Leadership And Thought Leadership In Times of Uncertainty

So our theme here is leading in thought leadership in the times of uncertainty. So we happen to be lucky that we're living in times of uncertainty, and this is a highly relevant topic. Or we picked a topic that we think is relevant. So Mark, let me just introduce Mark. So Mark Greene is a speaker and author, a strategic advisor and business and leadership growth coach, and a CEO and a coach to CEOs and executives worldwide. on mid-caps, and it's really a focus on leadership and growth. So I thought the combination of Mark's domain expertise on leadership and growth and mine relative to thought leadership would be sort of an interesting, you know, his peanut butter and my chocolate put together. And we'll see where we go from here. But again, we want to make it interactive, so throw questions out, throw them in the chat, ask your, you know, raise your hands, do all that sort of fun stuff. So let me kick it off, Mark, with leading in times of uncertainty. How different is that than leading in times of certainty? And do we ever live in times of certainty, I guess, is the subtext of that question.

Yeah. And you can characterize the times as being more uncertain than normal. But what really I'm focused on here is more the velocity of change.

Okay.

Than the actual characterization of time. And so the way to think about this is how has the velocity of change in our current environment impacted your thought leadership or your leadership of your organization?

Well, and let me, let me push on that. So there's velocity, but I also think from a COVID perspective, oftentimes we choose to do things quickly, but this was an involuntary velocity, like literally We had days, hours, moments, whatever, to change everything we do in order to survive. And does that change the way leaders react, whether we think we're in control of it or it's imposed?

Well, it does. And again, to me, it comes back around to velocity because we get whiplash also. So I have a multi-unit high-end restaurant client that I've worked with for several years. And within the span of a number of days, they were open, they were closed, they were open, they like just— because nobody knew which end was up.

From a regulatory standpoint, and what can we do and how do we do it and all that.

For sure. It's uncertainty, it's velocity, it's whiplash. I think it's all of those things. What everything points to as to how do you manage through these times, everything points to structural elements, things of structure or patterns, habits, and things that remain constant over time, like the keel on a sailboat, which is the part that's under the water that keeps it sailing smoothly, even in very turbulent seas and shifting winds.

Got it.

So I look at the thought leadership side of that and say, well, the content, your thought leadership may or may not need to change a lot, but the context by which it is of interest, of value, importance to people has changed a lot. So if you think about, you know, just go back a year and change ago, the beginning of 2020, where were we? You know, macro level, right? It was the war for talent. It was customer experience. It was employee experience. It was work-life, all these, All these things were important because that's where the business world was, right? So the thought leadership that played into that played into that. And then all of a sudden we get hit. And, you know, unfortunately we're not in a war for talent. We are in certain industries, but at a high level that went away. So, hmm, that's a different conversation. Work-life balance means, you know, you're taking conference calls from the bathtub, right? So there's work-life imbalance that we're all dealing with, you know, differently. Now things that are bubbling up to the top from a thought leadership perspective are diversity and inclusion. We've redefined post-George Floyd what that is, and I think a lot of people looked at that— employees, customers, the board— and said the crap that we've been putting out here under the D&I bucket is insufficient and will not cut it in this world, and we need to have a different conversation there. There are new conversations around mental health. There are new challenges around work from home and culture, you know, and then there's even new challenges around what's, what's appropriate. You know, if I'm hiring somebody, is it okay to say, hey, you know, Mary, show me, you know, your workspace, where are you going to be working from? What's the bandwidth at home? Who do you live with? You got a barking dog or roommates? You know, all these things have changed, right? You know.

They have. That plays right into one of the 4 mental models that I spend quite a bit of time talking about relative to being part of the foundation of managing through through change, through this velocity of change. And it's the mental model, Peter, of essentialism. And it's this idea that you've got to be essential to somebody, otherwise you're not going to have much going on. And in the example that you just gave was beautiful because you said, well, back then, these were the things that were relevant. And I would replace the word relevant with essential to certain people. And now we've got a different list of things that for a different set of reasons is essential. And the problem is, is when we love our own ideas too much, or we love our own products too much, and we're not willing to acknowledge that the world has moved on. And what used to potentially be essential to somebody is now kind of, it's a nice to have, but not necessarily a must have. And I ran through this conversation with a number of CEOs who couldn't, just couldn't wrap their head around what to do with their existing customer base and what was going on. And I was able to actually coach them to get into their customers' shoes and realize what is it that is essential to them right now in the midst of, you know, pandemic and all these other things that are happening.

And what does that mean to you as a business owner? Are you more relevant or less relevant? It could be some of that's beyond your control. Right? So there were certain— from a thought leadership perspective, you know, like mindfulness in the workplace is a great thing. Totally tone deaf to be talking about that a year ago when the workplace, we don't even know what it is, where it is, what's going on. Are we going to make payroll? There's a time and place, you know, and you don't want to be perceived as tone deaf.

That's right. You don't want to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg, right? You want to focus on the hole in the hull and saving the ship. No question. No question. I was going to ask the crowd, does anybody have a thought on this or a question around the concept of essentialism, or as Peter highlighted, the shift of relevant topic areas to the business community?

