Take Your Thought Leadership to the Next Level with Peter Winick

Welcome to the Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast, offering tips, insights, and advice from the best in the publishing industry. Hello and welcome to this episode of All Things Book Marketing. I'm your host, Olivia McCoy, and our special guest today is actually a return special guest. Peter Winick is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and the host of his own podcast, which Leveraging Thought Leadership. So it was perfect to bring him back on the show to talk about thought leadership. Hi Peter, welcome back.

Great, thanks for, thanks for having me today. Looking forward to it.

Of course. Yeah, so I know you've already been on with us, but why don't you go ahead and give us a recap of what you do and how you help authors?

Yeah, so I have a consulting firm that I started about 15 years ago. That's Thought Leadership Leverage. Uh, we work with all sorts of authors, academics, consultants, thought leaders, senior executives, etc. To us, it always starts with strategy. Then we move on to brand and platform. Then we spend a lot of time thinking about what do you do with an idea that somebody invested a lot of time in? It probably landed in a book, but not necessarily. So how do you move that into other formats and modalities so that it has greater impact and generates more income for the thought leader? And then ultimately, with a subset of our clients, we'll own responsibility for the things that they don't enjoy doing, which is, uh, sales, marketing, product development, business development, distribution, basically the business side of the house.

We've talked about thought leadership a lot already. I think we've mentioned it probably upwards of a billajillion times. So why don't we— let's define it. What is thought leadership?

Yeah, so it's, so it's a great question. So the way I look at it is you got to break it down, right? So there's the thought piece, right? And then there's the leadership piece. So under the thought piece, it's not opinion leadership, it's not charismatic leadership, there's something thoughtful. Now that could come from a variety of places. If you're an academic, it comes from research, right? If you are a business leader, former business leader, whatever, that comes from experience of running a business, starting a business, growing a business, etc. Or you could come from the advisory consulting world where you've been in there helping people do things. So it's gotta come from somewhere and be thoughtful. You can't just be repurposing or re-quoting pithy statements or, you know, fortune cookie stuff, right? And then the leadership piece, and I think this is where people often need a little bit more courage than they, they might be comfortable with, is where are you leading the direction, the conversation, the discipline to? It doesn't mean that you need to take a contrarian view for the sake of being different, light your hair on fire kind of stuff. But what is the little bit of difference? Sometimes it's a lot that you're adding to the body of work that exists. And leading that conversation, leading that discipline, leading that work into a new and maybe better or different direction.

So how do we identify a thought leader? How do we, when we're looking for experts and resources online or out in the world in our network, how do we know that someone is a thought leader?

Well, the first way I'd answer that is the way you know they're not is they identify as one, right? So don't call yourself. I'd be leery. You know, it's the old trust me. Like, don't, don't, label yourself a thought leader. I always view that as something that others in your field sort of bestow upon you.

Or your publicist. Your publicist can pitch you as a thought leader.

Yeah. No. Well, your publicist, anyone but you can call you that, right? Whether it's a publicist or publisher or advisor or whatever the case may be. So, you know, I think that's, you know, how does someone identify as one? I think it's, it's It's an outcome, not, not the, not the objective.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

So that's interesting to me because I've always been under the impression that on LinkedIn, you should put thought leader in a specific field, a business development thought leader or something like that in your title. But you're saying the opposite. So what should they put instead?

Well, no, no, no. You, you can if others have already called you that. Right? So if you are, for example, I don't know. I don't wanna split the hairs, but there's, there's a difference between subject matter expert and thought leader. Right? So there's someone out there that's like the world-renowned expert in refrigerated supply chain, whatever. That might not necessarily be thought leadership. Right? So there's a difference between expertise, you know, and thought leadership.

So it's kinda like a nickname. You can't create your own, but once someone else gives you one, you can introduce yourself as such.

There you go. Let's use the Sopranos piece, right? Nobody, nobody, like the Paulie Walnuts model of thought leadership. There we go.

