Leveraging Thought Leadership

How do you plan for something you can't predict? Today's guest is Lance Mortlock, a Strategy Partner at EY (Ernst & Young) Canada, where he manages a team tasked to drive growth for clients in the oil, power, and mining industries. Earlier this year, Lance authored his first book, Disaster Proof: Scenario Planning for a Post-Pandemic Future. Disaster Proof is a practical and accessible guide for identifying risks, facing unpredictable challenges, and planning for the future. Lance discusses the process of writing an in-depth thought leadership book while also working a demanding day job. Getting the book across the finish line required long hours, the support of his family, and surprisingly, the support of his employers at EY. Employers might be quick to think that writing a book would take away from an employee's daily focus. Not always true! Lance explains why elevating his personal brand elevated his employer, as well. Lance had many years of articles, papers, and industry experience that give business leaders the tools they need to understand a volatile, rapidly changing world. Organizations with long-term thinking will excel in competition, and their leaders will be prepared to handle unexpected challenges. He discusses why business leaders need a wide view, to predict and understand long-term forces that will affect their organization. We wrap up by discussing the difficult and often uncomfortable task of marketing a thought leadership book. Many writers and thought leaders are not used to having to push sales, but it's important to get your text in the right hands. This means shepherding a consistent present on social media, and understanding that increasing book sales requires a slow but continual effort. If you are currently working on your first book, and trying to navigate balancing your day job and marketing your finished text, this episode has a wealth of helpful information. Think long-term - and be consistent! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leaders don't have to leave their current organization to develop their own brand. Enriching your personal brand can be beneficial to both parties. A book based on your Thought Leadership can stem from the articles and materials you've published in the past, combined with an expanded viewpoint for the future. If you want your Thought Leadership book to be a success, you'll need to create a flourishing social media platform to announce, elevate, and enhance publication.

Does your thought leadership solve global issues? How do you draw attention to a multinational crisis, on a personal scale? Our guest in today's episode is Reilly Brock, the Associate Creative Director at Imperfect Foods. Imperfect Foods is a weekly grocery delivery service on a mission to build a better, less wasteful food system. Through their efforts, they help people save time, money, and the planet. As Associate Creative Director, Reilly has a passion for making the average person aware of the global food waste problem, and giving them options to waste less food. Through his work, he educates customers on ways to increase and improve regional sourcing, utilize food that would otherwise be squandered, and make empowered decisions. They pay attention to wide-scale problems (like the reason Imperfect Foods doesn't sell bananas), so their customers can feel assured that their choices are having a positive impact on the world. Reilly has been delivering his message in long form writing, infographics, and even a podcast, in order to engage different audiences through the mediums they prefer. He, and Imperfect Foods, seek to spread the message that even multinational problems can be solved by individual action. By creating a sense of agency for their customers, Reilly creates excitement, so his audience will further share the ideas. That way, he can create an even broader movement. We close with useful advice for those just starting out in a thought leadership role. Reilly explains why you should determine who your audience is, and just as importantly, who your audience is not. Don't water down your content to reach a wider audience. Focus your efforts where you can have the most impact, and your audience will carry the message forward for you. Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leadership has the power to shine a light on invisible problems, and provide tangible ways the audience can get involved in solving them. Don't dilute your Thought Leadership message! Instead, use different mediums and types of content to reach a wider audience. When creating powerful Thought Leadership, make sure you have evergreen content that draws your audience back — time and time again.

