The Authority Muse Podcast: Recent Episodes
Matt Gordon
The place for experts, thought leaders, and up-and-coming authorities to explore the strategies and tactics of people who have changed the world, as well as interviews with current thought leaders and influencers.
If there’s one thing marketers know for sure, it’s that people find new things exciting. It’s why at least every few months, one of the things you regularly buy will have a “New! Improved!” label slapped on the packaging.
When you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while, what do you ask them? Is it, “hey, tell me about everything in your life that hasn’t changed at all in the last three years?” Or is it, “hey, what’s new?”
But the paradoxical thing about it is, the best source for finding something new to include in your thought leadership content is often something old.
C.S. Lewis once talked about how “the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century lies where we have never suspected it. None of us can fully escape this blindness.”
He went on to say, “The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash C.S. Lewis was right. Old books help us correct the mistakes of our own era. It’s not so much that people back then were smarter than we are now, although I think that’s true in some areas.
It’s that they didn’t make the mistakes we make. And, to be fair, we sometimes are not making their mistakes. So like with all of history, you have to take the good and leave the bad in the past.
Lewis prescribed reading one old book for every two or three modern books you read, and I think that’s a good idea.
In spite of all of our natural fascination with newness, one of the harder lessons I’ve had to learn is that marketing, just like thought leadership, is not the search for the new. It’s the search for the proven.
So as strange as it may sound, the best way to keep your thought leadership material interesting is to provide new information from old sources. You’ll surprised at how effective this is. And it’s easier than you think.
This tip concludes the week of making your stuff cool. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I’ve enjoyed bringing it to you.
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Welcome to day four of “Making Your Stuff Cool.” To review, we covered the little-known “RADIO technique” on Monday, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tactic on Tuesday; Wednesday was about making predictions, and today is about details.
Photo by Dimitri Bong on Unsplash We’ve all heard the saying that “the devil is in the details,” but I’m going to tell you that the money is there, too.
Claude Hopkins taught me that. Of course, I never met Claude, because he died forty-three years before I was born. But he lives on in the ads he created for the companies that were clients of the ad agencies he worked at. And yes, ad men and women can definitely become Thought Leaders. It’s their business to lead the public.
Let’s talk about one of his ads and see if we can steal the tactic he employed.
If you never saw the very first episode of “Mad Men,” you should probably do that. In the show, a Madison Avenue ad agency Creative Director named Don Draper is trying to come up with a “hook” for an advertising campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes.
At the last minute, he has a stroke of genius. He says to advertise this phrase: “It’s Toasted.”
Of course, all tobacco companies toast their leaves as a standard part of their production process, but Don made the point that nobody talks about it. By giving consumers something to think about (besides the fact that cigarettes will kill you), their company gets to sidestep that issue and set themselves apart.
It’s genius.
And it was pulled from real life. That “Mad Men” episode was based on the campaign that Claude Hopkins came up with in 1917 for Lucky Strike. It was a very successful campaign.
So that’s a great story, but what can you and I do with it?
Let’s look at the technique itself: Claude learned as much as he could about the product (just as a Thought Leader should) and then took a single, little-known detail that he could talk about in a fresh, new way.
The tactic was so successful, Claude also used it for Schlitz beer, Quaker Oats, and other companies.
If you put a little thought into it, you could use this tactic as a way to draw interest to your thought leadership content and products as well.
Get thought leadership tips like this in your inbox every weekday by getting on my email list. Claim your free subscription at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Welcome to day 3 of “Making Your Stuff Cool.”
As previously discussed, I’m talking about driving up the interest of your audience by making your information “cool.” On Monday, we talked about the “Radio Test.” On Tuesday, we talked about combining the interests of your audience in new and original ways. Today, we’re going to apply the technique of fortune-telling to your thought leadership.
Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash Here’s what we know about all people: they’re fascinated with predictions. I was just reading an article the other day about the end of the NHL regular season, and the writer talked about his predictions, and the predictions of readers who commented on them, at the beginning of the season.
You might or might not be surprised to learn that the writer was completely wrong about a number of things he thought would happen. In spite of that, the article was still informative and enjoyable to read.
The point I want you to take from that is that while it’s even more fun when people get it right, nobody cares when they get it wrong.
In fact, if you make a lot of predictions and only get a few right, you can focus on those few correct ones and people will generally forget that you got some of the others wrong.
Now let’s take this one step further, beyond just making predictions.
You can use those predictions to draw a crowd by how you talk about them. For example, you could make a prediction about what you think smartphones are going to be like in a year, and then point to a major change that will happen because of that. Maybe people will trade in or throw out their iPhone, and that’s how you begin your story. Of course, not everyone will upgrade, but if a few people do, that’s a valid prediction.
Maybe you could talk about what industries will be in decline, or what will happen if the President gets re-elected, or if his opponent gets elected. Maybe you could talk about technologies that will be made obsolete.
My prediction is that if you use this to your advantage, you can make your content fun and interesting to the people you want to attract and bond with.
Coming up tomorrow, we’ll talk about using a technique from a marketing copywriter who was born in 1866. You’d never believe this tactic is so old because it works so well. I’ll see you then.
If you’d like to make certain you keep learning all these strategies, you can do that by subscribing to my free daily thought leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Welcome back for day 2 of “How To Make Your Stuff Cool.”
Photo by Luca Ambrosi on Unsplash I’m going to jump right into the story:
In November of 1983, Ronald Reagan was a year away from one of the largest landslide election victories in the history of the United States.
But that has nothing to do with it.
At the same time, in Dover, New Hampshire, illustrators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird had an idea: they thought it would be “fun” to start a comic book.
They decided on their target market (teenagers), and then brainstormed things that teenagers found exciting.
After a while, they had a long list, and then circled three entries on that list:
Turtles, Ninjas, and Mutants.
Eastman drew a massive turtle standing on its hind legs and holding a pair of nunchucks. Below it, Laird wrote the words “teenage mutant.”
And the rest is history. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (renamed “Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles” in Europe) became a multi-billion dollar entertainment, toy, and licensing franchise.
You can use their technique to come up with new and fresh angles to give your own audience. Start out by getting very clear on who your audience is and what they already know and like. Look for crazy and appealing combinations of those things, add in a dose of your personality and creativity, and see what happens.
The reason I’m telling you this story isn’t so you can start making up stories about reptiles. Here is what I know for sure about thought leadership: Thought Leaders become leaders of thoughts by saying original things that have never been said before. And if they have to say something unoriginal, they say it in a way that has never been said before.
This technique will help you with that. Now go sign up for my emails so you can get tips like this every day.
Some of us might not like to admit it sometimes, but a part of thought leadership is simply bringing cool ideas to your followers. It’s just the appeal of interesting information and concepts. Don’t underestimate your audience’s need to entertained.
So how do we do that?
This week I’m going to focus every day on ways to bring the “cool” to your followers.
Today, I want to talk about a little-known copywriting trick called “the RADIO Test.”
Photo by 蔡 世宏 on Unsplash “RADIO” is an acronym for:
Reward Affirmation Deadline Intrigue Originality
Reward stands for the advantage that will accrue to your reader (or listener or viewer) for having consumed your content. It’s the old “what’s in it for me?” thing. Make sure that the reward to your follower is clear.
Affirmation means that they will feel better for having been with you for that moment. As Blair Warren told us in “The One Sentence Persuasion Course,” people will do anything for someone who makes their follower feel further convinced that they are “right.” A cynical and reductive way of looking at this could be called, “pandering for fun and profit.”
Deadline, in this case, refers to the timelines of the content. Why is this important right now, and why should I take action right now? Don’t let your cool stuff get thrown on the pile of “I’ll get to it someday.” Get them in the game right now.
Intrigue means to “arouse the curiosity or interest of; fascinate.” Make sure that your content is fascinating. The trick to this is not only to provide interesting information, but make sure you’ve chosen a market that would and should find your information interesting.
Originality, the final criteria, means that they can’t have heard what you’ve got to say every day for the past week. You need to bring them something unique. If you can’t be unique, at least say what you’ve got to say in a unique way.
If you’re going to use the RADIO Test to be cool, make sure your content meets all five qualifications. Three out of five isn’t much better than one out of five.
I’ll see you tomorrow with what you can learn from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! In the meantime, you should sign up for my free daily Thought Leadership email tips at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Today, let’s talk about testing and experimentation in Thought Leadership. You probably already know that establishing yourself as a Thought Leader in your industry requires constant innovation and experimentation.
Photo by Alex Kondratiev on Unsplash As an information marketer, it’s essential to take risks and try new things. Today, we’ll discuss why experimentation is crucial in thought leadership and explore some areas wherein you could greatly benefit by testing and experimentation. I think you’ll get a lot out of this if you’re willing to put in the work.
Experimentation can take many forms, such as introducing new marketing strategies, changing the format of content, or exploring new social media platforms. When it comes to thought leadership and information marketing, being open to trying new things and learning from them can be transformative.
Some areas in which experimentation is key include:
Content formats — Blog posts, videos, podcasts — experimenting with different formats and seeing which ones resonate most with your audience can be eye-opening.
Social media — depending on your audience, some social media platforms will definitely be more effective than others. So this is a great area to experiment in.
Product development — trying out new products or variations on existing products can inform the direction of your business and inform your audience. You’ll sometimes be pleasantly surprised at your results.
Whatever you experiment with, it’s essential to look objectively at the results and use them as a learning opportunity. You may discover new strategies or techniques that you hadn’t considered previously.
Experimentation is a necessary component of thought leadership and information marketing success. By constantly iterating and trying new things, you can stay ahead of the curve and differentiate yourself from the competition. Be open to new ideas, and don’t be afraid to take calculated risks.
Here’s an experiment you can start right now: Dedicate the next six months to growing your thought leadership. All you need to do is to sign up for my free daily thought leadership emails. Implement one strategy a week — that’s just one out of five — and see what happens in the next six months. You can start this experiment by going to You Can Be A Thought Leader and dropping your email address in the form. The very next weekday, your experiment can start. I can’t wait to see what you accomplish!
If you want to establish yourself as a recognized and well-rewarded Thought Leader in your market, creating and selling information products is a key part of that goal. Providing such products to your audience is a great way to help them achieve the transformation they seek.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash Information products are resources that provide valuable insights and knowledge to your target audience. They come in various formats, such as ebooks and physical books, physical written courses, video courses, or membership sites.
Each format has its own strengths and weaknesses, and you should choose the formats of your various products carefully, according to the buying behaviors of your market, the curriculum you plan on teaching, your pricing strategy, and other factors.
