Leaders Talk Episode 51: Peter Winick

And it's this: if you're an author and you're investing in being a guest on a podcast, right? So what are you investing? Potentially time in a PR agency or podcast casting agency. I mean, money. Money in an agency to do this, right? Your time and energy to be on the—

Hello everybody and welcome. Welcome back. It is Wednesday and Wednesday means another episode of your favorite show, my favorite show. Leaders Talk. As usual, here I am, your Chief Relationship Officer here at Leaders Press, Andrew Dupey. And today I have a very special guest with me. I have Peter Winick. So let me tell you a little bit about Peter. Peter is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, and for the past two decades, he has helped individuals and organizations build and grow revenue streams through designing and growing their thought leadership platforms, as well as acting as a guide and advisor to increasing businesses and sales of thought leadership products. Uh, his clients, they range from a diverse set of backgrounds and specialties. They include New York Times bestselling business authors, members of the Speaker's Hall of Fame, recipients of Thinker 50 Awards, CEOs of publicly and privately held companies, and academics at prestigious institutions such as Yale, Wharton, Dartmouth, London School of Business, and many others. Peter, your CV goes on, but I want to hear from you. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. That is a really impressive resume you've got there. And our audience, I'm sure, wants to hear a little bit more.

Yeah. So there's really two things that I focus on in terms of how I typically spend my time. There's the business and then there's the podcast, right? So the business takes up most of my time. That's Thought Leadership Leverage, where we work with, you know, the folks that you mentioned, authors, speakers, academics, etc. And then the podcast is just a lot of fun, where I get to talk to some amazing people like you know, Dan Pink, Tom Peters, Dori Clark, and have amazing conversations. And I just hit record while I'm doing it and share it with folks. So yeah, that's—

yeah, I mean, that's exactly why we're here. The same thing with us, you know, our podcast is, in my opinion, a lot of fun. I think we have a lot of fun here. And but it's interesting though, that you have, you know, the kind of business that you have, you have thought leadership leverage, you have all of that, that goes into the work that you put in there. And you have a podcast that goes along with it. And that's kind of what I want to concentrate a little bit about on today is talking about how those two things work together and how you can maybe leverage one into the other. So give us a little bit of a rundown. Why did you start a podcast? What was your purpose there?

Well, there's a couple answers to that. I would say one of the short reasons that I started a podcast is because I hate writing. So like talk, so, and I'll unpack that a little bit. So pre-podcast, you know, I'd have to put out a lot of content and a lot of thought leadership. And the modality that I was pretty much limited to at that time, although not exclusively, was writing. And on my best day, I'm a mediocre writer and I don't have a lot of best days, but I would be consistent about putting out blogs and getting information out there. We would put videos out, you know, but if you go back 10 years, putting out a video wasn't nearly as easy as it was today. You'd go into the studio, there's production costs, there's time, there's energy, there's effort. And then, you know, I, I, um, was guesting a lot on a podcast, which I think is a great way to sort of test the waters. Yeah. Go out and be a guest on folk shows and all that. And then realize like, like here, this is more fun. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then I realized like, wow, this is more fun than to me than writing. So I said, all right, well we'll launch the podcast. And, um, years ago when I started blogging, like 15 years ago, I went to get some advice from a friend. That had had 3 or 4 really successful blogs in the Bay Area. And what he said to me, and it was, and I, it still sticks to my head today. He said, don't commit to writing 1 blog, commit to writing 100. And I was like, oh, I get it. And he goes, you know, you're like every other CEO, entrepreneur, ADD, hard driving. We wanna look at the data. And if you don't commit to 100, it will be easy to convince yourself after 3, 10, 20 that this is no, there's no ROI here. Right. That there's no impact here because it takes a while to build that up. So I listened to him and I, and I did commit to 100 and then it worked. When it came to the podcast, I committed to 50. And I think that's the, a big piece of it is you have to make a commitment not just to yourself, but to a potential audience that wants to dedicate time to you. There's nothing worse than, you know, I think you said the last data I saw is something like north of 90% of most podcasts, north of 90% of podcasts out there haven't published a new episode in 30 days, which means that they're dormant, right? So you have to make that commitment even when the data tells you this may or may not be working. So that, that was one reason we launched the— several reasons. One is it's a better modality for me personally. The technology is there that makes it easier to do, right? Like, you know, like, I don't get involved in production, post-production. I hit record and I try to be smart and engaging, which is challenging enough. I don't want to deal with anything else. Um, there is a whole ecosystem of podcast guesting agencies whose job is to get people to people like you and me that have a podcast and introduce appropriate guests. It's an amazing relationship development opportunity. Amazing, amazing, amazing, right? Like, I talk to so many people every week that want to be on, on the podcast. Not all of them make it there. In fact, I think our acceptance rate is about 20%. But you develop rapport, you develop friendships, you develop clients, you develop relationships with folks under a common interest, right? You know, if they're coming to me to be on the podcast, they obviously have an interest in thought leadership. They probably listen to an episode or two, etc.

