Peter Winick, Thought Leadership Leverage, Vision With Execution Show

All right, let's roll. Let's do it.

Okay, so this is the Vision with Execution Show, and I've got my guest Peter Winick, and I'm just going to look at your website really quick on the profile you've got there on your about page, and I'm just going to read it verbatim really quick. Peter Winick is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. For the past two decades, he has helped individuals and organizations build and grow revenue streams through designing and growing their thought leadership platforms, as well as acting as a guide and advisor for increasing business-to-business sales of thought leadership products. There we go. Welcome to the show, Peter. Thanks for coming.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So this is a newer show for me, so I'm happy to help steer this conversation in a direction that is most helpful for you. But I do ask all my guests 2 questions, and usually the first one is, what is your biggest vision for 2025? And it doesn't have to be business related. It can be personally, it can be physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Whatever your big vision is for 2025, I really want to know what that is. And then the second question, the follow-up question to that would be, how are you planning on executing on that vision?

Yeah, so I would say it's 3 things, and I like the way you contextualize that. It would be something that resembles balance, whatever that means. Fun. Well, it's 4 things actually: balance, fun, profitability, and I am a big fan of the no a-hole rule. So, I'm fortunate to be at a stage in my career where I don't know if I've become cranky or I'm just, I don't have the patience, but like, I just, I will not work with a-holes both internally and externally. And it actually works out for the best.

So could I get a clarification on that? When I say I don't like working with a-holes, I have a particular type of a-hole that I don't like to work with. But what does it mean to you to not work with a-holes?

Well, I think that the litmus test, if I saw a call with, let's say there was another Adam, Adam the a-hole, on my calendar and I see your name on there Tomorrow I have a call at 2 o'clock with Adam the A-hole and I just get that ugh cringe, that means I don't want to do that.

Wow.

Could be your— Now, there's a lot of things that could contribute to that. It could be you micromanage, you're impossible to satisfy, you're grading, you're disrespectful. I mean, there's a laundry list of things that could contribute to your A-holeness. But the quick test is if I want to see my calendar full of names that I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's fun. That's curious." I'm looking forward to the conversation I'm having with you today.

Okay. That's— I love hearing how people define very common words in our language, but we always have more of a definition to it, like the deeper background. So I love pulling out meanings of common words like that, and it's because I'm a trained journalist. I went to school in communications. I had to write thousands of papers and I worked at the newspaper at the school. And I love how people use their words and our language. And even my own teenagers, I've got an 18-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter. The vernacular they use in their day-to-day language sometimes makes no sense whatsoever, even though the words they're using, I've heard the words before, but the context and the meaning are completely different. And so I always pick up on things like that. So much appreciated to define a-hole for me.

Now you know.

Now I know.

They didn't teach that in communication school.

No, they didn't. So tell me, what, what does the vision look like for you in 2025? Whatever that means in your head, I'd, I'd love to pull it out a little bit.

Yeah. So I think for me in the business, it's more of the same and then some different. So under the more of the same, you know, we serve a certain market and we will continue to serve that market because we're good at it. We can, make those clients happy. It's profitable. It's fun. It's engaging, etc. So we're going to continue to do what we've been doing for 16 going on 17 years now. And then under the new, there's some new things that we'll do and try or expand on that we've been dabbling in over the last couple years, which is things like licensing, things like developing learning programs, things like developing various partnerships. Et cetera. It's kind of iterative. It's kind of evolutionary, if you will, because I think if you— A, in business, the first thing you've got to do is figure out your lane, figure out your niche, figure out the market that you serve. But then once you're there, you can't just stay there, right? Because otherwise the world will pass you by. So where do you keep one foot in and where are you kind of looking around the bend to see What's next? What service lines could you add to professional services business? What other types of clients can you serve? And what are the things in the market that are the same and what are the things in the market that are changing that you have to either meet or choose not to participate in?