I can jump in with something that really struck me in a meeting I was at before this, one of the thought leaders— and this was a group of business leaders— asked about people's thinking about the cultural impact of going back to work in a virtual work environment. And no one had thought about it. And there are 2 ways of thinking about this. One is we should go where they're going to be in terms of needs, in that they will need to address culture. The other one is a lot of what we spend our time thinking about as thought leaders, and I'll speak for myself, is not where people are at.

Yeah.

So if you had asked me before this meeting, I would have told you culture is really important right now to focus on, but not a single person found that to be something they wanted to focus on or they needed to focus on. So I find that disconnect, at least in my mind and how I address the needs of my clients and potential clients.

So, Mahaan, is that because of the leadership part of thought leadership where we tend to live just a little bit around the corner in the future? We don't like to stay in the present all that much because it's kind of boring, right? We like to say, what's next? What's the next wave? What's the whatever? And as operators, a lot of business owners are going, geez, I got to figure out in the next 60 or 90 days how to safely bring X percent of my people back to work and who wants to come back to work and who doesn't, all this other stuff. And we're thinking it's almost a check, you know, they're playing checkers. and we're playing chess thinking 5 moves ahead. Does that resonate?

That's the positive perspective, and that's how I would hope. And the other perspective is that, you know, if all you have is a hammer, problems are nails. I spend a lot of time, my thought leadership on organizational culture, and I see that need, but maybe the market doesn't see that need. The positive perspective is I am 5 months or 6 months ahead of where they are. The negative perspective is that's not a need they see, but I'm still talking about, hey, you really need to address culture.

Yeah, I think it's incumbent on us to build the bridge though. So it's not so bad to be, you know, like Wayne Gretzky said, to be where the puck's going to be, not where it is right now. It's not such a bad thing, but you risk leaving people behind. So coming back to the concept of essentialism, You know, what is essential to a leader today from which you can build a logical ladder of thought to your future around culture and help them understand why now's the time to start working on that rather than waiting 6 months just because they're not quite ready for it yet, right? And so again, it gets to the question of understanding what, what is important to them right now. and then being creative around helping them build that bridge. I mean, this is good sales, actually, just a good sales practice. One of the other mental models I talk about is the Stockdale Paradox. Admiral James Stockdale was a POW in Vietnam, and he survived this brutal time in the Hanoi Hilton.

Yeah.

When he came out, He was asked, how did you survive? And he said, well, I wasn't an optimist because the optimists all died. They died of broken hearts because they always thought they'd get out and they never did. And I wasn't a pessimist because the pessimists just forget it. They gave up and died. He said, but rather what I did was I, I recognized the brutal reality of my current situation and at the same time held in my mind the knowledge that when I eventually emerged, I would be significantly better and stronger as a person. That's the paradox, those 2 things simultaneously. That comes to mind in this conversation because are we helping our customers see the brutal reality of their situation, and then are we giving them what they need to have hope that there will be a better future and that they'll be in a better place? And I think that could be part of the tie that could help build this bridge that I'm talking about.

Well, I think it's part of that bridge, Mark, is part of the ways to serve the clients with the thought leadership is to say, I understand why you're focused on this right now, and that's critically important. But I've worked with a lot of clients that are one notch ahead of you, either because of geography, industry, or whatever, whatever. And here's what's keeping them up at night. How can we have a conversation around that? I know it's not even on your radar. But I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that once you solve this problem, you know, here's the next whack-a-mole that's coming up, and we can actually work on both of these together even though you don't smell the fire over here yet. And I think that's— there's this sense of overwhelm for leaders now and leadership in, you know, think about just the HR function. I mean, a fairly stable, predictable, you know, HR year over year, how many people we're hiring, what are the policies, whatever. I think that function, amongst others, has gone through the most amount of change in the shortest period of time, and they tend to be risk-averse, right? And they tend to not want to take, you know, take those risks. And they were forced to. They were forced to rethink everything. IT is another one. Like, how did, you know, organizations or functions that didn't have to traditionally move as quickly— HR, IT tended to move quickly, but HR could be, let's form a committee and we'll think about it for a year. Right now it's like, no, you have— it's Friday. Monday at 8 o'clock, we will be doing something different. So what do you think, Mark, about, from a leadership perspective, this sort of— you know, it's not just uncertainty, but I think we have to acknowledge the stress, you know. And for some people, even when you sort of double-click on that a little bit, some people COVID has been— and I don't mean to sound harsh, insensitive here— almost a blessing. Right. So forget the physical. As long as you haven't gotten sick and your family's fine, all this other sort of stuff, it's like, hey, I don't have to commute anymore and I'm not on airplanes. And, you know, you know, business is pretty good. I'm actually not spending any money. I'm saving a lot of money. And for others, it's a curse. Right. Like, oh my God, you know, schooling children. I couldn't imagine being a couple in a 700-square-foot apartment in Manhattan homeschooling a 6-year-old and you're both working. I couldn't imagine that stress.