Yeah. And that's just the thing. I mean, you having a platform like a podcast or even a blog in some circumstances, that is a really good way to begin those kind of joint venture partnerships. That otherwise you're really just kind of almost doing a cold call in these cases.

Yeah.

With the podcast, you're actually starting to build rapport and beginning to understand what the other person's talking about.

Well, and I think you also flip things on their heads a little bit, right? So there's two conversations I can have with you, Andrew. One is, hey, I'm Peter and I've got a consulting firm and I want to sell you some consulting services. Right. So immediately the roles are really clear. I'm selling, you're buying, you're going to be somewhat skeptical. There's sort of a role that we each fall into, irregardless of our comfort level, right? There's another conversation I can have with you, Andrew, and it's this: Hey, I'm a host of a podcast on thought leadership. You're clearly interested in the topic. Can we have a short chat to see if you'd be an appropriate guest? So now you're flattered, your ego's been inflated. There's this commonality of passions, interest, you know, something that we have together. And I've sort of neutralized the sales piece. By the way, both outcomes can be a business development outcome, but the latter is a much more comfortable conversation for both parties.

Yeah. And that's why I think a lot of our clientele and the people that are watching this podcast right now are interested in this kind of concept because many of them are authors, you know, they have books or they're planning on having books. And then they have that kind of question is when I have my book out there, when I have my branding, when I have my voice that's just been put into this and is now in bookstores available to buy on Amazon, That's great, but now what do I do?

Right, right. Yeah, and what I was gonna say, and as you, you well know, the publishing universe tends to think in terms of launch. So there's a pub date, which is a fictitious date. It's a meaningless date. You know, your birthday matters, my birthday matters. A pub date of a book is, is a silly date, right? Um, and then a lot of activity goes into 30, 60 days before 60, 90 days after, and then out, right? To an author, that book is critical. I mean, most authors aren't gonna write but, you know, 1, 2, maybe 3 books in their career. Um, you could still use the fact that you're a published author to get on a podcast a year, 3, 5 years post-pub date. And I think a lot of people lose sight of that. Yeah.

And that's absolutely the, uh, absolutely the case in our experience. And they, because once you have that book out, once the publishing date's done, And the publisher has to concentrate mostly on the actual launch because I don't think people realize how much work goes into that stage.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's very difficult to do things beyond that. But then, yeah, one of the things that we suggest, and that's why we actually have this podcast, is we tell our authors once they're finished, this is the first step for you to begin to get out there and actually talk about yourself and begin to engage. And that's a great way to begin to leverage future opportunities, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. I think something that would be of interest to the audience, and you know, we've put out north of 500 podcasts, which means I've probably talked to, I don't know, thousands of people that wanted to be on the show and the folks that came on the show. And it's this, if you're an author and you're investing in being a guest on a podcast, right? So what are you investing? Potentially time in a PR agency or podcast guesting agency. I mean money, money in an agency to do this, right? Your time and energy to be on the, uh, uh, on the show. Um, I find that somewhere between 50 to 70% of people that want to get on the podcast, maybe even more, are totally ill-prepared. So the first, you know, one of the first things I'll ask them is, you know, how familiar are you with the show? Have you listened to any episodes? Have you read up on it? I don't expect them to spend hours and hours and hours, And like 7, 8, maybe 9 times out of 10, they'll say, no, I haven't done that yet. After we decide, you know, after we book the date, then I'll do that. And it's, to me, it's the equivalent of going to a job interview and saying, no, once you hire, you know, and the, and the, the interview question is, oh, tell me why you wanna work here. Well, after you hire me, I'll tell you why. It's just stupid. It's just, it, it's unprepared. It's, it's disrespectful. It's stupid. That's the first thing that annoys me. Second thing that annoys me is Then we do the show. That's the easy part. After we do the show, there's usually a backlog, a queue, 4, 6, 8 weeks for when it gets produced, unless— when it gets published, unless somebody has a need to rush that because they have something they're promoting, and we're happy to do that. So then we put it out there and we say, okay, okay, Andrew, your episode's coming out on October 17th. Um, here's, here's a bunch of stuff, right? Here's, here's a way that you can promote it on Twitter. Here's a way that we can promote it on LinkedIn. We make the investment and do all the hard work to create those assets, and and say, we ask that you would promote that as well. Maybe 50, 60% of people promote it. And I say, Jesus, that is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You just invested the money and the time to be on here. Yes, we're gonna promote it to our audience. We're gonna promote it to our people. That's a given, right? Why would you not wanna promote that asset to others in your network? It's another reason to say, hey, look at me, look at me, buy my book. Um, it's an asset that you've created that you should put on your website, that you should put on LinkedIn, that you should get out there. It's another reason for people to engage with you and your work and ultimately buy your book, hire you to be a keynote, or whatever it is that you do. And I think ultimately it's not, um, how would I put it, it's not that people don't want to, but I don't think they have the discipline or the systems and processes in place to make that just— it should be something you don't even think about. If I'm on a podcast, bang, when that comes out, do we have the systems and processes in place in my organization to make sure we're doing what we need to do to promote it effectively?

