Tips, Tricks, and Advice for Elevating Thought Leadership | Robert Glazer | 539

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Robert Glaser. He's a serial entrepreneur, an award-winning executive, a bestselling author, a keynote speaker, and a podcaster amongst other things. He's currently the founder and board chair of global partnership marketing agency Acceleration Partners. And I can go on and on reading his bio, but I'd rather just talk to him because he's sitting right here. So welcome aboard, Bob. How are you today?

Good. Thanks for having me.

Cool. So I, I wanna, let's start with, you have used and continue to use thought leadership in a wide variety of ways, right? From writing books to Friday Forward to the newsletter to your podcast. I mean, you're doing it in all sorts of ways.

Yeah.

How do you decide what formats to use and what to experiment, like how do you make those decisions? 'Cause there's lots of things you could be doing on any given day.

It's a little bit of experimentation. You know, we operated as a business, we operated in this kind of niche of affiliate and partner marketing, and I think we had a fundamentally different approach and disagreed with a lot of the norms of the industry. And so we'd get asked about stuff, and one of my tricks for content was always, If I get asked something 5 times, I'd be better off writing an article and then the next time someone, and maybe backdating it, and then the next time someone asks me about it, like, this isn't new. We've, you know, we've covered this issue. Like it's all right here, what you're asking about, because when you're telling it to someone as a one-off answer, it sounds like you're telling them what you want to hear. It, you know, I had the same thing when we started acquiring companies and I got into the same crazy valuation conversations. Every time I built a whole valuation chart and a whole thing, and when the 20th person gave me the same loony thing about what their company was worth, I'd say, look, there's actually an article and some information I put together a year ago. Like maybe it'd be helpful to normalize around that. So I learned early on, like we kind of picked a fight with the industry too and threw a couple grenades into the model. And I think a lot of people resonated, you know, with that. And so that led to kind of writing some of those marketing books and saying, why don't we just put our platform out there? Why don't we, like, we fundamentally think that the industry needs to change. We're doing something different and put it out there. My—

just think for a minute, 'cause I like the idea, whatever industry or business you're in, if you're doing something that's different, which you should be, or, or contrarian, which maybe works for you or whatever.

Yeah.

Not just expressing that in a sales pitch or a meeting or conversations with the clients, but memorializing that in some form of thought leadership article, short-form video, whatever. I love the idea of saying, yeah, everybody's jumping on this bandwagon, but go back to 2015. I've been like, right. I was grandfather of something, right? Or you have more, you, you're not someone jumping on a bandwagon.

Yeah.

You can point to a point in time. So yeah, I, this is an idea that I actually started or was, was early on.

When, when Annie asked me, I was helping my financial advisor with this, with Shane advice about like, what content should I write? I wanna do this. I'm like, what do people ask you about all the time? Time that you have a great answer to, right? Wouldn't you want to increase the exposure to that, to people who might be looking for that, who don't already know you? You know, one of the things we used to get asked all the time was like, look, if you're working on performance, can we just do it on performance? And I'd have 10 answers. Like, look, we could— I could write up this agreement for you. It's going to have to have a 2-year tail. You're going to take it to your lawyer. They're not going to like it. Your finance team's going to hate it. And then you're going to come back and ask me for a retainer. So like, I've just— we've seen this movie, but out the middleman.

Right, right.

Yeah. So that's where a lot of the content started was generally as a response to, you know, common issues. But when I wrote my first book, Performance Partnerships, I actually made— look, our industry affiliate marketing had a lot of naysayers. So I kind of, I went with that. So it was 3 parts, kind of the past, present, and future. And the past was like, this has been some shady shit. Like, and we agree with you and we actually share all your concerns, but there's a totally different way to do this and let us show you how the best companies were doing that. So it earns some credibility by kind of starting with the self— everyone likes a little self-deprecation.

Yeah, no, that's true. So again, you've got lots of different things, right? You're writing books. But podcasting, you're speaking, some of them are directly for dollars, some not.

Yeah.

How do you decide on where to spend more time and energy and where to spend less relative to your goal? So for example, keynoting is easy if there's a fee that you want to get and you get it and you know, whatever.

Yeah. And look, I think you need, you need rules and, and even in speaking, I can tell you kind of the rule that I've adopted and that's, well, first is you gotta kiss some frogs, you know, initially.

Yeah.