To create impactful information products, you must invest time in designing a balanced product and curriculum that is tailored to your audience’s needs. A well-designed information product has several characteristics. Let’s go over a few right now:
Impactful information products provide value to your audience. Ensure that your product solves a problem they have or introduces them to a body of valuable knowledge.
Impactful information products are easy to understand. Communicate clearly and avoid any sort of technical language your audience might not understand.
Impactful information products are are tailored to your audience. This is where having an intimate understanding of your market comes in. Whether you are sharing insights for beginners or planning an advanced course, ensure that the content is aligned with the audience’s expectations.
Curriculum design for information products is critical, regardless of format. A well-designed curriculum will have a logical flow that builds on the previous lesson or chapter. It should be paired with appropriate examples, questions, and assignments that reinforce the subject’s concepts and provide opportunities for students to confirm to themselves that they are on track.
Crafting impactful information products takes time and effort, but it can pay off handsomely when done well. They can help you establish yourself as a Thought Leader in your industry, provide the income an expert deserves, and provide valuable insights and knowledge to your customers.
Against my own advice and better judgement, I don’t have a information product to sell you. But I should! In the meantime, I only have something to give you for free:
Every day, I email a group of my followers a tip on how to build and maintain thought leadership. It would be a great way for you to up level your skills and start making real progress toward your goals. You can sign up for these emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
As a Thought Leader, your primary aim is to provide value to your audience. However, your message is incomplete if your audience doesn’t take any action on the information you have provided. That’s where a call to action (CTA) comes in.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash A call to action is a prompt that encourages readers, viewers, or listeners to take a specific action towards doing something about the information you have provided. It can be anything from signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, or leaving a comment on your article or video.
Examples of CTAs include “Sign up for our free trial,” “Download your free eBook today,” or “Get your exclusive discount now.” All of these might be very successful, depending on the context. That is why it is important to test the wording of your CTA to see which one works the best.
In today’s world where attentions span are short, it’s important to have a strong and effective CTA strategy to turn people into followers, and followers into customers.
The key to crafting effective CTAs is to make them persuasive through strong messaging. So here are some tips for crafting persuasive CTAs:
Use action-oriented language that drives your message forward, such as “Grab,” “Join,” or “Subscribe.” In other words, lead with a verb.
Keep it short and sweet. Make sure your CTA is easy to understand and straightforward. Now is not the time to get cute or to drop hints. Be bold, and be direct.
Provide value to the reader. A CTA is always more effective when it offers a clear benefit or incentive to the reader. They aren’t going to do anything for you, so they need to understand why they should do it for their own benefit.
Create a sense of legitimate urgency. If there is any kind of deadline or limitation, make sure you highlight that. People respond to urgency like nothing else.
It’s also important to note that the placement of CTAs on your website or Thought Leadership material is key. Placing them in high-visibility areas can increase click-through rates.
An effective CTA strategy is essential for successful thought leadership and information marketing. It engages potential customers, drives conversions, and helps you build and maintain thought leadership in your industry.
My call to action, right now, is this: Register for a free subscription to my daily thought leadership emails so you can up level your skills and achieve the recognition and reward you deserve. Sign up today, right now, at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Do you want to stand out and establish yourself as a Thought Leader in your industry? Then you must understand the importance of delivering high-quality content to your audience.
Photo by Carlos Esteves on Unsplash In today’s ever-evolving digital landscape, it is essential to provide fresh, relevant, and high-quality content that speaks to the needs and interests of your customers. Solid, informative content can establish you as an authority and start a conversation with your reader. Today, I’ll discuss how quality content can help you differentiate yourself from the competition and drive your thought leadership efforts.
One of the most effective ways to develop quality content is by conducting data analytics that identifies your target audience’s needs and preferences. By examining your data, you can create content that fits your target market’s traits, preferences, and behaviors.
The importance of readability of the content cannot be overstated. You need to ensure that your readers can understand your content by writing in a way that is concise and straightforward.
Finally, providing valuable insights through your content can drive engagement with your readers, who will want to learn more from you. When you produce content that gives readers actionable advice they can take to the bank, they will come back to you for more.
Delivering content that resonates with your audience is a game-changer, allowing you to stand out as a Thought Leader in your industry and start being rewarded for your expertise.
The tips I have provided here only scratch the surface of content quality. These factors are just the ante that you have to pony up to play the game. In order to establish yourself as a highly rewarded and highly respected Thought Leader, your content must also be persuasive and emotionally connect with your audience in a way that guides them toward being a good follower and customer.
Join me as we explore topics like this every day. Register for my free daily thought leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash As a Thought Leader trying to grow your audience, you may be trying to target your audience with an ad campaign or some other effort to target who you would like to put your thought leadership content in front of.
Today, I want to go over a couple of things that will help you do that.
When you think about the kind of people you want as followers, you might start thinking about what you want them to be like. What kind of people you want them to be.
I’ll give you an example: for my business, The Educated Authority, I need people who are willing to study and learn. In fact, if they aren’t willing to study and learn — maybe they feel like they already know everything or they’re too intellectually lazy to learn anything — from a thought leadership business perspective, they aren’t any good to me at all. They’re worthless.
I need people who want to learn, and enjoy learning about things they’re interested in. And not just willing to learn from me, but to actually be a student of their own industry.
I could have a list of a million followers, but if they’re not willing to invest time and money in continually learning, I really have no following at all.
What I’m doing there is selecting a follower by something called psychographics. And like the word “psychology,” it has to do with how people think. And it’s important that you spend some time on identifying what your ideal follower would be like.
That said, although psychographics are extremely important in attracting the right kind of follower, you can’t run your business by psychographics alone.
The opposite of that is what people are like on the outside, their demographics. And this is the kind of thing that’s more identity-based, as well as possibly their careers. And demographics are pretty easy to take to a list broker or someone planning an ad campaign and tell them exactly the demographics you want to talk to.
So how do we balance between the two?
I suggest that as much as you can, you target market by demographics, and then you filter and indoctrinate by psychographics. You draw a huge crowd with demographics, and then from there you can pull out the best people for your business.
Your thought leadership content should repel the people who are psychographically wrong for you, and at the same time, your content will create an even tighter bond with the right people — the people that have the values you need in your ideal follower.
And that’s the real trick of thought leadership content. Not only do you establish authority, inform people, and entertain people, but it also has to run off the wrong people and make the right people fall deeper in love with you.
If this interests you, you are going to love my free daily Thought Leadership how-to emails. You can sign up for them at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash I wanted to circle back to something I mentioned on Monday, because I think it’s really important for you to understand not just the how but the why.
So what I said Monday that I thought was so worthwhile is that there is one thing that no one will ever disagree with: a conclusion that they come to themselves.
So in other words, this is important if you’re in a Thought Leadership situation or a sales situation, which you should probably realize are essentially one and the same. If you’re trying to convince someone of something, and you almost always are, you are definitely going to run into some level of resistance. That’s just the way the human brain is wired.
So what do we do about that?
What we do is we stop trying to force our mental frame on the other person, because that makes them wrong. And nobody wants to be wrong.
What we do is we feed them persuasively designed information so that they can’t help but arrive at that conclusion themselves. That way, they get to be right.
And once they arrive at that conclusion, it would be difficult to try and convince them otherwise.
Why?
Because, again, people typically don’t disagree with their own conclusions. Particularly if they feel like they’ve gotten to them somewhat independently.
So that’s the “how,” but I really want to focus on the “why” of persuasion for Thought Leaders.
Persuasion is not just a matter of convincing others to adopt a certain viewpoint, but also of provoking a shift in underlying attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. Thought Leaders need to be able to understand the psychological principles of influence in order to effect genuine transformation in their followers.
Additionally, thought leadership requires persuasion to be able to communicate in a way that resonates with others and establishes you as the authority.
And those two things are what my company, The Educated Authority, is all about. Creating transformation and the establishment of you as the authority in your field.
And to do that, I send out emails every day to help you learn exactly what you need to do. You can sign up to get those emails, they’re free, at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Gear5.8 by Roberto R. on Unsplash I’m once again returning to how followers think (after yesterday’s message was very well received) with a tactic for establishing common ground with your followers.
First off, why would you want to establish common ground?
Well, you do and you don’t, actually. You are the leader and they are the followers, but they need to be solidly convinced that you understand their lives, and particularly their situation that is applicable to your expertise.
This builds trust in you as a Thought Leader, which is something you’re going to need. And the reason you need it is because your follower needs it.
There are a few ways to establish common ground with your follower, but I’m going to give you the best one right now.
You should have a before and after story about you and your thought leadership career. This is your personalized story about what your life was like before you learned and implemented what you now teach, and what your life is like now.
Your followers need to see themselves in the “before” part of your before and after story, so you need to tell that part with as much detail as you can. In the context of telling them about your life, you need to be telling them things about their lives that they’ve never told anyone else.
So let me give you an example. Let’s say you help people lose weight and get in shape because you were once very overweight and you figured out how to drop all those pounds.
When you’re talking about the “before” in your story, you need to talk about getting winded going up a flight of steps, the embarrassment of having to ask for a seat belt extension on a plane, and how you felt when people looked at you as you were eating an ice cream cone.
They need to feel that not only do you empathize with their situation, but that you have lived their life and you understand it intimately. You need to be saying things that only people that have lived through it can understand.
And that is the best way to establish common ground with your followers. Now if you haven’t been through their experience like that; let’s say that using my previous example you were never overweight, so you don’t have that “before” phase of your life, don’t despair. There are still ways to establish common ground.
Let me give you an example: when I go to the doctor with a broken leg, I don’t need the doctor to tell me about how they broke their leg a few years ago and talk about how much it hurt. I need them to show me they understand what I’m going through, and they have the tools, skills, and knowledge to fix my situation in the best and most painless and convenient way possible. And there are ways that the doctor can communicate that.
This is the kind of thing I discuss in the emails I send out every day to people who are up and coming Thought Leaders and quite a few who have been very successful at achieving and maintaining thought leadership. You can claim your place in that discussion by signing up at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Free Walking Tour Salzburg on Unsplash It’s Monday and I have too many other things on the calendar today (and Shayla’s off work), so I’m going to be brief and very, very to-the-point.
I don’t often focus a lot on the “leader” part of Thought Leader, so I thought today would be a perfect time to give you three principles about how followers think and what you can do about it.
There is a lot more to talk about, and we will, but I think if you can just work on these three, you’ll be off to a good start.