Perfect. Okay. Good. Got that down pat then. So I know thought leadership has been a hot topic. I feel like I've been hearing it a lot more in media in general, especially in my networking conferences, conventions, that kind of thing. Is it a trend? And do you think that it's something that's always existed and will continue to evolve?

Yeah. So I think it's a great question. So I can tell you that I've been doing this for over 20 years, and when I started the firm 15, 16 years ago, the term that made me a little queasy was guru, right?

Mm-hmm.

And, um, so I think any term that gets buzzy has the potential to be overused and abused. Now, that being said, um, I think You know, the other way I think about your question is it's more broadly accepted. It's more broadly almost expected. And there's different places where that makes sense. There's, you know, how do I use thought leadership in my career to accelerate, to find new opportunities, to do all these other things, etcetera? How do I, you know, engage in the business of thought leadership, which is my sweet spot, which is okay, how do I actually make a living at this stuff, right? I've, I've created all this stuff. And then there's the organizational application where I am a fill in the blank. You know, this, what we're doing now is a form of thought leadership that makes sense for a publicist, right? To be talking about thought leaders with an expert in thought leadership, right? This is a form of thought leadership, right? So organizations can also, and many smart ones do, invest in and embrace thought leadership to elevate the brand, stand out in a competitive field, show the marketplace that they have a perspective, stay connected to constituents during long, you know, like in, in your world, you might have an author that, that uses you, but maybe it's 4 years between book cycles. How do we get them to stay in touch with you? Constantly drip thought leadership on them so you're top of mind. That's one way to do it.

Dan and Sandy will be thrilled to hear that we are successful in our thought leadership.

Exactly. You guys have been, actually.

I appreciate that. I will certainly pass on the praise. So then I'm gonna stick with identifying thought leadership a little bit longer. Are there any characteristics of a thought leader? Are there are any criteria you have to meet before someone might consider you a thought leader?

Yeah. Well, I think there are some behavioral characteristics, and then the consideration I'll get to after. So I think you've got to be curious. You've got to be passionate. You've got to be almost obsessed. You know, you can't fake this, right? Like, like, everyone that I work with is really, really, really, really smart. And it's amazing to work with people at the top of their game. In the top of their field and, and they live it and they eat it and they breathe it and, and it's like, it's, it's where they're at, right? Which is really, really cool. So, you know, on, on the external side, that's a different question. I think that's a little bit of a diff— of a different question is what does it take to be successful? There's lots of, well, how do you measure success? You know, is, is, you know, um, number of book sales may or may not be the proper metric for success. For most, I would argue it's probably not unless you're, you know, writing Harry Potter novels or—

No, that's true. So is there any age that you have to be? You can have young thought leaders or older thought leaders or, I'm thinking in general demographics, there's no one size fits all.

I think that it's, you know, it's changing and it's always changing, right? There was sort of the, the old white male model where every expert kind of looked the same, said the old white male, right? And it wasn't good. It wasn't represented. And I was been in the marketplace for years and I would always look at the stage, you know, I'm talking about like keynote speakers and then the audience and I'm like, the stage looks like one thing, but the audience is way more diverse. Now it's changing, but there's a pipeline problem, right? You can't just come out there one day as a 31-year-old you know, bi, queer, whatever, female and say, oh, now I'm a thought leader if you haven't done the work and written the books and all that. So it's almost like in academia, there's a pipeline issue there. But one thing that I think was a positive outcome of COVID is pre-COVID, there was this sort of North American arrogance that thought leadership is only an export. We don't import good ideas with some exceptions from Europe or, you know, whatever. And then nobody left their house for a couple of years. And we realized like an idea can pretty much come from anywhere, right? And often does. And because it sort of equalized things where we didn't have the advantage of, ooh, I get to go to South by and you don't, or I get to, you know, be on the TED stage and you can't. Ideas came from where they came from and the better ones bubbled up to the top a little bit more organically than they might have in the absence of that, you know, restraints that we were all under.

