Moving from Corporate to Solo Thought Leadership| Dan Pontefract | 528

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you are joining us on the LinkedIn Live extension of the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today my guest is an old friend, Dan Pontefract. He is a leadership strategist, a change expert, a speaker, and an award-winning author. And his career has been really, really interesting. We'll get into some of that. Today. And if you're watching this in black and white, you're going to be disappointed because there's more color than should be on two screens at once today. So anyway, welcome, Dan.

Saint Peter. So glad to be here. To be back, in fact. Thank you for a second invitation. Yeah.

So let's start with— there's so many things I want to do. There's two big pieces I want to talk about. One is the fifth book. But before we get to that, Your sort of career launch has always been really, really interesting to me because, you know, in my work with working with folks like you, we see that a lot. So you are what I would call an inside person, right? You are a staff person at TELUS, big telecom company up in Canada. So tell us about sort of what it was like having a job and then building out this pathway thought leadership?

Yeah, you're right. I mean, I'm, I'm a recovering, I suppose, insider, uh, now that I'm, I'm 5 years out coming up this fall. I, I guess I've always been like that, and it's, um, it started really when I was at BCIT, British Columbia Institute of Technology. Here I was, a punk really, kind of a 26-year-old, and I had a dean and associate dean who gave me the keys to a downtown campus at that barely had opened 6, 9 months prior and said, hey, can you help fill it with career changers and people who want to take things? And I said to myself, well, this sounds like a great gig. And so I was kind of an insider in a publicly funded academic institution by the government of BC in Canada. And I was in charge of career changers without any public funding whatsoever. So here I was, 26, trying to figure out, well, how am I going to create education programs that are part business, part leadership, part technology, and convince people that our programs, whether they're part-time or full-time, could lead them— this is circa 1998, Peter Winick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Could lead them to gigs and jobs and things in the dot-com era. And I learned so much, but I was that insider in an organization whom was publicly funded, publicly funded, whom I had to work against the grain because of all the bureaucracy and the academics, et cetera, to kind of create this different experience for people who are willing to put down a bucket of cash, right? To help fuel and propel their career change. So that was where it really started for me. It was like 25 years ago.

Tell us a little bit about the Telus story from the standpoint of— I mean, now you're more senior in your career. You were chief learning officer, if I recall.

Yeah.

So typically, if I were to say, describe the roles and responsibility of a chief learning officer, it's setting the direction, implementing the programs, picking up the vendors for the learning solutions inside of the organization. But in essence, you kind of— that's when you started writing your books and you sort of became the internal motivator. At the company and they were really supportive. So talk about sort of that trajectory and then when you parted ways, but you didn't part ways, right? You, you changed. One of the things I always like about what you did is a lot of people make binary decisions, but you just sort of redefined your role with the organization. Say, I don't wanna be here full-time. I love you. You love me. I love the company. What does that look like? So maybe tell that story a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. So after BCIT was SAP, that was 6 years where I was still figuring out how do you be a chief learning officer internally and externally? Meaning we were building out programs and things for our internal employees, but then I was starting to delve into the external side, sort of helping customers and consultants and partners with, well, how do you learn our products and how do you become better versions of yourselves? When I joined TELUS in '08 now, it was a culture change opportunity to begin with internally, certainly not just me, but I guess I was part of the catalytic combination that was going on there. And yeah, I sort of used the TELUS example since I joined in '08 to be publicly writing and speaking about leadership, culture change, et cetera. So I got very vociferous.

Right. Let me just pause there. And what's really cool about that is when you look at the continuum of where thought leadership comes from, you have academics, you have consultants, but you're sort of at this moment an inside person and you have a laboratory of a real organization. So it's not just this academic abstract theoretical, it's things that you're actually doing inside of the business that you could measure the outcomes and the impact of.

I think that's spot on. If I were still British and saying something that was quite British. So the spot on point about that—

You stopped being British?

