Why Your Expertise Is the Only Content That Converts | Ghazenfer Mansoor | 724

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining me today on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. My guest today is Ghazanfar Mansour. He is an entrepreneur, he's an author, he's a speaker, he's also a podcast host. He's an investor and he's leading Technology Rivers, which is a dynamic software development firm. And he's got a book called Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps That People Love, Use, and Share Every Day. So welcome aboard today, Ghazanfar. How are you?

Pretty good. Thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me.

Great. So how did all this happen? You're a busy guy. You're, you're, uh, running a company, you're an investor, you got a lot of things going on. When did, did thought leadership get, get to be integrated into part of the portfolio, if you will?

I would say it was just a natural transition that happened. I was focusing on just growing my business. And as part of growing the business, we started doing different things. So for example, creating content, because initially as we were growing the business, it was more relationship-based, meeting people at conferences, referral. Gradually after COVID, we started writing content and then our inbound started working, working on the SEO.

Yeah.

All that strategies. So as those started, content started working, realized, okay, we need to dig more into it. And that's when started working on the podcast. So that's when I started the Lessons from the Lead because sharing more experiences again. And an initial thought was more the video content. Because previously we're missing those content and the book was in parallel. That's a 3-year-long effort. And I always wanted to share my experiences on the mobile app because I've been involved in mobile for a long time. So built so many different apps before even starting this business because I've been involved in mobile since 2000. So with all those experiences on the mobile, the growth strategies. So the book started, that was in parallel work. Then the podcast started. And then the speaking part, obviously, as you are talking about different experiences on the healthcare, the mobile, the growth strategies, how do you 10x growth through AI and technology, all the different topics. So those things naturally started happening because people started asking, can you talk about this thing? Sure. So, um, it was not planned. It was just naturally transitioned.

No, I like that. So, so let me, let me ask you this. So it sounds like, you know, there's, there's the podcast, there's content that you're writing. There's now the book. So those are different formats. Those are different modalities. I wanted to ask, you know, it doesn't mean that the different ideas have to stay in the different modalities. They're fluid, right? So you might have an, you know, you have an interesting podcast conversation that might lead to an article or that might lead to pieces in the book. How did that all flow through the various formats for you?

So those are also as part of the learning process. So for example, we started creating podcasts and then the podcast needs to go to, for For example, you create the content out of the podcast that goes to the business side because the podcast is my personal branding part. So that has nothing to do with business, but then the podcast is talking about some of the experiences that I'm sharing that's related to my business that also will go there, but then it goes in a different way. How do we repurpose those contents out of those blogs that will go to the website? Same is the concept with the book. Because book is about the mobile app growth strategy and majority of our work.

So the book is a more specific subset of the overarching Thought Leadership in its own container, if you will, right?

That's right. And then because even in the healthcare or whatever the different work we are doing, the mobile is the technology part. Healthcare is a vertical part. So if you're building healthcare and mobile. So that's where we are getting a lot of that traction. So our business, if you look at it, it's, you can see a trio, healthcare, mobile, and AI. These are the three areas that I talk about. These are the three areas of expertise and they're all somewhat related.

Got it. Got it. Very interesting. So you've got all these things and it starts as a way to sort of elevate the brand. Right. And do the content marketing. But it sounds like there's also a relationship development piece. Like when you're having a conversation with someone on a podcast or someone's inviting you to speak, that opens other doors. Walk me through sort of the, maybe something along the lines of like how much time you're spending as a thought leader and how that directly has an impact on the business for you. Because I'm assuming the payoff is positive. Correct.

Right. So we're not really, well, I would say we're still at the early stage. So we're not really calculating too much. I don't have exact numbers of, in terms of the ROI, because remember the content part that I started even writing the first blog, it was early 2000, right before the COVID So there was no even a blog on our website before that. So it takes some time to build that. So I know like what we are doing now. Is gonna have a lot more impact in the coming days. It's just process.

So, all right, so stay there a minute because I, I think that's important in that, you know, when you think like a marketer, you think in terms of a campaign, a call to action, a response rate, an open, like all those things. When you think like a thought leader that's using thought leadership to market, it's not the, those metrics are different, right? And I, and I like what you're saying is you've gotta be patient and play the long game here. It's not that, oh, I, I posted that one podcast and as a result of that podcast in 30 days, this is what happened. There's a compounding effect and a flywheel effect that takes time to sort of marinate is what you're saying.