Yeah, because you're reaching a whole new audience. You're reaching— both of you are touching on the bases of someone else's entire audience. That's a whole world that you're not necessarily connected to, that by bringing all of those together, by promoting it, cross-promoting it, you're getting in, you're knocking on doors, the old— like the old-fashioned hustle, go out there and get them.

Yeah, well, you know, so look at this for example. So when this comes out, we will promote it, and there's a whole bunch of people in my world that don't know who you are, and vice versa. That's an added benefit of us doing this, right? That you'll get exposure to sort of my followers and such, and I will get that on your side. That's a great thing. Yeah.

One of the things though I hear, and this is a kind of a pushback a little bit against the entire concept of podcasts, is like, I don't immediately see KPIs that I can get out of these. I don't immediately see revenue that necessarily I can track and put down on a metric sheet. What do you say to those that begin to actually become hesitant when they start to launch something like this or start to go out and be guests on this and think, well, I don't necessarily see the return right away. So is it something that's ever going to happen?

So I think that is valid with most PR, right? So PR people, you know, authors will spend $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 on a PR agency. And there's no impact or ROI, right? And you're like, whoa, hold on. But they're not even asking the question of the PR agency at all at times. So I, I would say that if you're gonna make that investment into being a guest on a podcast, you should have some goals and objectives, right? So number one, you're creating content, you're creating thought leadership, you're creating assets that can be repurposed and reused, et cetera, et cetera. You're getting exposure to the brand, you are getting your work out there. I think you should be curating the podcast that you put out there internally and cataloging them, you know, hashtagging them so that when you're in conversations with clients, you can send them an asset and say, oh, listen to minute 3 to 7 of this podcast I did. It's exactly the thing you and I talked about, right? Then you need to track it. So I could tell you that, you know, there are webinars, for example, that I've done where I've literally made 6 figures on in an hour because I picked up 4 or 5 clients from that. Then there were dozens and dozens of things that I've done that has had no immediate impact in ROI. And it's hard to really separate— or I shouldn't say separate. It's hard to measure what is the impact of each one. You have to look at it in totality and say, I am going to spend X dollars a month and X amount of my time in this venue. Of promoting myself as a podcaster, and then I'm gonna measure the impact of that longitudinally. You can't do it in a week. You gotta measure it at least over a year. And then like for us, our, the launch of our podcast was not because I needed to hear myself talk, right? You know, right. It was a marketing investment that we make that takes, you know, a fair amount of money every, every month to maintain. We have an executive producer. You know, we have, um, people creating, uh, the graphics, content, uh, screening the guests. I mean, it's, it's a thing, but I know that the investment that we make in it is probably one of the best marketing investments we've ever made. It's somewhere between 10 and 20 to 1, right? So I think you have to measure it, and I think to directly answer your question, over what period of time can you come to that conclusion that you have impact? And I think it's a little bit longer than we'd like it to be.

Yeah, and I would agree. I mean, we see the same thing. This podcast is, I would say, almost fairly new. I mean, at this point we've been around for about 6 or 7 months, but yeah, we've begun to see how it has begun to grow and make connections. I mean, you and I are meeting right now. We would not normally meet in other situations, uh, other episodes that you can watch right now, ladies and gentlemen. You can see that we've, uh, Peter and I have had actually had some cross with the kind of guests that we've had on. And we had talked about that in the beginning. So that begins to build momentum over time that you just have to kind of in some ways be patient about.

