06: Using Technology to Leverage Thought Leadership with Peter Winick

Everyone buckle up. If you are in any type of thought leadership position or you want to be, do you think you have expertise? Do you think the world needs to know about it? Do you want to monetize it? If the answer to any of those is yes, you do not want to miss our episode today with Peter Winick. He is the founder, president, CEO, whatever titles you want to use, of Thought Leadership Leverage. And in this episode, we're going to break down how you can use technology as a tool and a tactic to leverage all of the brain fodder that you bring to the table. So everyone stay tuned, another episode of Humanize Automation is about to begin. Welcome back everyone to another episode of Humanize Automation. I'm Dr. Jill Shifflevine, your host, and I'm kind of geeked out today. I mean, well, let's be honest, if you've listened to more than one episode, you know I geek out a lot, but I really love talking to people who have diverse background who have come to entrepreneurship, to business ownership, and then now to helping business owners really leverage what they do best. And with this kind of diverse experience working in multiple industries, this is bound to be a fascinating conversation today. So everyone, let me introduce you without further ado to our guest, Peter Winick. He is the founder, CEO, grand poobah, you know, the head honcho, whatever you want to say, at Thought Leadership Leverage. And we're just We're just going to dive right in. So, Peter, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Jill.

I'm so excited to dive into not only what you do, but how you're seeing technology influence what you do. But before we do that, I always think it's so important that people know the lens that you're presenting information through. So, can you kind of rewind a little bit and tell us about your path and the angle that you approach integrating technology in your business from?

Yeah, so, you know, my core business is really about strategy and helping thought leaders and authors and academics and such leverage and scale and better monetize their content and their thought leadership and their intellectual property. So technologies, you know, I'm not a technologist, but the technologies change and the technologies bring new opportunities and the technologies are something you have to think about. And I think the, you know, one of the patterns that I see, whether it's, you know, what do I do on social or what do I do here? What do I do there? Is people jump onto something tactically and don't look at it and say, well, how does this align or not align to the strategy, right? Like remember during, you know, COVID Clubhouse and everybody ran to that, like go Google that. That was a thing for about an hour and a half, right? And me, I'm always like, okay, interesting. So AI chat, whichever way we want to go with the tech, let's see what our strategy is. Let's see where this could help us, support us, take costs out of the system. Increase what we do, increase the quality of what we do, and then consider it. Don't dive into something for the sake of diving into it unless you're in an experimental phase, and that's fine. You might say, like, hey, I'm in play mode. I wanna play with this for a little bit. That's cool. But to me, I think oftentimes people, particularly thought leaders that happen to have a touch or more of ADD, if you will, or the creative types, you know, they see the shiny thing and they're like, ooh, this is gonna change the world. And it may very well do that. But before you go from zero to change the world, Where do you start? How do you integrate it? Where are you going to add value to your clients? How is it going to help you be a better thought leader? That sort of thing. Yeah.

And I think that's so important. There's a couple things that you said that I really want to emphasize, um, the first of which is play. Designated playtime is very different than an integrated strategy. And most people, if you are not using technology that's aligned to a goal, that's aligned to a KPI or metric or something that's measurable, You are in fact just playing. And I try to hit that hard on people all the time, but they're like, "Oh yeah, well, I'm using it for XYZ." And I'm like, "Great. And how does that fit into your bigger picture plan?" Exactly. And you just get crickets.

But sometimes that play, there's a period where you need to play to say, "Okay, now I think I kind of get it. And now I've now eliminated 5 things that I thought it could do. It's not the Ginsu knife. It can't slice, dice, and do everything I'd like it to do, but I think it might be good for this.", or it might be good for that, or it might be a good sparring partner, or a good researcher. Like, you have to figure out what it might do and what it might replace. Because, you know, quite frankly, most technologies are not additive. And I think that's a key issue for folks.

No, and it's, again, designate that playtime. I tell people, I tell my clients, I'm like, listen, have a mini hackathon, right? Make people feel smarter and part of something, even if they've never touched code a day in their life, right? Take the hackathon mentality, say that, hey, This week, you guys, 3 hours of your time this week, 6 hours, whatever it is, needs to be designated to this, and I'm going to pay you for it. And I want to see what you can find, right? Have that challenge, have that playtime, but realize, oh yeah, I'm using AI. It's a big part of my strategy. Great. If you can't tell me what measurable metric it's tied to, no, it's not part of strategy. It's something that you're figuring out. And I love how you said there's nothing wrong with that. Like, the only way we grow is by experimenting and innovating and playing in a sandbox from time to time. But if it's not focused around a certain goal, then And again, we need to kind of leverage it in there, in my opinion. Yeah.

