Helping Thought Leaders. Dropping Bombs (Ep 217) | Peter Winick

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Dropping knowledge from the people who have it to the people who need it— The real problem? Brad Lee bombs is dropping. Bombs drop like apples.

What it is, Brad Lee back again with another episode of Dropin' Bombs today in the studio folks. I have an intellect for you. Peter Winick, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Brad.

Man, it's my pleasure. And folks, if you guys haven't heard of Peter Winick, it's usually because he's behind the people that you have heard of. He's the, he's the guy that provides deep expertise for people with deep expertise. He's got a company called Thought Leadership Leverage. I don't know if that's Inc. or whatnot, but Thought Leadership Leverage would do. What he does is ultimately show business owners, subject matter experts, all kinds of people how to use thought leadership, which is, you know, intellectual property, know-how, knowledge, how to use it to, A, drive more business, drive more revenue, make more impact, etc. Would that be fair?

That would be more than fair. So how do you, how do you use it, you know, from one end of the spectrum to differentiate yourself or your organization, to build your brand,, and then it sort of splits there from the standpoint of are you monetizing that content directly, I'm selling a program, or you're monetizing your content indirectly, meaning I'm using the content to get you, to attract you as a client, and then I have other services, offerings, whatever, that I'm selling. But, you know, content's where it, content to me is the great equalizer, right? So most entrepreneurs can't go head to toe from a financial perspective, from a brand perspective, from a resource perspective with a big entity, But, you know, many of them are as smart or smarter than them. And if you could put the spotlight effectively on your content and thought leadership, you can, you can, uh, you can compete quite effectively there.

Yeah, you know, I do it accidentally when I get online.

Yep.

And I say like my 4 ingredients for training. I've had literally people call me and buy a training system because of that quote unquote thought leadership, right? When in reality I think I struggle with the, with the word leadership because it's to me common sense. And I, I would, I, I think I devalue sometimes the knowledge because I think everyone should know it even if they don't.

Well, it's, it's, it's the curse of expertise from the standpoint of things that you take for granted in your business because you're around it every day. Most people aren't coming to a place that that's creating killer content every day that has, you know, 4 or 5 subject matter experts coming in and out that have written a book, you live in a weird place, right? So, but to you that's normal, right? To the rest of the world, that's really interesting. So I think people do that all the time, no matter what your domain area is, right? You've got more expertise and you undervalue that expertise because you're so, you know, you're so immersed in it that you don't realize like, wait, I have this really interesting, unique perspective that most don't.

And it's abundant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And who else could benefit from some of this? I mean, how many people come here, for example, for a day and they're like, wow, I learned more about, you know, how you put content together in video or what. And you're like, it's Tuesday, dude, like, so what, you know?

Yeah, well, again, I rev share with customers, right? So I want to be the guy that, that shows them how to make more than they would have without me.

Sure.

Which I do a lot, but in some cases I don't because A, they don't listen. B, you know, their targets are unidentified, their message, or as you call it, a platform, is unidentified. But they're an expert, they're a thought leader technically. But if you take me as an example, like, I teach people sales, right? Closing, persuasion. I can also teach people how to like change their whole entire life, relationship, everything else. That's more like a life coach, like a success coach.

Yeah.

Now when someone says, how do I qualify myself to do that? Well, number one, what you just pointed out, dude. I've, I've sat and drank and partied and had fun and shot the shit and ate dinner and lunch with, with like the best thought leaders on earth, and I ask a lot of questions when I'm doing that, and I hear everything. So it's— and not only that, I've read and I've learned myself the hard way in a lot of cases, to where if someone said, Brad, are you a sales trainer? I don't want to say yes. Why? Because I'm more than a sales trainer, even though sales and closing and persuasion is something that I can and do teach people, and I think it's an ingredient everyone needs. Would I be not doing myself justice by entering the market if I wanted to be a sales trainer?

So at the risk of sounding like a consultant, it depends, right? So you wear many hats.

You're—

there's Brad Lee. We could create a brand around killer sales training that doesn't have to have your name on it per se, right? It could be the killer sales training something, something, something.

Yeah.

You also wear the hat of a CEO. You also wear the hat of an entrepreneur. You also wear the hat of, you know, doing lots of other things, being a speaker, right? So it depends on the hat that you're wearing and where you're doing it. So one of the things that folks struggle with early on is my name is my brand, and that's really, really good until it's really, really bad because you don't scale, right? So how do you create a platform? I use the term platform different than you use it from the perspective of technology. I'm talking about sort of the identification, the representation of your brand, right?

What's your expertise?

Yeah, what's your expertise, right?

So Tony Robbins' platform would be what? I think, uh, motivational.

Yeah, well, no, motivational is a description. His platform is how to get the best out of, out of your personal life, or how to get the— how to make the most out of the life that you've been given. Something, something along those lines.

Name another one. So, uh, who else would be that?

Marcus Buckingham is the strengths guy. Right? So his— all of his books are about strengths and StrengthsFinder and the impact of having people in your organization engaged in the things that are aligned with their strengths and how that drives your business. And everything he does— speaking, research, books, products, services— I mean, he sold a company to ADP based on that methodology and that framework, right? So the people that do it really, really well are really, really focused, right, about one thing. Um, and I think for a lot of people early on, it's struggle. You know, Patricia Fripp is great. She's fantastic at communications and executive presence. Right? And, and you sort of know when you're talking to someone, you should talk to Patricia. Well, why, right? You're hearing things, you're seeing things, you're like, she's the one, right?

Or yeah, but she told me, she said if I would have come in to the meeting the way I normally dress, she wouldn't have done business with you, right?

I saw that episode.

That's right. Again, dude, that's like, really? Like, is she the expert now?

Different, different.

No, she's like used to be the expert. Like, like she needs to update her new thoughts because there's internet billionaires, Bitcoin billionaires, all kinds of kids with, with that are executives now where they are going in with torn jeans in a hoodie.

Why?

Because Zuckerberg made it cool.

But it's, but it, but it's content. Well, Zuckerberg made it cool, but I'm not Zuckerberg and you're not Zuckerberg.

Yeah, dude. So, but, but again, if you're trying to get into IBM, you're not going to walk in with torn jeans.

That's my That's not my point. So my point is if your audience are cool, hip entrepreneurs that are trying, you know, the GaryVee thing, then you could wear a hoodie, right? You could roll like that. If you're trying to stroll into a, you know, I live in New York, so we do a lot of business with banks.

Well, GaryVee, for example, he does business with a lot of big companies. He always wears t-shirts.

Yeah, but Gary is the conduit. So he has an agency, and part of the claim of the agency is I know this generation better than anybody. I know 25 to 35-year-old, young men better than anybody. I look like him, he's a little bit older than that, I look like him, I act like him, I'm cool, and PepsiCo doesn't know what the hell they're doing, so they're looking for him as that crossover. So I think part of your brand has to be who you're working with and how are you working with them, and is it an aspirational piece? So some of it is geography too. So I think going back to the Patricia piece, she's block and tackle, more conservative, more traditional companies. That's cool. You know, I don't know that Facebook would hire her, and I don't know that she would work well at Facebook, and that's okay. You can't be all things to all people. You know, she might do better with a more traditional company.

We got a bomb. I've been forgetting the bomb.