My wife had that— my wife and I had that conversation a zillion times over the last year. Like, thank God our kids are up and out because how could we have dealt with that for sure. So there's a really important element of any leader's role that I call LMA, lead, manage, and hold accountable. It's a bucket of accountability for any leader in terms of what part of what they have to do in their job. And there's an element of that that I call overhead, leadership overhead. And it's like the dropping by people's office time and saying, hey, how's it going, Peter? What's up with your family? You know, that kind of thing. Like, it's just being a human being. Okay?

Right.

And my position is that in the past year, the amount of leadership overhead has doubled or tripled in terms of what leaders are required to allocate now than it was prior. Because you have to be a lot more deliberate to call somebody or get on a Zoom call or whatever. You can't just like—

The lack of management by walking around.

Yeah, you can't just swing by the office on your way to the coffee pot, right, or the restroom. And so this leadership overhead thing, you have to be much more deliberate about. And what that does, though, is it enables more humanity. And that's the mechanism here that I think is really critical to talk about, that gets to being able to help people through whatever the experiences that they're having. So, I had a client tell me back in the midst of all of this mess, it was probably like June of last year, he said, Mark, you know what the killer question is? The killer question whenever I get on a conversation with one of my folks is, hey, tell me what's your plan for dinner tonight? And he said, because that one question would cause people to just light up and they would give him the whole menu and all the thing and all the stuff.

Yeah.

And, and you know why? The reason is because in, in that COVID lockdown world, that was one of the few things that somebody could actually control in their life.

Right.

Now, granted, you were limited to what was in the pantry and what was in the fridge, but you could still choose what, what you were going to do with, with your dinner and make the best of it. And that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. That, that's just this— it's, it's overhead, but it's humanity, and it's so, so critical.

And I would add on to that, Mark. So you can put it from the lens of a leader or a manager, and you've got your typical 8, 10, 12 direct reports. And at any given time, you've got a handful of folks on your team that have something, right? They're going through a divorce, a health scare, a parent with a sickness, whatever. But you can isolate that and say, ah, Mahan's going through a tough time. I'm going to, you know, let me cut him some slack. Let me have a talk. Let me, you know, whatever. Now we don't, you know, it's even just to find that information out. Now, if it's extreme, you'd find it out. There was a death or something like that. But how do you know, like, hey, Mahan, how you doing? You know, and it's not like, you know, his patterns. He comes in the office and he's usually happy-go-lucky and gets his coffee and he's got a big smile and now he's all grumpy. You're not seeing that totality of the person, you know, 'cause people don't typically show up on a Zoom call feeling all, you know, you sort of put your face on, right? You gotta go at it, so. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's interesting. So you're saying that, and as you're saying that, Peter, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, I guess that's a lot of companies out there, but none of my clients are like that. And the reason why is because we've put structures in place that take care of that. Remember I said structure is the key to managing through uncertain times?

So stay there for a minute. So structure in times of uncertainty in service of being a better leader. So give me— so if my old tools were, I could sort of read the room a little bit. I see how people are acting, you know, management by walking around, you know, just grabbing some random time sitting on someone's desk and, you know, shooting the breeze, whatever. What are the new structures? Because the ones that served me well served me well. I don't have a new toolbox.

Yeah. And so it's funny because for, again, these are not different structures. They've been adapted. So things like a daily huddle, okay, with your team, with your direct reports. is an amazing structure in this era. And that's something that can super easily be adapted to find out very quickly, hey, what's going on in your personal life in the last 24 hours? Because there's rounds to a huddle, and a huddle with a team of fewer than 8 or 10 people should last 10 to 12 minutes once a day. That's it. It's about synchronizing the group, synchronizing the team. And we design it with different rounds, like, hey, what's up? What was the win yesterday? What's going on personally, you can add for this era. Literally every day, you have people on the team hearing each other and seeing what's going on with each other and able to care for each other for all the right reasons. I'll give you another story. I have a very large client, a 1,000-person organization.

Right.

The chief revenue officer told me mid-year last year, he said, you know what, Mark, if not for The rhythms and the processes and the structures that you put— helped us put in place in this organization. We literally went from 100% in person to 100% virtual in the span of 48 hours, and the company did not skip a beat. He said, you got to realize every single thing we were doing in person, we're able to do this way. And that's part of what helped us do this. And so to me, it's a great example of managing through this velocity of change and uncertainty. Think about that, a 1,000-person white-collar organization, 48 hours, 100% virtual, and they didn't skip a beat. That's what I'm talking about in terms of—

Well, and then in the old world, if we were to say, hey, as a 1,000-person organization, we're going to go virtual, there'd be a committee and an IT committee and an HR committee, and we talk about it for 2 years, and then we would do a pilot. You know, and it would— until they got to where they were. So there, I mean, what does that tell us? Because I think if we look at— I don't say some of the good that came out of COVID but some things that we could replicate from COVID is, you know, Mm-hmm. given that everybody was going through the same stuff at the same time, it was okay to say to a client, you know what, I just— I've never done what I do in this way before in this situation, but here's what I'm thinking. Because usually they're coming to you as the expert going, Mark, you've done this 50 times. What do you do? Right? So this piece here, but shouldn't people have an increased confidence of, geez, we lived through that. Nothing will ever compare to the amount of change we did in such a short period of time with relatively unscathed.