I'd love to dive into some examples of thought leaders because I think there's a misconception in our industry and in the, the greater culture of thought leadership at large that you have to be a household name to be a thought leader. You have to be recognized. You have to be the Oprah Winfreys of the world to be a thought leader.

But that's not true. That's an influencer. So, you know, I would argue Kim Kardashian is an influencer.

Mm-hmm.

I would be a little, you know, taken aback if somebody said, you know, if I said, who's your favorite thought leader? And they said Kardashian, like, ooh, probably not. Right? So I think there's, we confuse. Now there is a little bit of a Venn diagram of an overlap, but popularity and influencer and all that is not a thought leader. Right? So now there's a little, also a little bit of a chicken and an egg that once you have developed rapport with your followers and, and all that, it's easier to maintain it, right? So it is much easier to write your 5th best-selling book than it is your first. It's— life's not fair. Like, it just, it just is. But there's lots of things that you can do today that don't take as much time, energy, effort, or money to build that audience. Because I think the real question is, okay, if I've got the stuff, the great thought leadership, how do I get it out there, which is really a function of sales, marketing, PR, business development, distribution. And it's usually not what drew most folks into the business side of this.

When I think of a thought leader, I am drawn to people like Selena Razvani, who was on our podcast last month. She is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. She is a confidence workplace culture coach. And she gets out there and she does her speaking and she does her almost daily Instagram Reels, TikToks, videos on social media, giving tips and advice and insights. And you can see that she lives and breathes confidence and wellness in the workplace. DEI expert. Really, she is a thought leader. And she is someone that maybe you've never heard of. You never heard of Selena Razvani, but you look at her brand and it's impossible to say she's not. Do you have other examples like that you could give us?

Oh, there's tons, you know, without, I, it's like naming your favorite child. So I've got hundreds of clients, but so I'll speak more generically. But I think what you see is one of the things that you mentioned about that, that person is, oh, she's on TikTok, Instagram, whatever. I don't think it's a matter of measuring, are you on Instagram, TikTok, or, or, or whatever. Step 1 is you gotta have a strategy. Then you need to know with a high level of specificity who your, who your target market is, who the client avatar is. And this is a, a really important point. Many thought leaders confuse the end user, maybe the reader of the book, the butt in the seat at the keynote with the buyer. They're two very, very, very different personas. So oftentimes a lot of the things that we do on the marketing side of thought leadership is to that end user. But we can't do that at the expense of not effectively communicating to the buyer. So the buyer might be, you know, in that person's case, someone bringing in an expert for workplace culture, DEI, whatever, I'd wanna make sure that we're seeing enough of her content. And I, I don't know because I haven't seen it that resonates with that population because that population is going, okay, I'm gonna spend X dollars with this expert. What's the outcome and the benefit? What are the business levers that it moves versus the end user might go, hallelujah, sister, this feels good. You're saying what I'm thinking, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, they don't have the authority or the scope or the budget to, you know, fund her initiatives other than a book and a book. Nobody's making money on books like that. It's not where it's happening.

Yeah, it's very rare to be making your living on books. So I do agree with that. But I do love them as a tool for promoting your insights and your expertise.

Yep. So, you know, there could be like, so, you know, going on that line, once you know where your market is, you know, there, there are folks that are amazing thought leaders that are not particularly active on certain forms of social media because it's not where their peeps are. Right?

Yeah.

They're hanging out at Davos. They're talking to boards. They're talking to senior leaders. And some of that might be in a very private, intimate, one-on-one setting as opposed to a broadcast setting because there's a, there's a place to broadcast your thought leadership. And then there's a place to narrowcast it where it feels like that thought leadership could be a little couple of bullet points I have in my pocket as I'm walking across the way at Davos. That's thought leadership too.

So if you have a client who is— has everything they need to succeed as a thought leader, maybe they're a big ideas person though, and they have the thought, they have the ideas, they have the personality and the passion, and they need a plan. So they need someone like you. Maybe they're hiring your company to do the planning to help them reach that visibility as a thought leader. What would that look like for them?