Welcome to this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership! Today's guest is our very own Peter Winick, Founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, a firm that helps thought leaders of all kinds develop strategies for branding, marketing, technology, and sales. The episode begins with Peter outlining the similarities and differences between marketing and thought leadership, particularly as it pertains to sales. While some comparisons can be made, thought leadership targets a small, very selective audience, giving timeless advice directed toward specific challenges. Sales, on the other hand, commonly relies on wide reaching, less focused tactics, marketing consumer products to a broad audience and relying on wide appeal. Peter tells us that the true art of thought leadership means your offerings are unrelated to 99.9% of business problems, but laser-focused on solving the issues of a sharply defined target audience. In that space, your insights and products can deliver solutions that change the client's world. Peter and Bill outline the reasons that seeking a "necessary minority" is important: people who truly need your solutions get maximum benefit from applying your thought leadership. Plus, they discuss reasons that thought leadership practitioners should create touchpoints, low time commitments that display the benefit of their insights, before expecting a potential client to spend valuable time reading a white paper or book. We wrap up our conversation with some great advice for those just starting a thought leadership journey. From reintroducing yourself, to expanding critical relationships, from asking for help, to finding the right cadence for publishing your content, Peter and Bill share a vast amount of experience on thought leadership and sales. This episode is a beginner's guide — and an expert's handbook, all in one! Three Key Takeaways: · Thought Leadership needs to be focused on a small and specific audience where it can truly shine. · Thought Leadership ideas should be introduced in small chunks, leaving discussion of larger offerings for after the audience leans in. · New Thought Leaders should reach out to their network and reconnect, explaining their new venture, their offerings, and the solutions they offer.

Today, we sit down with the incredibly insightful Jon Levy! Jon is a behavioral scientist and social engineer best known for his work on human connection and decision making. Jon is the founder of the Influencers Dinner, a secret dining experience started in New York in 2009. Twelve thought leaders, tastemakers, and influencers from various industries attend, but do not discuss their professional career, or share their last name - in order to guess, at the end of the dinner, what the other attendees do professionally. What started as an experiment has turned into a world class experience that brings guests from a broad spectrum of fields together to share insights, camaraderie, and a great meal. In addition to being a TED speaker, Jon also has a new book: You're Invited: The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence. We start today's conversation with a discussion about the way humans, as a whole, possess a desire to experience something different and unique. Jon explains a bit about the SN/VTA part of the brain, which governs reward cognition, associative learning, and positively-valenced emotions. The SN/VTA engages during unusual experiences, and that response can be used to inspire curiosity and get an audience to authentically engage with your ideas. Behavioral science for the win! The traditional methods for networking have become stagnant and overblown. People "turn off" when they're bored, so how can we create a stronger connection? Jon shares tips about bringing people together for a mutual, unique experience, and how that can create relationships that are stronger than plain ol' humdrum networking. John talks about the enigmas of connection, and helps thought leaders understand why people do the things we do. This is a great lesson on how to tap into those responses by using a little bit of social engineering! Don't miss it! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leaders can create more interest in their products and ideas by adding a little uniqueness and novelty; raising people's curiosity makes them engage more fully. When designing Thought Leadership courses, think about the frequency of communication, not just the depth of ideas. Trust is a must-have in Thought Leadership, but to gain trust you must be willing to show a level of vulnerability.

Today's guest is Mandy McEwen, the CEO of Mod Girl Marketing, a firm that helps their clients increase brand presence and stand out from the crowd by offering innovative content marketing & social media strategies, and by leveraging the organization's best asset – their people. Many companies are asking employees to engage on the org's behalf through social media, but not everyone really understands LinkedIn's power to increase brand presence. Mandy shares common reasons people struggle to support their company through posts, likes, and comments, and why there's a lot of social anxiety around the topic. Mandy gives advice on ways that managers and leaders can empower their teams, methods for starting or joining appropriate conversations, and ultimately, how your workforce can generate their own content all as part of a daily routine! Getting the most out of any social media platform will mean becoming comfortable with experimentation; employees need support and flexibility with the type of content they provide and how it's presented. Best of all, Mandy explains why even social media "failures" can be successes in disguise - if both employees and the organization are committed to learning from mistakes. Mandy has a great point: Every interaction can be a source of Thought Leadership content! Building content is as simple as having great conversations. You can do it, and your employees can, too! Three Key Takeaways: Getting started with Thought Leadership on Linkedin can be as easy as leaving meaningful comments in industry-related conversations. It might be tempting to use bots or direct messages to blast your Thought Leadership as broadly as possible, but be warned: Such tactics can backfire, driving people away. When developing teams to use Linkedin on an organization's behalf, you have to empower them to share their ideas, coach them on how to get engaged, and give them the thoughtful support they'll need to create great Thought Leadership content.