Yeah. Sometimes a decade worth of change can happen in an instant. And that's what it did. And so people didn't have a chance to process it. For me personally, it was a real blessing because again, all of a sudden I didn't have to mount an argument as to why I could be just as effective remotely as I could be having to fly on an airplane to go see you and your team in person. And the reality is I am.

But so stay there for a minute. So for a lot of thought leaders, COVID wasn't the first time they thought, geez, you know, I can probably do a lot of this remotely, whatever. But there was a peer pressure and an expectation. Well, everybody else jumps on a plane and whatever, and my fees are pretty high and they sort of expect it. And I think we proved it's not 100% in every instance, but I think you're going to have to make a pretty strong case in the post-COVID world of, why do you need me to get on a plane? And do we really need to be— it won't be zero, but I think we're both— both parties are going to have to go, no, I think this is significant enough where, yeah, you should come to DC and we should sit down and whatever.

Right. Or if you want me to get on a plane, you're going to have to pay my travel rate for that, which is something perhaps I never could have conceived of charging in the past other than just expense reimbursement. Right?

Well, as thought leaders, we had a negative travel rate because we had our fee, And nobody's paying for the— hey, if I had to go to Seattle from New York, great, I'm getting my whatever, my fee, but nobody's paying me for the other 2 days on a plane. Now, I was able to do other things, but I'm amazed now. So I was not a crazy traveler, but I was 120,000 miles a year. And I look at my weeks now and the calls I'm back to back and the time zones I'm in, and I'm like, when did I have time to do that?

Yeah.

And did it really add that much value? And there's certain instances that I think Maybe 20% of the time where I really wish I could.

Yeah.

Well, and it's interesting because you may discover, like I am, that this mode of operation actually advances me in the direction of my purpose in a much better way than the old mode because I'm able to impact so many more people in such a more profoundly deep way. than if I had to single-thread this and just be moving around all the time. I think that is true.

I also think we are at the beginning of what I am calling the COVID Renaissance. What happened was, it is the ultimate A/B test. You give a zillion people who did not have enough time on their hands a ton of time back, what do they do? Well, there is only so much Netflix, but smart people that are passionate and thought leaders tend to create a lot of stuff. So we're seeing a whole genre of books, or people read, you know, that workshop I used to do, you know, now I've got it, I can spend a couple days on, you know. So I think there's this, I'm calling it sort of again the COVID Renaissance, people going back and codifying and documenting the nuances and improvements and the tweaks and all that stuff that they always, they always had the list somewhere. One day when I get time, you know, I will. And I think it's really interesting because we will normalize again and go back to not having the time. Most of us are probably mostly there now. But how do you capture that sense of creativity and innovation? So I see Mahan is smiling because maybe you've done some of this.

As you were saying that, Peter, just today's McKinsey newsletter has an article about how companies are spending a lot more money on training, much of it asynchronous, but they're spending a ton more on training because their people are at home, have the time, and they want them to feel engaged and developed. So it is where things are headed.

Yeah, interesting.

For sure. So question I would ask is, if this transition from in-person to virtual was, you know, essentially the slaying of a sacred cow, if you will, and a big abrupt change that everybody kind of got our hands were forced. What's the next one? So what's something going on in your business, if you're a leader, or in your thought leadership practice that is another sacred cow that maybe you ought to start scratching at or questioning to see if perhaps that's the next thing that you should challenge or the next boundary that you should contemplate crossing?

Did you have an example of that? Because I think that's interesting. It's an interesting question.

Yeah. So let's see, like a business that always bundled some sort of service with its product deciding, you know what, it's always a headache for us and we want to get out of the service business and we're just going to do the product. It's that kind of a change. It's just something that you always took for granted, that's a part of your model, and maybe there's some fear if you took it away or changed it, like that.

Well, and we've seen— it's interesting. So you mentioned a restaurant client earlier. So we've seen some things on the restaurant side that have just been fascinating, right? So they've gone from high-end restaurants that have been forced to go takeout, or there's a group here in New York that is a world-renowned purveyor to 5-star restaurants and hotels, and you don't want to be selling, you know, high-end food products there. They went direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, retail, you know, e-tail. Literally, I know the guy over there, in 2 weeks, 90-year-old family business, third generation, not the one that you would have predicted would have, you know, rocked on a dime, and they're killing it. Why? Well, people are at home. They can have a high average ticket price. You know, it's like a $200 minimum, which You wouldn't enter the consumer market that way pre-COVID, but now it's like, well, everybody's home, I'm going to eat it anyway. It's fine, you know. And, um, I wonder when things normalize if they look at what was their core business for 3 generations as non-core. Maybe they have a new core or a new market to serve in a new way.

Yeah, there's nothing like a crisis to learn from, right? And really challenge your sacred cows. Shari, were you—

Would you stop?

Until I say go, stand.

I think we need a mute there.

Okay.

Yeah, let me— let me—

there we go.

There we go. I'm gonna guess she wasn't talking to you.