Yeah. So the, we're, our work starts with the development of a strategy because it has been my experience over many decades that most thought leaders either operate without a strategy, right?

Mm-hmm.

With an antiquated one or broken one. And you say, why is that? There's a lot of reasons, but the primary one is they get to do whatever they want. They're not held to account and there's not a lot of capital involved. So if I were to go out there and need to raise $1 billion, people wanna know, all right, Peter, what are you doing with the money? What's the plan? What's the impact? What's the ROI? If I couldn't answer those questions, I'm not gonna get the billion dollars, right? With a couple of exceptions along the way. So I think for thought leaders, you've gotta have a strategy in place. And the problem is a lot of them have left roles or jobs or whatever because there's things that they don't like doing, like being held to account, like developing strategy, like developing a plan, like being operationally efficient, all that sort of stuff. So at some point, if you want to be in the business of thought leadership, you gotta have a strategy in place and you gotta be able to stick to it. Now, there are exceptions to everything, and there are several thought leaders that have been incredibly successful because a lightning bolt hit. You know, if you go back, for example, and look at Simon Sinek's first TED Talk, the talk was great. The quality of that is, is like your worst family barbecue, right? It's just awful. But lightning struck, you know, right message, right time. And it struck. And there, you know, so there, there, you would look at that now and say, oh, if I were to go out there as a thought leader, would I produce a TED Talk that was of the quality of Simon Sinek's 15, 18 years ago? You'd say, absolutely not. It would be nice if it was, I don't know, maybe not blurry.

Like, you know, fair.

Yeah.

So what would a strategy look like, or what are some examples of a strategy?

Yeah. So a, a good strategy takes, there's some inputs and then there's some outcomes. So some of the inputs, and, and there's no right or wrong answer, is Well, what are your constraints as a thought leader? I want to travel. I don't want to travel. I want to work with tobacco companies. I only want to work with these type of companies. I, um, uh, whatever those constraints may be, they don't need to be rational or logical. I don't like traveling on Wednesdays, or that one. Uh, okay, don't want to talk about that one. Um, then there's goals, right? And to me, goals are not, uh, one size fits all. There's an intrinsic element to goals. Like, I really love when I'm on a delivering a keynote and a week later I get an email from someone that says, you changed the way I look at the world, or I tried the thing that you said and finally had that moment with my boss. And holy cow, like, they're really valuable, yet they don't show up on a balance sheet. Right? Then there's income goals. And people think talking about money is bad. I think it's, it's actually healthy. Like, hey, I'm gonna do this. What's the opportunity cost? What's the investment I'm willing to make? And this is the money I wanna make. Okay. How are we gonna get there? And then there's exit goals. Like, people don't think enough as thought leaders around what is this, what might this look like in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 15, irregardless of my current age, my current needs, whatever. But am I building something that might have value to another entity at some point in time? That's usually not a binary answer. Right? Nobody's buying anybody's keynote business. But if you have, tools or a validated assessment, there's lots of subsets of your IP that, that if, if formatted properly, do, does create incredible value on the exit side. So that's some of the input. On the other side of it is, okay, well, who are you serving? How are you serving them? Do you have the product roadmap? And this is where I think probably the number one mistake thought leaders make is, hey, I've got this book. I've been working on it for 3 years, 5 years, whatever. Like, you, you know this, Olivia. Has anyone ever completed a book on time or on budget? It's like doing your kitchen, right? Like, it just, it has never happened. It's just not, right? But, you know, oh, I've got this book and then I'm always like, and then what? And then people buy it. Okay. And then what? And then, okay, well, you don't, and then, like, you need to do that upfront even before, way before you think about, well, you know, have a vision of, I want this type of person to buy that book. And once they buy that book, I want them to do this. Bring me in to speak, have me in to advise, license my tools, whatever the case may be. Don't wait until after because it's, you're gonna be in this blender, this whirlwind of book launch. And not be— it's not a time— that's a time to be tactical. That's a time to just— I'm doing 30 podcasts today. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You can't be big picture when, you know, you're jumping from airplane to airplane and interview to interview and all those things. And you have to do that to get a book sort of launched, if you will.

