Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Lee J. Colan and Julie Davis-Colan

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on our LinkedIn Live, which is an extension of the podcast Leveraging Thought Leadership. So today, my guests, we usually don't have 2 people in one box, and we, I don't think we've ever had 2 people in one box with the same last name. So that's a first. So let me give you just a quick intro on Lee and Julie. So Lee is an organizational psychologist. and a CEO advisor who applies an in-depth understanding of business, science, people, and organizations to help leaders and organizations grow. Julie Davis-Cohen is a CEO advisor, corporate health strategist, and an executive coach who keenly observes and deeply listens so she can hear the unseen and unheard truths in others. They've formed a company for— I think it's probably over 20 years. We'll get into that— called The L Group. And now they're the co-authors of a new book called Healthy Leadership: How to Thrive in the New World of Work. So welcome aboard, folks. How are you today?

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Great. So let me, let me dive in. We were chatting before we got online about the new book and how you're excited about that. But what I want to do is do a little bit of history. So, so most people might not be able to know this, but I think all of the books behind you are books that you've authored, right? So, so that's an unusual— so this is not your first rodeo, or, uh, as it comes to publishing. So maybe tell us a little bit about what, what you did this time compared to other ways you've gotten your book to market and what you're learning and what you're experiencing.

Sure. Well, to be exact, this is our 16th rodeo, so we've learned a few things. We've published, uh, 3 of them through big houses, traditionally with McGraw-Hill, 1 with a niche publisher, kind of gift book publisher, but the majority of them through kind of a mid-sized publisher called Cornerstone Leadership Institute. And that's the latest one we did here. It's a paperback.

Vanna will be here.

Yeah, okay. This is kind of a rapid read book. And then, so it's a— we like this model that we use this time. That's why we've done it with most of our books. And because it's a built-in publishing model and a marketing model, so we're able to publish large quantities of the book very cheaply. As you know, you know how printing goes, the more you print, the cheaper it is. But then we also have a process where we can get it on people's desks. So it's called the direct mail sampling method. So we have a targeted list of, in this case, it was 15,000 people, executives, HR professionals, people that are psychographic is people that pay money to read and learn.

Yep.

So we get it on their desk, they look at it, we already give a free copy, so we don't care about them buying one, right? We're looking for the quantity orders and that, and if we get it to the right people, again, it's direct mail, relatively small response rate, but the orders come through very nicely. So we like to call it a marketing kind of strategy uh, kind of a loss leader, but it's not a loss leader. It has about a 35% net margin on it. So we're getting on there. Yeah, the books make money for us, but as any author knows, it's not so much about the book, it's about the other supporting services that you can provide on the book. But we want— we like to make sure that the books themselves—

Sure.

Make money, right? You need to make sure that it's profitable. Uh, but this one in particular, we feel like it's a real passion of ours. We just feel like it could really change the world. So, but any author should be passionate about about their book, right? I mean, we've talked, we coach a lot of people and they'll say, we'll say like, they'll say, you know, I don't really want to do a bestseller. I just want to like write something, a legacy book, whatever. And I believe like you should feel that strongly about any book that you would want the world to know, right? You'd want that. So, so that's the approach.

So I want to push on something that you said or unpack something that you said. So most people, when we talk about the world of publishing, the binary thinking is traditional or non-traditional.

Right.

Is it self-published or is it traditional? And by the way, I don't even think that's the right perspective anymore because there's a lot of hybrid and variations in the middle. It is no longer black and white.

That's an old model.

That's an old model. Number 2, just because you're not publishing with a big publishing house doesn't mean that it's less than. I think there's a whole business model issue here. I think there's this time to market. I think there's control. But you put 2 things together that people don't often put together where I like to have— I think what you said was I'd like to have in one house the publishing And the marketing. And I think what happens is if you talk to most first-time authors, maybe some second-time authors that didn't learn all that well the first time, they're shocked that the publisher—

Oh yeah.

Isn't responsible for marketing. Like, wait a minute, I thought like I, I sit there with my pipe and my tweed jacket and the words flow, and then somebody else, you know, twitches their nose and magic happens and markets a book, right? Tell us how True or not true, that is.

Can I just piggyback on that for a second? So, you know, we talked about publishing with some big houses and with this intermediate publisher, and the ones that we published with the big house are actually extensions of ones that we've published like this. So they're larger variation. So, you know, as it relates to marketing, the big houses only want you if you have a proven track record and your own list. Which is great as an entry to, to get with them, um, but they don't market.

And unless you're a big name, unless you're, you know, a famous—

massive— yeah, yeah, right.