The accent's gone. So people are like, I thought he's Canadian. What happened, eh? So yes, it was a melting pot. It was a playground. It was a lab. And yes, culture change takes time. This isn't a light switch opportunity. So we would try things like— so the big thing these days, Peter, is kind of Meta and being in the sort of avatar digital world, right? Well, back in 2009, we partnered with a company called Avaya, Not an insignificant company. And we said, "Hey, we want a virtual world. Can you help us build a virtual world?" Literally, '09. And so, we would run leadership conferences, onboarding and orientation, coaching sessions. We ran an MBA program in there as avatars, right around where people from across the country. And there was a playground. There's an example. We do gaming, gamification, like stuff you'd never see before. We put because it's so Canadian of us, we'd have virtual speed skaters and you'd be learning our coaching methodology being a speed skater coach with this team that you're trying to beat other speed skater teams across Teleson. So you're right about the spot-on comment. We would try all kinds of stuff and I'd learn a lot, what worked, what didn't, lots of creative license. And then when I got essentially bored about culture change and leadership development stuff, and I was writing two of the books that had come out by that point. I pitched my COO and CEO the idea, well, hey, we're doing a pretty good job here internally. Why don't we then sell that externally?

So in Business Ease, can I take a cost center and make it a profit center?

In essence, that's exactly it. And So I relinquished my role from an internal perspective as CLO, but started something called TTO, TELUS Transformation Office. I sort of handpicked a few troubadours, I called them, right, to go help us. And for 4 or 5 years before I left on a full-time basis, we went and helped all kinds of our clients and customers with culture change, leadership development, purpose, and all kinds of funky technology things that they wanted to get into.

I think that, A, that's brilliant from a business model standpoint, but I think that takes more courage than many have, right? Because in a shared services environment inside of an organization, we don't have a choice. This is the HR group you learn. This is the learning and development group you learn, probably the marketing group you use, whatever. To go out into the open market, there was a risk that Nobody cared, right? You did not get market validation, right? So I think it forces you to make that bar higher when people are paying with real dollars versus internal dollars.

I'll tell you this though, Peter. One of the true benefits of that model was not necessarily the P&L or the EBITDA add that goes to a— If a $12 billion company is going to pick up, you know, $600,000, $750,000 in revenue. That's not a huge lift, right? But the biggest two factors that came out of that whole experience of mine was that A, the sales team loved bringing us to their customers. So, because we would talk about things that wasn't IT or technology or telecom.

So stay there a minute because I think actually the, you know, with all due respect, telecom is a commodity. There isn't, you know, few businesses that are less commoditized than that. So if your salespeople are looking to sell a big deal, they probably can't say your stuff is better, quicker, faster, cheaper than the competitor. I mean, they could say it, but in reality it's comparable. A differentiator is, hey, we've got everything our competitor does and then some. Let me have you bring in one of our folks and talk about culture. Talk about leadership. So the use of thought leadership as a differentiator, to fight the commoditization, to get a salesperson to have an interesting conversation, that's really hard to put a dollar value on. But the fact that salespeople love it, I think that tells you all you need to know.

Now we're cooking with gas, Peter, as they say. That's precisely the point. And the—

Who says that, by the way? Do people still say that? I don't—

Well, I guess if we're being environmentally friendly, it'd be natural gas, right?

Natural gas.

Yeah. So that's, and that's just it. So the really smart and voraciously willing to help their clients in ways that were differentiated were using TTO, the Telus Transformation Office, me and the team to get into these situations where their bag of telecom is not being sold. What they're bringing is empathy. What they're bringing is thought leadership. What they're bringing is differentiated view on something that is not necessarily what was normal.

Well, quite frankly, they're bringing a reason for someone to attend a meeting on the other side, right? Like invite you to a meeting to hear the pitch from the telecom guys. I probably have a dentist appointment that day. So that's interesting. So then ultimately you decide to sort of go external, but When you did that and just talk on that, you just redefined your role at the organization and made them a client, which is brilliant, right?

I don't know about brilliant, but basically it was one of those situations where I knew that I was at some point going to have to put my big boy pants on, Peter, and become Dan Pontefract, independent solopreneur, company of one, if I really wanted to make a go of my own thought leadership and not just always tethered to SAP or TELUS.

Yes.

And so there in lies the point is that after kind of thinking that through a bit during the year of 2018, as soon as January 1st, 2019 started, you know, I was no longer on the full-time payroll of TELUS. I was, I was on retainer and we agreed to sort of amount of hours and an amount of things that I would do, which actually included not only me still running something I cooked up 5 years earlier called the TELUS MBA, it allowed me still to work with the sales team so that then I could also help them and be at times that differentiated go-to-market, you know, addendum to some of the sales calls. So the sales transformation office kind of work continued a bit in a way that allowed me still to be part of the sales team, helping them when necessary or needed.

So that's great. So you start a business with your first client and that's a great thing. All right. I want to shift to books because we were talking before we went live here on your fifth book is coming out in a month or two and what's been different about the process this time as well as the sort of state of publishing. So how long ago did your first book come out?

