Never call yourself a thought leader

Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Yeah, so I I do a bunch of things, but they're all pretty related. So I am the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. So that's a consulting firm. I started that in 2008. I have a podcast that I co host, which is called Leveraging Thought Leadership. So we've done 750 episodes in the last eight and a half years. And the most recent thing I'm focused on is a book. We wrote a book, I co wrote a book called The Thought Leadership Handbook, which was released just recently.

Yeah, so for many, many, many years I had no desire to write a book and turned down a lot of opportunities to write a book. I don't think I'm a particularly good writer. I don't particularly enjoy it. I'd rather do this. I'd rather have conversations with people or do video or something like that. It's just not my favorite thing. But then a couple of things changed. So then I realized that number one, we have developed Dozens of models and methods and frameworks over the years as consultants. And and we didn't develop them in an academic way. We developed them in the field, working with real clients every day and then coming up with models and methods and frameworks so that we could make it a bit easier to work with clients as we moved down the road. So I knew we had all these things, but I didn't think that anyone would want to look at a book full of models or or frameworks or whatever. That to me seemed incredibly painful and boring. So it was always in the back of my head that we've got these models. And then a couple of years ago, about two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, it was a rainy Saturday. And I don't know why, but I I started playing around with chat a bit more than I was prior to that. So I was dabbling in it, but I haven't really like I didn't really do a project on it. And what I realized was we've got these podcasts. And at the time we had 650 episodes and we had transcripts on all of them, but quite frankly, we never We very, very, very rarely went back to the transcripts because it was hard to find them and hard to dig them up and all that sort of stuff. And we had this rudimentary system that our executive producer put together where every episode he would put like three, four, five hashtags next to the episode internally on a spreadsheet to say, so today I talked to someone Mikolas and and we talked about this, right? We talked about being an author or being a speaker or whatever. so what I did is I took about 30 of the transcripts that were tied to a specific hashtag. And I threw them into chat and I started to play with it. And I started to ask it questions. And I started to say, Do you see any patterns here? What do you think about this? What do think about that? And I was blown away as what it was giving back to me. And it wasn't giving me back anything. I was there. I was recording these conversations, but I didn't remember, you know, a little snippet here and a little snippet here spread out over many, many, many years. And I was like, wow, this is really, really cool. So on Monday, I called Bill Sherman, my COO and co-author of the book, and I Hey, I got an idea. I was playing around with chat.

And putting some of the transcripts in and it came up with some cool patterns. It would probably pretty easy to write a book. Well, you know, little did I know it's never easy to write a book, but fast forward, we did upload about 600 and some odd transcripts, 650 transcripts into chat. That's 2.3 million words, which is the equivalent of 50 nonfiction business books. That's a lot, right? And Bill created all these amazing tools and queries and stuff so that we could pull. Valuable information from it in many cases go back to the source or go back to someone and say, hey, remember you we had you you may and may not remember we had this conversation, but I'd like to talk to you again about that. And that helped us basically take all the models and stuff that we have and wrap them in multiple stories of real people that have lived those life experiences, which may which to me made it a readable book and therefore made it a writable book.

So that's the story. So I learned, yeah, it's a it's a great qu I learned a bunch of things. One is I when I started, I knew I was gonna commit to about fifty episodes, which is a lot. And and the reason I committed to fifty is it's easy to convince yourself early on that there's no value in doing this. Right. There isn't an you know, we didn't get any likes or we didn't get enough downloads or we didn't get anybody calling whatever. And I think it takes time to build these things up, whether it's a blog or whether it's a podcast or whatever it is that you're doing, commit to a period of time before you make a go-no-go decision. Now it doesn't mean during that interim period, you're not looking at it, refining it, tweaking it, whatever. So so that was the first thing I committed to. The second thing is I knew that if I didn't enjoy it and if I wasn't having fun, I wasn't gonna do it. Right. So it's fun. If if I never published the podcast and all I did was have great conversations with fun people. That would be enough for me. But I was like, why wouldn't I share this with the world? If I'm learning something during every conversation, other people could probably learn too. And then ultimately what happens over time, maybe it's a hundred episodes, maybe more, is there's a flywheel effect where you know success begets success and it becomes easy to get guests and it becomes easy to actually do the episodes. I I have to do a lot less prep per episode now than I did early on. It comes naturally to me, it comes, it comes. Easier to me, I kind of know directionally where I might want to go. And I've got you know a pattern and a style that I like to stick.