Uh, and, and But I don't do anything free anymore. I have to travel. If I do, it's gotta have a potential future audience that is considerably, you know, there's 1,000 CEOs and it's local and I can go for an hour and possibly 100 of them want to have me then come to their company. But those are few and far between because I find that when people don't have skin in the game, They overestimate the audience. They do a bunch of stuff. So, so if the primary value is for people to gain awareness of me, I'm willing to be flexible and do one of those events. If the primary value is for me to deliver value to the audience, I need to be paid in full for that because there's no residual impact from that.

Right. And the paid in full is at a premium based on your reputation, how long you've been doing this and all that. It's, it's, you know, speaking is one of those things where you'd never go to the dentist and say, can you check out this cavity? And if you do a good job, I do these all the time, I'll throw you the next one.

And I know it seems really glamorous, but, you know, I have kids that want to be around me now and I see people doing, you know, 100 a year and like, it's like double your rate and do 50. Like, you know, obviously it takes a while to build that up. But look, if I get— I have a mark that I want to be at that's worth my time. If I get 10 of those, great. If I get 4 of those, great. Like, I just not— I'm not— it doesn't go on sale.

So what about the podcast? 'Cause that's something you've been doing for quite some time. You've got some great guests.

Yeah.

What does success for you on the podcast look like? 'Cause I think people get, get mucked up in the totally.

So people do.

Yeah.

Like it's like, you know, that if you sell 2 books on Amazon, you're in the top 50% or something like that. Right. I think podcast is the same thing. I think most people don't get past like their second episode and it actually rewards longevity. So again, I, people do. I, 2 books ago, I did this whole podcast tour with some well-known people. And when I went back for my last book, half of them weren't doing their podcast anymore. And I think it's because they started their podcast for the wrong reason. They started it as an incubator to their business. They started it like it wasn't its primary mission. Mine is super simple. Like I want to have an amazing conversation with someone who's incredible, who I can learn from and I can share. Like, so if that's the one conversation we ever have in life, then that's going to be like a great hour. Now there's a lot—

not though, but isn't it usually a great way to either build or deepen a relationship?

But it's a great way to start a relationship. There's people who don't want to get on the phone and chat with me, and but they will come on my podcast and then they see that I ask super thoughtful questions. I did my homework and research. It's organized. I marketed it. I send them a lead where someone says, hey, I heard on the podcast, can I get, you know, Peter to come speak? So then if I want a testimonial on a book or otherwise, so yeah, so that's, that is a great way to connect to people and meet people who I, I've always wanted to have a conversation with and I've built enough of a platform where it's valuable for them to do that.

Yeah, I think it's, it's exactly what you said in that there are zillions of people that won't necessarily take my call, but if it's behind the microphone, you're doing something for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, Look, this is the reality of human nature. I always would say this in our business. I get calls all the time, right? That would say, hey, we provide X and Y services. I would love to connect with you and talk about how we can provide these services to your clients. Oh, great. I want to take a meeting with you to pitch services to my clients. That sounds super helpful. I had a 100% success rate when I would reach out to another firm and I'd say, hey firm, you offer So-and-so, our clients keep asking us for a vendor for this and we don't do it. I'd love to connect with you and learn about how we might send you referrals. Do you think that person's gonna take that?

Yeah, right.

That meeting?

Yeah, right. Exactly.

Well, it's not ungenuine. I mean, it, it, but it's just the approach of like, hey, can you help me out or can I help you out?

Well, you're putting them at the center versus, hey, can I, can I take your time so you can make me more successful versus Wow, here's a way we can make one another more successful and there's a carrot for you right here.

So yeah, 100%.

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 what other thing— you've got the Friday Forward. So how did that come about?

Yeah.

And what's the value to you in that?

So it came about because I started sending this note to my team. After I went to a leadership thing that was about better morning routine and writing something positive. And we were given like Chicken Soup for the Soul stuff. And that wasn't the type of positive that motivates me. Like, I like something a little more spicy. Chicken Soup for the Soul. And so I started taking these quotes and stories and things about leadership and personal development. And I didn't have the language at that time, but now what I call capacity building. And I started sending them every Friday to my distributed team. People started sharing them outside the company. Eventually, after a discussion with some other CEOs, I shared it with them. They started forwarding it to their company. And I was like, huh, maybe other people would like this and I kind of opened it up. 3 years later, 100,000 people in 60 countries had signed up, you know, for this newsletter. Again, it's just about providing value to other people. Have I gotten tremendous value from it? Have I gotten speaking and clients and all kinds of stuff? Absolutely. But I don't sit there and be like, what would be a really good way to get a client from this? I try to create something that's valuable to someone else. And this is an example of doing something for the right reason. So every year there was a massive conference in our industry where the whole industry would be there. And a lot of people were on my Friday Forward and I write a lot of industry content, how to launch your affiliate program, how to do this or otherwise. Every year I go to the party that they had that night and 5 or 6 people come up to me and say, I love your Friday Forward. I love this one. No one talked to me about— I loved your 10 checklist thing. So even though it wasn't about work content, these were partners, people in our ecosystem, like key people who I had permission to be in communication with every week and share some value. And that's what they chose to come up and, and talk to me about.