Today's guest is Adam Bryant, Managing Director at The ExCo Group (formerly Merryck & Co. Americas). The Exco Group specializes in helping boards, executives, and teams unlock their full leadership potential and deliver high-impact performance for their enterprises. Adam is also the author of The CEO Test: Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders; a book that focuses on the seven most critical reasons leaders succeed or fail. Adam hasn't always been a Thought Leader. For 30 years, he had a successful career as a journalist, editor, and columnist, primarily at The New York Times. As he honed his communication skills and learned the ins-and-outs of complex teams, Adam focused on the question: "What if we interviewed a CEO for an article and didn't discuss their business background?" Instead, he focused the conversation around the lessons of leadership, culture, hiring, and talent, to see what made high-powered leaders flourish and grow. Over 10 years, Adam interviewed 525 CEOs. Those lessons eventually became a book: The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed. In it, he presented the insights and advice he gleaned through those interviews in order to to help others master the steep learning curve of leadership. In today's episode, Adam discusses his skills as a journalist, and how they positioned him to elevate others through the practice of thought leadership. He credits that background with his impressive ability to see patterns, focus on the essence of an issue, and find insights in both challenges and success - and share those gifts with others. If you're feeling blocked, this is the episode that can show you how to find your strengths and bring them into the game! Three Key Takeaways: Non-traditional questions can be a great way for Thought Leaders to gain new insight. Thought Leaders can find strong, accessible examples of leadership lessons in TV and movies. Thought Leadership might start out as a "side-hustle," but if nurtured properly, can take on a life of its own!

Today we are excited to sit down with Lisa Bodell. Lisa is the CEO of FutureThink, an award-winning learning company that is transforming the way teams work in organizations. She helps leaders guide teams to build skills that are radically simple and immediately impactful. Lisa defines herself as a "futurist," and is an expert on the topic of innovation. She's been named one of the Top 50 speakers in the world by Thinkers 50, and is the best-selling author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins. Lisa explains what it means to be a futurist, and how she brings a compelling message of simplification and innovation to over 100,000 people each year. Lisa also discusses manufacturing strategic luck, and ways to teach others to recognize potential and capitalize on opportunity. It's not ESP - it's science! Teaching these powerful skills is no small task. It may take work before mastery becomes instinctive, but Lisa's innovative process breaks the challenge into many small steps. Through studying these steps and integrating them one by one, a leader can change behavior, overcome difficulties, and move toward greater success. Don't waste your time looking into a crystal ball! Learn how to be a futurist, and predict tomorrow's opportunities - today! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leaders need foresight as well as insight. Learn how to see the potential in opportunities, and act. Thought Leaders often suffer "the curse of the expert." Breaking down complex knowledge into simple steps can help others master difficult skills. If you are seeking to change behavior with Thought Leadership, simplify the changes you want to see, create small challenges that teach fundamental skills, and build on those skills to achieve high-level success.

Welcome to the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast! Our guest in this episode is Dan Sanchez. Dan is the Director of Audience Growth for Sweet Fish Media, a full service podcast agency focused on B2B brands. Dan is also the co-host of the go-to podcast for marketers seeking to grow: B2B Growth. Many businesses have thought leaders producing content and drawing attention to the company, but how many take the next step and create a program that evangelizes thought leadership within the org? That's the way to create a body of thought leaders, so that everyone in the company takes part in elevating and sharing those insights. Today, Dan talks about the way he started such an evangelist program, kicking off elevated leadership and organically taking Dan's Linkedin connections from 1000 to 10,000 in just 5 months! Dan describes how everyone at his organization was offered a chance to invest in and create thought leadership, so long as they committed themselves to the work for a period of time. Join us as Dan talks about his insights and elevates the conversation, sharing his experiences around developing methods of engaging employees to develop the organization's brand. If you want everyone to join in, you need to find the topics they identify with, and help them share their passion for their organization's insights and good work - though thought leadership! If you want to jumpstart your Linkedin brand, be sure to sign up for the 3-part Sweet Fish video series - it's free! Three Key Takeaways: When creating an interactive group of Thought Leaders, your first step is to engage your employees. Give them reasons to be excited, and they will start acting like thought leaders, too! Learning a pyramid. There may be people above you, but remember, a lot more are looking up at you and could benefit from your thought leadership. Preach! The best way to engage B2B accounts and gain a larger following is by creating and maintaining a thought leadership podcast.