I was just doing some training with, some newer members of our team around website audits and making sure websites are optimized. And I was telling them about how the goal should always be to bring users and visitors in deeper to the website. There should be a clear pathway, there should be a lead gen idea. If the goal is more speaking, if the goal is more consults, more clients, that kind of thing, then the book is just a tool to lead them to those other pieces, those other resources. And I'm hearing that also in your strategy too, that it's not— the book is not the end product. You don't publish a book and then everything just works out. It's the book leads to other pieces of your brand and of your successful work career. That helps you grow.

I think the other thing to think about or to rethink maybe is books for most authors have, no pun intended, you know, a shelf life of 5, 7, maybe 8 years yet, if you're lucky. Yeah, yeah. For most, right? If you're lucky. But, but most people focus on that like the launch phase. And I say, okay, a pub date is an artificial irrelevant date other than internally in the industry. We need to know when it's coming out and what we're doing and how we're timing things around that. But the litmus test is it's 6 months from now, 3 years from now. If you get the right book in front of the right person, will that light bulb go off and say, ah, you know, now we don't know what the future is gonna look like in 3 or 4 years, but most nonfiction business books are more evergreen than not. Right? They're not writing about last year's Super Bowl or an election that happened where it's, it's, it's so dated so quickly that it's irrelevant.

And even if you get pieces of that, you can always republish new editions of the same book, same idea, same concepts, newer examples, newer research.

Totally, totally.

And then you have an even longer shelf life because you have the same book, new versions into the future. Love that plan.

Exactly.

You also mentioned in your last, um, response to the question, things that thought leaders aren't thinking of that they should be. What are some other things that you are often hearing people aren't considering, but they absolutely need to be?

Yeah. So there's a lot. They, they tend to be weak on systems and process. So for example, many authors wanna be speakers, great. You know, from the outside, it looks pretty cool. You get to fly into, you know, Scottsdale first class. You work for 45 minutes, and the end of your day's work, you get a standing ovation. Like, the mailman doesn't have that experience, right? So it is, and you get paid fairly well. So I look at it and say, okay, well, that's really cool. But the keynote, for example, should be the beginning of a relationship that you have with a client, not the extent of the relationship. Sometimes that happens serendipitously. You know, the, the CEO falls in love with you and wants to throw a lot of money at you, that's cool. But you, you need to make, increase the odds of that happening. You need to have systems and processes in place pre-event, on-site at the event, and post-event. And this is where most folks sort of struggle or just don't think about it because they've had positive experience of, hey, every time I speak, people come up to me and gimme their business cards, and that usually leads to something else. I'm like, okay, that's cool. But you could, you know, one of the, the metrics we use is you could be doing 5 to 10x your revenue that you're doing in speaking in non-speaking related businesses. And then the other side of that is, are you building a practice or you're building a business? Right? So a practice is ultimately you're selling time for money. You might not line item it that way on an invoice, but you're, you know, you need to be in the room, in the Zoom for the ideas and the dollars to be exchanged. There's nothing wrong with the practice. Dentists have it, lawyers have it, whatever. But it's not a business. And I think one of the opportunities, one of the major opportunities for thought leaders is you You've built these assets, you've got this IP. What are they doing to deliver dividends to you regardless of what your calendar looks like that day, week, or month? So that's where it's a business and not just a practice. And I would say probably upwards of 80% of thought leaders never get out of the practice mode. And sometimes that's fine. You know, sometimes that's cool for them. But like that next level is really, you know, think about thought leaders that really have a business that aren't dependent on their specific activities.

As a podcast host, I'm itching to dive more into speaking as a thought leader. But I also know because I help with the blog that you wrote us an amazing blog piece about it that's going to come out in about 2 weeks after this podcast episode airs on the Smith Blog. So instead, I'm going to be a tease. I'm going to tease and say, check out—

movie trailer.