I'm gonna guess she wasn't talking to us either. That's okay.

So any— so I like the idea of thinking proactively, thinking about a sacred cow, right? So, you know, is it the meetings that you always had? Is it, you know, whatever? And are we going to be so quick I think initially the first six months, I was like, "I want to get back to normal." Now it's like I want to get back to productive, and a lot of things I did were quite stupid. Like I working remotely for me was never a shocker. Right? I have a remote virtual team and blah blah blah blah blah. But I have a lot of friends my age in the profession like, "Oh my God! I can't even imagine how you did it." And then like two months into this, like, why did I ever have an office? That was the like this is just like paying ten thousand dollars a month in rent to sit around people that. Or, you know, it's always someone's birthday. And I think the dark secret in corporate a lot is, yeah, it might be an 8-hour day, but it's not 8 hours of productive day. It's always Sheila and accounting's birthday, right? You ever notice that?

Yeah, for sure. Or like, why am I sitting on a train or in a car for an hour each way?

Nobody misses the commute.

Completely.

Oh, I really can't wait to get back on the train.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Yeah.

Anybody else see anything like that? I'd love to hear from the crowd.

Anything in chat? No? Cool. So from a thought leadership perspective, Marc, right? So the rinse, lather, repeat of create content, write books, serve clients, write— what are the things that have been added to your repertoire and things that have been removed?

So I've spent the year doing a lot more building of an audience and a following online. So that's a big thing.

Okay.

I happen to have a pretty successful newsletter on LinkedIn actually with 75,000 subscribers now that comes out every other week. So I've been building that audience. So that's for sure. I also feel—

So let me ask you though on that, how do you know? So when people are building lists, whether it's followers on LinkedIn or newsletter list or whatever, they always lead with the amount of numbers they have. And I think that's just human nature. And I would argue, it doesn't matter if you have 75,000 or the right 750. And do you know?

Yeah, for sure. For sure. So what's also interesting, though, is that there's a form of capital in the numbers, Peter. And so I'm actually able to get people's attention more readily. So, for example, like the calling card of, you see these 2 books up on the shelf, I'm an author.

Yeah.

We all know the magic of that, right? That's a door opener, et cetera. Well, similarly, saying I've got 75,000 subscribers to an every other week newsletter gets people's attention very quickly, because the truth is everybody's looking for eyeballs, everybody's looking for that. And what that's actually enabled me to do is land and conduct some interviews with other thought leaders who are, you know, have even larger following than I do. And it ends up being a very synergistic process. So I agree with the point you're making. It's about quality, not quantity. But there are aspects of the quantity that are of value. And it's about taking the totality of that and making it work.

At some level, it's a de facto validation if you're going— because thought leaders are always sort of playing aspirational. I want to get to that next level, next level. And it's like, oh, okay. So if you have 75,000, Wow. A lot of people go, that's awesome. And they go, oh, but Marshall Goldsmith's got a million. Oh geez. Right? But in between that, there's a lot that now opens the door because if you had a newsletter with 113 people, kind of like, what's this guy been doing? Right?

So to come back to your original question, one of the other things that I'm doing that I didn't do a lot of before is I'm collaborating more. So for example, here we are today. This is a great example of that. I mentioned to Peter earlier before we got started, I'm now teaching on Simon Sinek's online learning platform. Right? That's another collaboration. And I have a couple of things in the works to do some testing on Clubhouse in collaboration with folks. And it's the same idea that these are not things I would have thought about this way before, but now I'm seeing more opportunities for synergy than I did in the past. And I think one of the reasons is that the virtual world is— it's a level playing field. The arena is so accessible. Right? Whereas in the past, if Peter and I wanted to collaborate, and I'm down in Virginia, and like, you know, like, we're— it just, it's a layer of complexity around how do we go do that. And I think we're at a point now where, again, enough of the sacred cows have been slain so that people are more open to these, the alternatives of a virtual environment, and the fact that it's just as valuable as a live environment in many cases.

And it's easier to find an hour to do something together where, oh geez, I'm flying to this client in Chicago, you're flying to Tampa, it's gonna take us 6 months till there's a Thursday afternoon where we can both collaborate an hour.

Yeah, the barrier to entry is lower and the opportunity cost is lower, much lower. Yeah.

So, so who or what do you see sort of winning in this, this new way of operating and who might be losing. So I'll give you an example. For example, many, if not all of my clients speak. To some, it was a significant number one line item on their P&L. To others, important, 30%, 40%. To others, maybe a little bit less. And that, I mean, talk about an industry that's just getting turned upside down and shaken. I mean, it's— I hate hearing the term freenoting, but I'm hearing it more and more and more, and it's not a good thing. So if you were a one-trick pony of keynoting, and many are, it's not a judgment, a great way to make a good living and get your message out there, not a particularly complex operation to manage. If that was your jam, now what?