Yeah, we've been forgetting the bomb, man.

Well, that's it. Well, what you just said was key. You can't be all things to all people, and if you try to be, you're going to be nothing to no one.

Exactly, exactly. So I would rather— I mean, our process, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, is getting— and people are afraid to do this, people don't have the courage to do this— let me spend some time and develop my client avatars. So who are the types of people, psychographic, demographic, whatever, that I can serve better than anybody? And I want to serve them, and I know I have the impact for them. Conversely, you've just said, I don't want to deal with these people, and that's cool. So for example, I launched my podcast, uh, the beginning of last year, so 20 months ago. We've done, I think, 160 episodes. And my vision, which—

how many?

160, something like that. We've had some cool people. We've had Dan Pink on. I've had Stephen M. R. Covey.

Daniel Pink. Yep.

Stephen M. R. Covey. I've had Chip Conley. I've had some great, great, great, great folks on. My vision, however, has always been if people were listening into it, if we were doing it at a Starbucks or something, to 99.5% of the universe, they would walk by and go, that's the most boring shit I ever heard in my life. And people said to me, well, why do you only want to go after the 0.5%? Because that's probably even too big. I know who my business is. I know who I work with. I know who we resonate with. And that's all I care I don't want people reaching out to me that have no money, that I can't serve, that are whatever. So I think part of knowing who you are helps you figure out who you can't work with. So you gotta figure out who are those avatars that you can help. Then you gotta say, well, what are the pain points they have? What are the things that are keeping them up at night that you are uniquely qualified to solve? And you've got a better mousetrap. Better mousetrap means it's gotta be quicker, cheaper, faster, better than what they're doing. And by definition, it has to be a problem. Don't be a, Solution, you know, don't be a problem, uh, that doesn't need to be solved. That's an irritant. What is something, one of the top 3 things that are keeping these people up at night, that once you get them in the palm of your hand, you're going to close them?

How do you find what those are?

I think some of it, uh, is experimentation, some of it is history, some of it is research, some of it is hypothesis, right? Like, the world doesn't need another sales trainer, period. The world might need another sales trainer to teach How to build relationships. Under 30s, under 30s, how to sell cars better than other folks, right? They might need something, how do you sell in an environment where you're not dealing face-to-face that used to be face-to-face? They might need to teach people how do you sell solutions versus products, right? So you have to get really narrow and specific.

Yeah. I'm thinking up a new business. I shouldn't even mention it here, but it's not a new—

I won't tell anyone. Nobody's listening.

It's really not a new business. It's more of the same, but— I should say a new subject, right? Because again, I mean, like, colleges and education nowadays, it's not as popular as it used to be. So there's a lot of kids that aren't going to college because everyone keeps telling them they don't need to, when I disagree, they should go to college. But I think it's for the relationships.

Yep.

And, and a little bit of the education. I mean, it's nice to know things, but Not if they're never going to use those things. So why isn't there a preparatory academy for, you know, success, like billionaire prep or something? Billionaire Prep Academy.

I think some of that ties to personalities, right? So someone like you, someone like me, we're lifelong learners, right? Like, I'm the biggest dork that's reading 2 or 3 books. I can't get enough of stuff. Why? I'm just fascinated with the world. I'm trying to take the pieces of it that I can apply to me. And I can apply to my business and do something with. There are other people that the day they graduated, whatever X was, high school, college, grad school, whatever, that was it, right? They stopped learning and they know all they need to know. You know, the recent study I read is by the time an undergrad graduates today, 60% of what they've learned in the 4 years they're there is no longer relevant. So if you don't learn how to learn, right, you're done. Like, would you want to, you know, if you had a headache and somebody said, hey, Brad Godfrey, you got a brain tumor, you got to go to this doc, he's a brain doc, um, he graduated in 1978, hasn't learned a damn thing since. How happy are you going to be about that?

Not very.

Yeah, but how do most people treat their careers, their professions, their life? I'm all right, I got it, it's good.

Yeah, I think we're kind of programmed to be like that, some. So, so all the bigwigs and the academics coming out of Yale, Wharton, Dartmouth, the London School of Business, they come to you and say, hey, I want to create a better or, or, or even the invention of a platform?

I would say the invention. So the academics that we deal with are incredibly elite. So they're at places that never would have taken me and certainly would have taken you into school, right? Like we wouldn't have gotten there. These are really, really smart people. And typically what's happened is they're acknowledged in their field, which might be fairly small. It might be some level of popularity, but then there's some event, event that happens., and the event could be a TED Talk, the event could be they go to Davos and meet some cool world leaders, it could be a media appearance, a book, and all of a sudden they're flooded with demand, with attention, with all this sort of stuff, and they don't have a system or process in place because what they've got is they're academics, they teach, and they research. They usually do a little bit of speaking, a little bit of consulting, a little bit of advising, but you're ultimately dollars for time. And now the demand comes in, so what do you do? You increase the price, that's cool. Board of directors will pay you 50 grand to roll in for a day and tell you about your strategy, innovation or creativity, whatever, but they're, but they're still missing the forest for the trees. How do you codify what they've got, which they've spent 20, 30 years putting together, and, and make it more, uh, approachable? Put it in a format that can be digested by more people more often and not be limited to them being in the room with their content for dollars to change hands.

So if I'm a business owner listening to this and I'm thinking, hey, I like what I'm hearing, how do I create my knowledge into something that generates more leads, more traffic? How would you help people do that?

So if you're a business owner or a business leader today and you're not reevaluating your marketing budget and putting 20, 30, 50%, maybe even more into thought leadership, you're going to lose, right? You might not lose today, but you're going to lose market share. Your rate of growth is going to go down. You're— we're all— listen, we're all being commoditized, right? The— we're living in an age now for the first time in history where the advantage is to the buyer, right? So if you were gonna buy a new car tomorrow, Brad, you're gonna go online and you're gonna become an expert in whatever that car is, right? Versus 10 years ago, you'd walk into the dealer and they've got you, man, they've got you. You're gonna go in there now and know the inventory, know the cost, know the resale value, and say, dude, I'm gonna pay you X dollars for that blue BMW over there. Would you like it? And you probably don't even need to go into the showroom. You can go online and put out that request.

Yeah, they're doing it now.

Right, that's all they're doing. So I think every business is being commoditized and the cheapest, most effective, most efficient way to decommoditize or slow down the rate of commoditization is the integration of thought leadership into whatever you've got. Whether you're a dentist, whether you're an advisor, a consultant, an accountant, a lawyer, whatever it is, how do you start reallocating your marketing dollars away from things that don't work or used to work or aren't working as well into thought leadership and into creating really good thought leadership that builds your brand, differentiates you, attracts net new clients into the system. And we were talking about it earlier, everybody's so focused on attracting that net new clients, and it's harder and harder and harder to do that because we're all competing through the same noise, the same— you can go to Google, I can go to Google, right? Oh, okay, great. So I can outbid you on an ad, you can outbid me on an ad. Eventually it's just not profitable to be in that space, and profitable for Google because they're taking both of our money. But only one of us could win.

Thought leadership. Give me your definition.