True, true. And I mean, and the other strategy is also not bad. I mean, in fact, that's what recommended many time. Yes, we should do that, but that's not how we were doing it.

So, right.

Like even, even in our business, like the SEO perspective, like never use an SEO company. And we had a couple of pages that were coming number one on Google for a long time. When you have those genuine contents, people will come. The same thing on, on the content. Now, let's say our customers, if I ask, how do you find this search for top app, HIPAA app development company in the US? We get number one on Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT. So we didn't do any specific effort. It's that gradually, once you have the right content, you're talking about the stuff that matters, you're talking about the genuine content, people, it, it automatically get picked up. You don't need to have all of those.

So, so if somebody was to be starting on this journey today, what would you advise them to do differently than what you are doing or have done? And what would you advise them to replicate? From what you're doing?

I would advise them not to hire a marketer to do any of this because here is the reason, because when marketer, and again, nothing against the marketers, but marketers when are writing this stuff, they're writing it for multiple people. The depth is not there. So you as an expert know exactly your field, whether you're an athlete or a healthcare professional or any, when you talk about your specific stuff, that makes a difference. And that's what people are interested in. If your content are good, if you are talking about something, you're providing some value, people will come and listen to you. They will read, they will interact with you, and those conversations will automatically get picked up, and then you will have a visibility, you will have an ROI.

Got it. I love that. I love that. So, you know, it's easier for people to say, well, let's just hire somebody to do that, right? Because they know. But I think that for the most part, you know, as you mentioned with the SEO, it needs to, it needs to be you. It needs to feel like you. It need, it needs to say what you're saying. You're not gonna get expertise by outsourcing copywriting cuz this isn't copywriting. There's a big difference between copywriting and thought leadership, right? And I think that, that people put them in the same bucket and they're very different. So for example, when people are approaching you now and saying, hey, I saw what you wrote or that podcast you did, whatever, come speak to my organization. Right? That, that to me speaks to the fact that it's working. They're like, wow, this guy's smart. He's got a perspective. He's got a way of thinking and I want to bring him over here. Right?

True. True.

Yeah.

And I would also add that as we were talking with the marketer, again, nothing against them, but it's like treat it as if you're like, if you're using AI, so AI can generate content, but if you're not giving the right context, it's not going to, it, just going to be producing same for everything. So when you're working with marketer as well, like when they have to be specifically working with you to extract the knowledge out of you, and in order for them to even extract that knowledge, the questions have to become accordingly so that they get the right knowledge. Sure. So that, that is— so the same is the case with AI. So if you are providing all the detail and AI is just helping you optimize those contents, maybe, uh, just improving the copy part of it, then it's great. But if AI is just generating a content, then it's relying—

I think that the debate not that long ago with AI was, I'll never use it, it's terrible, it writes bad copy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think that, at least from my experience, what I'm finding now is different thought leaders are using AI differently, right? Anything from a research assistant to a sparring partner, to someone to give a context. Like, let's say it's a keynote and you've never keynoted to that type of audience before. You can say, here's who I am, here's my work, here's how I, here's my typical keynote. How might I make this more relevant to, I don't know, financial services or CPG people or whatever? So it sounds like that's what you're doing. You figure out, you've figured out where it's the right resource for you. And you've also figured out, which is equally important, where not to use it. Could you, could you say a little more about that? 'Cause that's, that's something I think we're all wrestling with today.

Yeah. So you have to give your own information. I mean, and sometimes I just speak about it. Like, I mean, I talk, like I record it and say, well, I want to talk about this X thing and then I give my own perspective. So all of the data has to come still from you. It helps me if I'm writing in general, let's say if I'm writing an email in a traditional way, it may take me much longer. Now, if I give all that data, I don't have to think about cleaning it up and organizing it in a way, the way. So that's the part AI does really good. So, but the data still has to come from me. Otherwise, it's going to be generic data that everybody knows. Like, so whether it's the healthcare related, whether it's the email contents or anything about your business, the knowledge—

it sounds like we're almost back to, uh, we're back to garbage in, garbage out, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, but the variation of that garbage in, garbage out that I listened a couple days ago from one of my friends is, okay, garbage in, garbage out, great in, great out, uh, whatever you put in, you get. So whatever.