So, who would you say is your ideal client? The one that you look on your calendar and you're just excited to chat with them because you know you're going to kill it for them.

Yeah. Our clients are nonfiction authors, academics, thought leaders, keynote speakers, small consultancy, small to midsize consultancies, and we also work with a fair number of founders, CEOs, senior executives, etc. That's our lane. Those are the types of folks that we work with that we can be helpful, that we can help them scale and leverage their thought leadership for impact or for increasing their income.

And how do you define the term thought leadership?

Ah, that's the zillion-dollar question, right? So, to me, there's a couple of ways to define it. We have a pretty sophisticated model, which is a framework that we use to define thought leadership. But for the purpose of a shorter answer here, I think about it as two components. There's the thought piece and then there's the leadership piece. So if you break that down and you say, okay, under the thought piece, where does thoughtfulness come from? So if all you're doing is regurgitating or copy-pasting or whatever, that's not thoughtful. Thoughtful could come from, you know, research is a great place that thoughtfulness or insight or wisdom could come from. Experience, right? So I am a consultant. My thoughtfulness oftentimes comes from real-life experience working with dozens and dozens of clients every year. It could come from experiencing different industries or different things. So I think there's a research piece, there's an experience piece, etc., where the thoughtfulness comes from. And then the leadership piece is where it gets interesting. It's where you have the courage to lead a discipline, lead a school of thought, whatever, in a bit of a different direction. And it doesn't need to be radical for the sake of being radical. It doesn't need to be the earth is flat, no, the earth is round. It could be an incremental piece that you want to add to the conversation and stand on the proverbial shoulders of the giants that came before you in your space, whatever that is. And that, to me, that combination of fullness and the leadership piece, that's the sweet spot of thought leadership. And then the last thing I would say there is never, ever, ever, ever call yourself a thought leader. It's something for others to sort of— a term of endearment, a term of respect for others in your space to to bestow upon you. If you just go out there saying, "I'm a thought leader," like, OK, well, you know, and I'm the king of Siam, like, whatever. You know, it's kind of an obnoxious, pompous thing to say, according to me.

So that kind of reminds me of one of the classes I took. It was an advanced-level class my senior year in college, and we were talking about who's going to go on and get a PhD. And like 2 or 3 people raised their hands out of a class of about 30. And the professor was describing what he considered what a PhD would do in terms of how it would advance your field and yourself. And he described it in— he framed it as if the whole body of knowledge about a particular subject, if you Think of it as a big circle. And then your PhD thesis and dissertation in the context of that big circle is going to be a really, really tiny little bump on the outside edge that hopefully expands the whole sphere of that industry or that piece of knowledge. And that's about it. When it comes to what you can expect to do with your PhD thesis and your impact. Because you're just adding to a huge already existing pool of knowledge or experience or research. And that's how I look at what a PhD was like.

Yeah, well, I would say, Spoken like a true academic. Yeah. Yeah.

Here we go. Exactly.

Because the downside of academia is that people spend a lot of time and energy and effort and money and opportunity cost, whatever, writing brilliant papers that 4 people in the world read. When I think about thought leadership, there is an impact component where if you've got a framework on how to I don't know, give feedback or lead without authority, whatever it is, right? The application of that when adopted at the enterprise level, meaning Fortune 1000 type organizations, can be massive, right? When you think about something like Strength Finders, we could debate whether, you know, how solid that is from an academic perspective. But what we do know is millions of people have gone through that and continue to go through that on a annual basis. And it does have impact.

Yeah.

Because to me, it's like, why would you spend 7 or 8 or 10 or any amount of things in your life doing things that don't have some level of impact?

