Peter Winick warns thought leaders about two risks: relying on a single revenue stream like speaking, and depending on a handful of clients. Diversifying your offerings and client base protects your practice from collapse when one income source dries up.
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here's the thought that I'd like to share with you today, and it's this: in my work with lots of different authors and speakers and academics and thought leaders and consultants from around the world, I noticed that there's often a lack of diversity. And I'm not talking about traditional sort of DEI diversity, but what I'm talking about is from the business perspective. There's a lack of diversity in A, the products, offerings, and solutions. They're, they're very heavily weighted into one modality. Maybe it's keynote speaking, maybe it's advising, whatever the case may be. And then the other risk factor or thing that I see that's, that's of concern is there's a lack of diversity in the client base. So really 2 different issues here that I would ask you to think about as it relates to your thought leadership practice or business. And that is, you know, where the revenue is coming from, where the client's coming from, both from a service offering and product perspective. Is 60, 70, 80% of your business coming from doing X? Well, that's a problem, right? Is 30, 40, 50% of your business coming from serving client Y? That's definitely a problem. And once you recognize that either of those things might be risk factors, problems, concerns, call it what you will, what are you going to do about it, right? So on the product and offering side, there are lots and lots of different derivatives and variations and modalities that you can move your work into, but each has its own sort of rules and cadence and nuances that you need to understand. On the client side, often that's a sales, marketing, distribution issue. If you're heavily concentrated and focused on one client or 2 or 3 clients or whatever, a handful of clients, and don't have that diversity, it's a risk, and that's probably gonna be more indicative of a sales and marketing issue. Anyway, we'd love to hear your thoughts about your lack of diversity or how you have diversified your thought leadership business or practice. Thank you so much.