Yeah. No, no, that's exactly right. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about the process of writing the book and what you enjoyed about that and what was more either as difficult or more difficult than you expected it might be in terms of getting a book done?

So there were, there are two things that happened to me. One was we wanted to write an ebook, which was on the Mobile App Playbook. That's how we started as an ebook. So it was a small ebook, got bigger, got to 35 pages. We realized it's too big for ebook. Okay. Let's trim down the ebook to a smaller version., but now, okay, now we already got this one. Why don't we expand it into a book? Okay. And then around the same time, or maybe before, I wrote multiple blogs on this topic. In fact, the blog topic was also beyond the download. It wasn't really more at the similar subtitle, but it was more about how to build the mobile apps where like people get more insights and predictive, like get more retention. So there was a series of 3 blogs that I wrote before writing even this book. So I said, okay, well, these are really good blogs along with this playbook. Maybe we could start putting together as a book. And then obviously then additional part come in. There's a chapter on AI, how to use AI to do that. So, and then it's not obvious.

Let me, so, so you didn't start with the blank slate of, I'm gonna write a book, it's gotta be 60,000 pages, et cetera. You had components that you knew were already gonna be a core foundational piece of the book to build around it, which I, I think that's one of the beautiful things about thought leadership is, wow, hey, I wrote these 50 blogs or whatever. I know these 15 really resonated most with folks. So that's intelligence to say, great, let me stick to the stuff that works. And by the way, it's already written. I can expand on that idea. Right, right. That's kind of the, the way you did it.

That, that's exactly.

Yeah. So that's interesting because the classic way to write a book, and I, and I don't believe it's any longer the correct way, is come up with the hypothesis, research it, write it, get it out there and, you know, pray for the best, right? In terms of the receptivity. But we live in a world now where I think you have an obligation to yourself to say, Let me put something out, whether it's on LinkedIn or a video or whatever, and see where it sticks and to who it sticks. 'Cause some, we're really bad at judging our own ideas in terms of what's gonna stick and what won't. And I think you have to have the courage to put it out there. I think sometimes thought leaders are, are afraid to put something out that's not great or might not be perceived as great. How did you deal with that? 'Cause not everything you put out is stellar, right? Like some, some's better than others. How do you, How do you deal with that?

I think once you start looking at it, that what is great and what is not, you look towards the perfection that never gets lost. So I don't care too much on that part. All I care is, okay, this is what I believe in. This is the right thing. So we started writing those contents and that's how the book shape came into. So, because if we started bringing out what, whether people will use it or not, well, it's perfect or not. That would've put us in a totally different path, I would say.

Yeah. No, I, I think that's right. Cool. Any other non-obvious benefits that comes to you or has come to you as a result of writing the book and doing the podcast and all the things that you do as a thought leader?

I think, well, I mean, there, there are many, many benefits or different people are using it for different reasons. Some people are just for monetization. Our goal is more sharing my experience, whatever I learned along the way in my career, sharing that experience. And then gradually, automatically, it became, it came towards the thought leadership. So obviously the bigger benefit that I see now is obviously as we're talking to our customer and you share the book with them, now it's building the credibility because people, if you're writing a book, it is shared based on some experiences. So it's not like another company who just say, oh, we can build the mobile app. Now that this is shared, this is where we're sharing all those experiences. Once people see it, the strategies that came out of those, those are the ones that talks a lot. So obviously that helps a lot.

And there's probably an expectation from the people that follow you that if you're putting something out there, it's thoughtful, it's on point, it's relevant. So when I think about, you know, why do people follow different thought leaders, right? There's trust, there's curation, there's consistency, there's quality. So that's, you know, those are also great elements of your brand as well as the organization's brand, right? Why would we keep doing this? So this has been awesome. I appreciate your time and thank you for sharing your journey with us today. Appreciate it.

No problem. Thanks for having me.

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.