And I would say that that's really a mindset because there are thought leaders that are such perfectionists. Many of them, and I'm not painting with a broad brush here, have a more academic background where you don't put something out unless it's valid to the 11th decimal point. And then there are others who are like, I'll just throw a bunch of stuff against the wall. And I think somewhere in the middle is where you gotta find your zone and say, hey, you know what? I've got two choices. I've got an idea for a book. I can spend 9 months of my life and a couple of thousand hours and get this book out there and then see what happens. Or I could, I could test an experiment. Let me write a 500-word, 1,000-word blog post on LinkedIn and test it. Let me do that again. Let me try it again. Crickets. Okay, well, if that's crickets, that's an awesome thing because you just saved me 1,000 hours, 1,500 hours, 6 months of my life, and potentially some reputational, uh, harm by doing something. Nope. Nobody has ever gone out of business, lost their reputation for putting up something on LinkedIn that's an experiment, that's a new idea that just, eh, you know?

Right, right. And when you're looking at like the experimentation phase of whether it's writing, whether it's trying to codify, let me throw out the academic term there, like codify your thoughts into something that is actually tangible.

You're not allowed to say pedagogue. You're not allowed to say that. I'm holding your one academic hand behind your back.

Man, man. But this is where, you know, I decided to go back and get my doctorate later in life because I was continually frustrated by the amount of brilliance that you found in the academic setting and the inability of that brilliance to be communicated in a digestible way. And so, I think what you do is so important to that end. And I like kind of the balance you struck between, hey, listen, you don't need that 11th decimal point. And you're throwing up, I like to say, throwing spaghetti against the wall and see what noodle actually stays up. You know, it's gross no matter what, but maybe you'll get lucky and it's still not that appetizing. Like right in the middle there is where you have to just, you know, the common adage, you're 80% of the way there, press play, do it, press send, press submit. And if you are a true expert in what you do, you can pivot and adapt from that and have conversations around it in a way that's only going to strengthen your case, in my opinion.

Yeah, that's 100% right. 100%. And don't be afraid, because I think part of the, the struggle that oftentimes I see in, in the clients that I work with and thought leaders is they're the expert, right? In, in many cases, literally, you know, one of the top people in the world in whatever the space there is. So they forgot what it's like to have the beginner's mind, to get on a bicycle and fall off and skin your knee. Because everybody, you know, CEOs and people are coming to them and say, oh, oh, great one, what do I do? And they have all the answers. And then they're in a space where it's like, oh, have you ever tried being on a unicycle? No. It's like, okay, it's going to it's gonna be awkward, you're going to fall, it's gonna be bad, right? And they haven't— it's been a long time since they've had that beginner mindset. So I think you have to almost prepare yourself to say, "Oh, wow, I'm not gonna be best in class at this my first time outta the gate. Why would I?

I haven't put, you know, I haven't put the reps in." No, and I think that's where, you know, to go directly into a use case for AI, I teach a class at the University of South Florida in their doctoral program with a colleague of mine about getting eyes on your expertise, right? So trying to get these doctoral students who are, executive program practitioners, right? They have at least a decade, if not more, of managerial experience, are coming in to try to, you know, better themselves. And they have no clue how to utilize that in a bigger way. So it's like, you know, the 0.101 version of what you do, Peter, but it's like, let's at least get them in the frame to be able to start doing this. And I told them, listen guys, if you don't know how to make this tangible— because I'd ask them to go around the room I said, "In one sentence, tell me the benefit of your research." Oh, my God. They're an unmitigated disaster, right? And the inability to think outside of it. And I'm not mad at them and I'm not making fun of them because when you've put 3 years of your life working into one specific research project at such a granular level, it is hard then to extricate yourself from that situation. Yeah, but it shouldn't be hard.

But I would argue that if you can't do it— like, listen, I'm working with people at a certain caliber. And oftentimes, I'll say to them, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Out, explain to me as if I'm an 8-year-old what the hell it is you actually do and for whom and what the outcomes are. And they look at me like that's the hardest question they ever got asked. And I'm like, it's kind of a nice way of me saying, pretend I'm an idiot, which isn't that much to pretend. I'm not getting what you're saying. I'm not at the 600 level, right? I'm at the huh, what is this level? And if you can't democratize your ideas, you're never going to have the impact and quite frankly, never generate the income that you potentially could as a thought leader.

