on top of your game, and how to listen to the market in order to keep your business growing with today's needs. Jan and Shannon share why they chose to become authors, and their reasons for wanting to write a book about their personal experience. Both created books that focused on making their personal stories a delivery mechanism for inspiration, insight, and ideas that others can use to improve their lives. If you missed this episode when it was live, this is the perfect opportunity to get caught up. Three Key Takeaways: * Understand your thought leadership's deeper purpose, identify the people you want it to serve, and reach out to them early in your career. * The market will tell you what it values — which might be different than what you want! Be open and willing to listen, and change course toward success. * It can be easy to create thought leadership based on our experiences, but it shouldn't be about you. Make sure you are giving your audience something they can use.

Traditionally, great marketing requires a big budget, a great deal of manpower, and broad advertising. When your organization isn't able to compete in those arenas, what can you do to punch above your weight class? To help us level up, we've invited Heather Donids, the Director of Thought Leadership and Insight at Harbor Capital Advisors to join us for a chat. Harbor Capital Advisors is an investment company that specializes in helping clients achieve the financial security they deserve. Together, we explore the ways thought leadership sits outside of the traditional streams of marketing. When done properly, thought leadership allows companies and individuals to compete on a higher level — but only if they have something to say, and the conviction to broadcast and shepherd that idea. Once your organization has zeroed in on the message they want to share, you'll need to get it to the right audience. Heather explains how she views thought leadership as an asset, comparing it to human capital. If you develop a content strategy and program, you can create a strategic asset that can be measured, compounded, and guided. The goal is to use many voices and mediums to reach your audience where they naturally spend their time; both in terms of what they are thinking about, and where they are, physically. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought leadership needs to be in perfect alignment with your company's business strategy and values. * If you have someone in your organization with something valuable to say, equip them with the tools they need to take that message to scale. * Proper curation of thought leadership will cut through the clutter and put the spotlight on important ideas.

Have you ever thought about publishing a book? Be careful! There are a lot of misconceptions and bad information about publishing. If you want to publish successfully, and see your work reach it's best audience, you might need to do a little research — and our guest on this episode is a treasure-trove of information. To clear up the misinformation and get our listeners started on the right foot, we've invited Matt Holt, Editor-in-Chief of Matt Holt Books (a BenBella Books imprint) to join us. Matt was previously Senior Vice President and Executive Publisher at John Wiley & Sons, where he oversaw a team of 85 staff. Over his 27-year career, he's acquired over 1,000 titles and published 10,000 titles! We start with the questions you need to answer before you set pen to paper. Matt believes you need to know your book's goal; why you are writing it, and for what audience? Once you have those answers, you can start thinking about the publishing model that will best suit your authorship. Having had literally thousands of proposals cross his desk, Matt can tell in only 30 minutes whether a manuscript merits further exploration. During our conversation, he shares what he is looking for in a proposal, and the methods he uses to look into each potential author's background and qualifications. Lastly, we discuss the tension that often exists between author and publisher. The author is making a long-term, multi-year connection ,while the publisher is looking to get in, publish the manuscript, and move quickly onto the next project. Matt explains what both sides can do to provide the transparency needed for everyone to achieve their goals. If you want to ensure that your manuscript proposal doesn't get tossed into the "pass" pile, you've got to listen to this episode! Three Key Takeaways: * You can get a book done quickly and cheaply, or you can get it done right. * Thought Leaders who are also practitioners often have an advantage in promoting their books as they already are in direct contact with their audience. * A book is a mass-market tool, you'll need methods of taking your content to scale if you want to fully capitalize on your book launch.

Thought leadership is all about unconventional ideas. But unconventional ideas can be intimidating. How does a thought leadership practitioner stir curiosity, draw in an audience, and make potential clients want to engage? Does giving the client agency draw them in or push them away? In seeking answers, I've turned to an unconventional guest, Vince Kadlubek. Vince is the founder and director of Meow Wolf, an art studio creating massive, world-class experiences that weave art, space, and narrative into one inspirational adventure. To start things off, Vince explains Meow Wolf's purpose and design, and talks about the three major Meow Wolf experience spaces. These huge art installations provide an environment to explore the unknown, something essential to an authentic, visceral experience. That's the kind of place, Vince says, where real transformation happens. Bringing these massive events to life takes many iterations of prototyping, and many artisans working towards a unified vision. Vince explains how Meow Wolf creates the theme, seeks artists, and builds both teamwork and autonomy, creating a collaborative effort built on trust. This episode takes many concepts and ideas used in the arts, and shows how they can be applied to thought leadership advancements in any industry, to make dreams come true. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought Leadership needs to marry art and adventure, leading their audience into the unknown - where transformation happens. * True collaboration means each side provides 50% of the work toward a result; it's the merging of both that creates something richer and more meaningful. * Prompt your audience to participate in your thought leadership instead of simply being a spectator.

Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) often think in terms of campaigns, responses, and calls to action. Everything is about selling a product or service. So, when it comes to using thought leadership for marketing, how do you thread the needle? How do you show CMOs that thought leadership can develop a brand, bring in new clients, and not look like just another advertisement? To tackle this tough question, we've invited Drew Neisser, the Founder of Renegade, a B2B marketing agency that helps their clients do the heavy lifting of brand strategy, market research, content, and social media. Drew is also the author of Renegade Marketing: 12 Steps to Building Unbeatable B2B Brands, helping readers remove the complications of B2B marketing. For thought leadership to be successful, you need to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish. Drew discusses the way CMOs should be focusing their efforts, and ways to express how thought leadership differs from traditional marketing. Once you have a clear purpose, you need a clear vision. Drew explains that thought leadership needs to be developed from the viewpoint of the customers, creating content that encourages them to think more deeply about problems in order to find solutions. Drew's CATS (Courageous, Artful, Thoughtful, and Scientific) method is one such framework. It can be used as a guiding light to ensure your content hits all the right targets. We conclude the conversation by examining Drew's goals Drew in writing his book. He set out to make B2B marketing easier by creating a 12-step program that he used in the field to gain real-life feedback and viscerally improve the book. Drew shares how the pandemic affected the release schedule of the book, and how he stripped it back to a massive blog post — which then exploded in popularity, proving that he was on the right track. B2B marketing has never been more complicated. If you are struggling to find your share of the market, this episode might just have the advice you need to find your audience. Three Key Takeaways: * Thought Leadership content should be created with the focus of helping clients solve problems by looking at challenges from a different perspective. * Low or mid-level marketers should consider creating thought leadership content early in their career, as a means of building a reputation for the long run. * Make sure you've considered the three C's when creating thought leadership: Content, Connection, and Community!

Many organizations deploy assessment tools, only to have the results ignored because of a lack of understanding or motivation. What do we do with them, now? What do the numbers really mean? Our guest today will help us understand not only what it takes to build a valid assessment, but how to use one to drive measurable behavior change. Meredith Bell is the co-founder and president of Grow Strong Leaders, where they help individuals discover key areas for development, and implement strategies for achieving higher levels of performance. She is also the co-author of Connect with Your Team: Mastering the Top 10 Communication Skills and Peer Coaching Made Simple: How to Do the 6 Things That Matter Most When Helping Someone Improve a Skill. Meredith started her journey into the assessment tool space in the 90s, when she became frustrated at the lack of customizable tools at her disposal as a consultant. Before long, she had made the pivot from consulting to software creation. Her original product, 20/20 Insight, is still in use today. In addition to having been a consultant and creating assessment tools, Meredith is also an author, speaker, and thought leader. With so many plates spinning, she knows well how each label factor creates multiple touchpoints for potential clients to utilize her expertise. From those touchpoints, she helps companies and organizations discover which of her offerings will have the most impact for their needs. If you're looking for an in-depth understanding of assessment functionality, and why peer-to-peer coaching can be the most cost and time-effective method for moving the performance needle, you'll want to listen to this episode. Three Key Takeaways: * When creating assessments, keep your questions indirect. Indirect questions create more connection between behaviors and other elements. * Helping people reach their full potential is all about changing the habits that are standing in their own way. * Effective communication often means having to ask, "Who do I need to be, in this moment, in order to connect with my audience?"

How can you tell — in an instant — whether an in-person event will be a success or failure? Are there key items that can predict an event's outcome? In-person events are returning, and with them, questions of their utility and ability to really change the behaviors of those who attend. How can a thought leadership practitioner speak about their insights on stage in a way that brings about lasting and sustainable change? In order to better understand the challenges and pitfalls of organizing an event, we've invited Ruud Janssen, the Managing Director and Co-Founder of The Event Design Collective to join us. The Event Design Collective is a group of event designers who train and consult with event owners to elevate events using the Event Canvas model. As the co-creator of The Design Canvas, Ruud shares how they altered Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas to suit the event space, creating a model that any event owner could use under the creative commons license. Taking an idea and making it shine on stage isn't as simple as it sounds. Ruud helps us grasp the key elements that events need to create value through behavior change. While many concentrate heavily on the look or feel of an event, smart show-runners know that the real selling point is an event's outcome — and how it shapes ideas and habits for those who attend. The most successful events begin by taking notice of the event stakeholders; who they are, what they want from the event, and how they hope it will unfold. Ruud explains why we need to keep in mind those critical elements, and how to both manage expectations and surpass them. He also shares his thoughts on articulating thought leadership on stage, and what we can do to create behavior change from entry to exit. In addition, we learn how his business grew from offering a better understanding of The Design Canvas, to the creation of the Event Design Certificate program, and the creation of the Event Design Handbook — all to help empower event organizers to create amazing, impactful gatherings. If you want to learn more about The Event Canvas, you can get it free along with the first 100 pages of the Event Design Handbook HERE. Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leadership isn't just about insights. It needs to shape those insights and focus them in ways that deliver behavior change. Thought Leaders should spend at least 1% of their total attendance time thinking about the event they are hosting, and how to best reach attending stakeholders. You don't have to have a Hollywood budget for a Thought Leadership event! The production quality simply needs to elevate the conversation taking place.