Yeah, I think the other thing to realize with podcasts is what are the consumption habits, right? So some people have their favorite, you know, X number of podcasts that are downloaded immediately. And when they're at the gym or on the commute, they're always listening to them. Others trip over something So someone might, uh, come into our podcast because you're the guest and they follow you. So then they come into my world and go, ooh, okay, yeah, let's go, we're Andrew fans, let's go listen to him be on Peter's podcast. They go, that was pretty interesting, Peter's got a fun style, whatever, whatever. And then they snoop around and they say, oh, uh, Peter's interviewed Dan Pink, I like Dan Pink, I'll listen to that one. And then they, you know, they don't necessarily do it sequentially or linearly like you would in another medium, They go in and snoop around and say, oh, this, this one's on an episode for newly published authors. Ooh, that's me. I'm going to listen to that one. That's episode 127, like whatever the number is, it's 4 years old. You're not even thinking about it as a podcaster, but going, wow, I've got all this stuff out there that's relevant to different people at a moment in time to them. Right.

So that leads me to another question that I have. Some kickback that I get is that there's so many of these out there. There's so much noise, white noise. How do you find your right audience? Now, I mean, I already had kind of a guess of what you're going to say here, but I want you to speak to our audience a little bit about that, whether they're talking about, you know, being guests and doing cross-promotion or even launching their own. What is the way in which you're able to actually get that audience that's going to tune in, listen every week and connect with you?

Yeah. So I think to me that's a little bit backwards or upside down. I think before you do anything, You need to know who your, who your audience is, and your audience is your target avatar, is your buyer. I don't really care about, well, I shouldn't say it this way. What I, what I do care about is the subset of people that listen to our podcast that have the potential to become clients. Everyone, anybody else that benefits, that's great. If I can put out information that's helpful to people, that's all fine and dandy. Great. But as a business person, what I care about is am I Is this a vehicle to attract net new, net new clients? Is it a vehicle to convince a prospect that I've had a conversation with somehow that's on the fence that they should hire us? Other than that, I don't care. So I don't, you know, and this goes to the metrics like our, we just, I just got informed today that we're a top, the top, the number 16 podcast in publishing. Okay. That's nice. Accolades are nice. It's good to hear good things. Um, what I care more about is not the metrics, not the number of downloads. I mean, because we track all that stuff. What I care about is directly through the podcast, whether it's as guests or listeners, how many people become clients over a period of time. That's all I care about. Nothing else matters to me relative to that.

And that was actually kind of what I was expecting you to say, because that's also in many cases what we are looking for. We're looking for the people that we're gonna answer their questions for. And as an old salesman, you know, I spent most of my time, uh, in sales. That's something that you really want to build with a potential client before they're ever really in front of you is a relationship. There's gold in that.

Absolutely.

Yeah, when you're talking to someone that you don't really know, you're not really connected to, and you're having to spend time actually explaining why they should be in front of you, you're really at that point underwater in the sales relationship. But when they know what you're going to do How does a podcast help you build that? I mean, I'll be, I kind of almost answered the question, my own question myself, but you know, I want to hear it.

I think it helps you do it in a lot of ways. So if someone has been a follower of the pod, of anybody's podcast for some period of time, they're self-selecting and going, okay, I get this. I dig this person. I understand what they're saying. I understand what they're— so it shortens the sales cycle because they already know what they're getting. Or, you know, the other side of it, they might be, Peter's not my cup of tea. He's too New York. He's like, okay, that's fine. I'd rather you figure that out on the podcast than waste my time on a couple calls to realize we're not a good fit. Yeah. Right. So it's, there's a self-selection bias, which I think is, I think is a really good thing actually. And you know, how does someone, um, do what they do? What do they think? Who do they have access to? I also think there's a de facto. Halo on the brand. The people like the fact that we've had some really, really impressive guests. And I would argue that some of that is a function of relationships that we have, and some of it is a function of developing and putting out a high-quality podcast so that high-quality people would put their name to it and spend their time with us and listen. Right. Like, if I'm a multiple New York Times bestselling author that's got a top PR firm, they've got to be pretty selective as to where they put their clients in front of so they don't look like jerks. You know, you don't want to be pitched to Bob's Basement Podcast that hasn't published an episode for 7 months. You're going to go back to your publicist and say, are you kidding me? Like, you're just not going to do that.

I can tell you that that's helped us as well. Absolutely. I mean, our guest list, and our guest list brings referrals too. I mean, that's one of the other things that I think people miss is that as you begin to actually make an impression on people, they invite people, they actually begin to do some of the work for you.

Exactly.

Your own staff may not even have the ability to do.