Follower Psychology Principle #1: Followers are looking for someone in whom they can place hope and confidence, because they have none for themselves.
This means that everything you do, especially when it’s directed at people who are just being exposed to you for the first time, has to inspire confidence in first yourself, and then in the follower.
Follower Psychology Principle #2: The follower pays you to fix problems.
You can’t be a profitable Thought Leader telling people how to prevent something bad from happening to them. Nobody ever goes on a diet to keep from getting fat, right? They’re looking for solutions, not prevention.
Follower Psychology Principle #3: The person who does the convincing is the follower, not the leader.
Pop quiz hot shot: what’s one thing no one will ever disagree with? The answer: a conclusion they’ve arrived at themselves.
Instead of trying to convince your follower of something, especially in a sales situation, don’t try impressing your belief system about the product on the follower. They’ll resist because we all resist when we’re being sold to. Don’t lecture them. Instead, present the facts in an interesting story in an almost passive way, and let them draw their own conclusions.
Now here’s a story about two Thought Leaders.
One Thought Leader subscribed to my free daily email tips at You Can Be A Thought Leader. This individual woke up the next day in mysteriously much better shape. Everything was easy for them, and when they were behind the wheel of their car, which was always clean and had a full tank of gas, every single traffic light was green. And their bank account balance ended with more zeroes than it ever had before. They lived happily ever after in a loving relationship with a person even more attractive than they are.
Another Thought Leader struggled through life, and died unlamented, broke, and alone. Their body was never identified, and they were buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave outside of town by the garbage dump.
Which Thought Leader do you want to be? If you want to be like the first kind of Thought Leader, you know what you need to do. Sign up for my free daily Thought Leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Tran Phuc on Unsplash I want to follow up yesterday’s “what do Thought Leaders Say” discussion with a “what do Thought Leaders deliver” discussion.
I think most Thought Leaders understand the concept of value, that you have to deliver value if you want to stay in business as a Thought Leader.
But a couple of things about that:
First, who determines value?
The customer determines value, not you.
Second, the customer determines value based on their values. And they value more than just the financial return, if you’re selling them something that helps them make money.
So what other things do people value?
Well they often like ideas a whole lot. They often like cool ideas more than doing the work those ideas are centered around. In fact, if you can’t keep bringing your audience a stream of good ideas, you’re not going to last long in this business.
They like to put their faith in something besides themselves, because they don’t believe in themselves. They need a sense of confidence and a feeling of hope.
They like to be entertained. You don’t have to be entertaining, unless you want to get paid. Then you do.
They want a sense of belonging in a group of people — are there other people out there in the world that are like them? They need that support.
Finally, they want a sense of progress, of forward motion. They need to feel like they can eventually get to where they want to go.
If you’d like to get to where you want to go in Thought Leadership, your next best move is to subscribe to my free daily emails, where I teach you how to establish, scale, and maintain a Thought Leadership business. You can register at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
One of the questions I’m constantly asked is, “I want to be a Thought Leader; what do I say?”
Photo by Daniel Álvasd on Unsplash Fair question! And as I said, not an uncommon one. We all have to speak knowledge and wisdom into the silent void.
So I’m going to give you three types of things that Thought Leaders say, so that you will at least have a perspective you can work from. You can take your pick between them.
The first things Thought Leaders say are things that haven’t been said before. We introduce original concepts and market those concepts. Let the content marketers write about us. So we say things that have never been said before.
But you don’t always have to be so original, because that’s extremely difficult to do. If you have three to five original concepts, you could have a entire thought leadership career based around those concepts.
Second, we say things that have been said before in ways they have never been said before. Tibor Kalman, one of the premier graphics designers of the late 20th century, once said, “I’m always trying to turn things upside down and see if they look any better.”
That’s what Thought Leaders do. We turn things upside down and provide another perspective.
Third, we re-introduce people to forgotten and valuable knowledge. It always amazes me how easy it is to find what seem like new ideas in very old books. We’re always on the hunt for old, rare, and valuable knowledge. So we repeat things that haven’t been said in a really long time.
So to recap, we say things that have never been said before, we say things that have been said before in ways they haven’t been said before, and we say things that haven’t been said in a really long time.
I hope this helps you conquer the blank page.
If you are an up and coming Thought Leader, I have something to give you. I want to help you grow into that role, and you will learn a lot from my daily thought leadership emails. You can sign up — it doesn’t cost anything — at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash I’ve put off recording this one for several days. It’s too dangerous in the wrong hands.
What if you had the ability to get someone to do anything you wanted them to do? Even if it went beyond their moral or ethical limits?
This is what the compliance formula does, and it’s been used by some of the most evil people in history to achieve their nefarious ends.
So I’m asking you to be careful with this, and treat it with the respect it deserves. And that might be difficult for you because it’s so simple.
Here it is:
Social Proof + Authority = Compliance
Social proof is when you see other people doing what you’re considering doing, and you see them being happy with the outcome.
Authority is when you respect someone’s opinion on a subject and accept their conclusions because you know they know more than you.
Add those two together, and you get compliance.
It’s that simple.
This is the kind of thing I talk about with my subscribers every day over email. Except is usually a lot less dark. You can sign up to get those emails free of charge at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Steven Libralon on Unsplash In his book, “Superhero: The Secret Origins of a Genre,” Peter Coogan discusses the definition of a superhero and how superheroes have evolved over time.
By the way, I’m assuming you can see the connection between superheroes and Thought Leaders. If you’re not getting it, you probably aren’t going to be successful as a Thought Leader without some instruction and assistance. I can help you with that.
One of the primary conventions of a superhero, Coogan writes, is a costume. Superheroes have costumes. Initially, the costume was to obscure the identity of the superhero. It was a disguise.
But the creators of Superman changed everything when they made his costume an expression of his identity. The big “S” chevron on his chest and the colors of his costume all told you, “this is Superman.” Batman had the same thing going on — his costume with the bat logo proclaimed him as being Batman.
Coogan says, and I’m quoting here, “The superhero costume removes the specific details of a character’s ordinary appearance, leaving only a simplified idea that is represented in the colors and design of the costume. The chevron especially emphasizes the character’s codename and is itself a simplified statement of that identity.”
I told you all that to tell you this: your costume — how you appear in public to your followers and customers — needs to proclaim your identity as a Thought Leader. What does your costume say about you? What message does it send?
I’m thinking of Kevin O’Leary on Shark Tank. He’s always in that black undertaker suit and wearing a fancy watch with a red band. That’s his look, and it’s part of his branding as the whole “Mr. Wonderful” persona. Yes, you can find him on social media wearing lots of other kinds of clothing, but when he’s working and there to do business, he’s always dressed the same way.
You don’t need a uniform like that, like the black turtleneck and jeans that Steve Jobs often appeared in, but you do need to put some thought into how your personal appearance sends a specific and intentional message about who you are and what you can do.
And of course, the same thing could be said for the branding of your business, but that’s another discussion for another day.
My followers and I have these discussions every day, and you can be a part of them by signing up for my free daily emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Petros Kelepouris on Unsplash I had a conversation over the weekend that I want to tell you about.
Somebody asked me one of those “one thing” questions. In this case, it was, “what’s the one thing that I could do that could make me a Thought Leader?”
I thought about it for a moment, and then I gave my answer. But before I tell you what it was, what would your answer be?
What’s the “Royal Flush” of thought leadership that could beat all these “content marketers” spreading their mediocre dreck all over the Internet?
What’s the trick to beating AI at its own game? You can’t become a Thought Leader using “me too” or “also ran” type of content, so it has to be better than what AI will come up with.
So what would you say? What’s the one thing that could be the key to thought leadership?
My answer was a bit of advice: conduct original research, and from there, you can draw original conclusions. The research and conclusions will be your intellectual property.
You can quickly become known for asking and answering questions that everyone wants to know the answer to, but nobody has had a way of finding out.
AI can never do your research and draw your conclusions, and content marketers will cite your material. Most of them will be cool enough to give you credit. That way, you’ll be doing concept marketing, a step above content marketing.
Original research is the exclusive benefit that only you can offer your followers, and I strongly suggest you make the most of it.
I publish my own original material every day, and you get it by signing up for my daily emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash I was reading about William Bernbach last night — he was the advertising guy behind such legendary classic ad campaigns like Avis’ “We Try Harder,” and the Volkswagen “Think Small” and “Lemon” ads.
He had a number of sayings about advertising that could — not surprisingly — be applied to thought leadership.
I wanted to share seven of them with you today, adapted to the subjects you and I talk about, and strung together to tell a story as old as the hills and more useful than your smartphone:
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The most powerful element in thought leadership is the truth.
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The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you.
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They can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying.
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They can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you.
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They won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting.
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You won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.
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Our job is to bring facts to life.
I think these seven principles are your marching orders: tell the truth, be persuasive about it, get in front of people and grab their attention, and for Pete’s sake, be interesting.
I dig up lessons like this every day, and present them for you to put into action in your thought leadership business. And they don’t cost a dime. You can get them delivered to your inbox by signing up at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Here’s a policy that I’ve established for myself that’s worked pretty well, and I think you might benefit from it as well:
I never read the comments.
Whether it’s a YouTube video or a news article — especially a news article — I never read the comments.
Yeah, I break the rule every now and then, but it’s rare.
If you’ve ever read comments on a piece of content like that, I think the reason for this policy is pretty obvious.
That’s where the poison is!
Photo by Denise Chan on Unsplash One reason for that is that it’s anonymous. We’ve all seen someone hiding behind a screen name saying things online that they would never have the guts to say to someone face-to-face.
There is a lot of anonymity available on the Internet, but if you’re online as a Thought Leader and you’re selling something to someone, it’s probably the least anonymous place there is.
Ten or twenty years ago, there were only a handful of sites people could go to complain about a business online, and really no harm was done.
Nowadays, you make one false move and people will blow you up, and it doesn’t cost them anything to tear you down.
And just like in rumor mills or between gossips, bad news spreads faster than anything. And there’s no “truth detector” on these sites to let people know that this guy is lying about you.
So let’s talk about what you can do to vaccinate yourself from this poison.
One thing is to systematically build up as much goodwill as you can between yourself and your followers. Additionally, in the context of a transaction, you want clear and easy ways for your customers to provide feedback and get support.
The thinking is that if they can easily get their problem addressed, they won’t make the effort to feel like they need another outlet for their frustration.