No, 100%. And I tell them, listen guys, ChatGPT, throw, throw your dissertation in there, throw your research in there, and ask it for metaphors, for analogies, for alternative ways to explain the premise. I mean, again, it doesn't need to give you the perfect answer, but if it gets you 80% of the way there and then you're like, oh, let me tweak this nuance a little bit, like, that's a great use of taking your time. Like, for me, technology helps us be more human when it's used correctly, and whether that is forming better relationships, better communication, or giving us more time to be human But it's like, oh, well, you know, then it's, oh, I don't want to put my research into ChatGPT. It's going to be in the database. I'm like, you want your research to get out? You want to be a thought leader? I'm really having a hard time with this, guys.

Yeah, well, this idea of keep your stuff behind the wall, you know, is, you know, first of all, the genie's out of the box, right? I mean, period, full stop. I mean, and, and I get it, we're living in an age where, well, what's the, you know, legal ramifications, trademark, IP? We don't know the answers to that yet. Right? But if, if you continue to keep your stuff out, you're out. Like, that's— it's kind of that simple. And I, you know, I, I debate this with, with clients all the time. Okay, so you're writing a book, right? And when Stephen M. R. Covey wrote The 7 Habits, he didn't publish 5 of them and say, I'm going to hide the other 2. You have to hire me as a consultant to give you the 2. You put it all out there because there is a different market for a book than there is for an advisor than there is for a keynote speech. Like, there's different markets for all of it. And that small, small percentage of folks that'll go down the do-it-yourself route and take the book and turn it into a workshop, they were never your clients anyway. Like, it was like they were never gonna pay the money for you. And who cares? Maybe eventually they expose it to someone who 5 years later, you know, reaches out to you and say, hey, I saw your work, you know, 5 years ago when I was at Company X and now I need your help. Like, like I, I just think you have to come at it with an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. You know, be smart, protect yourself with the trademarks and the appropriate things that you need to. But, but you know, if anything only exists on your hard drive, it doesn't exist. No.

And I think it's, People are like, well, you know, I'm gonna put it out there, but it needs to be behind a paywall or behind this. Listen, the reality is anything that's in the digital space can be copied, period, end of story, full stop. Yeah, right. Yeah. And people are worried about that now, about, you know, there's big conversations, or, you know, and what I do around digital cloning. It's like, my identity— well, no, if you have a single picture of yourself out there, you can be digitally cloned. If you have a clip of your audio out there, you can be digitally cloned. So it's establishing yourself so well that people, if they hear something that doesn't seem right, are actually going to proactively reach out. And it was the same thing when the whole spam and fake accounts really started, you know, a number of years ago on social media. If you built up a solid enough following, people reported them to you before you even landed on them yourself. That's when you know you've built up a strong enough audience that they are there to defend you and your ideas.

Yep, yep, 100%, 100%.

But Peter Winick, when you're working with people now and in your business and people are wanting, you know, more to the name of your business, more leverage with this, how are you advising them from kind of the content side from the technology side?

What tools are you using a lot? Yeah, so to me, the tools are a tactical answer, and there's different tools for different people, right? Everybody wants to hack and say, what's the best tool? And, and again, it goes back to what is the strategy? Who are you trying to reach? How are you trying to reach them? How do they consume content? So it's not— first step one, it has nothing to do with you, right? So I think that every thought leader, every content creator has a default concept— content consumption modality. If you're an academic, you probably like academic papers. If you're more verbal, maybe you like video. If you are— maybe it's generational, you like long form, short form, whatever. So the question is, first, do an audit of yourself and say, what's my default? Like, I read books, I read 2 books a week. That's not normal. It's not that I'm abnormal, but if I extrapolated and made some, uh, uh, assumptions about the marketplace saying, well, every educated professional at a certain age level, at a certain income level reads 2 books, uh, you know, a week, I'd be way off, like many, many, many factors off. So realize what your default is, then get really tight around who you're trying to reach and get really, really clear, not just demographically, cuz demographic marketing is quite frankly a lazy marketing, you know, oh, age, rank, and serial number. Yeah, whatever. Because I don't believe every 48-year-old woman with a master's degree making $112,000 $1,000, you know, buys, likes Tide versus, you know, whatever, a bleach like that. I don't, I don't, that doesn't work for me. The psychographics are far more difficult to embrace, but far more fruitful. What is that person's feeling about risk? Do they have a growth mindset? Do they have an abundance mindset? If you can figure that out, then you can say, okay, and then how do they consume content? Oh, they like short-form video. Oh, I don't like the sound of my voice. I don't like short-form video. I think TikTok's stupid. Great. Then you're just not gonna participate in that market. Market, right? You just have to realize that they're not going to come to your modality. Maybe eventually they will, but you have to meet them where they are first and then maybe slowly bring them along.