Well, I'll say to folks all the time, you know, if they're, if they're focused, if they're one of their objectives to get on the podcast is, hey, I've got a book coming out in a couple of months and I want this to be part of our promotional. I get that. So one of the things I might say to them, if I might say to them, because it's a nice thing to do is, hey, you know, I know you want to promote yourself, We've put out hundreds and hundreds of episodes. Skim through the guests. Many of them have their own podcast. I'd be happy to make an introduction. That's a win-win for me. If I say to you, hey Andrew, I just talked to Fred over here. He's got a book coming out in a couple of months. Um, you've got a great podcast. He was just a guest on mine. You're gonna go, wow, Peter probably found me a high-quality guest and I get to meet a new person. Pretty cool.

Yeah, absolutely. And that, and that's what we've been seeing. And that actually goes back again to the whole idea of publishing. I mean, obviously we're a publisher, our podcast very heavily focuses on publishing and what it can do for you. So just as a kind of a way to begin to wrap up things here a little bit and bring it together for our audience, how do you see a podcast or being a regular guest on a podcast working within the idea of publishing a book and building branding? I mean, What's the relationship from your perspective that you feel is the most beneficial for people?

Yeah, I would chunk that into before, during, and after, right? Mm-hmm. So I come across in my line of work, as, as do you probably as well, lots and lots of thought leaders that when you search them, it looks like they're in the witness protection program. Like you just can't find anything on them. So I think that if you are even thinking And maybe they are in the Witness Protection Program. Maybe they're a mailman in Scottsdale. I don't know, whatever. But, but when I Google someone, I'm like, nothing comes up. That's not a good thing. So if you're even thinking about writing a book, start, start getting on podcasts, right? You know your subject matter expertise, so that's gonna be the first filter. You know who— I hope you know who your target avatars are. That's your second filter. Get on there, start to promote yourself, start to get out there, start to— and, and some people don't like to promote. Think of it as sharing knowledge. Like, I don't feel like I promoted today. I feel like you and I had a great conversation, shared some information, and you're hitting record, and so maybe some people could benefit from it. It's fun. It's a good part of my, my morning today, right? Um, that's the first thing. During the, the, the launch phase, you definitely want to be doing that. And then after, you want to continue. I mean, you know, books are a long tail product. They are a long tail product. And for most people north of 95, 98%, I would argue the book is not the thing, right? The book is not the primary revenue generator. Even when they have a quote successful book, whatever that means to them, the book is usually for most authors a means to something else. Promote your brand, speak more, attract new clients, et cetera. So the more that you can promote the book and who you are and your intellectual property and your thought leadership vis-à-vis podcast, it should be a key and integral part of your business strategy, of your marketing strategy.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I mean, the book is really just your first step. It's the way that you begin. Yeah, it's the, it's the way that you start to build trust with people. The, the, the, the T word that comes up very regularly in all of these episodes, and I, I keep mentioning it because it keeps being mentioned, it keeps being brought up, is such an important part of the process.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah. All right, so Peter Winick, one thing we like to do at the very end of these is kind of just give you the floor for a minute, just maybe for a golden nugget, something that we may not have talked about, something that we haven't addressed. What do you feel that our audience, mostly prospective authors, they're thinking about their book or they've begun to write their book, they're in the process, what is something that you and your experience that you feel that they could just universally use? Easy question. What's the golden ticket?

Yeah, I think don't, don't let the, the book be the tail that wags the dog. So what do I mean by that? To many, when they're in the process of putting a book out, it becomes this overwhelming thing. Why? Well, it has deadlines. You have other people that, that, uh, you know, are depending on you to get it done. You have lots of decisions to make— the COVID the distribution, whatever, whatever. Keep your eye on the prize, right? The, the reason that you're writing the book is to what? Promote your brand, attract net new client, like whatever those things are, you need to have a strategy in place for your business, period, full stop. And quite frankly, a book is just a really big tactic. That's all it is, right? And a tactic without a strategy is, is not a good use of time, energy, effort, or money. Absolutely.

All right. Well, Peter Winick, how can our audience, out a little bit more about you?

Yeah, I mean, they could go to the site, which is thoughtleadershipleverage.com. Uh, that's probably the best place. LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh, and you could always shoot me an email directly at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com.

Wonderful. And ladies and gentlemen, those links are down below. I mean, Peter, we could go on for a long time. Yeah, I say that a lot, but it's—

I feel like we're in violent agreement. We've been in violent agreement for a half an hour, which is—

I know, I know. Uh, but, but hey, I love, I love being in violent agreement. It was very fun to have you on. Uh, I'm looking forward to future endeavors with us because, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, that's what we're going to continue to do. We're going to build this relationship out. So thank you so much for being here, and we wish you the best of luck, sir.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.