Yeah. Well, I come back to essentialism and who are you essential to and for what purpose, and what does that look like? I think that's— No business is exempt from periodically needing to reinvent itself. And, you know—

Even on that essentialism, Mark, I want to push on that. So, for example, you know, airlines were pretty essential to my existence a year and change ago. I booked my first flight last night in a year and change for some time in the future. Right. And I don't see myself coming back to E Platte American Airlines Anytime soon. They didn't do anything wrong. Like, you know, well, maybe they have over the years, but that's not the point. No, they're no longer essential to me. Keynoting—

That's right. Hey, look, think about commercial real estate, man. It's the same story. They're not—

That's where I was going. So if you're, if you're commercial real estate and there's all sorts of stuff we could do, the hybrid model, we can do the WeWork model, the bottom line is in most cities there will be more supply than demand, which means price will drop, period, full stop.

Yeah, right. Yeah, but if you're in a capital— so both of those are examples of really capital-intensive industries. You can't pivot on a dime if you're an airline and reinvent the business the way so many of our clients can do in their business.

You can't go flying in the clouds and being in the cloud.

The same is with the concept of being in the cloud. The concept of essentialism still plays because here you are, you haven't flown in a year, you don't anticipate being a platinum dude again anytime soon. You could make the argument that flying was essential to you previously, it's not as essential to you now, and you play that out over time, and you might conclude now's not a great time to invest in airlines.

Go back to the keynoter. If I'm the keynoter, and that's not all I know, but I've been making a great living for 15 years, and I was essential to my clients, don't most providers or suppliers it takes them longer to realize they didn't get the memo that you are no longer essential, and we don't want to hear that message, or you are essential at 20 cents on the dollar. So I see a lot of keynoters now doing— you're not going to get your $40,000, $50,000 keynote fee on a Zoom. It's just not— the market says it's not— we're not valuing it at that price point. It doesn't mean you're not great.

That's right, but that's a keynote format. I might say, okay, what else can you— like all of those speakers have a giant file of client data. They have clients that they've worked with. And what about thinking, okay, why don't I get on the phone with some of these clients and actually have a conversation with them and say, hey, look, I know you're not doing any events. I know I'm not going to have an opportunity to come and do keynotes and move the needle for your 1,000-person sales force. However, I do know that in today's virtual world, your needs have changed. And what I want to talk to you about is where do we intersect today and going forward, and how can I represent value to you? Let's go back on that. Yeah. That's the inception of an essentialism conversation. That's my point, though. You're not just making it up. You got to figure it out.

Right.

So, the keynoters that I've seen that have done really well have said, they've come to the realization That okay, what I was really good at, what I was top in class at, is no longer valued at the level it was valued. Right? You know Ferraris are now selling at Hyundai prices. Just is what it is. Right? So now you got to go and say, hmm, but what do I have and who could value it? Maybe I need to move into the capabilities development business. How do I take my stuff and convert it into assessments and e-learning? Totally different skill set. So now I've got to have a beginner's mind. Uh oh, I'm going to scratch. You know fall down and scratch my knee. but maybe that's where the value is extracted and it's an unknown to me because everybody like, everybody feels good after you've been doing something for 10 years and you're killing at it. Nobody likes to have the rug pulled out from under them. Yeah.

Well, so I'll rip a page from my own experience. A year ago, Simon Sinek had no online learning platform. Why? Because he didn't need it. Okay? Like the guy didn't need it. Probably the most, one of the most sought-after speakers, top 2 or 3 speakers on the planet. Right? And what they decided to do was create this learning platform and not just fill it with their own content. but actually partner out with people who in different domain areas are recognized experts in their domain.

Sure.

And you know that they've, to date, I just saw the statistic a week or two ago, in less than a year, they've had more than 16,000 people enroll in their classes. All virtually, all online, and much of it was through partnered content. That's an answer to the essentialism question. It's not the only answer, but it's a real live example of a well-known thought leader who made a series of choices based on the reality of the environment and created this business that arguably is working pretty well.

If you were working with a client, whether they're a thought leader or not, Are there some framings, models, like what are some questions you ask to see not only your level of essentialness, if that's a word, today with your current market, but where you might be more essential as the world's changed? How might I get a sense of that?

I find strangely that people are very reluctant to go talk to customers.

Which is insane.

Yeah, like, I mean, like hand-to-hand combat, like having an actual conversation with a person. And yeah, virtual is fine, doesn't matter, even on the phone is fine, but it's like a live human-to-human interaction. And actually ask them about what's going on and what's important to you and what's working for you and what— because the problem is we're so accustomed to being me-focused, like us-focused, that all of our conversations are around like, well, Peter, let me tell you what I'm doing in my business to respond to the needs of our customers. And, you know, we're creating this new product for you and we're doing this thing and we're thinking, blah, blah, blah. But I'm not saying, hey, Peter, how are you? Like, what's keeping you awake at night?

Right.

And what are the things that are changing in your business? And what are the 3 things that if you don't figure them out in the next 3 to 6 months, you think like your lifestyle is at risk, right? That's a real tough thing.