You’re not going to believe my example for this, but it’s actually “The Godfather.” Not the movie, which was great, but the book by Mario Puzo. In the book, Vito Corleone became the godfather by doing favors for people and establishing such goodwill that people happily did whatever he wanted them to do because he had done so much for them.
He based his power on goodwill, not fear.
Now do me a favor and let me extend a little goodwill toward you. Sign up for my free daily thought leadership tips, tactics, and strategies at You Can Be A Thought Leader. I hope you’ll find it an offer you can’t refuse.
Back when my stepdaughter was in high school (she graduated in 2018), a teacher once asked her class who Steve Jobs was.
The class was quiet, and then one person volunteered the answer that it was the guy who hosts “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery network.
Umm, no.
Photo by Md Mahdi on Unsplash I was shocked when I heard that story. Utterly shocked.
How soon they forget. Within five years of his passing, there were people who didn’t know who Steve Jobs was or what he did.
I have to admit that as someone with no children of their own, I carry a bit of sadness over the fact that the only things left of me after I pass away are the things I create.
It’s probably part of the reason why I’m so consumed with creating a legacy for myself and my followers.
Abraham Lincoln was also concerned with this (although he had 2 boys out of 4 survive him). As a matter of fact, a lot of Thought Leaders are concerned with this.
I’m not trying to be maudlin here; you can be forgotten while still alive.
In fact, if you don’t keep in close contact with your followers, you will be shocked and dismayed at just how fast they will move on without you. They will forget you.
Keep in touch with your followers. The more touches, the better.
On that note, let’s you and I keep in touch, shall we? You can get Thought Leadership advice from me every day at You Can Be A Thought Leader. Sign up today so you don’t forget!
I remember reading some book about how to create characters for fiction. It said that to create realistic characters, you need to have them be one thing but want to be something else.
For example, “Emily is a waitress in Los Angeles, but she really wants to be an actor.”
That kind of thing.
It was good advice because transformation is something that everyone wants.
I think of what people want to transform into as their secret identity. And yeah, sometimes it actually is a secret. It’s a secret because it’s held captive by their beliefs and lack of knowledge. It’s your job to set it free.
Photo by Kerwin Elias on Unsplash So here’s my advice for you today: speak to that transformation, and help people discover their secret identity.
When people discover that secret identity, and they become more congruent with it through your help, they will be instantly connected to you and you will never have to convince them of anything.
You will probably need to help your followers have a better understanding of what that secret identity is, because our brains often mask it with surface-level desires, like a new car, a better house, or something like that.
That is not their secret identity. That’s their costume.
To get to their secret identity, and to help them realize it as well, you need to uncover the daily experience they want to create and sustain. Not their best day ever, but their daily experience. Their secret identity will reveal itself through what that day looks like.
That’s all I can give you today without turning into the ugly offspring of a neuroscientist and a history professor, but if you want to pull the levers of your followers minds, that’s the kind of thing I teach every day in the emails I send from You Can Be A Thought Leader. Sign up today — it’s free — and you will be on your way.
I want to keep you from making a big mistake.
It’s one I made, repeatedly, and I don’t want you to fall into the same trap.
I ran a marketing agency for over 12 years (it still exists, but I’m no longer in charge of most of the day-to-day operations). When I started it, I knew I had the skills and knowledge to help businesses make money. I thought that my business was “selling dollars at a discount.” I would make them make a thousand dollars, and they would pay me two hundred, and everyone would be happy.
Sounds logical, right?
Small problem… the businesses I was working with had one fatal flaw: they were being run by human beings. And human beings tend to mess things up (you and me included).
So how did this fool-proof plan go wrong?
Well, any number of ways… they were losing money on each sale because they didn’t have a handle on their profit margins, they went out and bought a new truck and increased their overhead, they had a hard time selling the customers I got in the door… and so on.
Eventually, I realized that I couldn’t shoulder the responsibility for the profitability of a business I did not control.
My point is: your customer is not a blank canvas onto which you can paint all your skills, knowledge, and experience and then expect them to get results.
They’ve got a lot going on in their heads that is going to interfere with your perfect plan.
Fortunately, there is a way to get around all that: you’ve got to know your customers extremely well, and then you can defeat these demons in their minds — demons that they are probably not even fully conscious of.
Let me ask you a few questions about your followers and customers:
What are they afraid of? What are they not telling their spouse or loved ones about what’s going on with this thing? Who are they angry at? Who are their enemies? Who do they blame for their failures? What is their feeling about the way the world is generally heading right now?
If you don’t have an accurate answer for every one of those questions, you’re fighting an enemy you can’t see, and the enemy is stronger and more powerful than you think.
You can’t fight this enemy head-on. You have to undermine it by making your followers and customers feel understood.
Your followers need to feel like they’ve finally found someone who understands what they’re going through, even though you’ve never met. Once you achieve that, you can initiate a transfer of confidence and help them to put hope in you that they were unwilling to put in themselves.
I’m going to be very blunt: you don’t want to do this alone, and I’m here to help. Sign up for my free daily Thought Leadership tips at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
People surprise me. Constantly.
You’ll see why in a moment.
Photo by Colin Maynard on Unsplash Have you ever heard the phrase “born yesterday?” As in when you say something like, “She won’t fall for his lies, she wasn’t born yesterday.”
When we say that a person was “born yesterday,” what we really mean is that they don’t understand a given situation, so they are naive and easily fooled. Much like a one-day-old baby, they just don’t have the knowledge or experience to handle themselves.
As a Thought Leader, you can’t be “born yesterday.” It’s simply antithetical to the position.
And yet, I see so many people who would be Thought Leaders, and maybe someday could be Thought Leaders, but they’re ignorant of the history of their subject and market.
Let me give you an example: I can’t tell you how many marketing agency owners I’ve met who didn’t really have much of an idea of the history of advertising and marketing.
They don’t know the likes of Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, or Eugene Schwartz or the fact that they stand on these people’s shoulders every day.
Another example: People who advise their customers on how to lose weight who haven’t read the autobiography of Jean Nidetch, who founded Weight Watchers in 1963.
That’s the longest-running, most successful weight loss organization ever, but a lot of people in that business can’t be bothered to learn about it.
So yes, I am constantly surprised at how so many would-be Thought Leaders operate as if they were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the context or history they’re operating in.
My advice for you today is don’t be that person. This afternoon, I’m releasing the March issue of Authority Gold, the monthly journal of The Educated Authority and the premiere newsletter for up and coming Thought Leaders. In this issue, you can learn the steps you can take to learn history the right way — which is not the way you learned in school.
If you want a complementary subscription, go to EducatedAuthority.com/newsletter and register before I send out this month’s issue.
I normally never send out back issues of Authority Gold, but if you’re seeing or hearing this after today’s date — March 31, 2023 — you can reply to any of my free daily emails I offer at You Can Be A Thought Leader and I’ll send you the March 2023 issue of Authority Gold so you can get up to speed.
One very common mistake a lot of would-be Thought Leaders make is that they try playing the role of teacher to their audience.
Logically, this makes a lot of sense. But in real practice, it doesn’t work.
Ask yourself, how many teachers in the world are perceived as Thought Leaders?
Not many, and those who are Thought Leaders are typically research-oriented college professors who publish books for the mass market.
Why is this?
Because people susceptible to becoming a follower of a Thought Leader aren’t looking for information, they’re looking for transformation.
And transformation through mass persuasion requires a leader.
So thought leadership requires a different set of skills than simply planning a curriculum and the transfer of knowledge.
It requires the ability to capture and maintain attention, the ability to fascinate, to entertain, to emotionally connect, and yes, to inform.
So you’ve got a lot boxes to check to get this right.
And that’s why I’m here, to help you do that. If you would like that help, your first step costs nothing. Just go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my free daily emails. Read those, put the principles and tactics to work, and see what you think.
If you don’t like it, stop. If you find thought leadership a rewarding and impactful activity, then maybe we can talk. But it all starts at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
I guess I’m on a “client relationship” kick this week. Bear with me, but this will be applicable to everyone, not just consultants of some sort.
Let’s quickly quantify two things:
The first is the inflow of new customers for your thought leadership business. Not for your resources or other products (we’ll get to that in a moment), but for the services that demand your time and attention. We’ll call that “demand” for the sake of this conversation.
The second is the ability of your business to handle all that business. We’ll call that “supply.”
Ideally, we want to have the demand be higher than the supply.
If we could graph these two variables, we would call the space in between them “the power to say no.” I call it a superpower because it give you the space you need to breathe and do your best work for the best clients.
It also has the pleasant side effect of keeping your prices high enough to be very profitable.
Your thought leadership business has the chance to remain healthy when that space is large enough that you don’t have to make too many compromises in who you work with and what you agree to do for them.
If that space does not exist, then you have a marketing problem, and that’s something that is often very repairable.
Now with information products and other resources like that, you have to adjust this formula a little bit because your supply can and should be extremely high. For example, with a digital download, supply is basically infinite because there is virtually no cost to replicating the product.
So here’s what we do with that: we don’t include the supply in your formulation, but we just look at demand.
What we don’t want is for the demand to be so low that you feel like you have to convince anyone to buy your stuff. Yes, there is always a bit of persuasion in marketing, but that’s not the kind of convincing I’m talking about.
You only want to sell something to someone who is a good fit for your products, and when you find yourself trying to sell something just for the sake of making a sale, and not because the product would be great for them, that’s when you know you’ve got a problem.
If you’re ready to graduate to the next level of thought leadership, go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my free daily emails. Every weekday, you’ll get something that will help you move closer to your goal line.
“Thought Leaders Publish”
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash Publishing is in a Thought Leader’s DNA. Just as sharks supposedly have to keep swimming to stay alive, Thought Leaders must publish to attain and maintain thought leadership.
But why?
Well, a few reasons…
The first reason is that publishing is how you build an audience. You have to leverage media (in many cases) in order to attract, inform, and entertain your followers. There never has been a Thought Leader without a plan to get the word out. And there never will be.
The second reason is that especially in a consulting type of situation, your prospects very justifiably need to have a sense of what you stand for, how you think, and what a business arrangement with you would look and feel like. What you publish will give them a sense of that.
The third reason, related to the second, is that it will shorten the sales cycle of whatever you sell. Not only are your prospects able to get a feel for what you’re like to be around, but your thought leadership content can also help a prospect to choose to trust you, which makes everything easier and better.
The final reason is that the process of publishing is an essential part of sharpening your thinking, enabling you to communicate your ideas clearly and efficiently. You’ll have more ideas, and they’ll be better ones, because you’ve taken the time and energy to crystallize them into words, phrases, and stories.
