Build Influence Before the First Call | Jim Schleckser | 645

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, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dr. Jim Schlechter. He is the founder of The CEO Project, which is a CEO peer group. And, uh, he's got an interesting perspective and focal point based on the work that he does. So Jim, welcome aboard today.

Thanks for having me, Peter. I appreciate it.

Yeah. So let me ask you this. So your work is CEO advisory, CEO peer groups, et cetera. So you're swimming all day with CEOs, not literally swimming unless—

Well, I have swum at various points, but not every day. You know, that's an occasional occurrence.

Better than sinking with CEOs.

Well, yeah. Uh, you are.

And, and how many CEOs are in the, the CEO Project community?

Uh, we work with about 125 CEOs, all industries, uh, really all over the United States. I think last time I counted, we were in 38 or 40 states, something like that.

And what's the revenue range on the company?

Um, we get interested around $20, $25 million of revenue because we think that's when you move from sort of CEO and number one salesperson, number one marketer, engineer, whatever. And our largest firms we work with are kind of $2.5, $3 billion. So we got a pretty big range. But what we do to keep it interesting is we cluster them with other CEOs in their size range. So you're not gonna be running a $200 million company sitting next to a guy running a $5 million scrapyard going, I don't know what this person can do to help me.

Right?

It's gonna be other people in your size range and they go, oh yeah, yeah, I had that problem a year ago. Here's how I solved it. So that's what's powerful about what we do.

So based on your vantage point, then give me your thoughts or what you're seeing in the marketplace relative to how CEOs are using thought leadership. And I'll split that in two. One is how are they taking in ideas and thought leadership and such so that they can be better leaders so that they can grow their companies faster and learn what they need to learn. And then B is a separate use case. What are they doing to develop thought leadership for their, their own personal brands, for the company, et cetera. So, yeah. Do you wanna, you wanna touch on that?

So, you know, the big thing I've seen lately, and, and let me start with CEOs are readers, uh, most of them actually, and a surprising percentage compared to the general population. And so books work. And, you know, my standard when I read a book or when I wrote my books was, you know, if I, if they get 2, 3, 4 good ideas out of the book, it's a win. So they're not looking for 100 good ideas. They need 4 from this one, 4 from that one, 5 from that one, and so forth. So reading is a big area of content digestion, but interestingly enough, podcasts have really become a big deal either during exercise or commute time or just hanging out time. So they're very big consumers of business podcasts to get ideas, to get new thinking, to hear what other people are doing. So those are the 2 channels I've seen. And particularly with the growth in the podcast one over the last, you know, 10 years or so, it's become super, super important. And in fact, you'll, when they get together, you'll hear, hey, have you listened to this one or that one or the other one? And frankly, that's how I've gotten some of the podcasts I listen to by hearing what other CEOs are listening to. And, you know, they're usually pretty on point, you know, in terms of the ones that are worth listening to, which are not. So those are two.

I think that's interesting from a leverage standpoint, because oftentimes authors and podcasters are too obsessed, obsessed with how many viewers, how many listeners, how many books did I sell, whatever. And it's like, you know what? Handful of CEOs as an example that embrace your ideas, those are the ones that can bring you in to speak, advise, consult, license your work, et cetera, et cetera.

You know, there was a guy that did, um, he's passed, but he wrote a book on, uh, self-publishing of books. I'm not pointing, I think, or pointing his name. Anyway, he's, he's passed on, but his idea was you need a treasure map around your book. And the idea is you're not going to get rich on a book. Like only a few people actually get rich on books. But what you can get rich on is all the stuff around the book, to your point, speaking, consulting, you know, peer groups, selling product, whatever it is. Same thing's true, I think, on a podcast. If you look at the profile of podcast listeners, you know, how many people have 100,000 listeners? It is really thin air, but you know, a couple of thousand of exactly the right people that could buy your product, service, speech, consulting. That's what's interesting. I actually had one guy that said, I actually don't care if anybody listens to the podcast. If just a couple of the right people listen, I'm good. And so, yeah, I think you have to flip your thinking from volume, quality over quantity, uh, when you're thinking about—