Let me layer on that though. So as thought leaders, let me sort of pull it back to the thought leaders. Thought leaders love creating great stuff, right? That's what drives them for the most part. They didn't get into that business to be salespeople, to be marketing people. There are some exceptions to that, but for the most part, what do they love? They love the creation part. And the mistake that I've seen people make is they come up with an idea and then they go nose to the grindstone and create something really amazing, an app, a video-based learning, whatever, that has absolutely no value or no one's interested in. And they could have found that out way earlier, but there's either a lack of, you know, it's got to be perfect before they ship it. If you listen to them, it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what I think. What matters is people that will buy your stuff, what do they think?

Yeah.

And what are they telling you and how are they— and then, you know, I love the idea of going out to clients. We do it all the time because one of the beautiful things about thought leadership as a business is you don't have to go produce the pen and then, you know, source the factory in China and then hope somebody buys, you know, beige-colored pens. You can ask them exactly, hey, if I was to do this or if I get to do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, what do you think of that? And I think too few people do it because they— I don't know, it's either they're not used to it or they're afraid of somebody going, That's stupid. But if it came in purple, or you're thinking about my leaders, I'm thinking about I could use some of your stuff in my onboarding program. Yeah.

So it's the absence of a strategy and a core customer, right, I think is the underlying cause of a lot of that. And sorry, I'm about to sneeze, but maybe it'll hold off here a second.

Not during COVID You can't do that.

Yeah, I know, right? No, it's a non-COVID Well, there you go. Sorry about that. But the absence of a strategy and a core customer and look, a thought leader, even as a solo person, is still a business. You got to think of it that way. You're running a business. You're not a human being. You're not just a person.

Right?

Well, now you're preaching to the choir because I see far too many thought leaders operating without a strategy because they can. They can get away with it. And because it's not a capital-intensive business. Right? Nobody would open up a shopping mall that needed $100 million Without a strategy, like, hey, I just got a feeling people would dig a shopping mall maybe sort of on that part of town.

And, you know, and that's, and that's the same way people get into coaching, by the way, in so many cases. And that's my— I talk to a lot of new coaches and a lot of people who, you know, sell, sell a business, do really well, and they say, boy, Mark, I want to do what you do. Great. Where's the business plan? You know, like, you got to think about it that way. Otherwise, it's not going to work.

Well, coaching is a great example because there are— there is far much supply than demand. And not to discount the value, the quality, the necessity of a good coach, but to be a good coach and do it for a living, you also have to have the skills to sell coaching skills, which isn't necessarily taught in coaching school.

100%. Listen, I mentor coaches worldwide. I get this completely, and I traveled that path. So Right. You know, because it's definitely, there's definitely like, I would say in the coaching realm, there's probably about a 90/20 ratio where you've got 90% of the people that call themselves a coach probably don't have or barely have a 6-figure income.

Maybe.

And then, you know, 10% are above 6 figures and maybe 2% or 3% are above maybe half a million bucks or less, like maybe even 1%. I mean, it's just, it's like a cliff, drops off a cliff. And by the way, you see the same pattern in real estate, for example, right?

Real estate agents are exactly the same.

Same idea. And it's the same. And my guess is you probably see the same pattern, Peter, in your clients that are thought leaders. And so, again, you ask yourself, well, what's the difference between the 1%ers and the 99%ers? And guess what you're going to come down to? You're going to come down to the fact that the 1%ers probably have more structure and process and more discipline.

And more strategy and more marketing.

But that's part of structure and process to me. But strategy, that's all structure and process. That's part of what that is that people tend to eschew because they're like, no, I want to do my own thing and I can do my own thing now. And so, And so they think that's like this whole, I want to be agile, right? So I don't, I don't need the structure. And I have this conversation all the time that you missed the idea that structure, if properly implemented, actually increases your ability to be agile.

Right.

And think of like a world-class athlete who's super agile on the playing field, but what don't you see? All the years of discipline and stretching and regimens and diet and all the structure that's behind their ability to be agile. And it is no different for us in business.

Yeah.

And I think for thought leaders, again, because it's not capital intense and they actually don't use proper accounting to say, well, the opportunity cost— well, you know, it took 6 months, but it was only my time. What would you have if the only product you have to sell is your time? 6 months is actually half a year of your revenue. If I was— most companies, if I were to say I'm investing half a year of our revenue, you better have a good case and a strong plan for an ROI on the other side of that.

100%.

That's not to say you don't make smaller bets, 5% of your time, 10% of your time, or whatever. But those are bet-the-farm bets. And I work with clients all the time, and I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, that year was awful. How come? I'm going through their financials. Why was that year— oh, that was the year I wrote my book. So you just turned— like, so you didn't work? Like, so what does that mean? Well, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. How'd that work out? Well, see, the second year was pretty crappy too because the pipeline stopped. Yeah, yeah. And I'm finally— so it took you 3 years to catch up from writing?

And then I realized, right, and then I realized you don't actually make any money selling books, so I had to go back to like the other thing. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, cool. So let me, um, sort of be mindful of the time. Um, anybody— let me just open it to the floor. I got a couple Thoughts here? Anybody? Questions, thoughts?

