Being a Human Venn Diagram. | Christina Wallace| 488

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. My guest today is Christina Wallace. She's a senior lecturer of entrepreneurial management at the Harvard Business School, an angel investor, and author of The Portfolio Life: How to Future Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Business Card. She is a self-described human Venn diagram, which I love that because I think more of us should be that. So I don't think I've ever interviewed a diagram before. Do I need to have a— I don't know, where do you start with that? Anyway, thank you for coming on board today.

Happy to be here.

So tell us a little bit about this journey into thought leadership and authorship and all the fun things you're doing now.

Sure. So this— a lot of this started, I don't know, almost 10 years ago at this point. I started writing bits and pieces here and there. I had always loved writing. I'm not a writer by training necessarily. I would never even use that as part of my description for a long time. But I'd write these pieces. I had ideas and I wanted to share them. And then Forbes called a few years in and said, hey, do you want a column for Forbes.com? And I said, sure, why not? And I ended up writing for them for 4 or 5 years. And during that time, they launched their Forbes Podcast Network.

Right.

And they said, you know, we're trying this new thing called podcasts. Do you want to— do you want to host one? And so I just— I got very lucky by being in the right place at the right time. But I think equally so, I said yes when opportunities were presented to share ideas and started getting the opportunity to put them out in small pieces and get real-time feedback from my audience, which I think is so helpful. If I had started with the idea for a book, I think it would have felt really overwhelming. But getting to write.

So I like that starting small though. So I think a lot of people, you know, one of the questions I get asked a lot is where do you start?

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, well, you start where you start. Like, so if you haven't really dabbled or experimented with thought leadership, starting with a book is a monumental task. That's like, I haven't gone on a 2-mile hike, but Everest is, you know, on my way to wherever I'm going.

Sure.

You know, so I like the way that you sort of, hey, like throw my hat in the ring. Like let's just try podcasting and writing and then, you know, you could learn different things from blogging than you can from podcasting than you certainly can from writing a book, even though in essence a lot of the things that you first introduced in a blog probably nurtured into maturity in the book.

Absolutely. I mean, when it came time to finally write this thing, almost every chapter I had a piece or a TED Talk or an episode that I already had done on that topic, and I was able to actually go and grab that almost as my first draft. So I never had to start with a blank page, which I thought was really helpful. But equally so, from a marketing standpoint, being able to sell the book, getting my agent, getting my publisher, my editor, I had an audience that I could point to, and I had their reactions to this content that I could point to as market evidence that people wanted to hear more about this.

Yeah. And then the— That blank slate issue, I think a lot of people are scared to death of the blank slate. And I would argue that from my perspective, from my experience, 80, 90% of people putting out books today, it's 70, 80% there, not word for word, but the concepts are there, the framings are there. Now it's— and you've also experimented a bit and have an understanding of what works and what doesn't work, what's resonated and what hasn't resonated with the market. Could you give an example of something you put out there maybe in a blog or in a podcast that you thought was like, or didn't think about like that was kind of the hard way and it got sticky?

I have a perfect example of this. So one of the forcing functions at Forbes, I hated it at the time, but it ended up being really helpful, is that I was forced to publish 5 times a month in order to get paid. You publish 4 times, you don't get a penny. So I would get to the end of the month and I'd be like racking my brain for one more thing that I could publish. To hit my 5 posts. And at the end of, I think it was 2016, it was on Christmas Eve and I needed to publish one more and I wanted to be able to just log off and enjoy the holidays. And I was like, crap, what am I gonna write about? And I came up with this concept that I had been using for my own sort of end of year life and work evaluation called the Personal Balance Scorecard. And it was exactly the same tool that companies use, the Balance Scorecard. Applied to my health, my finances, my professional goals, and my personal relationships. And so I published this. I wrote like 800 words on it. I included—

Kind of a lazy way out, right?

Completely lazy. Right.