10 years ago this month, Peter Winick. Flat Army was 10 years ago with Wiley.

Got it. So maybe tell a little bit about, you know, you've experienced big publishers and then different publishers and seen the market. I mean, the market's changed radically in 10 years. Give us your take on it and how you meet the needs of the market.

Yeah, great one. Also, I'd recommend anyone tuning into Josh Bernoff and everything he has to write about writing good business books these days in the new market. Josh is amazing. Yeah, so I was one of those guys, very lucky. I was delivering a talk in, I think it was the end of 2011 somewhere. And there was a Wiley editor in the audience who approached me afterwards and said, have you ever thought about writing a book? I was like, yeah, here's 3 chapters. What do you think? And a week later, that editor who's amazing, Don Loney, said, yeah, we've got Pat Lencioni already. Fables are okay. We'd like you to write in your first-person voice. Can you do that? And so that became Flat Army, the first book. And so where do I start, Peter? The Wiley office, the people who I worked with were amazing. I can't say enough between Don and Jen and Marika and all those folks like Flat Army. They just, they, it was just such a treasure to work with them. But then shortly after publishing book number one, bean counters from McKinsey came in and decided to, well, basically nuke a lot of the satellite offices of which Flat Army and the team I worked with were one.

Okay.

The entire team that I had been working with exited from Wiley, and here I wrote a book about collaborative humanistic culture. And I thought to myself, oh, timing is everything, right?

Right.

Irony alert, right? Totally. So I tried desperately to make it work and it didn't. I just felt that my skin had shriveled up right in front of my body and it was stuck on me. I was like, I can't work with an organization that's done this to people. So I negotiated my way outta my contract and became a free agent. And from there I started shopping around this idea for my second book called The Purpose Effect. And a friend of mine put me in the direction of a hybrid publisher. I didn't even know what hybrid publishing was back then. So this is now circa 2014. And I was led to a group in Idaho, Boise, Idaho called Elevate Publishing. And Elevate Publishing, I learned a lot from because, uh, the owner was a snake, like selling snake oil. And I totally got duped by what looked to be a legitimate organization with several known authors of which I will not name. But I know that I got duped because about 6 months after publishing my second book, The Purpose Effect, I was provided information from an insider in the company that it looked like the publisher was going to go bankrupt or fold or take all our money and run. And I was like, oh, great. And so this lovely insider Found a way to ship me all the books that were still sitting in a warehouse, and I suddenly became a free agent again, Peter, because I wasn't going back to big publishing, and now I was burned by an American hybrid publishing company. And I'm thinking to myself, God, I really have a lot of luck in this publishing world, don't I?

And so there's a third publisher that wasn't afraid of you at this point?

Yeah, really.

The Three-Legged Dog Named Lucky. No.

So who's this torched Canadian bald white guy who doesn't seem to do well with book publishing? Should we take him?

Yeah. What's in this book?

So I spent a good year meeting with a bunch of different, like, Big Five and hybrid publishers. I was leaning to going back to Big Five. And then I thought, well, I remember why I left because they didn't care about me and I'm not You know, I don't have a name like Sinick or Pink or Grant or Lencioni, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't really want that. So then I made a decision because I'm Canadian. I said, I'm going to stick to my Canadian folks. And I then honed down to 4 different hybrid publishers in Canada. And then I landed on Figure One with Chris Labonte, and Chris has been an amazing partner and the team there for now 3 books since. Got it.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership. Please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So talk about then So that's really some of the landscape and the business issues of the publishing marketplace today. What does it take to actually sell books today? Because lots of authors talk about the pain and suffering of the writing of the book, and not to discount that, that does take a lot of work, but if you think writing a book is hard, try getting anybody to buy a copy.

Yeah, exactly. Well, whether it's hybrid or the big 5 publishers, right, right now, either editors or mostly publishers are telling you, you need a platform. You gotta have a platform, Peter. That's the big buzzword in the author world. And they're not wrong, but the first thing to get out of the way is that as I've found either hybrid publishing or traditional publishing like Wiley, et cetera, their marketing teams aren't going to market your book to your liking anyway. And it's not that they're bad people. It's just that their job is to make books. Their job is to distribute the books. Their job is not to market the book or you.

And the budget for that marketing piece has been cut, right? You have to produce a book to get into the marketplace. Where they're cutting in this market is the marketing budget.