In any case, whatever way you go, your marketing plan, your marketing strategy is yours to drive and pay for and put effort into in order to get the word out about your book and/or your book.

Say that again. It's not just a strategy, it's You are the— I always joke around, congrats, you're not only the author of the book, but also underneath that, I've been advocating in parentheses, SVP of sales and marketing of the book.

100%.

So you own that function, whether you like it or not.

You own it entirely. And you can employ people to do so, but it is a very crowded world, as we all know. And I guess the other point I was just gonna piggyback on was a book, We've— this is a learning because you talked about, you know, this being number 16 and what we've learned along the way. Very wise people have spoken into us along the way. And at first we might have had like a great idea. And our first one was our best idea and still is our bestseller. But an idea in and of itself that we felt we needed to publish isn't a sufficient reason to publish. And, you know, I think probably your listeners, Peter, are probably well more informed than most. It's really our platform. It is our platform for other engaging services that Lee mentioned. It is not just about writing this book and speaking on the book. That is one offshoot. So thinking about the content and how it provides the context for more than just the key idea, the context for the services you provide.

Sure. So stay there for a minute. So, so, so the book— so there are a couple of things that you said. One is these books have led to traditionally published books. So it sounds like you're almost doing a little bit of sampling, market testing. I don't know how many pages, 150, it's less than a full book. So it's really, you're getting market validation for a publisher, for another piece to say, do we go all in and write a bigger book or a bigger piece? But I wanna talk about that, the platform leading to the other services. You know, Lee said earlier, well, we make some money on the book, you know, 35%, whatever. But the trick is whether that number was 35% or 40% or 20% doesn't change the world. What are your goals for the book relative to the business? And talk about the suite of services and offerings that you have in the business, because that's really where you make your money.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, so Julie's the kind of the marketing guru, uh, in the business. And just to give an example, our first book did very well. We're very fortunate. So then I got our role. Then I did 5 books in the next 12 months. Stupidest thing we ever did. Big investment of time because we thought, hey, this is— this is—

It works so well, number one. Let's keep going.

Why wouldn't it work well in all of them, right? And then— and so then after that, we slowed down and just said, you know what, let's make sure that we're only writing something that supports the platform. So our platform, we're leadership advisors dedicated to healthy growth. So we have a healthy growth platform around creating a compelling purpose, around engaging your team, having an aligned culture. positive coaching, and excellent execution. So we have books around all the aspects. We call them growth factors to, to, to inspire healthy growth. And, but around that whole platform is something called healthy leadership. We believe that leadership either inhibits or enhances each of those growth factors. And so that's where this came from. So we, before the pandemic, we started a process of kind of repositioning and just relooking at our company.

Yeah.

What do we want it to look like for the next 10 years?

Step back, What are we naturally gifted at? What do we love doing? What do we have resources around? What does the market need? Don't forget that. What does the market need? And we created this, this Healthy Growth Platform. And that has really been very powerful for us to be very clear. And honestly, like when we went out back to our website, man, we— there was all kinds of crud out there. It's like, you know what, we don't need to list everything we do. Everything needs to be focused on how we're leadership advisors for healthy growth for the leader, for the business, and for the team. So, so it really helped clean things up a lot. And so it makes it much easier when you think about developing a product or a service, whether it's coaching or consulting. Now it's like much cleaner and easier, and we help other people do that too. Just think about, hey, the more— any organization, the more focused you could be, the easier your decisions and your strategies are.

Well, and a good, a good litmus test of a platform is how do previous books fit in that and work, and the current book. Because what happens often, and you might have been slightly guilty of this writing 5 books in 12 months, whatever, is every time there's a new book, there's, there's a new platform. And then Your client base is getting whiplash because we're not sure what to expect from you. When I get in my car and I leave it on the jazz station, when I come in the next day, it's going to be on the jazz station. That's the expectation, right? And I think even though most thought leaders are incredibly smart and curious and prolific and all that, you know, the point that Lee made, what does the market want? Forget about what you're curious about. That's important, right?

Yeah.

But it's, it's that place where something that you're mulling over, thinking about, gnawing at, whatever is aligned with the platform and, and where the market's at.

Yeah, it's got to be. And really, the focus is really key because, because you're— if you have a clear platform, it helps you stay focused. And I would say I want to just credit, uh, Peter, you and your firm, because your models around what it takes to have a good platform and supporting tools and all that, we use that to help us think through the process. So all of your thought leadership in that area was really helpful and value-added for us. So thank you publicly for that. Seriously, that was a big deal.

Oh, thank you. And I would say that the thinking that we did pre-pandemic that led us to the Healthy Growth Model, led us to Healthy Leadership, is the most intensive thinking we've had in years since we started the business.