Okay, good. Are you having fun?

Well, but I would I would I would say yes and and the end is I've had some amazingly brilliant people, but they've been tough interviews because maybe you maybe they retired that day or or or they're more introverted or whatever. Because just because someone's interesting doesn't mean they're a good guest. And it puts a lot of burden on the host to make them interesting and shine them in a good light and and make sure that the conversation is flowing and going and and all those sort of

Yeah, so the book is the Thought Leadership Handbook. And there isn't one main thing, like, you know, check your emails in the morning or, you know, whatever. It's really designed as a handbook so that anyone that is a thought leader, would like to be a thought leader, is an aspiring thought leader, is curious about thought leadership, could read it and apply it. Because far too many books people read and don't apply. Right. Far too many books people look at, read, process, but they don't do anything with. So we we we wrote this in a way for it to be actionable and for the benefit to be on any reader that wants to go through this, that wants to develop their thought leadership, wants to deploy it, wants to understand how to position it and package it, and do those things. So that's that's that would be my hope.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of misper mis misconceptions. So one is that everybody could be a thought leader. And I think that's absolutely untrue. You know, ev anybody could be anything, but not everybody is really in a position to be a thought leader. So first of all, you know, one of the rules that I follow or t or or or advise clients is never ever, ever, ever call yourself a thought leader. It's a way to distance yourself from someone. It's it it makes you sound arrogant. It's it's it's obnoxious. to me, a thought leader is is it's almost a a title of honor or or or a s sign of respect that others in your field, in your community that you admire, that you respect refer to you as. Hey, Miglas is a thought leader in, whatever. Cool. Now then you could say, well, Peter said that I'm a thought leader, or this person said, but don't say I'm a thought leader, right? So that's that's something I think about a lot.

Yeah. Well, I'll I'll I'll start to answer that by telling you what I don't what I think it's not. So it's not an influencer, although thought leaders can influence others, but it's not an influencer as that term has evolved in the social media landscape. Because an influencer by definition, and this is why I don't really love the term, is influencing you to do something that you may or might want to do. I want to influence you to buy this bottle of beer or or or eat at this place or you know do something I'm doing or whatever. Okay. It's really a nice way of saying coerce, right? If we called influencers coercers, which is ultimately what they are, I don't think that's a that's a nice thing, right? So it's not being an influencer, although thought leaders can influence. It's not content marketing. And I think a lot of people in the business world can erroneously conflate. content marketing with thought leadership. Content marketing is great. Content marketing has a job to do. Content marketing has a place in the world where it is content that supports the marketing of a product or service. And we're all clear as to what that means, right? If I'm selling pens, you know, I might put out content marketing on how best to use this pen. Or look at some creative ways some of our customers have used this pen. And that's all great, but I'm doing it in service of selling more pens, right? To me, thought leadership is really the the the ability to take ideas and refine them and polish them and get them out into a marketplace that that that they resonate with and are most valuable to and that could benefit. s the way those people think, believe, behave, or act. And there may or may not be any benefit to the thought leader other than the intrinsic value of sharing the idea. There may be other benefits, but it doesn't have to be.

Yeah. So I would I would I would do two things. I would work backwards and say, who am I serving? And I would so I I would clearly define as best I possibly could demographically and psychographically who cares. And if the answer to that is everyone, you that's the wrong answer. Right. So the answer you you need to be able to clearly identify and understand who that group is. And if I were to say to you, give me three examples of that. You say, it's my next door neighbor Fred, or it's my former boss Joe, or it's Sally down. Like, well, why is it Sally? Well she fits this role and this way of thinking and this way of being and she has these technical backgrounds and she has this educational background. Okay, great. So we're writing for her. Right. So that's number one. That's the first thing I would do. Then I would work the other side of the coin. So that's the who is what the hell do you have to say? Right? Because we don't the world doesn't need another expert on Leadership on management, on say on quite frankly, on anything, because anybody now with with a keyboard or a microphone or whatever could fancy themselves a thought leader. So, what is it that you're specifically adding to the conversation? What is it that you're adding to the dialogue? And it could be a little bit different, it could just be a d a a slight incremental change to the way people are thinking or talking about it. It could be radically different. I think far too often people t shoot for the radical. Right. And that's really, really hard because there the you know the the the the just the va the sheer number of totally radical ideas is far, far less than the number of incremental ideas. So what could you add to your discipline incrementally that you know that if Sally got it, she would go, Wow, that's really cool. And I'm gonna tell three friends about it. And and if you can't answer that, then then you shouldn't start.