Yeah, so I get asked this a lot. So my definition is there's two words in thought leadership, right? So the first is thought, which, which represents thoughtfulness. So you've got to be adding to a conversation. It doesn't need to be blank slate, but the conversation already exists, whether that's on resilience, whether that's innovation, whether that's creative, whatever the subject matter is, there's a conversation happening. And you're coming in and you're adding to the conversation. You're standing on the shoulders of giants and you have something thoughtful to say, right? Not regurgitating, not reciting someone else. You're adding to the conversation and elevating the entire field that, that, that you've committed to. The other piece is leadership, right? And, and by leadership means you're— you, you see a place where it can go that others don't. You see a place to apply it that others don't. You've done research that's groundbreaking. You've got a way to apply that thoughtfulness and thought leadership into an area that's getting results that others haven't. Otherwise it's followership, right? The antithesis of thought leadership is, you know, thoughtless followership. There's plenty of that out there. The other piece of the definition is don't call yourself a guru and don't call yourself a thought leader. It's a title or it's a sign of respect for others to say, you know, in the space of online learning, Brad's a thought leader. If you go running around calling yourself a guru or a thought leader, kind of not cool.

Yeah, it makes you look foolish. Yes, I do believe I am somewhat of a thought leader, but, but only because there's a lot of businesses out there, including the big ones, that are not necessarily breaking any records. So in other words, I'll go to some top companies that you would think would have ideal training programs, and in reality they, they have exposure programs, meaning they're not— there's no repetition assigned, there's no— there's very little accountability. Well, you need those things to teach people. So, so, and it's proven. So how come these huge companies that are spending huge dollars, quote unquote, training, when you peel back the curtain, they're not even training, they're just exposing?

Well, I would say there's a couple pieces there.

Now, did I— is that thought leadership? Because that's my— that's, that's what I'm adding to the conversation.

I'm saying, guys, —That's a perspective if we had some research behind it, and so that is a kernel that could be evolved into some thought leadership, right? So for example, most professional services firms today are following the mantra of what software firms have done for a long time, which is do we buy it or do we build it, right? So the Microsoft of 30 years ago was building stuff that no one could build. Why? Because they had these great minds and these great resources and great whatever. Now it's an amazing company, but it's, I don't know, a $100 billion fat bloated, bureaucratic whatever that is probably not the center of entrepreneurship it was 30 years ago, but they got cash, man, right? So if you're doing something cool with software, they can buy you, and they can buy you at a big premium. That's cool. Professional services firms, consultancies, the Deloits of the world, the Accentures of the world, the Ernst Youngs of the world, they used to invest more time and energy into the development of internal thought leadership. They've become more billable hour focused, more client billable. Centric. So they'll see somebody out there doing some really, really cool stuff in a space that they know their clients could use, and they'll just go out there and buy it, right? Because I either have cash or I have the resources to invest in the development of thought leadership. It is a prime time right now to be, be developing thought leadership for the specific purpose of being acquired by a large professional services firm, if you understand their history, how they're trying to be embedded. And what I would add to that is consulting firms are selling analog dollars, right? I'm selling a, a body doing some stuff at some multiple. If I'm lucky, it drops 20% to the bottom line. A lot of the consulting firms are trying to migrate as many of those analog dollars into digital dollars, right? How do they buy tool-based companies, assessment-based tools? Those things drop 70, 80 points to the bottom line. It's just a better— not every dollar is created equally.

Bomb. Yeah, well, I happen to agree that's a bomb, but I don't know if you listen, but I decide when they're bombs. But that was one. You nailed that one because that is a bomb. So if I'm a plumber out there in the world, right, and I'm listening to this, you got me interested. I mean, other than calling you, which they're welcome to do, we'll give them the information at the end. But other than calling you, how would I as a plumber start to begin to create and, and use thought leadership?

So, so I'm working with a couple of folks in the home repair space, heating, ventilating, air conditioning, home repair, whatever. So for the plumber, I'd say, well, where's the pain, right? So the pain could be for the plumber, as it is in many of the home trades today, in the talent acquisition side, right? There aren't enough plumber young people coming into the trade because they want to go to college and they want to do all these other things. So it could be, am I using that application of thought leadership to attract people to come and work for me because I can show them a career path? That's a whole different piece than am I going after the homeowner Talking about a different way to use plumbing services.

I'm trying to get everyone to consider me the best plumber in town. So, so I, I'm used more than everybody else.

So best plumber again, let's go with the talent piece as one thread could be one of the reasons I'm the best plumber is my people are great. I got better people than anybody you've got. They want to be here. They have a career. They're fully trained. They're certified in this. They're whatever. The customer service is awesome. They know everything there is to know about plumbing. Right? And I can back that up with data and facts. I've got to, I've got to actually back that up by hiring the best talent. Um, you know, in terms of differentiating against the other plumbers in the marketplace, that's a marketing twist. I think there's some thought leadership that can go into that where— and I don't know much about the plumbing business— is there— are there more things that people can do from a preventive nature than wait till the toilet jams up? Do we need to start training people that, you know, every 18 months, you know, just like, you know, every, every year, like you get your teeth cleaned, you should have somebody come in and we sell you a contract to make sure your plumbing works and we prevent a bad thing to happen.

I don't know. So, so what I'm hearing with the word thought leadership, I'm trying to spin it into marketing, which is why if I'm a plumber listening to this, I'm thinking, dude, how can I write a blog or an article or put out some sort of podcast or some, some intel and some, some good information Let's just say knowledge. How do I put out some knowledge, some knowledge that a lot of people wouldn't know, but if they saw it and they started recognizing that I'm the plumber that's telling all these interesting techniques.

So maybe for the example, and again, I don't know a hell of a lot about the plumbing business other than, you know, I use my toilet and it tends to work right.

But is that what it's about?

But it could be, so let's say the knowledge or thought leadership could be, hey, the average toilet in an average home in my community that I serve is 20 years old, 25 years old, I don't know, whatever, it's old. And there's new technology toilets out there cost X that use half the water. So now it's about, I want you to make an investment in something you're not thinking about that isn't broken, but here's the ROI on that. Within 2 years of replacing toilet X with toilet Y, you know, you're an environmentalist, so your water usage is gonna go down. Your water bill's gonna go down. Your whatever it is. So it might be an angle of be, you know, you're driving a Tesla, you're driving a Prius, you wanna be pro-environment, but you're wasting all this water at home. That doesn't align with who you are and who your values are. Let me make sure your home aligns with the values that you represent yourself.

Yeah, so that's thought leadership.

Yeah, maybe I partner with the Tesla dealer, and every time you, you roll out with a Tesla or Prius, you get a free, uh, you know, $20 off a visit or something like that.

Yeah, because again, to me, that would drive business back to my, back to my company, right? If I read an article that said, hey, new toilets are better for this reason and that reason, I'm like, hmm, that's interesting, I didn't even think of that. That's thought leadership that would also drive back to your biz.

Yeah, I mean, think about what's going on now with the straws, right? So— With the what? Straws, right? So plastic straws are like the Antichrist in California and other places, right? So they're passing laws to change the plastic straw to the paper straws. Paper straws suck. Paper straws are awful.

Yeah, I won't use them.