And we have to realize too our own bias in that, which is, you know, part of what you're getting to, right? You don't make assumptions based on your behavior, but then also, you know, don't make assumptions about what does or doesn't work based on your own bias in that, which I find, you know, from the content side and then from the tech side, right? Oh, well, you know, ChatGPT can't replicate what I do, you know, whatever algorithm arithmetic aversion they bring to the table. And it's like, I'm not trying to have it replicate what you do. I am trying to find a way to use a tool to save you more time, or to use a tool to communicate more effectively to your audience.

And but that one-eye reaction is natural because it's scary. I was talking to a world-renowned, um, IP attorney the other day, and he was telling me that, you know, the things that he's seeing, um, because he's on the other side of the IP, not the creator, but the people creating the, the the chatbots and such, that there's going to be a time in the very short future, year, maybe two, where if you slipped and broke your ankle or something like that, you're going to want AI to look at your radiology slides versus a radiologist. And not because you don't like people, because it's going to give you a better outcome. Okay, so great. If I slip and break something, whatever, I'm going to want the best outcome. Of somebody reading that to give me that. Now, if I'm a 39-year-old radiologist with $150,000 or $250,000 in medical school debt, I should be scared to death, right? But I have to get over that fear because the world's not going to stop because I'm scared. Okay, so is there an opportunity for radiologists to program their own bots? Is there an opportunity for radiologists to sort of be the bot? I don't know. Or is it, geez, you got to get retooled? Like, are those skills no longer viable in a larger marketplace.

You know, I go back to that. I love that example. It's okay, how can I be more human as a radiologist, right? How can I relate to my patients better? How can I help them make sense of this data and make sense of a report in a way that builds their whole entire health picture into practice, right? So it's again, if you are pushing— stay there a minute.

So maybe there's an opportunity to be the empathetic radiologist, right? Maybe the technology can read the tumor better or the bone better or whatever. But would you want to get a text that said, hey Jill, guess what? You know, yeah, cancer for you, congrats, like whatever. Like maybe there's an opportunity to retrain medical professionals or radiologists to say, how do I deliver that news in a way that is human?

Exactly. And the field of health communication has been growing significantly the past decades. And now with all of the changes in insurance and governance around health, you see now more people focused on that, again, patient, uh, provider relationship. So again, for me I'm telling people, double down on what makes you the most human and helps you relate with people more. And then again, pick the tool, pick the tactic that's going to— Exactly. —to do that better. 100%. So Peter Winick, one of the questions I like to ask people on this show is, you know, tossing out this phrase, this idea of humanizing automation, right? It means different things in different industries. For you and the thought leaders that you work with, these experts who are trying to get their brain out to the public, How do you think of this idea of humanizing automation?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of layers to that from, from where I sit. One is, and they're not synonyms, but how do you democratize it, right? Because oftentimes as thought leaders, we're operating at a really, really high level, right? Like, so we're, we're best in class and, and we're only talking to CEOs or senior leaders or boards or world leaders or whatever. Over. And that makes sense. That's where the market takes people, right? So if, if a board of directors is gonna pay you $50,000 to spend a day with them and a community college is gonna spay you, pay you $500, like, you know, okay, well ultimately now you might say, well, I, you know, I like community colleges. I'm gonna spend some time there. It's kind of my pro. Okay, that's fine. But ultimately you're gonna go where the market is going to compensate you best. So I would be thinking about it from the standpoint of how do I democratize my content? How do I get it out there in a high quality way consistently at a lower cost per capita? Right. And that's where technology comes in, whether that's assessment tools, video-based training. You know, you've got your, your bot thing that looks like you. That, like, that's cool, right? Like, that's— and it's not just cool, like, oh, it's cool. It's cool plus utility, because cool without utility, you'll get 5 minutes of my time. It's a parlor trick. Utility. Yeah, it's right, right. Look, I can pull this, you know, rabbit out of my hat. Okay, that's cute. But cool has to have a utility factor. Like, why would I tune into that again? Why would I I trust that for information. And eventually, once you see that, like, you're— I'm using your chat avatar thing. I don't even look at that as like, oh, this is a cool piece of technology. It's like, no, Jill is telling me something really, really cool. Now, it's not really you, right? But it's another way for you to deliver, uh, high-quality information to me. Yeah.