Yeah. So for thought leaders, number one, I think it's the easy stuff. There's some easy ways to use AI to make your business more efficient. That's pretty easy. And there's too many people talking about that. You don't need my opinion on that, right? Like so it's there's an efficiency piece on this. Then as a thought leader, you know, there's places that you should should definitely figure out how to use it. And there's places and use cases that you should stay away from, right? So one way to use it is How could it help you be a better thought leader? Well, what does that mean? How could it help you craft a better keynote? How could it help you tell your message to be more resonant to a different population? How could it help you as a research partner? How could it help you as a critic? And I think you have to realize that the default switch on most AI. is to placate you and make you feel brilliant. And that's not good. Right. If all your AI does is say, wow, that's so good. You're so smart. That's that's not good. I mean, think about the best teachers that you've had. They might have told you you're good, but they've also might have given you some really targeted and direct and specific feedback. So if any any AI that you use, you have to train it and say, listen, I want you to be really critical of me. My bar is really high, right? And if I can't exceed that level, don't tell me mediocre is good, because it's not. Right. So that's one thing. I think I think research, I think understanding your clients better. There is no excuse today why you go into a meeting with a potential new client and don't know a hell of a lot about them. Right. We couldn't do that 10 years ago. Getting we would have to subscribe to Hoover's database and all these other things and do a lot of research and do a lot of whatever. In 20 minutes, you could find out an enormous amount about a company, a team. an individual, right? And use that in ways that make those conversations and those meetings meetings deeper connections as opposed to I'm gonna hit next on a PowerPoint, you know.

Yes. Well, it's not just to let it speak, but you know, people can say, you know, read my book and write fifty blog posts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And guess what? As soon as somebody read those, they're gonna go, that was written by AI. That's garbage, right? You know. No, you might say to it, give me an idea for 30 different articles that would resonate with these people going through these situations. Give me a way to tell a story, right? But don't don't do the AI slop thing. I think, you know. It's the equivalent of spam today. It's it just shows a total lack of respect. If you're putting your name on something, you should be proud of it. And I think you gotta ask yourself, yeah, that was really easy. Am I proud to put my name on that? You know? And if you're not, don't do that.

No, absolutely not. Not another book. No. This was this was two years. This was a lot of work. now what's next is I would say two things. We're gonna continue to do more of what we've been doing as as a firm and as podcast host. and then we're gonna do some different things. We're experimenting because I think life and thought leadership is a is just a series of experiments with different ways to get the ideas out, different business models, different markets, different audiences, and see where it lands. And I know that much of that won't land well and that's okay. You know, that's why I have to go into this with an experimental mindset.

Yeah, I think that's I think that's a good question. so we're a consulting firm. So, you know, when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. So to us, the solution to many problems is: hey, we're really good consultants, we're smart, we've seen these type of problems before. Engage with us and we'll help you we'll help you solve those problems as best we can. And we know better than most, right? I think I would still do that, but then I might look at other tools and other things that are more licensable that aren't as dependent on us. And that that's really what we're doing now. I think my target market would be the same because I think we found a niche in our marketplace. So it's not like I would say, you know, I've been working with thought leaders for 20 years. Now I'm gonna go work with plumbers. No, I we we we sort of know our lane. I question now in the age of AI, are are there other more creative or different ways that the end user that the client wants to engage with the ideas that we have in the way that we work.

Yeah, you could find me at on LinkedIn. You could email me directly, Peter, at thoughtleadership leverage dot com. You can go to the website, thoughtleadership leverage dot com and YouTube channel, all the socials, and obviously you know, they they can get their hands on the book would be a good idea as well.

This has been great. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.