and then I think that's that moving the focus away from volume. You know, one way to do that is to keep the constraint on the focus. 'Cause it's easier to say, let me broaden the conversation. Let me broaden the conversation, whatever. And you say, Okay, wait, if, if my, you know, target market is a billion-dollar CEO, then would this be of interest to that person or not? Yep. Yep. So let's go to the other side of the question, which is what are you seeing? 'Cause there's a lot of talk and a lot of organizations are trying to embrace this thought leadership thing from, from the standpoint of how do I stand out from the competition? How do I show the marketplace we're smart? How do we use this as a way to elevate the brand, attract new clients, et cetera? So what, what are you seeing in that space?

Yeah. So I mean, this is all part of a greater content strategy, you know, you really for search capability, cuz the way people find potential partners is they search. And so if you dominate the landscape for a particular set of ideas or set of words, you are gonna be found more, more readily. And that can back up into what should I be talking about from a thought leadership point of view to attract people to the organization. So I think most CEOs I bump into are a little hesitant to be the lightning rod for their company. It's funny, you know, they're a little more humble than that. Now, there are some that are out there and they're big and they're promoting and they want—

well, we'll stay, stay there for a minute. 'Cause I think there, there's, I think that's true. And I think it's also a misperception from the standpoint of I'm a CEO, I am, right? And I'm thinking, okay, you know what? Thought leadership would be a good thing for us to invest into whatever the objective is, elevate the brand, attract new clients, stand out from the competition, et cetera. The default is, oh, do I really want to be the guy or the gal representing all of it? I think those are two different issues. I think the first thing is to understand, is this a wise investment of the firm's resources to achieve the objective at hand? And then number two is the who. So in a lot of our work, we're trying to think about, well, how do you spread that, right? How do you look inside your organization and say, well, you know what, Jim's a really good speaker, but he's in accounting and so-and-so's a good researcher and This one's got some really good ideas, but maybe English isn't the first language. Like, how do you develop the capabilities in your organization? So it's a, it's an individual ca— it's an organizational capability, not an individual burden.

Yep. And I, I think that, uh, that's absolutely right. And if you look at like the big consulting firms, they're great at this. They've got 30 people, 100 people writing really high quality stuff.

Yeah.

But the idea that, is it worthwhile? Yes. Because if you're going to be found, you have to own the content space that causes people to find your firm. Like when they've got your problem, You should be the first one they find when they go search. That is how they find it. So thought leadership in your area so people find you absolutely important. I think delegating it out and having people do it is interesting. Funny enough, I think there is a, a balance of should it be an organizational capability or is it particularly when you're a little smaller, is it interesting to put a name, face, personality to it so they're attracted a bit to the personality as well? So I think when you're a little smaller, having a personality element in the content strategy makes more sense. When you get bigger, you know, really big, it should be, it should be distributed competency.

Yeah, no, I, I, I think that's right. I, I think, I think that's true. And it, it depends, right? It's not applicable across every industry. This works really well. High tech. Yep. Professional services, financial services, et cetera. If I was selling, you know, Wheat by the bushel, not so much probably, right?

Well, but I've seen people do it in like irrigation for crops. They had some really cool technology in crop irrigation and they became a thought leader in irrigation. Like, I wouldn't be real excited about that, but for them it was awesome. And so same thing for their clients. They really wanted to learn more and be better and it gave crop yields. So they were the irrigation guys, you know, that's what they did.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, 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. Forward slash podcast. Well, I think, I think the other thing to think about is it's also a great way to develop rapport and relationships. So you've got a great podcast, right? You're talking about crime like I am. I would imagine an outcome of the podcast is not just people listening to you that you want to listen, but some of the people you have on and guests become friends, colleagues, clients, referral sources, et cetera, et cetera. And that is in service of the development of some thought leadership together.

Well, and, and you know, if you think about marketing as sort of softening the ground before you build the actual relationship, the number of people I've, we've brought onto other like conversations or workshops or what, and they go, oh, I love your podcast. I listen to it all the time. Or I've read your book and I give it to my whole executive team. You're like, I need to do business with this person, right? If they like my content that much, I should be working with them somehow. So I love when that starts to happen that I have never talked to this human being and yet I'm already in relationship with them because of the book.