Just one, one quick thought on that, Peter. Until your group this last year, I haven't been engaged at all with thought leaders, and I have 2 what I consider to be somewhat outside-the-group observations. One, I think you and Mark touched on it. Number one, it is very much of a product pusher perspective. I've got this thought, I've got this book, I've got this process, whatever it is, It's that rather than a client-centric, sales-oriented perspective. The second part of it is the thought leaders that I see, and specifically the speakers that you talk about, seem to be the most resistant to reinvention. They're the ones— the clients, the organizations out there are reinventing themselves. The thought leaders are hoping and hanging on for the day when those big—

But I think they're I think they're most resistant because the old world worked pretty damn good for them. You can make a million bucks a year as a speaker if you didn't mind, you know, living on Delta Airlines and not sleeping at home. Like, nobody wants to look at that and go, geez, when am I going to get back to that again? Or I gotta, you know, I'm, I'm 60 years old and I gotta reinvent. Nobody wants to hear that story. But I think there is a lot of that.

I, I'm, I'm with you, but, uh, we preach reinvention to our clients Thank you.

Thank you.

And therefore, we need to be reinventing ourselves.

Thank you.

And I don't hear as much of that with the thought leaders that at least I interact with.

Listen, I love that point. One of my core values is I practice what I preach. And I think as a practitioner, or as a thought leader, or whatever you are, even as a leader in an organization, If you don't lead by example, you are lacking integrity. And if you are lacking integrity, then there is no way you're going to have anywhere near the impact on the world that you have the potential to have. And it is critically important.

But I think it tells you the underlying assumptions and the outcomes that you've gotten. So I can tell you that for me, Pre-COVID, every, every, every new client engagement for 15 years was face-to-face. Every one of them, right? Either I'm getting on a plane or they're getting on a plane. And because that worked so well for us, I assumed that was not the reason, but why would I mess with that? It's working. And we had dinner the night before, a little bit of FaceTime, or have a meal, get to know somebody, whatever, whatever. And I was very concerned, like, not that people are hiring me because I'm a dinner mate, right? Like, but that was part of the whole experience is, yes, we can help you, and build a rapport and build a relationship and we're trustworthy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And having to convey some of those, not just the expertise remotely, but some of those other softer things got us rethinking the way we operate the business. And quite frankly, I'm loving the fact that I can work with clients all over the world, you know, from my big comfy chair here or wherever I want it to be. Rosemary, you had your hand up.

Rosemary?

Yeah. Yeah, I did, because I wanted to say something in response to what Mehon had been talking about, reinventing yourself, because I've always been a firm believer in doing that over and over throughout your lifetime. And I actually wrote a blog last year called It Might Be Time to Reinvent Yourself, and it's, it's on my copywriter website. But I talk to people about that all the time because we do that in our lives and don't even realize we're doing it. We move to a new location, And now we have to become something else, something new, something different. And a lot of times we're changing jobs because we don't like what we've been doing previously, and we're reinventing ourselves again, or we're learning new things, and that's reinventing us. So it's, it's a constant thing, but it's a good thing. It makes us better people. So I'm— I just had to throw that in because I've always been a firm believer in that.

Yeah, no, thank you. I mean, I think my, my— and I'd love to get your thoughts too, Mark— so my my sort of conclusion or summary to sort of this leading in thought leadership in times of uncertainty is there's so much good of it. Like, how do you bottle some uncertainty for when we get back? Because inevitably we'll get back to complacency. That's what we do, right? Like, that's okay. I did that change thing and I got a couple more green hairs and give me a new routine and let me just sort of follow that. And I think you have to sort of, like you said, kill the sacred cows or, you know, how do I deliberately create a sense of uncertainty when I don't need to?

Yeah. There's a great story that's told about Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, the founders of Intel Corp. If you went there, you could compete against yourself. At the time when the memory chips that they were making, that was the bread and butter of the business, became commoditized. They looked at each other one day and Andy said, if we were fired today as the president and the CEO, and the board went out and rehired a new president and CEO, what would they do? And the answer was they would exit the memory chip, exit the cash cow business that was the entire company, and bet the farm on processors. Okay? And so the 2 of them literally walked out of the building and walked back in, in a mental mindset of, we're the new president and CEO. And then they were able to execute that. And the reason I'm telling the story is because That's all it takes. It's a mental exercise to project yourself as someone you're not or as someone you wish to be. And it's a really healthy conversation for a leadership team, for example, to have once or twice a year, which is, if we were acquired by our number one competitor, what would they do to us and why? Or if, again, these sort of existential questions bring up the sacred cows and cause them to have meaningful thought and discussion. And to me, that's a rhythm. You should have a rhythm. By the way, structure here. There's a rhythm around having this kind of conversation with the right people in the room that can be quite powerful over time so that you can effectively create— this disruptive change environment without having to have a pandemic on the planet.

So waiting for the next pandemic is not the answer.

It's a bad strategy, Peter. Recommend against highly.

Okay.

Yeah.

So if you, if you learn nothing else today, that's it. That's it. Well, this has been awesome. Uh, I appreciate everybody popping in. We've archived this. If anybody wants, um, copy, shoot me an email. And, uh, this has been great. Thank you for joining me today, Mark, and thanks everybody else for participating.

My pleasure. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Have a great rest of your day.

Thanks.