How to Unlock Thought Leadership & Grow Your Influence | Peter Winick Interview

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Welcome everyone to another spectacular episode of Thrive Live with Lou Diamond, connecting you to the most inspiring and amazing people that are thriving each and every day. I am your host Lou Diamond, and today on Thrive Live we have the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. Where he uses a combination of art, science, logic, focus, passion, and creativity to transform a thought leader's great ideas into a platform and a practice. Thrive Loud listeners, excited to bring you Peter Winick. Peter, welcome to Thrive Loud.

Hey, thanks for having me, Luke.

Excited to have him here. Uh, Peter and I have discovered that the, uh, the mastery of doing a podcast interview on a Friday afternoon is to have Strong drinks really close by. Actually, we're just drinking a little H2O, but we're going to have a lot of fun on this conversation. Peter, I gave a quick intro here, but here's what I want to do. I don't want to go all the way back to the womb. I kind of want to go back and understand how Thought Leadership Leverage came to be.

Yeah. I mean, I think that the way it came to be, like any good or mediocre entrepreneur, I saw an opportunity in a marketplace and I said, ah, there's a problem that needs to be solved. And I think I'm someone that can solve it better than most. So that's, that's the short version of the story of how I or why I started Thought Leadership Leverage back in 2008.

So now, why don't you share with the listeners a little bit about what it is that you do and why you love doing it?

Yeah, so I love doing it for a lot of reasons. But I'll start with the what. So what we do is we work exclusively with nonfiction authors, academics, thought leaders, keynote speakers, small to mid-sized consulting firms, and then a fair number of founders, CEOs, senior execs. And what we do is develop the strategies that enable them to better leverage and scale their thought leadership, be that for the purposes of having greater impact in the world, or more often than not, for the purposes of better and more effectively monetizing their intellectual property and their thought leadership.

So, I want to ask this question for those who are loyal listeners, almost 1,100-some-odd episodes of this Thrive Lab Podcast. We have had a number of amazing thought leaders on this show. Let's have some fun here, Peter. Peter, before they're working with you, what are most of them doing wrong?

Yeah, I would— well, a lot of them are doing lots of things right. I mean, many of them are— most of them are far smarter than I'll ever be. I think the common thread and the reason I started the company is that in most businesses, if I were to say to you, Lou, hey, you know what, I got an idea. I wanna start a pizza chain in Wichita. There's some questions you're gonna ask me like, okay, well, what's the competitive advantage there? What type? Is it gonna be gluten-free? Is it gonna be high volume in a college campus? You're gonna do some sort of a competitive analysis. We're gonna have a strategy and we're gonna implement that strategy. Most thought leaders, they hold their nose, they dive in the pool, and on the way down, they look to see if there's any water there. There is no strategy because it's not necessarily a deliberate path, right? If you wanna be a dentist, you go to dental school. If you wanna be a, you know, you wanna go into business, you get an MBA. Like, there's things that you do. And for most thought leaders, and some of the origin stories I've heard are wild, it kind of happens and then they sort of roll with it. And serendipity's great, but ultimately they're operating either without a strategy an antiquated one or a broken one. And that's the first problem we need to fix so that they've got that foundation that enables them to have a business that's predictable, that thrives.

In the spirit of now flipping the coin and saying, all right, look, most of these people have the capabilities to do this. And by the way, a lot of them really are great at delivering the content, but they might not be as good as growing the practice, how does thought leadership leverage? What are you guys doing to maybe help them best understand maybe which lane to go in or which area to focus in or what area not to focus in? How do you work with them?

I would say is that if you're a thought leader and all you have and all you aspire to have is a practice, you're missing the point. So a practice is time for money. I need to be in the Zoom, I need to be in the room to exchange ideas and therefore exchange dollars. And it's no different than an attorney, a doctor, or quite frankly, a prostitute. It's a business model. It's not a particularly scalable one, right? So the first thing that we wanna do is say, let's move from having an objective of having a practice that thrives to a business. So when you've got a business, it's the intellectual property that's at the center of everything. It's the thought leadership that is the core asset of that business. And that could be deployed in multiple formats, in multiple modalities, at multiple price points so that it's not dependent all on you, Mr. or Ms. Thought Leader.

From books to courses to masterminds to all the different things that I have heard other guests pitch in and promote within here, things have changed. Even in the way that the medium is delivered. To somebody that's helping a thought leader think proactively forward today, what are some of the trends and things that you're helping people with or guiding them through? Because like here, put it this way, remember the old days when people literally used to create CDs and mail them out on their courses or whatever it might be to listen to, or tapes to watch them on video. Everything evolves and changes. How is Thought Leadership Leverage helping the thought leaders leverage the future?