If you would like a complementary masterclass on what daily publishing looks like, and the opportunity to improve your thought leadership position every day, go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my free daily emails.
I get new listeners pretty regularly, so you might not have been here last week for my discussion of avoiding comparable products.
Short version: if you’re a Thought Leader who sells information products of some kind (and you should be), you want to be careful about selling a product that can be easily compared in format or structure to an everyday low-priced product.
The example I used is a book. Everyone who buys books has a certain price in their head about what a book should cost. And if you want to sell your book for much more than that, you’re going to have to do some work to disqualify that comparison in the minds of your buyers.
The even shorter version is that we price our products based on value, not the market price of a commodity, like a book.
The writer Christopher Morley had a great quote about this. He said, “When you sell a man a book, you don’t sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue — you sell him a whole new life.”
Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash I went through all that explanation to get to answer this question:
How do we determine the value of our product?
Sometimes, the answer is fairly easy. If you help businesses get more customers, you determine the value of your information based on a multiple of the average customer value of the kind of business you’re helping.
Other times, you might be a Thought Leader that just helps people enjoy life more or see things a little differently, and there is no financial outcome tied to the transformation you help with.
And while that’s more difficult, it’s okay.
One thing you have to do in every thought leadership situation is gauge the passion of your audience. And you’re going to notice varying levels of passion.
What you don’t want to do is to let the highly passionate person scratch their itch for only twenty bucks. They want to invest at a higher level than your less passionate customers, and you have to have something for them to buy at an appropriate price point.
Likewise, your less passionate people are going to want to limit their spend, and, depending on the size of your market, you may or may not want to have something for them as well.
Whether you’re very passionate or only a little passionate about becoming a Thought Leader, I have an incredible price point for this offer to you: it’s free! Just go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my free daily emails that are all about helping you achieve the impact and reward you deserve.
Photo by Elisa Calvet B. on Unsplash This one is for Thought Leaders who produce resources (my word for information products) for their followers:
Beware of the kind of product you produce so that your prospective purchasers can’t valuate the product just on the type and nature of the product.
Here’s an example:
What’s the price of a paperback book?
Likely, your answer is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty US dollars, right?
What made you come to that conclusion?
Well, that’s just what a book costs.
So when you sell a book, what will your buyers be prepared to spend?
That’s right. Twenty bucks, at the most.
See where I’m going with this?
I suggest that the price of your product shouldn’t be based on the type of product, but on the value it brings to the consumer. And that number should be much, much higher.
So, this calls the question: if you agree with me, and you should, then what do you do about it?
Well, the main thing to do is to produce a type of product that your market can’t compare with anything else.
One way to do that is by bundling. This means, you produce a multimedia product where there might be a book, a DVD, and maybe even a USB key drive all bundled together into one product. Or some combination of those things.
Another way is to produce a premium version of a product. Think of a leather-bound book with gold gilded pages. You can charge a lot more for that, and sell it as a signed limited edition that comes with certain bonuses you can’t get anywhere else.
You can then sell the book on value, and then charge a premium not only for the quality of the book, but for the quality of the information inside.
I hope today’s tactic has helped you expand your horizons about what is possible in your business. If you would like more help with maximizing the profits of your thought leadership business, go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my free daily emails where I can help you achieve the impact and reward you desire.
Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash I spent a lot of days in very competitive industries, where it was always a “zero-sum game.” If somebody bought from me, they either wouldn’t or couldn’t buy from my competition.
We could label that as some sort of rough ’n’ tumble business practice, or simply recognize that’s the way it is with a lot of things.
What’s nice about Thought Leadership is that it is rarely this cutthroat. Sure, there are winners and losers, but it’s a “winner takes most” sort of an environment where a buyer almost certainly chooses multiple providers.
Think about the last subject you really got interested in. Did you only get information about it from one website? Have you only purchased one book about a subject you are passionate about?
Of course not!
You buy everything you can that you think will be worth your time.
Thought Leadership followers are the same way. They don’t just learn and buy from one source.
This is a piece of very good news. A buyer is a buyer.
This means you can turn your competition into cooperative partners.
It means that if you have a way of targeting buyers from a similar Thought Leader, you have a good chance of capturing their customers as well.
It means that if you can help another Thought Leader serve their audience well, you can rest assured that their smartest customers are going to swim upstream and search you out.
So don’t be afraid of competition in thought leadership. In fact, you should take it as encouragement that other people have been able to build an audience of similar followers.
If you are a Thought Leader that wants to learn more about the business side or the persuasive aspects of Thought Leadership, fire up your browser and go to You Can Be A Thought Leader. When you get there, register for my free daily Thought Leadership emails, where you will learn tactics and tips like this every day.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash Do you like to pay attention to all the productivity literature out there?
I do — well, some of it, anyway…
Some books and articles are great and helpful; others, not so much.
Truth is, a lot of it provides just a shade or two different form of self-gratification than certain “men’s magazines.” The only difference is that when people are pictured, they’re wearing much more clothing.
You get a warm feeling like you did something special, but you didn’t.
The “productivity industry” even has a term for it: “confusing activity for accomplishment.”
It’s when you check off this flurry of “work” on your to-do list, but nothing really ever gets done.
Have you had days like this? I certainly have.
Now here’s why I’m mentioning it: you kind of have to encourage this behavior in your followers.
All of your followers need to feel like they’re doing something, when the vast majority of them aren’t.
They’re still “thinking about it,” or “learning more.” And that’s good, to an extent, but their progress is more fictional than real.
As their Thought Leader, you can’t worry too much about that, because you can only do what you can do. It’s the whole thing about leading a horse to water.
Until the day comes when they actually get in gear and really do something, if that day ever comes, you still need to be there with them, giving them the knowledge and resources to achieve the transformation they claim to desire.
And along with that, you have to give them things to do so they can build their self-esteem by feeling like they’re actually doing something. Additionally, they like to feel like they’re earning their place in the tribe.
So although confusing activity for accomplishment is often counterproductive, there is some of that that is actually beneficial to the follower of a Thought Leader.
Now here’s an activity you can do right now, for free, that will lead to actual accomplishment. Go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my daily Thought Leadership tips. But please, only do that if you’re actually willing to grow your Thought Leadership.
I’m often asked “one thing” questions.
You know, “what’s the one thing I need to know to…” type of stuff.
Everybody wants the magic “one thing.” One thing to do to lose weight and get in shape. One thing to do to get rich. One thing to do to… and so on.
But if you’re an expert, you know it’s more often a lot of littles than just one big thing.
But today, I’m going to make a bit of an exception for people who want to learn how to be a Thought Leader and have no idea where to start.
With apologies to Simon Sinek, this is maybe not a time to “start with why.” Instead, I tell would-be Thought Leaders to start with “who.”
Photo by Alexandre Pellaes on Unsplash Why “who?”
Because who you are leading as a Thought Leader makes all the difference in your success (no matter what your “why” is in defining “success”).
Choosing the right audience makes the difference between your profit or loss, your happiness or unhappiness, and having a somewhat easy or very difficult business to run.
Here are some questions you must answer about your “who” people…
Can you find enough of them to build a thought leadership business?
Do those people have a transformation you can help them achieve?
Can these people afford to pay you what you need to be a well-rewarded Thought Leader?
Can you affordably find these people out in the world and reach out to them?
Has anyone else made any money selling products or services specifically to this group?
And finally, would you enjoy interacting with these people day in and day out?
So I just gave you the first six questions an aspiring Thought Leader needs to consider, and if you find yourself answering “no” to even a single one of them, I would think twice about selecting that audience.
If you’re ready to consider how to make a Thought Leadership business an add-on to your business, I have good news: your first step costs nothing. Go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and register for my free daily emails that will help you build your business every day. These emails will make the difference between knowing how to get where you’re going and being lost in the dark.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash Fasten your seat belt, because this is going to be a fun one.
Last week, I talked about how in thought leadership, we make two sales: the first is the “sale” of your expertise, and the second is the actual product or service we sell.
Basically, you get a customer before you get a sale.
Now let’s take that concept one step further…
Is there some sort of resource you can sell that would provide immediate, tangible value in the form of a solution that your would-be customers have?
If you can sell that solution for an “entry-level” price, you can use that product or service as a self-liquidating offer.
This is the offer that will build your list on the front end of your business — a list of proven buyers that might then be candidates to go on to purchase your higher-priced offerings.
See what we’re doing there?
We’re getting customers at break-even (or maybe even a little better) and then marketing to that list to get future sales.
This is the way you build your following at basically no cost, and perhaps even at a profit.
Thought leadership is an awesome business.
If you’re ready to hit the afterburner on your thought leadership — no matter what goal you may wish to achieve through thought leadership — your next best move is to sign up for my daily emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
I wanted to take this lovely Friday to talk to you for a moment about the business of thought leadership.
Specifically, there is one thing that is very different about this business than other businesses.
In thought leadership, we have two sales:
The first sale is selling our own expertise and our fitness as a Thought Leader. The second sale is whatever sort of resources or services we provide. Obviously, only the second sale is a financial transaction.
But here’s the rub: you have to make the first sale before you have a chance to get the second sale.
So in a sense, we get a customer before we make a sales transaction.
Now you may be thinking, “so what?” And if that’s the case, I understand.
But stick with me…
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash Have you ever walked into a small business as a returning customer and been recognized for coming back? Maybe the business owner or a server recognizes you and welcomes you back?
This is the mindset you need to use with your followers. If they are truly a follower — that means that they’ve signed up to receive your emails or newsletters or something — they are a customer who should be treated as a returning customer.
Simply by raising their hand and becoming known to you, they become a customer because they have “bought” your expertise.
Do not neglect this individual, because this is the person who will take the second step and engage in the financial transaction with you.
Your job, then, is to close the gap as much as possible between the first sale and the second.
This will massively impact the growth and success of your thought leadership business.
Want more Thought Leadership business growth tips? Subscribe to my free daily emails and you’ll get better every day.
Here are the two most deadly words to Thought Leadership:
“It depends.”
As an expert, you know, of course, that oftentimes it does depend. And it depends on a lot of variables.
After all, expertise is the land of, “trust me, it’s complicated.”
Photo by Milan De Clercq on Unsplash But for the people that need a Thought Leader, that answer simply isn’t going to do.
They want someone to tell them “how it is.” They want hard, fast, simple, and easy answers.
And it’s your job to give them those answers.
Yes, you can get more complicated as they grow and learn, but for the first several steps of their journey, they just need you to simplify it.