They're god-awful. But let's go back to the straw. Like, the greatest marketing person in the world invented this thing called the straw. Do you ever use a straw at home? Nobody uses them at home. You go to a bar, everywhere you go to a restaurant, they put a straw in. Guess I gotta use the damn straw, like, right? Guess I gotta, like, so how many of those am I buying a year? It's a whole industry. And now the, you know, it's not good for the environment, so it says something about who you are if you're a restaurant still serving plastic straws in certain community, like you don't care. But who started the straw thing? I wanna meet that guy, 'cause that guy's brilliant. That's like better than the guy that sold the first fax machine.

No, I'm talking about who started the big straw controversy. There was a turtle with a straw in its nose. And now there's straws everywhere. I haven't seen a straw on the beach ever. Right. Have you? No. I've been to a lot of beaches. I've never seen straws all over the beach littering the beach. It's who started this shit.

I would say some—

I'll bet you the paper straw company.

No, I don't know if it was actually the paper straw company or it was the environmentalists saying symbolically, let's attack the straw. And by the way, there's a lot of data to say straws do bad things, you know, like what? I don't know, that turtle that got one stuck up its nose probably had a crappy day. I don't know. Clogs up the environment. I don't know. There's data that says they do bad things. Yeah.

So we could go either. Well, as far as data goes, who's verifying the data? That's what I always want to know. Probably the turtles. Like, who— like, is Trump doing good or bad? Depends who you ask. Exactly. But we have data that shit says he's doing great. We have data that says he's doing terrible.

Well, data is meant to be manipulated, right? Data— like, I'm going to—

That's my point.

We're going to both use the same data to to further validate our existing perspective. But we're not going to win an argument. Have you ever seen a—

I just want to know who's validating the data. Yeah, well, I don't know, because dude, this says we have data that shows straws are fucking up the world, right? Where's the data and who made it? I've never had a problem with a straw. I don't even understand the straw thing. It's just one day. Are you willing to give them up? What? Hell no.

To the straw? No, no, no.

I don't care because I drink out of the cup. 9 times out of 10. But if I'm gonna have a straw, it better be plastic or I don't want it. Like, I will not touch a paper straw.

People are walking around with their own personal metal straws. This is ridiculous. That is stupid. I was at a restaurant a couple weeks ago, a guy, I'm like, he's taking out a pen. What? Like, he's got a little fancy case and it's this. I'm like, are you kidding me? You walk around with dirty straw on your jacket? Like, it's disgusting. Anyway, whatever.

Well, I don't know, that's not thought leadership. We're Dirty straws are not thought leadership. But what I'm wondering is who made up the straw game?

Follow the money, I don't know.

Is that a thought leadership thing?

I think there's a current of thought leadership that's representative of certain thinking, of being environmentally friendly, of—

Would the guy talking about the metal straw be a thought leader? Saying, hey, well, let's make them metal. No, that—

I mean, that could be opportunistic. Somebody's going, well, if they're not going to be plastic and paper sucks, what else could we do? Oh, let's give everyone—

but why the straw? Why not the cups? Why not the plates? Why not the jugs? Why not the bottles? Like, why the straw? I don't get the straw.

I think you were gonna—

we need a support group for former straw users. Well, that's where I'm going. And it's always California. It's always California. What's wrong with California?

Well, we only have an hour, Brad.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. All right, well, let me ask you a question. So using Lightspeed, let's use Lightspeed. If Lightspeed— and you're familiar with the platform? Yeah, very familiar. So it took me a minute to get you to see that there is a little bit of a difference between Lightspeed and everything else out there. Sure. How would we leverage thought leadership if I were to stop joking around and cussing and put on a suit again, because I used to have one. Just one? Yeah. So, so if I all of a sudden shaved and became Mr. High Level Yale— I chose my words wisely, you know, didn't say a lot that I do, which would be the smart thing to do— how would I leverage thought leadership to blow up my business?

Well, so let's go back to the avatars. Your primary avatar now is you're selling to people that are selling to others. That's one. Right, that's one. Okay, but let's go with that avatar. I would develop an avatar of who are the most important corporate buyers, and maybe, and I don't know, I might change my mind, but let's say it's the chief learning officer types at Fortune 1000 organizations. People that are spending, I mean, their job is to educate the entire population at Unilever, 400,000 people, at IBM, at like, That's what they do all day. They try to get them better at their jobs, not because they care about them learning philosophy or whatever, but what, what is it that I need to invest in my people to do their jobs better, to drive business outcomes? So I would be thinking about those as the client avatars and then the pain points that are in. We would have to find a couple of pain points. What are they struggling with? Well, my learning budget's consistently getting cut because the company wants to spend more money on marketing. Well, the CEO and the board is now requiring us to show impact and ROI studies more than we used to. Well, I'm not really sure how these millennials and Gen Zs and all that learn compared to how Gen X and boomers learned. Right. Those are some pain points. And then I would say, well, the solution to all those problems are use a system like Lightspeed to more effectively teach your population more things more often at a cheaper price. Right. And I would need to create the narrative and the storyline vis-à-vis thought leadership to tell that story and make sure that everything you did was about telling that story. So I'd shut down dropping bombs, and all you would be doing all the time is creating content that speaks to those people about those things. So there's events that you'd be going to that you don't even know exist today. Where are CLOs hanging out? I don't know. There's CLO conferences, there's learning events, there's, there's SIOPS, a conference, I think it's in Atlanta in a couple weeks. So we'd figure out where are these people that I need to influence, and they're not millions if by definition there's 1,000 Fortune 1,000s, my math ain't that good, but that's the number, and they each have one CLO, there's 1,000 people and maybe they each have 2, 3, 4, 5 underlings that I need to influence as well. My whole universe is about how do I impact those 5,000 people. Period. Period, full stop. And we might determine, you know what, Brad, you're not the guy. Maybe we need a guy that, and maybe you are, maybe you aren't.

Someone like you.

Maybe it's someone, it might not even be someone like me, it might be a former one of them. It might be a former CLO at whatever, Google or something like that, a big, big company. And we bring them over and have them validate, or we fund some research that those folks do, because who's going to believe you or me? We're trying to sell stuff, but from Gartner, right? Somebody from Gartner, somebody from a research institute. We can fund some research that say, yeah, microlearning is the new thing. We know this is true. We know people learn better in small doses doled out over time. We know that. But why are companies sending people to 5-day workshops? Ah, it doesn't make any sense, right? We know that most folks would prefer to learn in a pull method versus a push method. So push is I sit you down, I say, all right, Brad, we're going to teach you negotiation skills. And I open the fire hose and I trap you in a chair for 2 days and I teach you every possible scenario on negotiation skills. And 3 days later, you've forgotten 90% of it. Pull is tomorrow I need to negotiate, um, a big, uh, data breach security contract with a technology company that's global, that's dealing with regulatory and compliance issues. Uh-oh, really specific. Let me go online. Oh, there's 5 modules that talk just about that. Now I'm really interested. So we would have to design and create the thought leadership that addresses the avatar, addresses the pain point. And the answer to everything is, and you need more Lightspeed.

So ultimately, identify an avatar, identify their pain points, And then create a ton of content in every format.

Video, audio, graphics. We need to figure out where they're hanging out. I'm not convinced those people are hanging out on Pinterest, but I would want to do my research. They're probably on LinkedIn. They're probably on YouTube. They may be on Facebook. There's probably academia. Where are they hanging out? Where are they getting their information from? It's not People magazine. It's not Cosmo. There's journals that they're reading. There's events they're going to.