And your name is familiar with them. It keeps coming up and then you get to a point where there's a flywheel effect. And I don't think the thought would cross your mind now to say, well, you know, it takes me an hour a week or 2 hours a week. I'm going to stop doing that.

Right. And early on, look, James Clear talked about this thought leadership and writing and this stuff. It just rewards longevity. And if you understand the compounding rule of 1%, you almost miss the hockey stick. It feels like crap, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then eventually the 1% compound. So all the people that have quit their blog and quit their podcast after the— they don't get what they're looking at of it out of 6 months— paved the way for the people, you know, James Clear was like 6 or 7 years into his blog till some of his really old SEO pieces started taking off. And that's also a good reason why you want to Everyone should understand basic SEO who writes content and how to tag and title and try to write things that are evergreen and that will always be true.

Yeah. So I remember when I started blogging years ago, 15 years ago, I don't really like to write. On my best day, I'm a mediocre writer, but it needed to be done. And I went to a good friend of mine in Silicon Valley who at that point had 3 successful blogs and he said, all right, Peter, you're like everybody else. You know, you're an ADD, CEO wants to do, you know, you want to hit send and then you want to click and see what the impact was and blah, blah, blah. Don't commit to writing one blog, commit to writing 100. And I was like, wow.

And I actually said, yeah, a week.

And I was like, geez. All right. And you know, you get to number 20, you get to number 30 and it's crickets and it's crickets. And I'm like, why am I? And you had every reason to justify this is stupid. This is stupid.

It's like the organic law of nature where it just rewards persistence in some way.

I think that's right. And then when I, so it wasn't necessarily exactly 100. We saw some early indication this was good. And then when we did the podcast 6.5 years ago, all right, how about 50? And same thing, the first 50 were like, okay, yeah, you know, my next door neighbor downloaded it. He's an accountant. What, like, thanks, but I wouldn't listen to your podcast on accounting if you had one, buddy, like, whatever. And now it's become a thing, right? So I think that most people don't persist. Most people live in a short-term reward basis. It, you know, there are places where thought leadership is a long-term play, a midterm play, and a short-term play. And I think you have to understand where to, where to place the bets and what the—

Yeah. And short-term is if you're the guy or the girl or whatever, and it's your space and your space blows up and it's hot and you're the like thing of the moment, right? Yeah.

But that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's like catching lightning. And it, look, I had a moment like that. We were a, a remote company for 15 years and we kind of like hit it and But we won all these best places to work awards and then COVID hits and everyone's like, how do you do remote? And so, and I wrote a book in 3 months and it's all anyone would talk to me was about remote work, but like that's catching lightning in a bottle.

Well, and that happens, right?

Yeah, it happens. But you can't, you can only plan for that by being the expert when your industry steps up onto stage. Right. And so you can plan by being really good and being prepared, but I, It's hard to make your industry pop out of nowhere.

So what would you say to someone out there that's thinking about investing in thought leadership for their business to differentiate, to stand out from the competition, to punch above their weight, all the great things that it's for. What are the things that you would advise?

Yeah, I think pick a strategy, pick a kind of an angle and a tone, and then pick one channel and do that really well. I actually think companies struggle with this. Like when they try to do—

you mean one platform? One?

Yeah, one platform. Like I'm gonna crush Instagram and do it this way, or I'm gonna write blog content or be— because I actually find that when you build an audience with one, you can then leverage it to the other. Companies have this exact same problem. The ones that dive into all social media are not successful at any of it. Then you'll see ones that nailed Instagram or figured out TikTok or figured out videos, and then From that base, they were able to do the other channels. But if you don't have the resources and you don't have the team, as you, I would go for the longevity, make a commitment. Like you said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do 100, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons and focusing on giving value to others and pick one platform. Those would be my—

and don't call it thought leadership when it's really content marketing or product marketing.