Yeah, so, so it starts with the strategy. Who are you trying to serve? How are you going to serve them? And how do they prefer to consume content? So when you go back, you know, you mentioned, you know, cassette tapes and stuff, um, Brian Tracy, John Maxwell, or, you know, Zig Ziglar. Those guys, uh, made a ton of money. And one of the things they realized is their market was a salesperson primarily that spent a lot of time in the car, right? So, they were in essence competing with bad AM radio back then before Sirius. And these were people that were trying to grow, trying to make more money, trying to be better at what they did. So, why not take advantage of this opportunity where you've got them in the car going from client to client or, you know, from Pennsylvania to New Jersey or wherever they were going and give them some value? So, I think to me, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer as to what is the secret sauce, what is the modality, but where are your clients? Where do they want to be and how would they consume content? And most importantly, how do you connect the consumption or the internalization of your thought leadership with a directly correlated business outcome? Because then basically you're selling a dollar for a dime, right? Then the conversation you need to have with a client is, listen, for every million dollars you invest in implementing my programs across your large organization, there's a 7x return. That's a much better conversation than hire me 'cause I'm smart or I'm charming or here's my logo page or I wrote a book. Nobody cares about that, quite frankly.

No. The big challenge I think also is keeping up with the Joneses. I also find this interesting that as thought leaders grow, develop, age, their businesses change, their focus, who they're dealing with, the clients they do can also change. But maybe at the end of the day, sometimes it doesn't. I always think of— there's one of the most productive professional speakers I've ever come across, literally just focuses in one lane, does real estate, and probably speaks, I don't know, 200 times a year and makes ridiculous money focused on one particular lane. And he's done it for decades. In part of your logical breakdown and mixing in the art and science, so to speak, of your expertise within this, There's a lot of shiny objects that are out there that thought leaders get distracted with. How do you help them focus?

Yeah, so I think there are two primary types of distractions. Ooh, look, a new shiny thing, right? Like there's a new format, there's a new this. This week it's, or this last couple of months, whatever it is, it's AI. You know, remember during COVID we had Clubhouse. Like there will always be something new and cool and shiny. And to me, that's fine. Like, we want to be open to taking advantage of new modalities, new opportunities, et cetera. But it needs to go through the same rigor of a strategy to say, does this fit? Does this work? Is this aligned to? Or do I just want to be the first kid on my block with a new and shiny thing? That's not good. That's not healthy. The way I think about the other side of this, Lou, is there's an element of anybody's thought leadership or anybody's good thought leadership that is evergreen, regardless of who's in the White House, what the stock market's doing, are we in a recession or in a high-growth market, whatever it is, that these truths will be true. Think about Dale Carnegie, think about Tom Peters, think about great content, great thought leadership that you've consumed over your career. And these things hold to be true regardless of what's going on in the world at a moment in time, right? Then the other piece of that is there are things going on today that make certain pieces of thought leadership more or less timely that are beyond the control of that thought leader. So sometimes you get lucky. I was on a call earlier today with someone and they were talking about early on during COVID how Amy Edmondson's stuff really, the world embraced that on psychological safety. Now I love her stuff. The concept of psychological safety is not new. It's been out there for 20, 25 years. We just didn't say it out loud. We didn't talk about it. It wasn't appropriate. Then COVID happens, a couple other things happens, whatever. Now it becomes a thing, right? So there's luck, you know, and sometimes your thing is the thing where lightning strikes, and sometimes there's not. Like, the DEI market today is not a great place to be for reasons beyond any individual thought leader's control.

Right. For you, you help a lot of these thought leaders and the benefit they get is growth in their practice. And that is the gift that you're giving to them. I've always found that people who help in this thing get a gift in return. Aside from what they pay you to do that, Peter, what is the gift that you personally in your soul get from helping some of these thought leaders leverage what they can do? What is, what is the gift that comes back to you?

It's funny that you say that because One of the things I say to clients early on is, listen, one of the things that drives you is you love the applause on the stage, right? You're a keynoter. And I don't mean you, Lou, you as well. But a lot of them, they get that. They love like, I got off the stage and they're, they're like an athlete. Like, you know, the adrenaline's pumping. I get the similar juice when we develop a strategy and implement it and it works, right? So how do you take— because I've been exposed to so many awesome ideas, some of which have never seen the light of day, not because they're bad ideas, but because there isn't a strategy, marketing, there's a, there's a whole other things. And we can unleash those ideas into the world. And yeah, the, the thought leader benefits, they make more money and whatever, but the people that consume it, you're solving a problem for them. You're, you're alleviating a pain. You're getting them to be able to do something better, quicker, faster, think in a different way. That's satisfying to me.

Awesome. Let's do the admin part of the show. Tell everyone, Peter, where they can find you, uh, things to promote, what you got doing. This episode's coming out literally the first week of May. I can't believe in May of 2025 already.