And I think from that, I, I— democratizing access, information, all these things has just been a cornerstone for decades of like where my heart's at. And I think it's really especially in the thought leadership market, it's— you can't be in a million places at once. So for example, in building online courses, I use Real.me to give you the skeleton of my content. I use AI.me to customize that content to each and every person that buys a course, to each and every industry in that segment, because there's no way a single human could do all of that. But I can make it a better experience for someone and provide extra value by leveraging that tool to an end goal.

Yes, that's right. That's right.

And then in terms of, you know, when people are— you're looking to get this content out, um, because people listening into this are all over the board at what they do, um, in terms of working in industry for a bigger company or being entrepreneurs, just people interested in finding better ways to utilize these tools to make what they do better and spend more time doing what they love. What are you seeing in terms of maybe it's efficiencies with your clients or maybe it's what's provoking the most curiosity right now?

Yeah. So I think if you look at it, where does it play across a continuum? I think there's some places it does really well and some places it doesn't. So for example, we could do a screen share right now and go on to LinkedIn and play, you know, name the author, chat, chat, chat, chat. You know, there's a lot of garbage that's out there. Give me 600 words on like, okay, Okay, but guess what? Like, you can fool some of the people some of the time. Most of the stuff that it produces without the human intervention is lazy, is horrible, is weak. It's, you know, what used to be airline magazine quality journalism. No offense to the airline magazine journalist if they're out there, right? But it's just bad. The stuff that's where it's used, it's invisible. So I think it's really, really good as a research partner. I think it's really, really good as a sparring partner. Like, hey, you're delivering a workshop and maybe you are, you can't, you continually deliver those workshops to highly technical populations, right? And now you go into a creative population. Okay, well spar with it. Like you said, the analogies, the stories, the languaging, the, even if you know you can't reprogram your life, lifespan and say, let me go back and have the mind of a creative versus the mind of an engineer. No, you got what you got, right? But this could say, how would I communicate these ideas to this population in a way that would be relevant to them? Maybe it's generational. Maybe you're in your 70s and say, okay, I got to deliver to a bunch of, you know, God forbid, Gen Zs, right? And I'm competing with the, you know, the attention span of a flea. Okay, we can either whine about it or figure out how to make that work. So I think that's where it comes, you know, sparring partner, research, formatting is really, really interesting. Hey, how might, you know, what might 3 powerful questions be that I would ask this sort of group. Like, that's this kind of stuff that's really, really cool, but it's not— I think maybe the short answer to what I'm saying is it's not binary. It does all of this and doesn't do any of this. It's part of the— you know, when I was a kid growing up, you had encyclopedias. Like, they were actually physical. Go Google that, right? Physical things. And you'd look stuff up. Now, the information was largely outdated, right? But if you were doing a book report in 4th grade, You'd take down the, the L and look up the stuff in L and then synthesize and add to it. If you just copy-paste it, it's no different than today, right? The teacher would be, would be mad. Now, you know, that's a whole nother lane. How teachers stay ahead of this stuff, I have no idea.

Um, but, but, uh, it was funny, I literally just recorded content on that exact thing the other day, so some videos are gonna come out on that soon. Okay. But I mean, heaven forbid you get the encyclopedia, then you go to that thing called the card catalog. I mean, remember? Yeah, in those drawers. Oh yeah, still one of sexiest pieces of furniture in existence to my eyes. You know, it's so great.

What day are your meetings at Nerds Anonymous? Do you go to the Tuesday, right, or the Wednesday meeting? Because I haven't seen you there.

But yeah, I know, I know, it's, uh, man, those card catalogs. But it's, you know, when you think about how you retrieve information, one of the things I just love that you said, um, I call it, um, use it as a customizer, use it as a humanizer. I like it. You're like, use it as a sparring partner. Like, I like that analogy. I use it kind of, um, to battle test ideas, right? To poke holes in ideas. I've put in arguments before, like put out a post that I thought I felt might be a little controversial. And not that that's— I'm saying don't put those out, but I wanted to also mentally prepare for what might come back, um, you know, ahead of time. Am I accurately anticipating the right type of objections or holes that could be poked in logic? And so, you know, you throw something in there and ask it to poke holes in that logic, ask it to find things that could be controversial. And again, is it 100%?

But even the controversial It might be it's aware of blind spots you're not. Hey, read through this and say, is there something that I put in there that's unintentionally offensive to someone?