Yeah. You don't get to call yourself a thought leader. Other— people can call you that, but it is never a self— there's no douchier thing than calling yourself a thought leader.

It is the douchiest of douches. Interesting. What about for folks that don't know where to start? So, you know, you're saying pick one, so pick Insta or pick or what—

whatever, pick LinkedIn, pick a newsletter, right? Yeah, yeah.

But I think that also assumes that you're really clear about who you're serving and who you like to serve and make sure they're there, right? Because I've seen a lot of folks say, oh, I'm not doing video. And then you get down to it and say, well, why aren't you doing video? Like, well, I don't like video. I'm like, okay, but you're marketing to this group and this group and this group, and the data shows us that they're consuming short-form videos. So if you don't show up there, you're not even an option. Like, how do you balance that out?

Yeah. Be something to someone. Again, it comes to the value. Like if you're a financial planner, again, think about the 3 or 4 questions you get asked a lot. Maybe prospects ask you, your best clients ask you otherwise, and figure out how you could deliver something that is of value and easy for people to consume and do it on a regular enough basis that they get used to it. Right? So, and again, figure out what your voice is and what your style is. If you hate video, maybe you write. If you hate writing, You know, you do, you do video. If you're good at making social media things, then do that. I mean, a lot of this is just based on what your proclivities are. I would try to play to your strength and I would, again, always take the view of like, how is whatever I'm going doing helpful to this other person? And because you're going to start with the people that you know, but your goal is for that content to move into the sphere of the people that you don't know. And that's how they get to know you. Yeah, no, I think if you want to write something viral, make something worth sharing. Like it's the thing that knows, you know, Morgan Housel talked about this years ago where he hired a social media consultant and she gave him all these hacks but never said like write really good content, which actually matters 10 times more than all these other things.

Yeah, I think that's right. And putting quality out there, making sure that like, you know, the scarcest resource we have today, you know, is not information, it's time. So whether you're going to get, 10 minutes of my time or 2 minutes or, you know, 8 hours if I'm reading a book.

Can I give you a perfect example of this in a different context? So I have a rental unit out in Park City and we built a website for it and it gets some traffic and otherwise, but the way you get people to your website, you need more links, you need more referrals otherwise. So I thought about like, what would be helpful, you know, to this? And over the years people sent me tons of lists, like the best restaurant and they're all This format and that format. So I spent like 36 hours collecting these lists, doing resources, building the biggest ultimate guide to everything you could ever want to do in Park City. And I just hung it off this rental website on another page. Doesn't, you know, with an innocuous link to it.

Yeah.

And, and I shared it with this morning with 200 people, the amount of connections I've already gotten of people like, we're going to add this. Can you put this on there? Oh, can you like. It's already like, because everyone's like, this is so good. We've been like, look, you know, I had a restaurant list, I had a whatever, like this solves a problem. So we're just going to link to it, give you stuff. And it already, one guy hooked me up with reservations at his restaurant. Like, like, but what did I do? I sat down, I spent hours trying to make something that would be really helpful for other people.

Well, and those, but those other people, I think you have a sense of the need because you're also one of those other people.

Yeah, because it's so annoying to get all these different lists. And I'm like, just tell me, give me all this stuff in one place.

And I couldn't just— timeout. This clearly we're falling into first world problem.

Yeah, yeah.

It's hard to get a good reservation in Park City. But we will work on solving some of the other things. But this is a problem that's been solved.

But it's a perfect example of like, honestly, I got super into it. It was fun. I spent an entire weekend, my wife was yelling at me like, why are you on the computer? I was like, Let me just finish this list. Like, I just, I wanna make this really good.

Is it more fun because you got the wife to yell at you and provided value?

Like, that ups the ante. But it's a super simple example of creating content that goes viral because it's helpful to other people.

Well, and what I love about your example, viral in that instance is clearly lowercase v. That's never gonna get a million hits.

Doesn't need to. Yeah.

Small community of a couple hundred people. That are in and out in Park City, that percentage of them that could rent your condo or whatever it is, pretty high, like pretty smart, pretty good, right? Because how many pictures of the mountain?

Yeah. And by the way, back to technical, the hardest thing for SEO, you can optimize your site. The hardest thing, one of the most important things, getting other people to link to you and link to your content. So how do you get people to link to you? You write something that is linkable, right?

Well, this has been awesome. I appreciate your time and your candor and lots of good stuff that's gone back and forth here, Bob. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Thanks for having me, Peter.

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.