That means a “yes” or a “no.” It means, “do this, not that.” It means, “this is how this thing works and this is what you do.”
That’s why Thought Leaders publish works entitled, “The Secret to __________.”
Not, “The 36 Variables That Go Into Deciding Step One of A 54 Step Process and How To Prioritize Them In Some Situations, But Not In Others.”
As they learn more, they’ll come to understand on their own that it’s complicated, and you’re going to meet them when they get there.
But for now, beginners need rules and absolutes.
Speaking of rules and absolutes, one sure-fire step you absolutely must take is to register to receive my free daily thought leadership emails, which will help you with all this and more. You can subscribe at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
A lot of would-be Thought Leaders have a very transactional view of their business: The Thought Leader provides life-changing information, and the customer pays for it.
Truth is, you’re also building a culture within your followers — a feeling of association and fraternity that will provide massive value to your customers in addition to the information you provide.
In fact, for a percentage of your followers, the community and culture will be of more value than what you have to teach them. You want to make sure that you’re serving those people just as well as the people who come to you for instruction.
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash That culture will be based upon your personality. Your followers will aspire to be like you in some ways, and will build their self-esteem, in part, on their association with you.
As you design your community, you want to think about the habits, words, and thought patterns that will help your followers be successful, and that includes the things you want to teach them to do that will make them better customers.
Three questions to consider:
What do you want that culture to look like?
How will you and your followers look and talk?
What are you willing to do to build and maintain that culture?
If you’re ready to take the next big step in building your thought leadership, your best next move is to register for my free daily emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader. You’ll find yourself getting stronger every day in this area.
Thought Leadership really is 3D chess.
You’ve got to manage several goals and priorities within your thought leadership business, and achieving that balance can be daunting.
The first part of the challenge is knowing all the elements you have to manage. You can’t manage something that you don’t know exists, or that it should be managed, or that it could be managed. I find that a lot of Thought Leaders don’t realize some of these factors, or they don’t see the value in them.
This leads to a dysfunctional, unbalanced thought leadership business. And then you’re just another expert, shouting at the clouds.
One of the overlooked elements of Thought Leadership is this: you need to regularly deliver cool, interesting ideas to your followers. That is the crack that you dispense to keep followers hooked.
If you’re not willing and able to do this, and actually do it, you’re going to have a rough time as a Thought Leader.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash People want to be entertained.
Johnny Carson used to tell people to compare his salary to the salary of the president of Harvard University to learn if Americans used to value education or entertainment more.
People like cool ideas much more than they like the actual “how-to” stuff. Of course, they need the educational elements as well, but it’s not enough on its own.
As you learn all of the various factors that make up a successful thought leadership business, you might find it’s more difficult than you thought it would be.
That’s normal. And I’m here to help. Your first step is to sign up for my daily thought leadership emails.
There’s a trick that all the best Thought Leaders know, and today, I’m going to teach it to you.
Abraham Lincoln knew it.
William Randolph Hearst knew it.
Heck, even Donald Trump and Joe Biden know it.
You might know it, too, but you might not be using it.
If you want to speed up the connection between your audience and yourself, you have to sound like yourself.
Does that strike you as weird?
All I’m saying is that you, as a Thought Leader, need to have a distinctive and identifiable voice.
Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash If a follower were to pick up something you’ve written and read it, do they hear your voice in their head? Could they properly identify the author just by the style of writing?
It’s not necessarily easy to learn to sharpen your voice, and you might find yourself trying to sound like someone that you follow. You’ll need to spend some time getting over that, and the only way to do it is to practice being you.
It’s one of the reasons I write every day. Certainly far from the main reason, but it’s a tremendous benefit.
If you struggle with finding your Thought Leader voice, there are some shortcuts and hacks I can help you with that will help.
You can start learning some critical thought leadership tactics by signing up for my daily thought leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
I just got off a video call with a friend who asked me how the coming explosion of AI-generated content is going to affect Thought Leaders.
Will you as a Thought Leader be able to compete with the tsunami of cheap information that is going to be hitting your market?
Photo by Matt Paul Catalano on Unsplash As my friend and I brainstormed what this is going to look like, a few very useful and important solutions jumped out at me.
The first and primary solution is choice and knowledge of audience.
You have to use propaganda and rhetoric tricks to make people almost instantly feel that you are on their “side.” That your values match theirs.
It’s like this: the presidential candidate who more people feel like they would be comfortable sitting down and having a beer with will likely be the one who will be elected.
The faster you can build an emotional connection and relationship with your audience, the more successful of a Thought Leader you will be.
Incidentally, this also means that you must be adept at almost instantly running off those who are not a fit. If no one finds you repulsive, no one will find you extraordinarily attractive.
One way you have to do this is to have a very deep understanding of your audience.
They need to be searching their home for hidden cameras and microphones because you know so much about the way they think and talk.
And the more likely they are to hide those thoughts and words from others, the better for you.
If you’re struggling to connect with and build your audience, I can help you for free via my daily Thought Leadership emails. Subscribe today at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
A lot of Thought Leaders (or wannabe Thought Leaders) have trouble making the turn from teaching to selling the products and services that their business provides.
They get all tripped up, because they don’t want to come across as “salesy” or to have the audience feel like they’re being sold to.
There is a way to cure that.
In fact, you can get sure-fire, iron-clad permission to sell to your audience, no matter what you’re selling.
And it really doesn’t matter how many times you use this trick. They’ll be cool with it… as long as one condition is met.
You have to be interesting.
You have to pull them into your story — delivered in installments, and creating a sense of wonder about you.
Let me bottom-line this for you, and then I’ll wrap this up…
The tolerance of a Thought Leader’s audience for being sold to has nothing to do with what you’re selling, and everything to do with your relationship with them.
Thought Leadership is a relationship business.
That’s the big secret that most Thought Leaders never learn.
I’ve written a lot to you about not being boring. From quoting movie director Frank Capra, certain novelists, etc.
I told you it’s important. And you probably believed me because you’re smart.
Now you know why I’ve been saying what I say.
As you’re building your Thought Leadership business, you will likely encounter some struggles along they way regarding capturing and maintaining attention and interest, building up your own proprietary “trademark” language, and publishing in a way that positions you as THE authority.
I can help with that. Write back when you’re ready. In the meantime, you can learn a lot of this through my daily Thought Leadership emails. Sign up (no obligation, and you can turn ’em off at any time) at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Have you ever noticed that in a lot of action movies, the villain is often a more interesting character than the hero?
There’s a reason for that.
People love to have a devil to fight.
Photo by ahmed zid on Unsplash A blind shipyard worker named Eric Hoffer deeply studied mass movements, and he noted that the people who set off these movements put as much thought and energy into picking a worthy enemy as they did in knowing what doctrine to embrace.
Every Thought Leader — the good ones, the evil ones… every effective one — has an enemy.
Every single one.
So I tell you: choose your enemy wisely and fight theme vigilantly.
As I consult with emerging Thought Leaders, we put time and thought into making sure their prime enemy conforms to the 7 qualities Eric Hoffer said an enemy must have.
It’s proven incredibly effective.
You can learn more in the book, “The True Believer.” Or you can shortcut all that reading and just have me help you apply its principles.
Either way… choose your enemy wisely. It’ll be one of the most important things you do as a Thought Leader.
Another big-time important thing all great Thought Leaders — whether emerging or established — should do is to subscribe to my daily emails that will make you better at all of this. There is no other daily email that will make you a smarter Thought Leader with a click and quick read each day. Sign up at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Here’s something that everyone loves and responds to:
Stories.
Everyone loves stories. They live vicariously through the characters in a story, they love to cheer for the heroes, and they especially love to hate the bad guys.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash You can use stories to provide proof — even with claims that are not supported by math or science.
I’m not saying that it’s okay to mislead people. Lots of things are true that are not addressed by science. Science is good at “how,” but terrible at “why.”
Likewise, math is great for counting things, but offers nothing about the things in life that count.
Stories are simply more powerful than facts or statistics. Our brains light up when we are pulled into a good story.
If you look at any successful nonfiction book, you’ll see a story. Whether it’s Napoleon Hill’s mission assigned by Andrew Carnegie (likely untrue), or even Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that 10,000 hours of practice will lead to high achievement.
As a Thought Leader, you should have a set of stories about yourself, and about your subject, and about the mindset you want your followers to have.
Sometimes, those stories are told outright, and other times they are embedded and implied.
Either way, the choices of which story you tell and how you spin it are entirely in your control.
And since you get to control the story, you can use that story to control the person you tell it to.
Use this power wisely.
If you would like to seriously up your persuasion and propaganda game (we’re all playing it whether we want to or not), sign up for my daily Thought Leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader
Welcome to another Manipulation Monday — an irregularly-published You Can Be A Thought Leader email series on the one-on-one tactics of mass persuasion.
Former FBI Agent Jack Schafer once wrote a book about the techniques FBI agents use to quickly befriend people and get them to open up to the agent. For FBI agents, building relationships quickly with strangers is critical as they are trying to gain trust and get information from them.
Schafer wrote that if you want people to be drawn to you, appreciate you, and miss you when you're away, simply make them feel better about themselves and superior to others every time they are with you.
Are you doing this as a Thought Leader? Remember, your job is not just to look smart in front of your followers, but to make your followers feel smarter than those around them.
Thought Leaders are often so focused on their own ideas and beliefs that they forget to make their followers feel smart. This is a major mistake.
Do you have any idea how many would-be followers mess this up?
Feeling smart and valued can be a powerful motivator for people to stay engaged with an idea or movement. When Thought Leaders fail to recognize the importance of making their followers feel intelligent and superior to those outside the group, it can have disastrous consequences for the Thought Leader’s business.
If your competition doesn’t know this, your life is now so much easier.
Another way to make your life easier — much easier — is to subscribe to my You Can Be A Thought Leader daily emails. Regular readers report regrowth of hair lost to male pattern baldness, shrinking waistlines, expanding bank accounts, clearer skin, and whiter teeth. And that’s usually just the first week.
I’m often asked, “Matt, O Wise One*, what is the difference between Thought Leadership and content marketing?”
“Pfft. You think I don’t know?”
“No, it’s just that I don’t know…”
They’re getting sort of confused by this point. That’s when I whip this one out…
“One of the two things in your question is written in Title Case, and the other is not. Does that not clear it up?”
It does not. And by this point, they’re kind of done with me.
Now that we’ve gotten rid of the people asking pesky, annoying questions, let’s you and me talk about it.