Because yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon when, you know, you're having a conversation with someone, there's sort of two early conversations with someone that might be a client. First one is sort of traditional. You've gotta sort of, there's an educational phase. You gotta teach them what you do and how you do it and why you're a better choice and I'm, I'm not saying it's a sales conversation, but there's a change of information that needs to go on. And it, it's a bit tedious. It's, it's, it's not all that exciting and it's not all that fun, et cetera. It's what we do, right? Not the best way. The other way is when someone comes to you and says, hey Jim, you know what? Wow. I'm a big fan. I've read your book. I've been listening to your podcast for 2 years, and now I want to become part of the community. You're like, bang. Okay, we're starting on third base here.

Yeah, absolutely. It's wonderful.

And when they, it feels like they already have a relationship with you cuz they do through your ideas, even though you may never have spoken to them.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is part of why I love like the audiobook. You listen to me talk for 5 hours and then you meet me, you feel like you know me because like I've had this guy's word voice in my ears for hours of driving or whatever. Same thing with the podcast. You know, it different than just reading the book. You actually get a sense for the individual and like, okay, they're smart or they're quick or they're whatever. That makes me want to work with them. And that's part of becoming—

I think the other piece is they kind of get your ideas, your style, whatever. And if they didn't enjoy it, if they didn't like it, if they didn't appreciate it, they wouldn't be there. So there is a self-selection piece because not everybody's for everybody. Right. And that's okay. Like if they don't agree with your— hey, I don't think peer groups are a good idea. Okay. Well then what are you calling me for?

Yeah.

Right. Like, but that's valuable too. Right. As, as a. Deselect.

You know, I have a friend who's in insurance. He says the best answer you can give me is a yes. The second best answer is a quick no.

Yeah.

So I'm all over the quick no. Like, I am not for you and you are not for me. Done.

Goodbye. Exactly. Exactly.

And there's nothing wrong with that. There's like 7 point something billion people that I'm not the right guy for.

Right?

So, and that's okay.

That's okay. Exactly.

I think also it's some, some, you know, when you get the podcast, do some CEOs do hesitate? Should I be the, the voice?

Yeah.

Do I have a team that's the voice? I see like Ram— I listen to Ramsey sometimes and he has a team of people that are personalities that he's developed over time. But in the beginning it was just him, you know, or years probably.

Right. It is also an opportunity to retrain and attract talent, right? So I've seen organizations where they never realize that so-and-so maybe does improv on the weekends or has a knack for the stage or, and it's like, wow. But we only saw you as an analyst or a researcher, whatever that role is. And now we're giving you a platform to be better at what we want you to do on the job and get more intrinsic satisfaction from the fact that there's this other capability that you've got.

Yeah, I love that.

I love that.

It sounds like everybody should run a talent show and anybody who's decent, you go, how'd you like to join the podcast?

Exactly. Well, it is shocking. I think in my line of work, how many folks had some sort of theater background, whether in high school, college, or whatever, or improv or standup or something. Right.

And then, you know, I was a drama kid.

Drama kid. Right, right, right. I'm not going to ask you to do like sing La Cage or anything, but, uh, um, but there's something about that, right? Like, you know, that the stage presence, the communication skills, the ability to connect with people that doesn't leave someone. You might have to say, okay, now I'm, Now I'm adulting, right? That stage that become the next, you know, whatever. But how do I use some of those capabilities? And that's fun when you find, you know, when you add those dimensions to the role that you have.

Yeah.

Any other things that you're seeing in the marketplace relative to creation, consumption, discussions around thought? Like, are you doing a lot of discussions in the peer-to-peer groups around books and ideas that people are sharing or?