And I like that you clarified that. And I wasn't even going in any particular direction when I was talking about the circle metaphor. But yeah, I think you're exactly right. It does. All of us all humans that are born on Earth, my belief is that we each have an impact to make in some way, shape, or form. We all have distinct innate talents and skills, and those of us who are starting to become unafraid of sharing those are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact. And that, that's one of the catalysts for me starting the show. People have told me for a long time I should have my own podcast because I know a lot of interesting people that are doing cool things. I'm a, I'm an angel investor and I've started several of my own companies. And just along the way, I meet so many cool people. And that's my plan is just to interview them and have them on my show and see where it goes. But my, my particular vision was to do something that scared me a little bit and be something that I knew that I could also accomplish and turn into a reality. So I'm using my own mantra to create this, this show.

So, well, let me add two things to that, Adam. One is, as a thought leader, if your work could be distilled down into common language, common models, common methodologies that people can share, That is really, really powerful. Number 2, with regards to you launching this podcast, it's also an experiment, right? Let's say, for example, in some period of time, 3 months, 6 months, whatever, it doesn't work out. You're not enjoying it. It's not hitting the targets that you wanted. You could shut it down and nobody's going to die, and it's not a bet the house move, right? So what I love is that people that have the courage to try things. And when you're doing something like a podcast, because I've got one as well, The quote scary part is it's a public experiment, right?

Yeah.

So you do it, you try it, it's either going to work or it's not. And you'll either continue to do it for a long period of time or you won't. The market, however you define that, will help you determine that as well as the intrinsic value. You might say, "I don't care if 3 people listen to this. It's a great excuse for me to talk to fun and cool people." Okay, cool. That's, that, that makes it worthy of doing.

Well, yeah, I could easily say that that's probably my biggest litmus test right now is the people I have on my show right now are people I care about talking to. No one is pitching my show right now to be on for any reason.

And so that'll happen.

Yeah. I, I get to, uh, talk to everybody that I want to talk to. So it, it's great to have that level of control and Have fun with it. And I definitely—

I might be the first one to bring a steering wheel, right? Am I the first one to break the rules?

Yes, you have that distinction for sure.

I take it everywhere with me.

Good job. So I would love to know, as I would like to wrap up how we end the show with you in particular. The next 5 minutes or so, how you are going to execute your vision into reality and any specific steps or strategies or frameworks, however you want to describe that, I would love to know.

Yeah, I think it's a good question. So on the balance side, that's probably the big— not the big, but the biggest of the ones I gave you that's unknown. Right? So that's a work in progress, right? Making sure that fun, health, physical fitness, mental health, all the other things, if you will, get taken into account relative to decisions that get made. So I can't say I have the— here's a 7-step plan for that. So that's that. You know, in terms of the business and you know, who we serve and the no a-hole thing. I'm really, you know, I think if you've been doing something for a while, you've got to trust. You know, we all want the data, but I think you have to have the confidence and the courage to trust your spidey senses. If I get, you know, particularly early on in an interaction with a potential client, the vibe or the signals or the whatever— people don't wake up one day and just totally change their personalities, right? There were things there that you could have looked for early on. But I think sometimes as business leaders and business owners, we'll look the other way because we're in the process of turning a prospect into a client or whatever, whatever. Careful what you wish for because in my world, in professional services, winning the client is not transactional. Now you get to work with that person. Well, if that person is a total jerk, why would you want to "win an opportunity" to spend time with someone that makes you nauseous, that you don't respect, that you're not going to make happy? Like, why would you want that? So I think trust your spidey senses. Sometimes you can't quantify it as you would a more, I don't know, analytical or rational decision, but that's okay, I think. So I'm going to continue to trust my spidey senses, experiment with things that are interesting, do more of what I know we do well to the folks that we serve well. And that's the plan.

OK. Well, I'm going to end the show now, and then you and I are probably going to talk a little bit later. But just to make a closing soundbite, this has been the Vision with Execution show. Hosted by me, Adam Torkelson, the son of a circus clown, and my guest Peter Winick from Thought Leadership. The exact name of your company was Thought Leadership—

Thought Leadership Leverage.

Leverage. Thought Leadership Leverage. I knew it had thought leadership. So