Yeah, yeah. The best way to get me, you can email me directly, peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. You can go to the site, LinkedIn, any of the other socials. You'll find me.

Excellent. I love when people are very simple. Just go here, find me, go there. We'll put it in the notes. We'll find you where to go there. All right. We are going to stroll down Fun Street here, Peter. I've been dying to do this. Peter and I have been chit-chatting the last couple of weeks. And I'm curious to see where this is going.

Arm or how are we strolling exactly? Set the pace.

We could, I was actually gonna, I'm okay to hold hands. I'm very comfortable that way, Peter. I just wanna let you know.

Let's skip.

Skip down here.

So we could skip to, Skip with Lou, how about that? That'll make it good. We're gonna skip on down to fun street. Let's start off with this. Peter, do you have an all-time favorite movie? One that if it's on some form of streaming network or television or cable station, it's on, you're just sucked right in.

Right hand. Yeah, it's Goodfellas or The Godfather, period.

Kid from Queens. Where are you specifically from Queens? I'm Rockaway. Where are you from?

Rockaway?

Oh, I'm fancy. Fresh Meadows, which is fancy Flushing.

Yeah, you're much better. There was a tennis center there. We had like a handball court. I think that was the extent of that.

No, Flushing Meadows was the tennis center.

Oh, there you go. All right, we're gonna do this, the Speakeasy Pub Crawl. Stop at all the fun places that matter the most to Pete. Here we go, Peter. Of late, a song that you've been listening to or one that kind of pumps you up?

You know, I don't know if it's of late, but for some reason I get in the car and some— if someone is with me and I wasn't in the car when I parked it, I'm almost— I get a little nervous, like, what the hell is going to come out of here? Is it going to be like Beastie Boys or Eminem or something? Because, you know, I look like just a fat old dude, which I primarily am. But they're like, what the hell? Who's been in this thing? And it's more the volume, the combination of like the volume is like an ear bleed mode.

So do you think it's an ear bleed mode or is your hearing just gotten as bad as mine has gotten?

Yeah, I'm gonna go with yes and yes.

Fair enough. Okay, favorite food that is not a dessert?

Oh, probably sushi.

Okay, favorite dessert?

Uh, I like— I'm into chocolate. Chocolate is good. I don't say no to carrot cake because that's technically a vegetable.

I think so too. I think there's, there's a grain in there. Okay, an activity you wish you did more of?

Well, again, you know, going back to the, you know, the old guy— pickleball. I'm like down with all these days.

I told you, you got to come hang out in Boca more often. We're playing every day, so it's It's like, I know my shoulder, the shoulder has seen better days, but that's a whole other story. An activity you wish you did less of?

An activity I wish I did less? Anything detail-oriented or administrative, like finance and pay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The answer for me is my monthly expenses because my much better half handles the finances here, and if I don't do it, I get yelled at. So I'm a big fan of it. Not a big fan of that. A new activity, one that you have recently tried other than pickleball, because it's not that new anymore. A new activity you recently tried that you like so much you want to tell everybody else to try.

Oh, that's a good question. A new activity. Yeah, I can't— I mean, pickleball would be the newest, but that's, that's been a while.

And we just, we just had an answer. This was— we just had Montel and Kristen Jordan on the show. And Kristen said paint-by-numbers. How cool is that? By the way, when was the last time you did paint? I mean, I was a little kid.

That's—

I don't know if it's a new activity, but she did like a picture of herself in paint-by-numbers. I thought that was amazing.

Wow.

I kind of want to try it.

I mean, the narcissist in me is going, where do I get someone to give me a paint-by-numbers of me? Like, how great would that be? Like, I'm liking that.

I think that would be pretty cool.

Okay.

If I could snap my fingers and Peter Winick could be anywhere in the world. Where is he?

Uh, probably somewhere with a beach. Well, either if it's a city, it's Paris, or somewhere in the Caribbean with a few cocktails at the ready.

Peter Winick, Thought Leadership Leverage. We're raising a glass to you. Um, everything you've been doing, really good. Everyone check them out. Um, for all the thought leaders been guests on this show and you're trying to figure out literally how to take it to that next level, this is your guy. He's the one to help you do it. Peter, thank you for coming on the program.

Thanks, Luke. You got it.

To all our listeners out there, thank you for joining us. Until next time, keep moving onward and upward, and remember, be brief, be bright, be gone.

You've been listening to Thrive Loud with your host Lou Diamond. Check us out on the web at thriveloud.com and follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook @thriveloud. And check us out on the GoodPods app at Thrive Loud, where you can follow, listen, and connect directly to Lou and all of the Thrive Loud episodes. Thanks for listening.