Yes.

Really trying to get clear and clear thinking.

Iterative.

It was so iterative. And, you know, just, you know, we have a lightbulb moment, we think it's there. And then what we do is noodle on it. I mean, I don't even know how many permutations there are, but just thinking, thinking through to get to crystal clarity, which is not easy. And it's— I don't even know if we ever— if you ever get absolutely there, but you think you're there eventually. But that's hard.

You know, when our kids used to write papers in high school, they would say, you know, help me out. And I'd say, well, where's the outline? They said, well, I don't have an outline, but I'm just all over the place. I was like, well, you can't have clear writing or clear speaking without clear thinking. And I think for a thought leader, that's really key too. It's like sometimes we just like to produce stuff, right? But it's that clarity of thought. And if you can get clarity of thought around your platform, about what you're all about and how you're— what you're passionate and skilled at intersects with what the market needs, now you're on to something. But it doesn't just like happen in one planning session.

I want to go back to the clarity of thought piece. But first, what I want to do is give us a 2-3 minute overview of the book. And then I want to go back to the clarity of thought thing. through the lens of the avatars of who the book is written for. Does that make sense?

Okay.

Yeah.

Cool. So give us a little, a little, you know, discussion on the book.

It's based on the research that Gallup's done that just says, this is what today's worker needs. And so there are lots of shifts that today's worker wants to work for a purpose and not a paycheck. They want to work for development and not satisfaction. They want a coach and not a boss. So thinking about the broad context of the worker and then what that means for a leader. So Honestly, 10 years ago, if, if a leader did the things that we're talking about in this book, they would separate themselves as like a great leader. Right. But today, with the market dynamics and there's a lot more places for people to go, if people don't look to see healthy leadership in their workplace, they're just going to go look for it somewhere else. So now it's like table stakes. Right. So it's basically founded on 3 principles and 3 practices. The principles are basically what you would consider your mindset, if you will.

Mm-hmm.

The principles of love, positivity, and growth. Right. And then we had a lot of pushback at the beginning when we developed the model. Remember, Julie, particularly from HR friends? Oh, you can't put love— there's not love in the workplace and all that. I'm like, so of course now it's the number one thing people— it resonates with them, right? So we just define love as doing what's in the best interest of others. So—

Yeah, lesson there is, is don't listen to HR. I'm like slightly kidding.

So we have that mindset of your healthy leadership principles that it's almost kind of sets the context. And really, when you think about this, it's really a way to thrive, not just at work, but in life. You could— anyone—

Sure.

Read this book and they'll say, this has helped my family, my relationship. So they're fundamental principles. And then they're supported by 3 healthy leadership practices, the practices of clarifying, of coaching and connecting. So I'll talk about those. So, you know, listen, is there rocket science in this book? No, but there is science in the book. Like it's all based on, even the positivity one sounds like, oh, Pollyanna. Julie Julie's one of 1,300 experts in the world certified as a positive psychology practitioner. So we draw on the science of the brain and how it works and how we can manage against negative— negativity bias to make sure we're bringing our best selves to the table. So there's a lot of science to support it, along with just some examples and stories to kind of bring it to life. But it really is subtitled An Actionable Guide for Leaders. So it's really about all the tools. We're very tool-based, kind of a how-to company.

That's what I say.

So it's like, it's all about the tools in the book. So people could take this and deliver training and they could be off and running if they wanted to.

Well, I think that tool approach where it's more applied than theoretical, there's a subset. And sometimes what happens is thought leaders fall in the trap of thinking everyone's like them. You all know more about this stuff than almost everybody, right? So you are not writing for you as the audience, right? So where you might be more theoretical, more abstract, you know, etc., it's that applied, which leads me to where I started a little while ago is talked about the platform. You guys locked down your platform. Then we talk about the book. Book, it's very focused. Give me a sense, and I think people don't spend enough time here, we call them avatars, but who's the book for? And I know it says leaders and all that, but meaning who's the book for relative to your business objectives? Obviously anybody can read the book, frontline people, whatever, but yeah, give me that sense as it relates to your, your direct mail campaign, all that. Where all roads come together?

Well, I mean, ideally our audience is, is the absolute leader of the company, the CEO. If he or she embraces these concepts, it trickles down. So that is always our goal, to start at the top. We spend a lot, most of our time coaching and interacting with people at that level. And so that is always the goal. However—

What size organization? Because when people say at the top, yeah, you know, if you're a solo practitioner, you're at the top. But if you're— okay, you're at the top.