Right now there's a huge thread of conversation around AI and where do, what are the use cases for AI? Here's just the funniest thing I've observed. People are using AI to write articles and content, content for their, their website. Now hopefully a human looks at it before you post it, but just think about the loop though. This is what's just wild. You know, a machine is writing content so other search engine machines can find the content and hand it to the human. I'm like, whoa, we're a little meta here at this point of machines talking to machines, but Um, there are so many, that is a big, big theme of how do I, how do I keep up with the information availability and, and, uh, how does my organization keep up with the information capability? And I'd actually say there's such a wash of content available. Like, how do I sort through what's really important? And before you'd say, we're all on the same basis. There's a billion pieces of information. We can never read it all. We get what we get. Now you go, Well, with AI, maybe I could access those billion pieces and figure out what's important, and I need to do it before my competitor does it or they're gonna gain competitive advantage on me. So the ability of AI to extract key information from these— Yeah. Scads and scads of information that's available to us has become a really interesting leverage point 'cause they're afraid their competitor figures it out before they do. So that's become very important. And it's a content question.

It really is. Yeah. It's a content question. What I think You know, everyone's, I don't wanna say struggling with, but figuring out how to, right? There was the, the first group of Luddites that said, oh, it'll never work. I'm like, okay, great. You go make your buggy whips and we'll see how that works out. Whatever. And then I think we're at the, a point now where am I using AI for input or is it a shortcut for output? Right? So the output stuff, I mean, how many articles have you read on LinkedIn or something and go, that's just crap. Like that, that, like there's nothing to that.

That's just, I maintain I can tell when it's written by AI nowadays. Exactly. It's just, it's very stilted.

But, and maybe there's a place for that. I look at that as the equivalent of like the airline magazine level of content, right? Or the magazine in the doctor's office that's 7 years old that you pick up because there's nothing else to do, right?

Oh, come on. I was a big fan of Highlights when I was a kid.

Come on.

Newsweek.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think so the, the output stuff, you gotta be careful when it's direct to output, the AI, because people are smarter than that, right? But I think those that are doing it well and creatively and, and are creating value, it's just another input. You've got the world's greatest research assistant at your fingertips that you probably couldn't afford before. And now what I care about is, okay, Jim, you're an expert on CEOs and high-growth companies, so you got some input from AI, great. Whether I care how that's how you got it or not, what is the insight that you are adding to that?

Yeah.

And what are you bringing to the conversation? Because I respect you and your thoughts. And I love that you're getting input from a broader array, a, a, a broader place than you physically cognitively could have in the past. Yep. Yeah.

I mean, I think when you're editing stuff that comes outta AI, you, if you're not adding content that it didn't find, then you're not at, you know, that's a problem. You really should go, okay, that was a good start. We missed this whole theme. We missed this thread. We gotta add this. This isn't quite right. And then you've actually had a starting place and I turned it into something interesting at that point.

Or it's content marketing, right? If you go to AI and say, oh, give, you know, create an ad that gives me 3 reasons why new moms should, uh, buy this diaper rash cream. Okay, fine, great, cool. I can get rid of some more copy editors if I had an ad agency, that's fine. Right? And if I was a copy editor in an ad agency not adding value, I'd really be worried about my livelihood, rightfully so.

Well, if you can't write better copy than an AI system, then you got a problem on your hands. So, I mean, because like I said, I've read, I had a marketing person that was using it a lot. Yeah. And I go, look, you can't, you can't just give me AI output. This is not acceptable. I mean, I can tell when I read it, so go work on it and then come back and talk to me. So, exactly.

Any other, uh, thoughts, words of wisdom?

Um, you know, I think one of the things that we forget, and this is not content that you can get reading, it's, it's travel. Travel is so mind-expanding for both people that work for you and CIs, CEOs. That you've gotta get your butt off the sofa and go travel. And I think we got shut down a little bit with COVID and whatnot, but you gotta get out there and go travel because there are so many different ways problems are solved and you're never gonna read about 'em. You gotta go see 'em and experience 'em. So I'm a huge travel fan as a way to expand your brain and expand your thinking. Yeah. And frankly go, hmm, maybe we don't have all the answers in Ohio. You know what I mean? Maybe somebody else has got some answers we ought to be thinking about. So, Huge fan of travel as a way to improve your inputs as a CEO or any leader to just make you better, make you humble, make you broadened.

So yeah. Yeah. I love that. Well, thank you, Jim. This has been great. I appreciate your time and I appreciate your, your ideas. Thank you.

Awesome, Peter. Thanks, buddy.

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