What can I pull that I can knock out in 5 minutes that looks like—

That was exactly it. And I included a link to my own personal balance scorecard, which it had some pretty pictures and a lot of transparency. You're like, interesting. I can learn more about her cholesterol levels. So I published this thing, I hit publish, I log off and I don't even go back and look at it until the new year. And when I log back in, it has gone bonkers.

It's blown up.

Like absolutely blown up. And the number of requests, so I had linked to not just like posted a screenshot of my personal balance scorecard, but I linked to it in like a Google spreadsheet.

Sure.

So it would be like editable. No. And well, not like my original one, but you could make a template and you could, you know, make your own. And I came back to, hundreds of requests of people wanting to like make a copy or edit it or download it for themselves. And I was like, wow, that—

wait, so stay there for a moment because one of the things I find fascinating is we as humans are awful at predicting what will, what will resonate with the audiences and what won't. So I would say, you know, you probably have 20 other pieces that you thought when you hit send, wow, this is my Mona Lisa, this is my Michelangelo. I spent so much brain power and every word, and this is the thing, and then it's crickets. And then here's sort of the, you know, uh-oh, cut and paste, got to get the homework done. Yeah, you know, like, so to me it's like it doesn't even pay to make the predictions anymore because the data is so quick and real-time and true. Yes, it kind of doesn't matter what you think.

Absolutely, because 7 years later people are still sending me requests for that spreadsheet.

Now people are holding you accountable.

Now they're holding me accountable. No, I, I ended up reposting it on LinkedIn of I don't know, 6 months ago saying like, hey, this is going to be a part of my book. I'm really excited to share it. And it blew up again. I was like, guys, this isn't even novel anymore.

Right, right. So you can do it quarterly now. And so anything that posted, we know you were too busy to come up with something new.

Correct. But I think what ended up being really useful for me, in addition to recognizing that this was a tool that people could really benefit from and that I should absolutely include in the book, was the discipline of having to write 5 times a month forced me to sit down and write. And in those moments of like, I gotta phone in the homework, pulled things out of me that my inner editor probably would have said no to otherwise.

Exactly.

And I think that kind of accountability and rhythm is one of the things I recommend to anyone who's trying to establish themselves as a thought leader or just, you know, put content out there on a regular basis. Okay.

Third-party accountability is different than, well, I kind of think to myself that I'll do it 5 times a month. And it's like—

Exactly.

It's the difference between getting to the gym at 5:30 in the morning solo or getting there because your trainer's waiting and you're paying them or you've got, you know, there's some sort of third-party— That's exactly it. If you're enjoying this episode of Thought Leadership Leverage, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So I wanna move now to You know, you've got the book, you've got the podcast, you got the TED, you got all that, like check the box, check the box. How do you measure, not impact, 'cause that's one thing, but the ROI, right? So even, you know, for example, I have a lot of clients that have been on one of the Forbes councils or Forbes coaching or any of the other platforms. This isn't a ding on Forbes. And we'll go through our work together and say, oh great, so you've been doing that for 4 years, X articles a month, blah, blah, blah. And I can easily do the math and say, okay, so that represents X, 500 hours of your time, 25% of your year over 5 years. Show me the ROI, justify your case. Let's pretend this was, you know, a publicly traded company and one division is fighting another division for resources. Why should we reallocate against that way? And shockingly, a lot of folks can't really answer that question well. I mean, there's some vague, you know, it's good for the brand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. And at your funeral, they can say you were Forbes at like, at the end of the day, if I'm going to say to you this year you're investing 200 hours into X, you'd probably say, and my expectation is to yield Y? Like, how do you, how do you—

yeah, that math. So before I got the book contract, the, the metric for me really was about whether I was getting inbound opportunities that ended up being greater than the amount of effort that I was putting into my outbound work. So I, I do quite a bit of paid public speaking. I don't have a speaker's bureau. I don't go out there and pitch my speaking. All of my paid speaking to date has been inbound through my website.