I'd say on the small end, and we used to try to describe this, but the fact is, excuse me, our ideal client, it's more about their mindset and the value they see in our kinds of services versus the size of the company. That said, on the small end, maybe a $50 million company, and we go easily up. In most cases, our companies are multi-billion dollar clients.

So, okay, so wait, wait, I want to expand on that though, because I think, and I call it sort of lazy marketing, it's easy to pull a list of heads of HR at companies $50 to $250 million, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What you were calling the mindset, or call it the psychographics, that's harder to find. So what are those mindsets? Because I think that that's really the hardest part about the definition, defining of, uh, an avatar. It's not age and income.

It's—

that is a piece, but that other piece, right? Tell me about that and how you, how you market against that.

And that's the, that's the, the one that really— the primary and sole criteria we use for the mailing list is people that pay money to read and learn. So someone that subscribes to CEO Magazine, someone that went— so someone that attended the local, uh, local university executive MBA program, uh, someone who purchased some videos for their, for their team. So any buying pattern, it doesn't have to be a big dollar amount, but just shows that they're investing in themselves and in their team to learn.

So that would also tell me 2 other things. One, they're a lifelong learner, right? Because I've seen the stats on how many people have not read a Book in the last five years, and it's depressing. So that they're not your piece.

On the other side of that, if you look at the stats on the average number of books a CEO reads, it's unbelievable.

Oh yeah, it's like fifty fifty a year.

A year.

Yeah.

Yeah. So so anyway, so number one is they're a lifelong learner, which is a trait. But number two, you have validated that with a purchase, right?

So they bought.

You know, if somebody went to an executive MBA program. all the things you described, right? That's interesting, right? So I think that, you know, um, and then, then you can double-click on that and get the, you know, size of company, etc., etc., right?

Yeah. And Peter, I would say on a micro scale, one of the things that LinkedIn provides beyond LinkedIn Learning is the ability to see how people think and what they respond to. And in particular, this is probably where I, I try to link with like-minded top business leaders, not just thought leaders, but people in companies who have like-mindedness. And it's very clear to see that based on what they post about their company and all that. So, and as a supplemental, uh, strategy, we can, we can look at a micro, you know, level at who actually may not have been on that list, but who thinks in this realm. Because convincing someone to have this mindset is not what we're about. We want to give People, tools that have an open growth mindset to execute these principles within their company and their leaders.

And then to piggyback on that, Peter, I think something for thought leaders is really important that, that we're always thinking about pushing stuff out. But we spend most of our time just trying to add value for people. So we host CEO lunches in our local, in the Dallas area. We don't charge them, they're just freebies. Come in, we'll talk, we'll help you out, blah, blah, blah. We're sending out these free books. We have free newsletters. We're coaching the kids of our clients. I mean, just any way we could help people to add value to their life, that's really— we consider our business kind of a personal calling. But I think sometimes thought leaders get— can get caught up like just pushing their stuff out. And I think the thing is too is we're focused on like, yeah, we want to push good stuff out, but it's really also about how do we add value for you? Like, how do we help them?

And so that's a great—

it's not remuneration at the end of every relationship. In fact, very few of them But we just have to keep adding value and adding value. And if you're doing that, when people do have a buying decision, we find that it's not competitive. They call us because it's like, oh, you guys have been helping us. We went to your lunches. We got your books. And they're not as price sensitive. So I mean, those are 2 big things for someone, you know. So to me, it's about—

Well, I think you're right because I think there's an old-school thinking amongst a subset of authors and thought leaders that, well, if I give it away, nobody will pay for it. And it's actually the opposite. Right? So the more you give away, and I'm not saying give it away to someone that would have been a paying client, Right. The more the work is out there, the more they're interacting with it, the more they're reading about your stuff, A, they're more familiar. And exactly like you said, when they're ready, it's interesting. We see this a lot too. We call them lurkers, right? So when you're following or doing your analytics on your social media, whatever, you say, oh, these are the people that are actively engaged in my content. Great, that's fine. And oftentimes it's the same couple of dozen or 100 or whatever the case may be. And then every now and then it's sort of like the snakebite, like out of nowhere comes someone and they get you on a call like, okay, ready to rock and roll, let's go do this. You're like, where the heck did they come from? And they'll say something like, I've been following your stuff for years and I wasn't ready.

Right.

Or they'll quote back to you something that you wrote or something that you did or a video that you did. And I find it's hard to know when they're going to strike. But it happens consistently enough that it's not an anomaly that people are consuming your stuff. And I think what happens is all of us in professional services, we theoretically always have the supply, right?

Yeah.

What we don't know is at what moment in time does the client have the demand based on all the other things they need to do, could do, can afford to do. So I love the fact that you're giving it away. And like you said, you're not competing, right? They're less price sensitive and it's an easier, it doesn't even feel like a sale. It's like, okay, obviously it's time for us to work together.