Content marketing is, as the name implies, a marketing technique. The content marketer trades useful information for the attention of the reader/viewer/listener. Hopefully, the content marketer will be adept at turning that person into a buyer.
I think it's important to note one of my 21 Undeniably True Thought Leadership Maxims: Thought Leadership is a business; content marketing is a marketing channel.
Thought Leaders don’t just inform their readers/viewers/listeners, but help them transform in some way. The follower doesn’t just walk away with a fact or two, but a whole new way of looking at and interacting with the world.
Thought Leadership takes a more long-term approach while Content Marketing has a short-term results focus.
Your short-term focus should be to sign up for my daily emails that will teach you to be a better Thought Leader. And if you're not a Thought Leader, they'll teach you how to become one.
You can sign up at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Frank Capra was responsible for some of the best movies of the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Stuff like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “It Happened One Night,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
He gave us some of the best advice about not only movie-making, but also Thought Leadership, in his autobiography, “The Name Above The Title.”
First, a fun one: “Don’t make your best film the same year somebody else makes ‘Gone With The Wind.’”
Seems like pretty solid advice, huh?
Now here’s a more useful one: “There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.”
If you’re looking for an inspiring quote for a tattoo on your right arm, and you’ve already got, “Never Don’t Give Up” on your left arm, I think that’s a good one.
The thing is, most of the time, dull and boring people don’t know they’re being dull and boring.
The way to avoid that is to put work into being interesting. Make your audience feel something. Surprise them from time to time. Give them stories.
It’s important.
ALSO IMPORTANT: Be sure to subscribe to my daily thought leadership emails. If you don’t subscribe, a puppy will cry. You don’t hate puppies, do you?
Are you sitting down? I hope so, because I’m going to share something that is scary. A quarter of American adults say they haven't read a book (in any format) in the past year. Does that matter? Yes, but only if you want to be successful.
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time — none, zero.” - Charlie Munger.
Money isn’t the only useful gauge of success, and arguably not even the best, but the richest adults are three times more likely to read than those with a household income lower than $30k. If you're a Thought Leader, reading is required. There is no getting around it. Why? Just these 5 reasons:
Being well-read gives Thought Leaders a better understanding of their field, and helps them stay informed on current trends and changes in the market.
A Thought Leader must be able to assess the accuracy of the sources they read, so having an impressive breadth of knowledge is key for credibility.
Reading exposes Thought Leaders to new ideas and perspectives which can provide inspiration for their own work.
Thought Leaders must have the ability to synthesize information from multiple sources and think critically about it, and being well-read will give them more material to do this with.
By reading widely, Thought Leaders are able to gain an in-depth knowledge and expertise in their subject, making them highly sought after by those looking for valuable input and guidance.
What are you reading right now? What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year? Get in touch and tell me. If you’re looking for reading recommendations, you’ll want to sign up for my daily Thought Leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
I’ve always loved that phrase. “Living rent-free in their head.”
And as a Thought Leader, it’s an essential.
What I mean when I say “live rent-free in their head” is that they’re thinking about you even when they’re not consuming your content or communications.
When you’re doing it right, your followers are running everything about your topic (and often, other subjects as well) through the filter of your Thought Leadership.
Pretty groovy position to be in, if you can get there.
And you can. Here’s how:
Tell stories.
Don’t just tell people facts, but tell them stories that illustrate those facts.
Your stories can have any number of purposes: to sell, to teach, to persuade, to entertain… and many more.
I’ve had people repeat my stories back to me years after they heard them.
Do you think those stories stuck in their minds?
Of course.
And they don’t just remember the story, they remember me.
And I didn’t pay a penny in rent.
By the way: If we meet in person, or talk on the phone, ask me about my funeral story. It’s not appropriate for email. I guarantee, once you hear it, you’ll never forget it.
One thing you shouldn’t forget to do is go to You Can Be A Thought Leader and get registered for my free daily thought leadership tips. You’ll never regret it. And if you do, you can just unsubscribe.
Before we begin, I want to note that between writing this article and publishing it, I’ve learned that, in response to the criticism from everyone — from Salman Rushdie to Queen Consort Camilla — the “classic” versions will still remain available from Penguin, alongside the newer Puffin versions.
But the point of this podcast still stands.
I’ve waited a week to see if maybe I could let it pass… and I just can’t. So I’m allowing myself a bit of an angry outburst today.
I’m talking the choice that Puffin Books, the UK publisher of the late children’s literature author Roald Dahl’s books (Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc.), made to make hundreds of changes to his books to adapt the language for “modern audiences.”
Basically, they’ve neutered the books by removing “objectionable” words.
Words like “fat,” or “ugly,” when used to describe fictional characters (e.g., not real people) who are actually… umm… fat or ugly.
They’re not making those books better; they’re making literature worse.
I’m so angry about this I could posse up and ride at down. Track down these fools and help them understand reality in a way that will make certain that they will never, ever, choose to commit such an atrocity like this again.
I assure you, this is not a “political” podcast. This is a podcast about words.
Words matter. Especially to Thought Leaders.
Why?
Because words are the way thoughts are led. The way people perceive the world.
When you take words away, you limit the ability to communicate and perceive. Even if you’re communicating the perception that someone really shouldn’t have said what they did.
…Which, at times, is a perfectly reasonable judgement.
I’ll give you an example in the form of a confession:
I let a mistake slip by in last Friday’s email to my You Can Be A Thought Leader subscribers.
It read, “Needless to say, a “Thought Leader” (and I put that in quotes very intentionally) who is not respected is going to be followed.”
What it should have said was, “Needless to say, a “Thought Leader” (and I put that in quotes very intentionally) who is not respected is not going to be followed.”
See how I missed that second “not?”
In the grand scheme of things — the email was nearly 400 words — one word isn’t a big deal.
Except that it was. It changed the meaning of the entire sentence.
Because each and every word, even an objectionable one, matters.
If any of your followers should attempt to neuter your language as a Thought Leader (whether for preference, politics, politeness, or anything else), they should be immediately banished from the kingdom.
Do not let those people persist, because they will tear down your leadership and your audience.
As a Thought Leader, you must communicate clearly and effectively, and in a way that is attractive to the right people, without apology.
This is non-negotiable.
As always, thanks for listening. You can get a free subscription to my daily thought leadership tips at YouCanBeAThoughtLeader.com.
The other day, I was thinking about how to make yourself irreplaceable. …That’s the subject of this month’s issue of Authority Gold.
(You can register to get it at EducatedAuthority.com/newsletter …free, no charge.)
I don’t have the time or space here to get into everything covered in a multiple-page monthly newsletter, of course, but maybe the biggest factor in making yourself irreplaceable to your followers is to make sure you are their “go-to” for your topic.
And the way you do that before, during, and after the time you’re doing business together is called “positioning.”
Wikipedia has as good a definition of that term as anyone:
“Positioning refers to the place that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers and how it is distinguished from the products of the competitors.”
If your positioning is weak, you’re viewed as a commodity. One choice out of a thousand similar options.
If your positioning is strong, you really have no competition that comes anywhere close.
Needless to say, no one with weak positioning will be respected.
Needless to say, a “Thought Leader” (and I put that in quotes very intentionally) who is not respected is not going to be followed.
Finally, needless to say, a “Thought Leader” who is not followed is not a Thought Leader.
Here’s a quick and easy way to get an idea about the strength of your positioning:
Write down at least 10 reasons — of the top of your head — why someone would choose to follow you as their Thought Leader instead of any or all of your competition. These reasons must be unique to you; no one else should be able to legitimately make those claims.
Do it now.
So… how did that go? If you gave that sheet of paper to a competitor, would they see some of their strengths — things that they would also say about themselves?
If you’d like to jump into the deep end of this pool and claim the respect you deserve, register your complementary subscription to Authority Gold at EducatedAuthority.com/newsletter.
It will go out Tuesday, and back issues are never available to anyone for any reason. So get on the list before then.
If I could harness and store just .0001% of all the energy people use suppressing themselves so they can fit into “polite society,” I don’t think I’d ever need to buy a gallon of gas again.
Most people keep their misery hidden, not realizing how common the feeling is.
In spite of that, people crave acknowledgement as unique individuals who lead meaningful lives. We all want to be seen, appreciated, and loved for who we truly are.
When a Thought Leader can make a follower feel like they have seen that individual follower's inner self, the person will feel a kinship with the Thought Leader and open up more easily for persuasion/influence.
There’s a trick to that, and it is my gift to you today…
Would that be useful for you? I think so.
There are three main emotional pain points everyone feels at some time or another: feeling stuck, feeling uncertain, or feeling unsuccessful.
Amiright?
By tapping into these feelings as you discuss your subject, you can show your followers that you “get” them. That you know a way out, and are extending them a helping hand.
As you then demonstrate that you have moved past that point, they’ll want to know how you did it.
And that’s where your offer comes in.
Here’s my offer:
This stuff is hard. It’s more complicated than it looks.
That’s why I’m offering you a helping hand.
Your first step is to sign up for my daily emails, which are going to give you tips, how-to’s, and keep you motivated and moving along the path to Thought Leadership.
You’re ready for this. Go to YouCanBeAThoughtLeader.com and sign up today.
I love learning. I hope you do, too.
I’ve tried all the different “Personal Knowledge Management” systems to try and be as efficient as I can.
Evernote, Notion, Obsidian… I’ve used most of them.
I’ve built my “second brain,” “my digital brain,” and even my “slip box” full of index cards.
But the one guiding principle that’s worked best at helping me make the most of my learning is a quote from a theologian born 100 years before me…
Here’s what G.K. Chesterton had to say:
“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”
This quote speaks volumes as it implies that travelers and tourists have two different approaches when it comes to exploration.
The traveler is open-minded and curious, letting go of expectations and allowing themselves to be immersed in the journey of discovery. They know that “getting there is half the fun.”
They are not focused on an end goal but rather on taking in new experiences and learning from them along the way.
On the other hand, the tourist has a set agenda in mind and knows exactly what they want from their journey — whether it’s finding their way around town or researching a topic — and they stick to their plan no matter what so they can reach their destination as soon as possible.
Tourists favor quick solutions that can get them where they need to go without having to think too much about it.
When it comes to creating content or coming up with something new, thinking like a traveler is beneficial because it allows for fresh perspectives and discoveries not found elsewhere.
Thinking like a tourist is useful when trying to solve problems quickly without getting sidetracked by potential discoveries along the way. You get in, learn what you need to do, and get out. This is for getting stuff done.
Being aware of what kind of learning you need in the moment and setting those expectations for yourself will make a ton of difference.