Stay there a minute. So that's beautiful because you can say You know exactly how many of your speaking gigs have come from that. And you can say, great, I spent X hours and I yielded Y dollars.

Yeah.

Is that a good use of my time or not? Period. End of conversation. Now with speaking, cuz it tends to be high ticket. Mm-hmm. The answer's probably yes. The problem is I've seen people where they're, what they're selling, if it's just a book or some coaching, it's like, wow, your customer acquisition cost is really, really, really high. Like that's just not worth it.

So yeah, I mean, for me it's always been sort of, it is what's coming back within, call it the next 12 months, equivalent to or greater than the work I'm putting in. So when I was writing for Forbes and that was my only effort, I was getting paid in real time. I could see my downloads, my reads, and I was getting commensurate. When I did my podcast, that was in first with Forbes and then with iHeart. Again, I had a contract and I had the real data. And then, you know, it was almost like for the work itself, I was keeping the lights on. Like, I was being paid enough to make it worth showing up to work in that context. And then the halo really was these inbound either speaking opportunities or sort of other opportunities to establish kind of the legitimacy. And that really paid off when I landed this role at Harvard Business School to be a professor without a PhD, right? Like, there's a certain level of cachet and credibility required there. And I am absolutely confident that my writing, my podcasting, my presence was a big part of what qualified me for this role. And now, you know, it's not entirely a fair representation to say my inbound as a metric for my thought leadership because some of, some of my inbound is cuz I'm at Harvard and not because I'm blogging.

Well, and I would also say one of the things that we've seen for ourselves and with our clients is there's a flywheel effect. Like when you put out your first, pick a number, 50 blogs or podcasts, you could easily justify through metrics that this is a bad use of time.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And it's, and, and there is no magic number. I'm just throwing out 50 as it's a big number. Sure. Represents a lot of time. And you could look at the data and look at that and go, geez, this is depressing. But you get to this breakpoint and it's not like get to 53 and, you know, whatever, it's perfect.

Yeah.

And you get paid dividends.

Yeah.

On old assets. So I had, I think it was last month or the month before, two different people reach out from a webinar that I did two years ago that was archived with the group that they're with that I didn't even— I mean, I remember doing it. I looked it up. I'm like, why? Like, that's really weird, right? Because somebody in their group mentioned, they said this was a good piece. Another one last week. So sometimes you find, you know, people are coming to you based on— it doesn't expire, particularly with blogs and the type of things you're doing. You're not writing, you know, a sports score that, that, you know, goes to the bottom of the parakeet cage, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's part of, you have to leave the breadcrumbs for people to find you. And one of the things that, that I have done and that I really espouse is sort of the opposite of, of, I guess, uh, the general advice on this. I don't pick a lane and only talk about that topic. I write about, I talk about, I go on podcasts about a wide range of things that I happen to be interested in and might consider myself an expert on.

Because one of the things— I know there are exceptions to this, but one of the things that's a really hardcore tenet in our beliefs and our working with our clients is I call it solve for X. You know, Christina is the X woman. What does that mean? So if you were a client, we'd go through this whole strategy process, we'd figure that out. And part of the reason is it's just the world is so noisy and I need to know— and again, there are exceptions. Adam Grant's an exception, Malcolm Gladwell's an exception, etc., where You know, if I left the station in the car at jazz and got back in the next day and it was punk rock, I'd be like, whoa, what's up with that? That's sort of broken expectations. So even though you say you speak on different things thematically, is, what's the, is there connective tissue? 'Cause it's not like pancake recipes, right?

Like there's, yeah. I mean, part of my connective tissue I've created, which is I'm a human Venn diagram and oh, okay. I create my connective, that's right. Like That's my ex. I say, look, I talk about business, I talk about technology, I talk about the arts. I have been included in a recipe book. It was a South by Southwest speaker's recipe book. I think there's a banana bread recipe in there.