Yes. Yes. Right. This is why we all— we have our lens, we have our bias. That's what makes us human. And that's what makes your perspective valuable to the right audience is because they can consume your content because they identify with you, your brain, the way you structure things for whatever reason. But we all have blind spots. All of us. Yeah. This is a great tool to uncover them. Exactly. Exactly. You know, when I think of the work that you do, Peter, and you have— this is a quantifiable term here— a shit ton of content on leveraging— that's a technical term. Very, very much so. When you look at all of the content that you've created, that you do on a regular basis with your podcast, with your writing, with your video content, etc., what are some of the things that you've personally in your business kind of shifted over the past 5, 10 years? And you talked about Clubhouse earlier. I have a whole rant on that because people are like, you're an idiot for not being on. I said, you guys, when, when it's not COVID, do we sit and listen to audio out loud? Never, never. And if you do, you're that a-hole in the sky club that's on a speakerphone. People want to punch you, you know.

But let me go back to the Clubhouse thing. So when Clubhouse came out, I had never seen an adoption rate so high. But like you, I said, but this isn't a normal time, right? Like, there's something weird. There's something odd about we're all trapped at home, and we're burnt out with Zoom fatigue. So I dabbled in it, right? Like, I went on, and I got invited to co-host some things. I didn't want to do that yet. So I just went on and listened. And I said, OK, this is a bunch of crypto dudes, like, whatever. And I didn't like the vibe of it. It felt like CB radio. Like, there was something like, I don't know. I don't need to be the first kid on my block. To be on it, but I do have an obligation to my clients to at least have a point of view. Yes. And hey, here's what I think, you know, and then I, you know, I popped into a couple of, um, uh, whatever they call this, the sessions and stuff and realized, yeah, this is, this is just, I, I don't think anything real has happened. And I don't even know if that app still existed. But going back to, to what you said, um, let me go back to sort of a, a quasi origin story. So years ago, probably 15 years ago, uh, not long after I started the business, I knew I needed to blog, right? Because that's what we did. 15 years ago, right? Like when we weren't riding our dinosaurs around, uh, you know, tripping over AOL discs, um, we blogged, right? So I don't necessarily like to write. I don't think I'm a good writer. Occasionally I'm mediocre and I just don't enjoy it, which is my ultimate litmus test. If I see it on my calendar, I'm gonna rearrange the spice drawer. I'm gonna like, oh wait, do I have enough? Like I'm gonna avoid that, right? So I went to a good friend of mine on the, on the West Coast. Host Raj, who had had 3 sort of really, really big blogs at the time. And I said, all right, tell me the secret. What do I need to do? Give me your advice. 'Cause he was successful. Now I could have gone to a drunken brother-in-law that doesn't know anything, but I went to someone who I admired, trusted, and respect. And it was easy to humble myself. We had a relationship. Say, tell me, what do I need to do? And he gave me some really good advice. He said, okay, you're like every other sort of ADD-riddled CEO where you don't have an attention span. Do not commit to writing one blog. Commit to writing 100 because you're gonna convince yourself after you do 3 or 5 or 10, the data doesn't support my, the value of my time. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. Keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. You're gonna learn, you're gonna change. You'll ultimately be embarrassed about the first things you put out and eventually there'll be a flywheel effect or there won't. But don't make any decisions and don't sort of microtrack it. And I did that and I powered through 'em and occasionally I, you know, I had, I don't think I had anything that went, you know, viral, but things that people liked and people, you know, the more authentic I got and my style and whatever. Sure. It's not for everyone. It's fine, whatever. And then fast forward, um, this I love, just conversations, you know. And I've always done a lot of this. I'm just— what, I'm on Zoom and calls and whatnot all day. So when it was time to do a podcast, I was like, okay, let me think about this. I've got a really good network. I've got relationships with really cool people, far smarter, far more interesting than me. Um, and I can hold a conversation. That sounds like more fun than pounding out, you know, 8 blogs a month. Yeah, let's try it. That point, I committed to doing 50 because 100 was just far too many to commit to. And I did that. And I said, be open-minded. Here's what my assumptions are. And I kind of scribbled down my assumptions, but be open-minded to what the outcomes are. And, you know, here I am 7 years later, 600 and some odd episodes, and I've got to talk to people who wouldn't give me the time of day if it wasn't for a micro— you know, $100 microphone and now somewhat of a reputation in that space and podcasting. And then the other thing was I never got obsessed with Ooh, how many viewers? How many follow? I don't care because that's not the metric. And Tim Ferriss has nothing to worry about. Joe Rogan has nothing to worry about. Come, you know, Gary Vee has nothing to worry about with me behind them. I look at how much time, money, and energy am I investing in this? What is it doing for the brand and what is it doing from a net new client acquisition vehicle? And there's a, and do I enjoy it most importantly? Mm-hmm. Am I learning something? So fast forward a whole bunch of years, we've repurposed episodes into LinkedIn Learning episodes, which was never are sort of part of the formula. But it's like, oh yeah, we could do that. Like, we've gotten, you know, literally I've never sold a dime's worth of advertising on the podcast, but I can attribute millions of dollars worth of revenue over the last 6 years directly to relationships formed there. And I can cross-introduce people all the time. Hey, you had Jill on your show, Peter Winick, would you introduce me? Sure, she'd be a great guest for you. Why wouldn't I do that?