Today's guest is Maura Barclay, a transformational leadership consultant. In addition to being the author of Unbreakable Women, her previous occupations range from firefighter to fitness trainer to military consultant! In this conversation, she shares the ways that her wide variety of previous experiences make her an incredible consultant and coach. Maura has always been interested in building and relying on proven methodologies that can be repeated for reliable outcomes. Learning is only the beginning; a great leader needs to continue to upgrade and iterate their knowledge into stronger, even more functional methods. In her work, she often utilizes check-lists, setting goals and building methods to achieve more Creating a solid list will anchor the methods in your brain, teaching the instinctive left-brain to perform tasks automatically - and guiding you to greater success. Maura uses her powerful and proven neurofacilitation system to help people build new mindset pathways. Armed with this tool, a leader can trust their well-trained instincts, and recognize good intuition, thus breaking bad habits and learning productive ones! If you are tired of second guessing yourself, and want to train your mind to fire all cylinders toward success, this episode has the best tips for you! Three Key Takeaways: Thought Leadership should use a methodology that is reliable, duplicable, and effective. Intuition often comes from past experience. Thought leaders can build intuition by creating habits that recognize good instinct, and build on it. If you want to sharpen your thought leadership content, spend time ruling out the things on which you don't focus. What's left will be your passion!

Welcome to Leveraging Thought Leadership! Today's guest is Stu Manewith, Director of Advocacy and Thought Leadership at Omatic Software. Omatic Software deals in data integration for non-profits, helping them maintain and grow donors and donations. His thought leadership changes lives! Before joining the team at Omatic Software, Stu worked as a fundraising director for non-profits for 16 years. His deep experience gives him an exceptional view of the sector, and taught him to understand the needs of both software vendors and fundraisers. By marrying those two interests, Stu was able to create incredible insights. His work became a turning point, helping non-profits achieve even greater mission impact though using cleaner, more integrated data and finding effective pressure points. Stu talks about the epiphany that made him realize that non-profits could better serve their customers by studying past stories, tracking data points, and comparing the outcomes. Utilizing this process, he's been able to better deploy software into non-profits, helping them create case-studies, assess previous assumptions, and create new, stronger methods of fundraising. In turn, those case studies have shaped informational blogs, webinars, and internal training documents to raise awareness both inside and outside non-profit fields. Thought leadership practitioners often debate the advantages and challenges of top-down versus bottom-up approaches to organizational education. Stu chimes in with his thoughts on why bottom-up has worked better for him and his clients. He uses that approach to learn about customers and their problems, taking those issues to heart. In this manner, he helps non-profits place the customer's needs first, allowing the organization's success to grow naturally from that good work. If you deal often with non-profits, or if you seek to understand the importance of data integration to thought leadership, this conversation offers clarity and inspiration. Stu offers a ton of valuable insights, so you might want to listen to this one twice! Three Key Takeaways: If you want people to listen to your thought leadership insights, be sure to present yourself as a trusted subject matter and domain expert. Never undervalue the importance of listening! Through understanding a client or customer's needs, you gain an intimate knowledge of their problems, making it easier to create custom solutions. Get out those case studies! Study them, challenge the outcomes, and turn that content into blogs, webinars, and other great learning tools.