CLOs mainly. Yeah, but your, your, your, your approach would be, I'll hit that 1,000, period, which means I'll spend more. Yep. To get less, but the, but the less is more.

No, spend more to get more. So it's less numbers, but each of those 1,000 represent a training budget of a couple hundred million bucks.

Yeah, and you're just trying to get a piece of it.

Yeah, if, if I can get, you know, What's it worth to you to be installed at Citibank if all 400,000 employees were paying, you know, X dollars a month to Lightspeed?

Well, they usually pay for content. You know, the platform itself would be— that would be a good account because there's so many. Let's say, for example, Lightspeed's $2 a user. Yeah, but, but $800,000 a month just for the platform, right? Just for the system on top of it.

That's where the money is. Cable operator, and you want HBO, you want Showtime. Yeah, but that's where the money is.

Money's in both. $400,000 times, you know, $800 a year training budgets, because there's some big training budgets out there.

Training is about 2 to 3% of gross revenue at most companies.

Well, you know, MGM had a diversity class. Yep. Where they paid $900 a head, took 2 days, brought them all in one after another, took years to get them all through. Yep. But $900 a head, because I know the guy who— yep. Who got the contract, $900 a head.

Times how many employees?

So many you wouldn't even believe me.

10, 20, 40,000. Yeah. Crazy number. And then stupid amount. High turnover business. So that contract never ends. By the time you trained them all, there's 30% new because they've quit.

So who at that company that authorized that deal needs to get bitch slapped? Why did— why do you say that? Well, because nobody's trained. That's why you spent $900 a head, which is millions and millions of dollars. You spent years doing it and nobody's trained. Well, the question is—

so the question is, what was their desired outcome? They might not have cared if anyone's trained. That might have been done for optics or prophylactically because maybe they got sued because somebody did something bad relative to diversity inclusion.

But if you're going to spend that money, why not get it done? It— I would agree.

But you have to go backwards and say, how do you measure that? I now have a population that I spent $5 million on. That's more fluent in diversity and inclusion. I don't know. Does it mean you're hiring a more diverse audience? You're not treating people with disrespect? You're— I don't know what the metrics are, but the proper way to do it is to say, you know, the example that I always use is Jenny Craig is really easy. So here's a Jenny Craig commercial, shows a large person. Then it says some time passed and there's what's left of that large person. They're somewhat smaller. So it doesn't take a lot to deduce that Jenny Craig is in the business of making big people less big. What's your Jenny Craig, right? So for diversity inclusion, the Jenny Craig might be, I now think, believe, behave differently as it relates to diversity inclusion. I'm hiring people that don't look like me. I'm hiring people that grew up in different countries from me. I'm hiring people that have a whole different view of the world than I do, than I would have before. And unless you can figure out what it is and how to measure it, then that guy should probably be fired. If they're doing a job of that, which we don't know, Then maybe he should be promoted.

No. Okay. Disagree. Disagree. I'd fire him. Why? Because you just allowed millions of dollars to get spent and nobody learned anything.

Well, we don't know that nobody learned anything. Yeah, we do. Okay. How do you know?

Well, just use common sense. Number one, no one was tested.

Okay. So I don't know the— I don't know the intricacies of the program. If there's no testing and you're just like—

There was no testing. There was two days you sit in a room, you sign your name when you walk in, you listen to whoever's talking. For 2 days, 2 8-hour days.

So that sounds like a compliance BS thing to me. So they weren't caring. Somebody didn't care or didn't design a program where effective learning was the metric.

Well, there you go. That's the problem with most companies, which is, which is why I want to be the thought leader in that world. Yep. Now, again, dropping bombs, that's, that's different altogether. Like, this isn't for Lightspeed. This is just— I did it because a lot of experts were coming in and out and I'm like, shit, I might as well get a microphone. It's just Brad Lee dropping bombs with some guests. So I consider that a Brad Lee thing. Yeah, right, right. Not a licensing thing. But believe it or not, I get a lot of business from people listening to this podcast, as will you. There's going to be people that are going to DM you and say, Peter, I thought that— and again, they might be the ones that are like, oh man, they got no money. And then you might be surprised because I was. One time I brought a guy in here that had, I think, a $20,000 product. And I'm like, dude, I don't necessarily know you're going to sell any of those. Dude, he did like almost $1 million when I released the podcast. I'm thinking, damn, how many people had $20 grand listening to me? Yeah, but you know, it's, it's a popular podcast, but I would never get rid of it. But I do want to, you know, make more content focused on where— when those CLOs or those whoever's making those stupid decisions, I think— this is just my belief— I don't think they know what they're doing. Remember the old— remember the old, uh, unknown unknown?

I don't know what I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, so like, they don't know that they're— that they're not training. Like, that's how we train. No, it isn't. You know, that's how it's done. No, it isn't. Like, that's not how it's done.

So you come from the— nobody broke it down.

So, so name it, name a training expert in the world. I've never heard of one where like, oh, that person is an expert expert at training, not training specific things. There's a lot of expert trainers, but training as a, as a general topic, like, like I'm going to walk into your company and I'm academics that are, that are experts in how people learn.

I mean, there's, there's whole associations on that.

Would, would, would they have the same belief I do? They must if they're experts. No, I think they do.

I think the trick is, so let's, let's take sales because it's an easy example. If I'm gonna teach salespeople how to X, negotiate a better deal, the only metrics that's gonna matter is I'm gonna have some before metrics that say, okay, for 2 years prior to them doing the Brad intervention, their average deal generated X margin, and I wanna increase that margin. Then I'm gonna do some stuff, whatever that is, right? And I'm gonna measure them after. If it stayed the same, it's like being on a diet and keeping your weight the same. That's a failure, right? The margin has to go up. Right? If I'm going to teach— invest in teaching salespeople how to get through the gatekeeper and they're not setting more appointments, either the person or the system's a failure. If you put multiple people through it, then it's the system that's a failure if it's not doing it right. So you have to have the right metrics up front. I think a lot of times people deploy training on a wing and a prayer. I think I sort of kind of need— maybe this would help, right? As opposed to saying, no, I'm investing. I'm investing. Because you put people in a room for 2 days. I don't even care about the $900, but they paid for the program. There's probably another, depending on the level of employee, $400, $800, $900 in soft costs because they had to pay them their salaries to show up for those days. They had to give them a turkey sandwich, and they brought them in from out of town. They had to keep them overnight somewhere. So now it's a couple grand. Where's my ROI on that? Right? If I'm investing $2,000, where is it? I want to see it come back to me, right?

Well, that's why I say they should be fired, because, like, dude, there can't— there couldn't have been an ROI other than a box that was checked. Like, that's the ROI.

Well, the box could have been checked. Again, this goes back to was the box checked because the year before they paid out $50 million in a lawsuit because somebody didn't hire somebody that looked different from them. And now the measurement is we don't want that to happen again in 5 years. There could be something there that's not obvious because sometimes logic doesn't always apply.

Now, how did you get into this deal? You couldn't have been Peter Winick your whole life.

Well, technically, since the day I was born.

Yeah, but not the Peter Winick.