Yes. So there wasn't a big marketing budget to begin with. And unless you are, as I mentioned, like Adam Grant or Daniel Pink or Amy Edmondson, like all of a sudden you, that's, there's a celebrity level of authorship I would call it, right? That everybody knows, right? It's the word of mouth that went wild and viral. And then there's people like me and people like me. Need to be out there on not just the socials, but on the keynotes, the facilitated workshops, the client work, finding ways in which to increase your mail list, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you think that you're going to write a business book and you have the Kevin Costner Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come model, you're in for a very strong heart attack.

So even that people like me, I think that's an interesting concept to say, okay, so there's one side of the coin of people like me who's writing similar type books thematically, right? If I write about culture, if I write about teams, whatever. But then the other side is what's a fair comparable? And a lot of authors don't do what business people do and say, who are my comparables? And say, oh, you know, and they might say, oh, I'm a better writer than Big Shot Writer, this, whatever. But how many books have they sold? What does their followership look like? Right? Like, How long have they been at the game? And, you know, how often are they putting out content, et cetera? And I think that's really where you need to put a bit of energy to say, wow, I admire an Adam Grant. I admire a Dan Pink because it's not just that they're great writers and great thought leaders, but they know how to keep that connection going with their followers, that they have to constantly be giving them high quality, high value of thought leadership in between book cycles, which might be 2 years, 5 years, unknown. Or that followership will go away.

I did, Peter, exactly what you alluded to there by hiring a company to do market analysis against 8, both my contemporaries of which I would say are equals or in around my orbit. And then what was that next level? So the people whom are Seth Godin and Amy Edmondson and Roger Martin, et cetera. And so I just, because I'm not there, I don't even know if I ever get there. I just wanted to know, well, what's the difference between people who might be quote below me, which I hazard to suggest that is such a thing with me and above me. It was kind of fascinating, right? I mean, there's not much to be said about just traditional. It's like, where did you get your MBA? No one really cares per se. It's like, who are you? Who's your publisher? I found that no one really cares about that either.

Stay there for a second because a lot of first-time authors will say, oh, but if I'm not with Random House or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, you know what? I'm the only dork, and maybe you are too, that when you get a new book, you open it up and look at the publisher page, whatever, because we're curious or whatever. Most people, you think about what's the use case for a book? You light up your Kindle, you hit start, and it's, they were the best of times, they were the worst of times. There's no filler pages. You're fast forwarding through that. And just because you went hybrid or non-traditional, whatever, doesn't mean that your book is anything less than. 20 years ago, it probably did signal that, wow, everybody said no. So this guy went to Kinko's and whatever, whatever. You can't differentiate from a quality standpoint, from an editorial standpoint, whatever. Many instances, it's time, it's business model. There are other reasons to choose a publisher.

You know what? And that really kind of gets to the point about the 3 types of publishing. There's traditional Wiley Penguin, right? There's hybrid. So in my case, Figure One Publishing, Page Two Publishing, right? But then there's self-publishing. That's KDP, that's going to IngramSpark individually, and you are taking on the entire process of writing, editing, marketing, distributing, publishing, et cetera. That is something I don't recommend. I really don't. Hybrid publishing is not self-publishing. Hybrid publishing, a publisher has to say yes to your idea, and you work with their entire team to build a product. The only difference is in my case with Wiley, I might've got a $25,000 advance. This time around, I paid $25,000 for better royalties and working with a team that gets the same distribution, the same effort, and the same quality. I don't want that in self-publishing. That's terrible.

Well, and even the advance, which these days is like the Loch Ness monster, we've heard about it, but haven't seen it. People forget it is an advance against future income. Exactly. So when you're at the right level, uh, well, you have to judge what that right level is to say, is it appropriate for me to even ask for an advance? Is there a different business model? Now there's a $50,000 swing between you getting a check for $25,000 today and putting out a check for $25,000 today. But I'm sure you did the analysis and said, well, I guess I'm going to sell about this many books over this period of time. And putting that money out of pocket upfront today is a better investment for me than taking someone else's money.

Well, and I'll actually add to that. It's not just a $50,000 swing. I believe that when I'm not just in control of the product and I get to work with publishers and editors, et cetera, and designers, right, that want to see my vision through, that don't have that hierarchy of nonsense in a traditional publisher. I'll add this. If that platform is something that you listen to what I just alluded to, whatever, 10 minutes ago, and are willing to continue and want to increase because you have clients and customers, et cetera, you're going to use the books in different ways. So if you're with a traditional publisher, you're going to be buying books off the publisher for maybe a 10% discount. If you're working with a hybrid publisher, first of all, in that contract, you're typically going to get a slew of books in advance.