So no, I think it's— I like the focus, the thing that you said about repurposing, right? And unanticipated, right? You didn't set out with that plan, but you found that your content, what you have, can be valuable in other ways. And I think, yeah, one of the great things right now about a lot of these generative AI tools that exist— I don't know if you've ever tried Castmagic. Um, it was my first dabble into it, and it was when I, oh, I uploaded— it was originally designed for podcasts. Um, and Riverside does some cool stuff with, you know, a lot of cool things too. But like Castmagic, before I tried Riverside, I actually would upload keynote speeches and panels that I was on into it, and the way it would break down into content, into quotes, into timestamps, into all of that. I have seen that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have seen that.

It's multiple tools do it now, but it's like even that, because people are like, oh well, you know, what do I have to share? Like, I don't have a podcast. I'm guessing you've been a guest on some podcasts. Exactly. Episode and pop it in there and let AI analyze and look and see what could potentially be of value. And again, use it as a that, as you said, sparring partner or, you know, starting board. Eradicate your blank page syndrome.

Well, and that repurposing thing has always been a core principle because when I was blogging, I'd say, okay, well, what are the ones that resonated? Oh wow, for some reason people like this one. Okay, let's double down on that. Let's do another one on that. Let's do a, a cartoon on it. Let's do an inf— an infographic on it. Let's, um, potentially turn that into a video. So it takes out the guesswork. If the market's already validated that it likes that idea in one form, chances are pretty good if you move it into another format, all you're doing is is introducing it to a different audience or a newer audience. You know, so I do every, typically every Wednesday, uh, these little short-form videos, 60 to 90 seconds. And I keep a running tally of like interesting things. You and I maybe had a conversation, I scribble down something that popped into my head and I'll go, you know, 90 seconds, right? Um, and they're really more about keeping the brand out there, sharing information, et cetera, et cetera. But that's led to a lot of opportunity where I've been invited on things that I wouldn't be invited on. And we've repurposed some of those into learning and, and, you know, uh, be open as to what your intent was and where, where people find the value in it.

Yeah. And use— I mean, I love that you talked about in here, I'm not chasing views, I'm not chasing this, I'm chasing is it producing results, right? Monetary results back to my business. And I think there's so much now that when you want to test things out, we can test things faster using different technological tools. We can do A/B tests at a much more rapid rate than we could otherwise. So again, looking at at. If your goal is to get 5, 6-figure consulting contracts very quickly with boards of directors or whatever it may be, you're going to look at a different type of content repurposing than if it's to get views, right? Views aren't what typically pay the bucks unless you're trying to be this major influencer and make money as an influencer. Yeah.

And vanity metrics, quite frankly, are lazy. They're lazy metrics. How many views and how many reachers? I don't I don't care. Like, I really don't. I mean, we look at it, but I'm like, I don't care. What I know is in the last quarter, I can attribute this much incoming interest and this much revenue to people that saw it in this modality that wouldn't have if we didn't have it.

Yeah. One of the things, as we kind of wrap up here, I want to like throw an idea out to you, and I don't know if it may or may not fit with your audience or where you see it fit in, or maybe you've already capitalized on it. But I think of people who have content out there and then want to expand their marketplace, especially global with the technologies that exist. When I can one-click translate in your voice, in your likeness to 28+ different languages. Oh, that's so cool. What markets are you seeing for that or have you thought of in that, whether it's for your stuff or for your clients?