Not the Peter Winick. That came later. Yeah. So, I mean, the way I got to this was really two things that I thought were very different parts of me that I realized weren't. So one is I've always been entrepreneurial. I've always loved creating things and building things and figuring out how things work and how to make them better from a business standpoint. So that's the entrepreneur side. And then the other side of that is I was always just, just a, a content nerd, right? I always loved reading books. I always loved taking in magazines. I always loved, like, just sucking in information, but never really applied any of the business skills to that until about 15+ years ago. I was brought in to do a turnaround at a global communications consulting company.

Why you? Why did they pick you? Who picked you? And why?

A buddy of mine was the CEO. He knew I had the business chops and the business skills to do this sort of turnaround thing. He had to actually sell me on the deal 'cause I'm like, dude, I have no interest in, training's the most boring thing that happens. I don't know anything about, I tried to unsell him. He goes, no, I got a feeling you'd probably be really good at this 'cause you're creative and entrepreneurial and it's a 40-year-old company and it needs whatever. And we did a great turnaround. And I was able to learn at that point, like, holy crap, there's a whole business underneath this, this whole training business, this whole people development business. And it's changing really, really quickly. The technology is coming into play, the old things aren't working so much, etc. So I learned that, and then from there transitioned into, um, individual thought leadership in terms of working with world-renowned authors, thought leaders, speakers, etc., and helping them. Because what I saw is a combination of some macro factors— the publishing world falling apart and a bunch of other things— that if you're a true thought leader, if you've got some great stuff to put out in the world Now all of a sudden you gotta be an expert on social media, you gotta be an expert on learning, you gotta figure out the speaking business, you gotta figure out how to license, like there's all these other things that you need to figure out and my vision was, and I validated this by working with a couple of folks, build a moat around those awesome thought leaders and let them just build great stuff and do what they're great at. What they're great at might be stage work, it might be research, whatever, and have others figure out the business side of the house. How do you market, how do you sell, how do you find the right distribution partners, how do you make the business global? How do you grow it? And then it's that one-two punch of sort of protecting the thought leader. You know, you don't have your quarterback cleaning up the locker room, right? Yeah, but you, but you help them with all that.

Yeah. So, so like if I were to listen to this podcast of yours, Leveraging Thought Leadership with Peter Winick, as you should, what, what would I be listening to? How to, how to leverage thought leadership? Yeah.

So 80% of the guests line up exactly to my client avatars. Because I eat my own dog food. So 80% of the guests either are clients, could be clients, or should be clients. And we're talking about their journeys. What— oh, you just came out with a book. How do you decide to go with a traditional publisher versus self-publishing? What is the answer? Well, that's a different answer for everybody.

Yeah, but like, I got a book coming. Okay. Why? Cuz, dude, people will buy it, right? And not only that, I want to share everything I've learned So some 20-year-old kid can, or 50-year-old man can pick up the book, read it, and literally change their fucking life. Now, I chose the word fucking on purpose. Now, why is that? Now, this can't be shared to those corporate companies, right? Thank you.

So we've just devalued the purpose of the book.

I can, I can, we can edit that. I can bleep it out.

However, why don't we change that to a wonderful life in all— try it again and say it again. I want everyone to have a wonderful—

Yeah, I want everyone to have a wonderful life.

Take 2. Good. We'll edit that in.

So, so realistically, I'm coming out with this book now. In my mind, I'm no expert. I'm going to self-publish. Why? Well, because I don't need anyone to publish me, do I? What do they do? Just take my money?

Well, it's a bigger question than that. In your case, because I know you, that's probably the right answer because you have a followership. You have a brand, you have all those things, and a publisher's probably not gonna do all that much for you in terms of a big New York publisher. So— Well, what do they do for people? Well, it's not a one-size-fits-all. So there are some people, which it's less and less and less and less, where the big New York publishers make sense, right? Most people, it's either a hybrid model. So publishing is not as black and white as it used to be. There's the big publishers, traditional publishers. There's total vanity press, and then there's all sorts of hybrids. So there needs to be an understanding of your strategic objectives on the front end. So let's say your objective is to get the book out to as many people as you choose to in a profitable way, in a way that you have control over, right? Because if, if there's going to be an F-bomb in the book and you don't want Wiley saying, no, we don't have, you know, we don't write that way, that's not going to work for you. So it might be freedom, It might be speed. Hey, I'm going to get this done in 6 months versus big publisher, 18 months. Could be margin. You do the book yourself. A book doesn't cost but $3, $4 a pop. You can sell it for $20, $25 versus making $1, $1.50 royalty. That's, that's what I mean.

Yeah. And not only that, but this publisher, because I got a book offer. Mm-hmm. And it's a publisher. Yep. Decent one. Mm-hmm. Everyone's like, no way. I'm like, yeah, way. Why, why is that so freaking surprising? But they're banking on I, you're gonna go do all the selling.

So who needs, and I'm like, who needs a toll taker?

That's all I'm saying. Yeah. And what do I need them for?

Well, there's two things that pub, big publishers are looking at. Used to just be one. What, what is it that Brad has to say? Right? So what's, what's your, what's the essence of the book? And do you have anyone to say it to that will actually listen? You've got a big following. So they're looking at it, looking at your numbers and your metrics and your downloads going, I think that guy can sell 20— I'm just making up a number— that guy can sell 20,000 books, $20 a book, that's $500,000, whatever the math is. So we'll throw him X, we'll pay for the books. Kind of a no-win for us. And you're looking at it going, well, geez, if I can sell 20,000 books, um, I don't need a partner that's taking 80 cents on the dollar.

Not only that, I can pay for the books.

Well, that's what I'm saying. You could front-load the cash.

So is that what a publisher's for, is to front-load the cash?

In some instances, to front-load the cash, um, it's distribution. See, that's what—

but they're not distributing anything. Well, like, I thought a publisher is this, like, you go with us, kid, and you're going to sell a million copies. You go try yourself, you're going to be stuck at right around 10,000 or 15,000. That's, that's 1994 thinking. It's changed. Yeah, but they want me to go do all the selling and then they want me to call Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone and tell them to pitch my book. Of course they do. Which again, I can claim that I will and claim, and that'll help the deal get done. Like, oh, if you tell them this, they'll do it for sure. Well, number one, I don't know that Grant or anybody else will pitch my book for me. I'm supposed to tell them that they will.

Well, but you're gonna be— if you don't publish it yourself— so let's take Grant, for example. Yeah. Are you gonna be equally motivated if you got a dollar a book or if you got $15 a book to persuade Grant using your charm and your persuasion skills? $15.

Yeah, no kidding, right? So what I'm thinking about doing is I before I even finish the book is I'm going to go put up a good-looking website that says preorder. Yeah. And take their $20 right now and have 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 people fund the actual printing of the book in the first place. You could.

You don't really— I mean, it's not a lot of cash.

How much is it to print a book? I mean, what's the minimum run?

It depends on— you probably— I mean, you're going to want 1,000 of them.

No, more than that.

You probably want a couple— I mean, I mean, minimum $30,000 to $50,000 probably to print 5,000 copies of something. But you're probably going to need editorial. It's a six-figure investment to do it right, because the other thing is, if you're putting something out that's representative of your thinking, it's got to be good.