Yes.

That show up in your garage or your office or what have you, your warehouse. And so for me, at least this is just me, you know, I order 3,000 copies as part of the contract of the books. They show up, they come into my garage. I use those books as ways to build the platform. I may give them away, contests, whatever, but more importantly, when I'm working with clients or conferences or keynotes, et cetera, what happens? The books can become either things that you use as enticements for the giveaway for the audience, or you say, hey, guess what? You know, the book retails for $32.95. I'm gonna charge you $25 a pop. How about that? And then it becomes part of like the additional part of your fee or your facilitation for a workshop. And to me, I make back the $25 grand pretty quickly because I'm using it as part of the platform for all the other things that I do.

Well, I think the other thing to think about is there's a moment in time where an author's objectives and a publisher's objectives are aligned. It's about 120 days pre-launch and launch, right? Then there's the rest of the world, right? So I would argue that this is now your 5th book. There are still people learning about Dan coming in the front door through book 1, 2, 3, like whatever. And it's all good, right? It doesn't matter. You don't care less about your first book or your third book than you do the fifth. Now, obviously you're going to put a lot of energy into the new book to get it going, but you're still selling copies of the other books all the time, which brings them into your sort of ecosystem to hire you as a speaker, advisor, et cetera.

That is precisely it. That goes back to the platform point. The best advice, well, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from my own kind of coaching whisperer book dude, and that's Roger Martin. And those that don't know Roger Martin, just Google Roger L. Martin and you'll find out more about a great thought leader. He said to me in 2015, we were working on my second book, The Purpose Effect, together because he was being such a great human being and Canadian. And he, one day over a drink, he said, Dan, here's the thing. He said, just continue writing, continue putting yourself out there, whether it's books. I hope you continue as well as articles and columns, whatever. And this is what he said. He said, Peter, he said, one day people will realize that you've always been here.

Yeah.

I was like, I didn't get it back in 2015, 8 years later, back to your point about the 5 books and just continuing to write for Forbes and HBR and wherever else. Like, I feel that 10 years later, essentially since book 1, I'm 52, but I feel like I've always been here now.

Right. Well, I mean, if you think about that, today somewhere, or somewhere is plural, there's a 13, 14-year-old kid discovering the Rolling Stones.

Yeah, there you go.

You know, so not that you're Mick Jagger's age, right?

But, um, and a new album coming out soon, Peter. Can't wait.

Exactly. Exactly. So cool. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate your sharing some of the behind the scenes stuff.

Always.

And the decision-making process and the analysis that goes into that as a 5-time author and leading expert here. So any other words of wisdom you'd share with folks out there that might be in your situation or where you might have been 5 or 10 years ago? No pressure, but this could be life-altering for some.

Yeah, I think almost to add to Roger's point, right? Don't stop at one. So when I, when I see people say, oh, I'm, I'm gonna write a book, you know, I kind of stop them in their tracks. I'm like, are you sure you want it to be one? So if you want to get into the game of thought leadership, then I do believe you have to map out at least your first three. And then hopefully like other bits come later on that make sense to you that don't, aren't redundant to your thinking or writing, but ultimately that you're thinking ahead about something else. So if you want to write your autobiography, great, there's one book you're done, I guess. But if you're getting into thought leadership, please, for the sake of your audience and your platform, don't sketch out one book. Think about how you will basically develop a compendium.

The only thing I would push on that, Dan, is book doesn't literally mean need to mean a book. It could be a body of work, right? So book means published thing, but you might have 3 or 4 big ideas that you want to focus on, and maybe one only lives on LinkedIn and maybe one's a book and maybe one lives in a suite of products or offerings or solutions. So I would just add to that, that don't be stuck on a book as the only delivery mechanism. Yeah.

Yeah. I will agree and disagree, Peter. I think I agree with your body of work point. That's the platform I'm getting. I think using the term body of work makes way more sense. So if you're continually and continuously adding to your body of work in various formats, methods, and ways, great. I get it. Totally with you. I think where I'm going with this is that books add to the credibility in the thought leadership space. And so when you do have that book and then books and then books, you know, people start saying, oh my gosh, like this individual has books. And it's part of that sort of prestige and the credibility factor.

The brand builder.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time. Always appreciate your work. And it's been fun chatting with you as always, Dan.

Thank you, Peter. God bless, man. You're awesome.

Thanks. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.