I have— if your platform is the human Venn diagram, it's kind of—

in some ways I back-solve for that, to be honest. I've given a TED Talk on how I met my husband on online dating. I created a sales funnel to like create a process and figure out my qualified leads and move people through the pipeline. And I'm, you know, I met my husband and I gave that TED Talk a little bit as a joke. Like they had come to me saying, we're trying to add a little bit more of fun and spice into what is otherwise a very serious week. Do you have something funny you could talk about for 5 minutes? And I was like, sure, let me tell you about how I met my husband in online dating. And that TED Talk has 2.5 million views. Right, like I, I now get called to be a, you know, an expert on online dating.

Okay, well, that's what I was gonna ask, but are they calling you because this cross-pollination, this Venn diagram-ishness, or do they say— I mean, because you do really want to be the guru on online dating?

No, but I can talk about the business model of online dating, and it goes back to entrepreneurship and how, you know, the attention economy has shifted. So I guess my argument is not necessarily that you can could or should kind of splatter your energy everywhere. It's more of like, think really creatively about all the different pieces that make you you, or the things that you might be an expert on, and how they could tie back to the X of whatever that you want to be known for.

But this almost sounds like a politician to some degree. So will you or will you not vote on this bill? And like, well, let me tell you about this tree over here. For, you know, Army vets.

I mean, it really depends on the context of the bill, I suppose. But no, so I say, you know, craft the narrative that serves you. And if you were to look at my resume, it would make no sense. If you looked at my LinkedIn, it would make no sense unless or until I tell you the story connecting those dots. And I think anyone who wants to be a thought leader has to proactively connect the dots of why and how they're speaking about the topics they're speaking on. If you can tell me that story, it doesn't have to be linear or obvious or focused as long as you can connect the dots for me. That's my argument.

Right. So, but if you use LinkedIn or your resume, that sort of lines up more to a traditional job applicant. I was an engineer, now I'm a systems, right? Like more of a logical way to cover. That being said, who's hiring you to do what? So like what type, right? So what does that look like? Speaking is speaking, but what types of groups on what things and what are the other, what are the underlying business models here that everything's feeding into?

Sure. I mean, I get invitations to speak on innovation and entrepreneurship. My first book was about how big companies can sort of steal and adapt the mindsets and skills of startups and VCs. So that was a big part of my speaking for a very long time. How can big companies be entrepreneurial? Now I've got a book about basically how to build the startup of you, how to, how to build a portfolio, a business model for your life that gives you work, rest, hobbies, relationships, community, all of these things in a way that fits together. And then I've done a wide variety of speaking beyond that where I talk about the future of work, talent management. I, uh, I've talked about how to pivot careers from more of an individual standpoint, how to come from a non-traditional background and make it into a more obvious, you know, traditional line of work like I have done. So I'm kind of all over the place, and that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. If I had to give the same stump speech 20 times to 20 different companies, I wouldn't be doing this anymore.

Got it. So a bit of an outlier. So as we wrap up here— but it's working. Listen, that's all that matters.

It's my contrarian view.

Yeah, no, I love it. So as we wrap up, what would you say to someone listening that's in a position that you were maybe 3 or 4 years ago, a little bit earlier in the journey? Because they're out there. What, what advice, you know, do this, don't do this, don't listen to anybody but me.

I mean, my biggest advice is figure out what is unique about your voice. What is your experience, your advice, your tone? The voice that you share those stories and those, uh, those takeaways in. Figure out what makes you stand out. And to do that, you just have to put a lot of content out in the world. Use LinkedIn, go on other people's podcasts as a guest, give talks where you can. Like, just, just put a lot of work out there and find that voice. One thing you'll notice—

voice, right?

And then stick with it. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I would say one of the common threads that I'm picking up from this conversation is not necessarily the it, but the how. Like you have a unique style, voice, way that you analyze data, the way that you look at things, whether you're applying it to future work, online, whatever, whatever. So that's interesting. Cool. Well, this has been, this has been great. I appreciate your time. I appreciate sharing your journey with us. Thank you so much, Christina.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Peter.

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