Yeah, well, so again, do I edit it? Like, do I send it to a big-time editor to say things? Like, what— is there anybody that can write a book that just opens up a Word doc and starts writing and then comes out and has a big smash?

No, I mean, nobody does it alone. Even those, you know, the, the amazing folks like the Seth Godins, the Malcolm Gladwells, all those folks— there's editors, there's— I mean, there's people helping.

What about Jordan Peterson? I don't know his stuff all that well. Maps of Meaning? Yeah, such a ridiculous book. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's hot. I mean, even if you're an intellect It is a— it is a— it took him 15 years to write it.

Yeah. So what's the ROI on that?

I don't know. But man, I'll tell you what, he's popular as hell right now.

He will. Enough to cover the 15 years of writing it.

He'll get $100 grand a speech, no problem. That's good. You know, he'll fill up— he'll sell out auditoriums just debating with people. Right. Good work. You know who he is, though, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, so it's like Anyway, I didn't get off on a tangent, but I want to, I want to come out with my book. I'm thinking in my head, because I'm just a common sense thinker, hey, why don't I?

But again, it's the same, the same framework.

What if the website, only 80 people after a year of me promoting it bought the book? Guess what? I send everybody their $20 back with a note that says, sorry, the press broke.

How about I'm not, I'm not doing it, none of you bastards wanted it. Well, so the first thing, again, it goes back to what I said before. Who are you writing it for? You got to get to those avatars. You got to get to the pain points. You got to get to what you're doing. And what is the product roadmap? So if I buy a book from you for $20, that should not be the end of our relationship. That should be the beginning of our relationship.

Yeah, so now you have to think, the book's supposed to lead to what? Exactly. And then that's supposed to lead to what? Exactly. And then pretty soon you have a whole freaking job, see? And what I want to I don't want a job. It ain't easy. Yeah, but I don't want a job.

Well, you could quarterback it and you can get people to help you with it. The other piece is I think people separate unnecessarily the church and state of business development and content development. So I would try to merge those two. So let's say we know what the theme of the book is. It's X. Well, now what we want to do is maybe interview 8 or 10 people that are as interesting or hopefully more interesting and have bigger followers than you that also have something to say on that subject area. Depending on what it is. And you say to them, you can make them in the book. What's that?

And then include them in the book.

Yeah, well, let's go back to the CLO conversation we had a little while ago. And just let's say you're going to write a book to just show CLOs there's a better mousetrap. So why not find 10 CLOs at the 50 biggest companies and say, listen, I'm writing, you know, I've got two conversations I can have with you. I'm Brad Lee, I'm the CEO of Lightspeed. I'd like to sell you some shit. Good luck, right? Or I'm Brad Lee, I'm a rock star, I'm a speaker, I'm this, I've got a book coming out in 2020 or 2021, and we're talking about the frustrations that learning professionals have delivering the return that their boards and CEOs have. And here's the other 10 people I'm interviewing. Would you like to take that call? And if you can't turn that call, which is a content creation call, that'll be a blurb or something in the book or a call out into a business development call, you shouldn't be in business. Bang!

Or, or you need a course to teach, to learn how to do that, which I think we know where you can get one. You don't have one? Do you? Well, we should get one. We should make one. Okay. That's what I said earlier. Yeah. There's a lot of things that like you, if you, if you just gave them a little, a little course, because again, I mean, a lot of people wouldn't even recognize to do that. This podcast, someone came in and they said, because I, because some people come in here to be on the podcast and then they go, what do you guys do here? And I go, ah, funny you should say that. And then next thing you know, they're signing up for a system. They didn't even know they wanted one. Right. I would probably wouldn't have got a sales call into those people. They wanted to be on the podcast to promote something. So I, I'm always looking for opportunity. I'm a closer. I'm always be closing. But I always, you know, ask them, what are you doing? Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? I plant these seeds. Dude, this right here is a business development. Well, it's funny that you should mention that.

So I'll go back to our podcast. So when I started our podcast, I cashed in some chips and called some friends and clients and said, hey, I'm trying this out. It's an experiment. It may work, it may not. I want 20 minutes of your time. Here's the theme, whatever. And that was fairly easy. Took some time, but I was able to get 20, 30, 40 lined up pretty quickly. Then I realized, which I didn't really plan on, there are PR firms and podcast placement agencies that have clients that are being paid, they are paying to pitch to people like me. So somebody's spending money to get on my podcast. We always do a call in advance of the podcast to make sure it's a fit, to make sure they understand what we're doing, whatever. That turns into business.

I'm not doing this for my health. You see, you take it seriously, don't you?

Well, I'm not doing this for my health, right? So when I've got— well, I want to put out a quality podcast because I won't put anything with my name on it that I don't think is good. But in preparation for an episode, I'll say to someone, well, these are the type of people we work with, this is what we do, this is what the conversation— and they're, what do you do? Tell me more. Because all they know is they're paying somebody a couple grand a month to get them on my podcast and 50 others. Nobody else is asking them these questions. Oh wait, could you help me? Yeah, I can help you. Like Let's take that offline.

Yeah, that's why, it's why that those are the people that are probably calling me a lot because I get a lot of people saying so-and-so wants to be on your podcast and I'm like, how does so-and-so even know about my podcast? Yeah, because there's lists and there's companies that sell lists of podcasts.

Interesting. So you should have somebody working for you screening all those people from a business development perspective to say, you know, well, I mean, this may sound, you know, inauthentic, but I don't, I don't do it for the business.

I do it to literally get information from the expert to my listeners. But they're not mutually exclusive. I know, but that's what I'm doing it for. So, so there could be someone that would come in that has no relevant need for Lightspeed. However, I'll still have them on because I want to get the knowledge out there. But what's funny is while they're here I'll always identify a reason for someone to have Lightspeed, right? I mean, at the end of the day, everyone needs Lightspeed. If you own a business, you got to train your people better. Yep. If you train your people better, like there's people that will spend so much money to advertise, get people in the door, but yet they don't invest in the actual training of the employees that are handling those people. You get a revolving door. Yeah. So for example, let's say I spend $100,000 on advertising and I kill it and I do $1 million and I'm walking around with my chest puffed out. Not realizing that had my people been better trained, I might have done 2 or all.

I can cut that spend down in half if I kept my people.

Exactly. Or I could spend half and make as much. So at the end of the day, this is a fact. Yeah. And when you say data, look, I've never done white papers. However, I've on several occasions went to car dealerships because when I started out, I was training car salesmen. So I'd go to a car dealership that would not pay me to come train their people. 'And I'm like, well, how much are you spending on advertising?' And they're gonna say, you know, 'Hey, we'll spend $50,000 this month.' And I say, 'Well, do me a favor. Give me $1,000 and spend $49,000, and I'll bet you you'll do more than if you spend $50,000 with no training.' And I've had them take me up— take me up on it. And every single time, dude, when everybody's prepared and trained for the big sale, it goes smoother. Sure, there's more— there's more revenue, there's less pissed-off customers, there's more follow-up, higher customer satisfaction. Like, everything's better. Better. So if you spent $49,000 on advertising and $1,000 on training, or somebody else spent $50,000 on advertising and, and the $49,000 on advertising, yep, is, is more successful—

well, you're plugging a hole in the bucket, right? Most companies have a hole in the bucket where they're bringing in a lot of clients, they're losing clients, they're bringing in people, they're losing people. Yeah. Why is that?