When you’re working on achieving Thought Leadership goals, understanding which approach best suits your needs — traveler or tourist — can help maximize your efficiency in reaching those desired outcomes.
Here’s one thing you can do to learn more about Thought Leadership than from any other source: Go to You Can Be A Thought Leader right now and sign up for my daily email. That’s right, daily. You’re going to become a better Thought Leader each and every day.
Don Rickles was one of the most successful comedians of the last 100 years, and he had a great quote about how to stand out as a performer.
He said, “When you stand alone and sell yourself, you can’t please everyone. But when you’re different, you can last.”
I want to use that quote to illustrate that the persona of a Thought Leader must include two elements: you must be confident and opinionated.
I’m not saying you need to be a gregarious “know it all” that nobody likes anyway. That is not the advice I’m giving you.
What I am saying is that Don Rickles was right: you can’t please everyone. If you try, you’re going to be a generic, replaceable voice in a very large chorus of voices.
You can’t afford to do that.
It takes a certain amount of strength to be a Thought Leader. You have to have the guts to say “follow me.” And there is no leading from the middle or back of the crowd.
Additionally, you can’t be a Thought Leader if you’re saying what everyone else is saying.
Thought Leaders need to speak in absolutes: do this, not that; this is right, that is wrong. Your answers can’t — at least not initially — be “it depends,” even when it actually does depend.
So I’m telling you not just to be unafraid of taking a stand, confidently and strongly, but I’m telling you that you have to do that.
Taking a stand isn’t randomly done, or based on whatever sort of stylistic preferences you may have. The ideas and values that you promote are not just to help people achieve the transformation they desire, but also the ideas and values to make them a better student and customer.
If you’re ready to start crafting and executing on that strategy, you might be a candidate for the Educated Authority Thought Leadership system. And you can get in contact with me to find out.
Whether you’re ready to take that step or not, you don’t want to fall behind on what I teach. You can sign up for my daily Thought Leadership tips and how-to’s at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
Just yesterday, we talked about how your customers desire the “opportunity for transformation.”
That is a pretty overt desire. But today, I want to talk about a covert desire your followers have.
They might not ever admit to it, if they even realize they have it (and believe me, they do).
If you don’t recognize and accommodate this desire, you could find yourself working at cross purposes, which could be a real problem for your Thought Leadership business.
Let’s get into that mismatch, and see if you can spot it. I think I can do it in just two questions:
Why do you write “Thought Leadership content?”
If you’re like a lot of people, you write that kind of thing to share your brilliance with the world. I hope I’m not putting too fine a point on it by saying it that way, but that’s what it is, on some level.
You want people to think you’re smart. Either because you’re looking to establish credibility, or you have a great idea the world needs to hear, or you want your audience to think and behave a certain way.
Next question:
Why do people read “Thought Leadership content?”
If you said, “to get smarter,” you’re close, but not close enough.
Truth is, there are several reasons. But the secret reason is so they can appear smart and interesting to their peers.
Therefore, all of your Thought Leadership content needs to have something in it that your follower will easily be able to remember and repeat at cocktail parties.
(Side note: I’ve never actually been to a “cocktail party,” if such an event even really exists. How about you?)
In any event, don’t deny your followers the chance to look smart in front of their friends. If you’re lucky, they’ll even give you the credit for what they’re sharing. But even if they don’t, you’ve built a stronger bond with that person.
My upcoming book will have several more tips on making your Thought Leadership content the most effective it can be. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, what you can do right now to almost immediately level up your Thought Leadership strategy and skills is sign up for my daily emails that are going to give you all sorts of tips and resources. You can subscribe to that list at You Can Be A Thought Leader.
One huge problem that keeps Thought Leaders unsuccessful is that there is a big difference between what they sell and what their audience buys.
Now I don’t mean that they’re “not selling the right thing,” like the common illustration of “we built a better mousetrap but nobody wanted a better mousetrap.”
Instead, I mean that they are selling information, but the customer is buying the hope of transformation.
Let me give you an example from my marketing agency days:
There was a time I sold a service that created and managed digital ads for small businesses. Sometimes, depending on the needs of the customer, they were Google Adwords ads, and sometimes they were Facebook ads.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure this out, but…
I never — not even once — met a business owner that wanted digital ads!
What they wanted was to buy as-cheap-as-possible customers.
As I grew better at talking to the business owners about what I did, my effectiveness at selling the ads increased.
And the way I “got better” was to not talk so much about digital ads, and to talk a whole lot more about getting customers and what they’d do with all that additional revenue they’d make.
Now, back to thought leadership…
Your customer wants to buy the opportunity to transform using the information you provide.
That means you need to talk about their transformation. Why they’re unhappy right now, and how they’ll be much happier after the transformation.
When you can get them to nearly literally physically feel the pain of their current situation, and visualize and anticipate the unbridled joy they’ll feel after they implement your prescriptions.
And is how you lead their thoughts…
Which makes you a…
(Wait for it…!)
Thought Leader!
Leading the thoughts of your audience takes careful strategy, planning, and execution.
That is what I will do for and with you.
In the meantime, get yourself over to You Can Be A Thought Leader right now and sign up to get my daily Thought Leadership tips and how-to’s. It’s where all the cool kids hang out and they’ve been asking where you are.
A big reason I have a job is because it’s so easy to mess this thing up — and by “this thing,” I mean Thought Leadership.
One of the biggest ways is to lose customers.
I’m not talking about making a customer mad and watching them stomp off angry at you. I’m talking about when they just drift off.
And there’s a reason why they just drift off.
The reason is because they’re just not interested anymore.
And when they’re not interested, they don’t read your stuff. They don’t consider your offers and buy your stuff.
Now sometimes, it’s because their goals and their lives have changed, and that’s okay, but often it’s the person they’ve been following doesn’t interest them anymore.
And that’s the Thought Leader who is bleeding customers.
That’s a big problem. The kind that will kill your Thought Leadership business.
If you do think of Thought Leadership as a business, as you should (instead of just a marketing channel), you’ll see that every customer is going to be worth something to you.
The business people call that “average customer value.”
Making that number grow is one of the only three ways to grow a business and make it more profitable…
(and I realize that some of you, this is the first time you’ve ever thought of Thought Leadership as a profitable business in and of itself, but just stick with me and you’ll hear more about it)
This way of making your business profitable is to keep that customer as long as you can, so they can continue to buy your offers for years.
And what’s great about the Thought Leadership business is that as long as you provide value and remain relevant to the transformation they’re seeking, you can do that. And you should.
So how do you do that?
Well, it’s a combination of things. But two of the ingredients in that recipe are to stay in communication with them, and stay interesting with the use of stories.
Keep in touch, and keep feeding them something to care about and be interested in.
In the meantime, your best next move is to head over to You Can Be A Thought Leader and sign up for my daily emails chock-full of Thought Leadership tips and how-to’s. That is where I put the good stuff, and it’s costing you money every day if you’re missing out.
If you’ve ever struggled to produce Thought Leadership content — even if you know your material backwards and forwards — you’re not alone.
But it’s still awful, isn’t it?
Writer’s block is painful!
Just so we’re clear, writer’s block is when you go to produce content and you don’t know what to write (or say). Some people suffer though it for an hour or two, while others have it for years.
If you’ve been procrastinating and not getting that book, article, blog post, or podcast started…
Congratulations, you’ve got it!
I almost never experience writer’s block anymore, but I can remember staring at the blank document, wanting to just get something done.
I felt like an idiot. Like I had forgotten everything I’d ever known.
It makes you start to question whether you’re even smart enough to bother with any of this stuff.
Not to mention the time you’re wasting.
Sometimes, writer’s block is due to a health issue or a major life event, like losing someone you love or other big change.
But generally, writer’s block is due to one one or two things:
Either you haven’t been reading enough, or your reading has been all about one thing.
When your cerebral cortex isn’t getting enough input to chew on and come up with new ideas, or to remind you of old ones, the limbic system takes over (and that’s where the emotions live).
That is a bad thing.
Don’t worry about producing something right now. Branch out and read something for fun, or something that you wouldn’t normally read. Go for a walk or take a shower. Or both.
Bonus Tip: Keep a reading journal. Not a diary, but more like a commonplace book, with quotes and ideas (both your ideas and those of the authors you read).
If you’re wondering what to read on the subject of Thought Leadership, boy do I have a treat for you: I’ve got a book coming out soon. So stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can sign up for daily Thought Leadership tips at my website, YouCanBeAThoughtLeader.com.
Heather Holloway owns Holloway Media Services, a company that empowers business owners to post social media content that has purpose beyond a sale. Heather shares her tips for making your social media content stand out and drive business and passionate followers your way.
Samuel Sanders is the author of "Your Next Big Idea: Improve Your Creativity and Problem-Solving."
Creativity and problem-solving aren't traits that you either have or you don't. Sam has some great ideas for how anyone can innovate. His book has exercises and techniques that are simple, yet challenging in helping you build muscles that you may not even know you have.
Dominic Cummins has been a sales and marketing leader going back to as early as the mid 1990’s. Starting out in the financial world working for such companies as Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Franklin Templeton, he then moved into consulting in about 2013 and now holds down dual roles as both the founder of RightMind Inc, a sales and marketing consultancy and agency, and co-founder of Apex, a teaching and coaching company that teaches business owners how to scale without sacrificing their freedom and sanity.
Links:
RightMind
Dominic Cummins on Linkedin
As entrepreneurs, we are often goal-driven. Even if we haven’t bothered to write those goals down, we have at least an idea of what we want to have happen.
But how can we make or achieve goals if we haven’t defined success? I’m not talking about success as a function of reaching a goal, but success as state of being.
In this discussion, I make the case that until you’ve defined what success means to you, you won’t be able to set appropriate goals for yourself. And if you’ve failed to set appropriate goals for yourself, you’re probably pretty unhappy.
Let's visit with Doug Foley and chat about starting a business, finding your niche, and the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.
In a story "ripped from today's headlines," we learn how PPP have damaged a 154 year-old brand.
I’m not talking about the U.S. government’s Paycheck Protection Program. I’m talking about your “Profit Prevention People.”
You may have Profit Prevention People working for you. If you do, you need to fire them, or at the very least, prevent the profit preventers from doing what they’re doing to you... which is assuredly harming your business.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Is that true? Maybe! Let's take a look at the patterns of history to see if we can recognize formulae for authority building and influence. We'll take a look at the businesses of two "visionary publishers" and see how we can use their strategies today.