Advertising and innovation are perhaps the two most important components of a company, and both are changing faster than ever before. So, how can advertisers better understand and harness the influence of social media content creators? Our guest on this episode is Geoffrey Colon, Head of Brand Studio at Microsoft Advertising and the author of Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal. Geoffrey is well qualified to discuss how individual creators and organizations are being challenged to think about accountability, and how their message and actions affect their reputation. We start off the conversation by discussing how every action taken by your company and its employees is a marketing action, even if you don't intend it to be. Geoffrey explains why companies need to consider how they are seen - from interactions with customer service, to social media, to advertising campaigns and thought leadership. Are you presenting a clear and consistent message? Content creators on TikTok and Instagram are capable of massive reach and influence. With that in mind, what can be learned from their methods? Geoffrey talks to us about the changing world of public relations, and how companies can team up with like-minded influencers to create unique campaigns that are mutually beneficial. We round out the conversation by discussing how thought leadership can help build a brand's reputation. Geoffrey goes on to explain how this can only be done when an organization's thought leadership matches the actions being taken by the company. Trust is immediately lost when the audience sees a company speak about something they clearly don't understand, or worse, when the organization's actions are contrary to their thought leadership message. If you want a better picture of how to bet on the future of your company's public relations and reputation you'll want to listen to this episode! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leadership should stay true to the actions of the company. Don't tell others about customer service practices if your company is known for having bad customer service. Brands can reach new audiences by teaming up with content creators to spread the thought leadership message of their company. It is important for thought leaders to understand not only the financial standing of the company they are working for but the ethical standing as well.

76% of people say networking is the top driver for attending an event, but the amount that have a plan to achieve that goal is much smaller. With many events having moved to a digital platform, networking has become harder - and yet, even more critical to success. To help understand the problem, and find some answers, we've invited Robbie Samuels to join us. Robbie is a networking expert, consultant, and advisor. He is also the author of Croissants vs. Bagels: Strategic, Effective, and Inclusive Networking at Conferences and Small List, Big Results: Launch a Successful Offer No Matter the Size of Your Email List, plus, he is the host of the podcast On The Schmooze. The arrival of the pandemic meant the end of in-person conferences, but as restrictions are loosening, we are starting to see these events return. We discuss what the post-pandemic conference scene will look like. Robbie explains that there is still great importance for in-person events, but they will have to be more thoughtful and meaningful than ever before. We also discuss the undeniable value of virtual events. Robbie explains that many of the tricks of the trade used by keynote speakers in person simply don't work on a small screen. He compares in-person speaking to a theatrical performance, and virtual events to a television show, where production and delivery is very different. Robbie gives examples to help speakers make changes to their delivery and connect with the audience in either style. Lastly, we discuss how the virtual environment has changed business models. No longer can keynote speakers rely solely on big conference gigs. Robbie discusses the diverse platform you need to deliver content, and how you can continue to provide in-person value - digitally! Robbie has a special offer for our listeners! Click HERE to get The Big Results Toolkit for Free! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leaders need to have a clear plan to achieve networking goals at both in-person and virtual events. When delivering thought leadership content virtually, consider changing the pace every seven minutes to keep the audience engaged. Don't rely too much on one method of income for thought leadership. By diversifying your business model, you'll increase revenue and protect yourself from future disruptions.

Few children say, " I want to be a thought leader when I grow up." So, when did you realize this was what you wanted to do with your life? Every thought leadership practitioner comes from a unique background. Most began in other roles, following twisted paths that unexpectedly led them into thought leadership. When your organization needs a formal thought leadership position, how do you take people from disparate backgrounds and successfully stand up that new function? To better explore this transition, we've invited Mark Smith. Mark is Director, HR Thought Leadership at the Society for Human Resource Management (also known as SHRM). Mark's background includes a Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and years of consulting in Human Resources, so he's got the right background to help us answer this question! Mark started his career at SHRM by leading a team to develop certification exams for HR. This research led Mark off the beaten path into marketing, social media, and sales - all the while continuing to lead his team. Eventually, Mark's boss recognized that Mark was doing incredible work outside of the scope of his position, and created the title of Director, HR Thought Leadership that Mark holds today. As the first official thought leadership role in the company, Mark was tasked with creating the responsibilities, roles, and tasks that the position would require, and building it into a meaningful part of the organization. He had to discover ways to bridge the gap between their important research and the audience he hoped to reach. Mark further shares his ideas about white papers. He tells us that they're not a great medium for the average audience, but those papers, infographics, sound bites, and more, can be shared on social media to offer people simple ways to take action toward more complex ideas. This is a wonderful conversation about standing up a thought leadership position. From the first steps of writing a vision for the role, to seeking mutually beneficial partners to collaborate with and reach larger audiences, Mark's got amazing insights that can help you do the same. Three Key Takeaways: Research often sits to the side of business goals. Thought Leaders need to bring that research to their audience in an actionable way. Organizational Thought Leaders need to navigate the complexity of silo'ed teams, develop buy-in, and get everyone on the same page. A fast way to grow your thought leadership reach is to collaborate with complementary partners - especially those whose work doesn't share the same audience.