Because their training sucks, their people suck, right? Their processes and their systems are terrible. Right. Like car dealerships. The biggest complaint at a car dealership isn't the salesman anymore. It's the wait. Like, dude, it takes 4 frickin hours to buy a car, right? It's like, dude, I want that one, right? 4 hours later, you're finally getting to buy it when all you want is that one, man, right?

I'll pay what it costs. My credit's good. Sign my name. Everything's good. The hell out of here.

Yeah. 4 hours. So that's the biggest complaint. So guess what car dealerships are doing now? Speed. Yeah, they're trying to speed that shit up. Well, now there's companies coming out that there's, there's, there's you, you show up and pick up your car because everything's done online, right?

Well, I would prefer a concierge service. I don't want to sit there and sign my name 30 times.

Yeah, yeah. So now all these dealerships, I don't know if they're going to get more profitable or less, but at the end of the day— or cut out— but at the end of the day, man, it's like, why haven't you been training your people? Why shouldn't you— when I show up to your, to your dealership or your company in any way, why don't your people make the difference? Like, that's what it should be. Yep. And but it's tough, man. You know, it's tough. You got to train them and you got to train them effectively. And you have to have some thought leadership to begin with.

And it can't be transactional. The old days of one-and-done training are over, right? People need to continually learn things. People need to be refreshed on a regular basis. Yeah, regular basis, right? You can't— you can teach me all the customer service stuff of my first day at a hotel. You know, and we've all checked in with that disgruntled person that's been there 10 years that's not looking up, but you're not making eye contact. Couldn't care less. Doesn't want to be. You know that. You could feel it, right? Sure. They need a tune-up.

I see it all day. Yeah. Peter. Hey, folks, by the way, before I forget, if you're not following Peter Winick, go to @thoughtleadershipleverage on Instagram. That's him. You don't like your name or something?

I got my name on Twitter.

Oh, on Twitter, it's Peter Winick, @PeterWinick, W-I-N-I-C-K. And, uh, folks, if you're listening and you, and you, uh, want to create thought leadership to drive your brand, I don't necessarily know that you'll get to work with him because he's very selective. However, where would people go to, to see if they do qualify to work with you?

Go to the website thoughtleadershipleverage.com, or they can can email me directly at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com.

And you guys, a little questionnaire for them?

Yeah, we've— well, we'll either talk to them or we have a series of questionnaires or things that they can look at to see if it's a fit. Yeah.

And you, you help people scale their businesses quite dramatically. Yeah. All through, through thought leadership. Yeah. Which is funny because you have your own thought leadership. Exactly.

Well, mine, mine is limited to thought leaders, right?

Yeah. But, but you said your tag is, uh, you give deep expertise to those with deep expertise. Yes. That's good. And there's a lot of it and more of it's growing. Have you, have you saw that? Like the industry's growing.

I think it's moved a lot or where it is moving is from the traditional, hey, I'm an author speaker, you know, road warrior speaker. There's plenty of those. We love those. But more and more mid and large size professional service firms, accounting firms, consulting firms globally are diving in going, wait a minute, everybody else has got a book and everybody else is speaking and everybody else is writing. We sort of dabbled in it. How do we do this with structure? And how do we do this in an impactful way? And, uh, we love those.

So, so if someone's interested in the book, will you help them with that or no?

Yeah, so we, we are not book agents and we are not publishers, but we guide and advise and help. Because the mistake that a lot of people make is they make the book the center of the universe, and the book should not be the tail that wags the dog. The book is one place that your content lives. You could touch it, you can feel it, it makes a thud when it goes on a desk, but it's usually the most expensive and the least profitable just on a direct dollar for dollar. If it's integrated thoughtfully into your marketing and strategy and all those sort of things, it's a great thing. But I think there's sort of the book industrial complex, if you will, that still thinks you need a publicist and you need an agent, you need all that. And we, we question all those things because for some you do, but for many there are alternative ways to get there.

So if I stroked you a big reader and said, hey, I want you to do it for me, do you help me? Figure out all of those integrated things. Like, Brad, if you're gonna do this, you're gonna need to have a mastermind, you're gonna need to have an inner circle, you're gonna need to have an annual event. Yep. Yeah, totally.

And then there are things that are outside of our core competence. So for example, if you needed a speechwriter or a ghostwriter or something like that, we have relationships with some of the top in the world. So I'd say, listen, I've seen your sentences, we need a little help, we need to get you a ghostwriter here, go talk to my friend so-and-so, and You know, he's got an agency that's, you know, worked with the world's finest.

Yeah, I paid a company once. I mean, they still owe me, but I paid a company to get me on a book deal, ghostwrite and all that. But when I got to the ghostwriter part, I said, I don't want anyone to write my book. Like, they can rewrite it, they can edit it. Well, the term— I'm going to write it because, dude, I would hate to say I wrote this book when I did not. Well, so two things.

Everybody's different, and that term ghostwriter is a generic term. So there's ghostwriters on one end of the continuum that they've written everything and your work— your name is on their words. Then there are others that are sparring partners with you to say, help, hey, let's, let's play with this, let's work with me here. And then there's stuff in the middle where you're doing some of the heavy lifting on the writing, but they're doing more of the editorial. So it really is, is about finding the right fit for you and your needs and the amount of time that you've got and all that. There are— I mean, anything from there are people using systems like you can just leave them an audio file, you know, every other day for 50 days and they'll stitch together a book. There are others that will sit down with you and do the strategy. It's matchmaking like anything else. So it's a pretty intimate sort of connection.

Folks, listen, go follow him at @thoughtleadershipleverage. You most active on Instagram?

Probably more Twitter and LinkedIn, but we're fairly active.

See, that's— see, it's all the high-level stuff. See, the intelligent folks are on Twitter. Yeah, LinkedIn. Exactly.

We use words, not as many pictures.

The kids and the goofballs are on Instagram. So when you say, where do you find Bradley? I'm on Instagram. Yeah, not Pinterest.

We don't have a Bradley board.

Dude, I got like 60-some thousand on Twitter, but it doesn't grow as fast.

Not to be competitive, but I've got about 85,000 on Twitter.

My shit doesn't grow very fast because I think that's where all the intellects are, and I'm not resonating with the intellects until they get to know me. Once they get to know me, they realize— they're like, dude, this fucker's smart, he just chooses the wrong words. Only, only because I didn't go to college, man. Dropped out of high school, ran around thinking I was cool till I realized, you know, I'm not. And then ultimately built this company, which without a college education and, you know, without support, right, I didn't do too bad. So imagine if I was like, you know, educated at Yale. Imagine if I had all the relationships that that a Yale education would provide.

There might have been another Enron. Who knows where that could—

or it could be. Yeah, hey, but I wouldn't have got caught, right?

That would have been great. You'd be in the Dominican somewhere.

Hey, listening, and also go check out Peter's podcast, Leveraging Thought Leadership, with Peter Winick and his company thoughtleadershipleverage.com. Peter, appreciate you coming in. Thanks for having me. And folks, as always, keep it real. Share this podcast, go rate it to help me shoot up the, the charts. Till next time.