Right.

Yeah, it's, it's really competitive. And I think as a service provider, you have to take the long-term view and just feel like you have to just kind of sow the ground, sow the good seeds, and help people out and, and not keep track of everyone. Oh, I helped him out, I hope he buys something. Like, just keep doing that and know that you're going to reap what you sow over time.

So, and one thing that we started doing since this is a new book is, you know, we, as Lee mentioned, we don't sell really one— people want one book, they go to Amazon. But for our large orders, we follow up and offer for their leaders if the leaders want to have a book discussion after they've read the book or a couple of things, we will give a complimentary hour and just have a powwow with them and just talk about, you know, the book or how it resonates with them, how they might use it, what fits, what doesn't fit. And again, there's no charge for that. But we start from, you know, a thought process. You know, we share a thought process with them and a relationship. Right. Yeah.

But we don't even keep track of them.

Like, if they— it's just something happens, it happens. It's furthering the message.

Yeah, and you have to be that passionate about it. Like, you, you really have to feel like your book can change their lives, the world in some way, that you're happily willing to do that without kind of trying to track.

But I also think you need to have a boundary. I mean, most folks don't take advantage, but if an organization wants you to come in and do 10, you know, free lunch and learns, you need to have a conversation, right? So there's— yeah, I think that's the other piece.

For the most part, we assume the best of people, and for the most part, 90% People are actually more respectful of our time than we would like. We'll offer an hour and we just got one today. Oh, we do. We'll take 30 minutes. I'm like, no, we're offering an hour. You take the whole hour. It's okay. Right. But occasionally you get that. You just, you just manage that one-off. But I'm a believer in building systems and processes around the norm, not the exception, and know that when the exception comes, you just deal with it.

Excellent. So as we start to wrap, any final thoughts or observations around what you're doing this time and, uh, how well it's working, or, or what's different? Or maybe because you've been at this quite some time, maybe it's a generational piece. What's, what's universal around getting a good message and a good book to market, and what's changing based on buying patterns, demographics, life, whatever?

Yeah, you know, we, we send out— you know, we used to send out 40,000 free copies at a time, right? This time we only sent out 15,000 just because it's Harder to find these lists because people, due to privacy concerns, people are more concerned about giving their list, you know, not get— we buy it, but even selling their lists, right? We understand that. So that's kind of changed a little bit. But I would say, like, in general, our big thing is like we're always trying to learn. Like, we're always testing something new from a marketing standpoint.

I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If it works, we double down. If it doesn't work, we go something else. We never really get complacent about this is the thing that works. We, we find some things that work, we keep doing it, but We're always testing something. So I would say you have to be willing to spend a little time, a little, a little money, uh, have a little risk to say, let's try this out, a little A/B testing here or something. But we're always trying something different and to try to stay relevant. Julie's looking into BookTok now on TikTok.

Yep, yep.

Just anything. And it may or may not work. But, uh, I think the other thing is you got to make sure you stick with something long enough to make sure it's working. Sometimes people like want that immediate result. Okay, we didn't try that, we move on. But Right.

I did 2 TikToks and I'm not a Kardashian.

Well, and I guess we have a foundational system of newsletters that go out twice a week, CEO luncheon, some state, some product promotion or relationship building techniques which are firm. And then as an example, I just say get creative. Like this year, actually, is it next month? We're doing a virtual book launch. So we just did one in person in Dallas, which was lovely and fun and our favorite kind. But now we're Doing a virtual rooftop book launch with, um, it's called Remo.

Yeah, it's a very, very, very real kind of meta—

Like a metaverse, uh, experience.

Experience where people—

That's cool.

Can literally go into a conference room table and chat with each other. It's a rooftop. It's a rooftop.

With fireplaces.

Fireplaces and stuff. And then they can actually talk very simply. It's not like doing breakouts in Zoom, uh, and then present and share.

Nice.

So just always trying something, you know, you know, something different.

So I just say, have somebody in your group that puts on a creativity hat and say, what, what could garner attention in this very crowded world?

Yeah, I think the one thing you said that's important is, you know, you're not making bet-the-house bets, but you have this experimental mindset and you know upfront, like, listen, out of 10, 3 or 5 aren't going to work. We just don't know which ones, and that's okay, right? And I think it's easy to get stuck in the, but we've always done it this way, because the world is moving too quickly to just just do that. So this has been phenomenal. I appreciate both of your time and your work and sharing your story with us. And, uh, thank you so much for spending some time.

Thank you so much.

Cool.

Thanks. Take care, Peter.