Yes. Check out the blog post in a couple of weeks. Keep an eye on our social medias. Keep an eye on our blog to hear more about speaking as a thought leader from Peter, the expert himself. And then I'm gonna continue to go in a more general bubble on thought leadership. So how should they be promoting themselves? And we've talked a little bit already about strategies and plans and ideas, but are there specific things they need to be doing themselves to self-promote?

Yeah. So I, I think that's a great question. Folks like you are really good at getting the media placement and all those things where they don't have the relationships. Where a lot of thought leaders, I think, can do a better job, and there's lots of reasons they don't, is that hand-to-hand combat is really getting— or with their network, you know, and a network could go back 30 years to grad school. A network could be people you worked with 15 years ago. But really, and we have a whole bunch of processes and things that we do around this, going through your network, letting the people that you know and love and care about you, whether, whether you, the recent connections or people you knew from years ago, that this book's coming out and what you'd like them to do. And then the other thing I would say is, is, you know, oftentimes getting the book in the hands of the right people leads to amazing, amazing things. So whatever you can do to accelerate it and don't leave it on them to go to Amazon and spend the $20, $25, you know, take a couple hundred bucks, a couple hundred books and be really deliberate, focused and say, you know, one of the things I love to do is, is go to, you know, like have my clients go to their best clients and say, Hey, can you give me the name of 5 friends or colleagues who you think would benefit from my book? And you send it out. Hey, our mutual friend Olivia, the CEO of Company X, thought you might enjoy my book. And here's why, dot, dot, dot. People open that and it's a win for everybody. Right? And, and people travel with like-minded people. So if you've got top clients, their friends and pals and whatnot are probably have a, a higher propensity to be client for you than the general population. The other thing I would say is the thought leader community, start way, way early. Start, you know, if you, if there's somebody that you read that you admire, that you watch their TED Talk, reach out, tell them that, comment on their stuff, start to get visible with them, build a rapport with them. And it's amazing how generous, there's a couple jerks there, but how generous most are and want to support you on your journey when your book comes out via, vis-à-vis a testimonial or a an endorsement of some sort. Like, that's really, really powerful.

I was just about to say, ask for an endorsement, seed more books. You are never gonna run out of readers. You're never gonna run out of clients because there's new people stepping into that space every day. So seed as many books as possible because like you're saying, word of mouth marketing is the most effective form of marketing. And I can't say this enough in my line of work and with our clients every day.

Yep. Yeah. 100%.

So let's finish up with your number 1 piece of advice for aspiring thought leaders. If you can think of your number 1.

Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't think there's one. I think it's, you know, it's never, ever, ever too early to actually invest in strategy because what happens is really smart people confuse activity with productivity. So it's not like they're sitting around, you know, eating bonbons all day waiting for, you know, rainbows and unicorns. They're doing stuff, but is it the right stuff in the right sequence against a set of outcomes? Right? And that really is the definition of a strategy. And when you're, you know, moving 100 miles an hour and your calendar's clogged and all that, you don't have time to be strategic. And that's a mistake.

How can our listeners and watchers learn more about you, your business, and your work?

Sure. So they can go to the website thoughtleadershipleverage.com. You can check out the podcast, uh, Leveraging Thought Leadership, or you could, uh, do something old school and email me directly, which is peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and remember to keep an eye out for the blog post in a couple of weeks. I read it. It's It's perfect. It's incredible. I'm very excited to publish it.

Cool. Good. Now I don't have to wait for redlines to come back.

So nope, nope. I like it. I think I'm just gonna add your bio to the end and get it uploaded.

Done. There we go.

Thank you, listeners, listeners, watchers. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you see, listen, then don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and share it with anyone else that might be interested. We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing Podcast. To reach us and learn about our many services, visit smithpublicity.com or send us an email to info@smithpublicity.com.