Yeah. So, one response I have to that is— is pre-COVID, there was a bias in the marketplace that thought leadership is primarily a North American export with a little bit of exception for the Brits and European, right? Like, oh, if a company like keynote speakers in North America charge far more than they do in Europe. Oh yeah. And that's just the way the market worked. And then, you know, we didn't wear pants for 3 years and didn't leave the house and it didn't really matter. It didn't matter where the ideas came from, and that went away. So now we realize that thought leadership is truly— it always has been, but our default switch is, this is global, tell me why it's not. Mm-hmm. Right. And therefore, you— now what you have to realize is the pricing might be different. The— there might be some cultural nuances. Translation stuff used to be the big hurdle. It is a non-hurdle today because of the technology. It used to be, you know, how do you get the colloquialisms and all that sort of stuff? You have, that's a tech problem now, not a people problem as much anymore. So to me, it's really a function of early on with the thought leader, where do you reach, where does, where do your ideas resonate, et cetera, et cetera. Let's start there. And when we're looking at global organizations, so for example, in, you know, North America, we've got tons of global organizations. We might not have to go to headquarters in Cincinnati for Procter Gamble and go for the leadership team, but we might say to them, oh, Oh, we noticed Brazil is one of your fastest growing markets. We have some really cool stuff there that I think would be approachable. Because that's, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, fastest growing management class in the history of the world. Well, if you're not participating in that and you have management content, you're kind of missing the boat. Mm-hmm. I think, you know, we rob banks because that's where the money is. We go where the opportunity is. And it is not, you know, tied to Delta Airlines flight schedule anymore.

Anymore. Anymore. And that's a good thing for all of us. Yeah. I love that example. And I love that kind of— again, tying to a word that you've said a few times, as have I, the democratization of access of information, of being able to share, disseminate, get your thought leadership out there in so many ways. Well, let me just push on the democratization.

I'm not coming at that from the, ooh, give, you know, I'm a socialist, give all your stuff away to everybody because it's better for the world. What I am saying though is most thought leaders, when I do an analysis of their business, they're in the low volume, high ticket business, right? I'm a keynote speaker. I charge $30,000 a pop. I don't do 1,000 of those a year. I do whatever, 20 or whatever that number is, and that's how I make a living, right? Okay, well, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with making a living that way. Let's flip that. What if you could be in the high-volume, low-ticket business? So you think about all the organizations that you keynoted. I would argue less than 1% of the population knows who you are. But what if here's a derivative of your $30,000 speech that's $25 a head, but I, as the whatever division leader, can buy 10,000 units of that on an annual basis, and that's got a 90% margin. That's interesting. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm thinking about when I'm talking about democratizing it. No, absolutely. Give it all away.

Give it all away for free. Right. But no, it allows you to do things at scale that you couldn't do it— that was previously reserved for big business businesses, people with massive budgets. And now the small mom-and-pop shop or the small solo entrepreneur can start scaling in a way that was previously reserved for those massive budgets.

Yeah. And it is the great equalizer in that you could be as smart or smarter than someone that's been at this far longer than you, is far bigger than you, whatever. It totally allows you to punch above your weight because guess But the smartest people in the world don't all work for McKinsey.

No, no, they do not. I kind of like that.

You think they do?

But I mean, there are some smart people.

No offense to my friends there.

Yeah. Oh, that was great. You know, on that note, Peter, I think that's a fun one to wrap up on. And you think of some of the smartest people in the world. You are one of the smartest people I know when it comes to leveraging thought leadership, aptly named company, podcasts, publications, all of that. Is there any— lasting thought or comment you want to leave with our listeners here today before we, uh, wrap this up?

No, I just want to hear you continue to inflate my ego because deep down I'm just a narcissist at heart.

No, I'm kidding. Yeah, you know, I mean, I could put it in the ChatGPT and get it to roast you too, which is one of those— again, Parler.

That could be fun. That could be fun. No, thank you. I appreciate you and I appreciate the work that you do as well. So I'm a first-time listener, long-time caller. No, I love it. Long time listener, first-time caller. Yes, yes, get the analogy right.

Come No, exactly. Where's the—

Larry King is in my head there.

So whatever. Well, everyone, there in the show notes and in the distribution of this, of course, all of Peter's links, social media, website, all of that are going to be provided. But thank you all for tuning in, for listening today. For me, one of the biggest kind of thought processes that I take away is that I actually need to be better at— and I have been thinking about it in 2025 a little bit it, but how do I reverse my high-ticket item to those lower-ticket, higher volume? And so I'm going to double down on that over the next week in my strategy meetings. So thank you for that, Peter. I get selfishly benefits on my show too.

Free consulting. What's better than that?

I know, right? God, podcasts are amazing. So everyone, again, thank you so much for tuning in. We will be back, of course, with another episode and also some new minisodes coming up for all of you. So thank you for tuning in to Humanize Automation.