Thought Leadership Podcasting With Net New Client Metrics With Peter Winick Host Of The Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all noise with the Binge factor.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and today we're going to talk about thought leadership. We're going to talk Leveraging Thought Leadership with Peter Winick. And Peter and I actually already met because I already wrote an article about him. Normally the whole process works here, where I interview someone on the show and then I write the article about him. But I already wrote the article about Peter before and now I'm inviting him on the show to come back because I thought he could really share some valuable insights to how he's using his show. Because his show is not set up to be a big audience grab, big listener grab. It's set up on that guesting strategy side, the strategy by which your connections and your rapport with guests really helps you build your show, really helps you build your business. And so that's why I wanted to bring Peter on, because that is an interesting aspect and it is probably the number one most effective aspect I hear from people who say I have a successful show. It isn't I have a successful show because I have millions of listeners. It's I have a successful show because my business is successful because of my podcast. And that's where Peter falls in today. So let's introduce him. Peter Winick is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. For the past two decades, he's 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. His clients come from a diverse set of backgrounds and specialties. They include New York Times bestselling business book authors, members of the Speakers hall of Fame, recipients of the Thinkers50 award, CEOs of public and privately held companies and academics at prestigious institutions such as Yale, Wharton, Dartmouth, and London School of Business. Peter has built his career and thought leadership leverage to serve the needs of these individuals and others like them. Specifically, he uses his entrepreneurial experience and spirit, along with a passion for using relationships to leverage growth, to help CEOs, business owners and Internal practice leaders looking to grow revenue, revitalize marketing and improve customer experiencing through applying the principles of thought leadership. Leveraging Thought Leadership is a podcast and it's a really interesting deep dive into the interview process and connection and rapport building through the guest process. So I can't wait to talk about that with Peter and I can't wait for you to listen to it. So let's go to the interview.

Peter, thanks for joining me.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Leveraging Thought Leadership. I love the topic. It's a great topic. It's very focused, which I think is probably why it's working so well for you.

Yeah, I mean, when we chose the topic area, we went really, really n based on our objectives. And I think, and we've stayed with it, we don't deviate from it because we always. It's always easy to get distracted and say, well, that sort of doesn't fit, should fit, kind of fit. It either fits or it doesn't. So we're pretty strict.

Yeah. So as I mentioned in the intro here that, you know, I wrote an article about you. Normally I do an interview and then I write an article, but I wrote an article about you and then we're doing the interview afterwards because there were some things that intrigued me about was shared in the Q and A, which is a part of the.

We're gonna make a movie and do a play next. Is that like, what's the sequence? It'll be like a musical.

Yeah, yeah, we'll just go backwards through it. We'll just go in reverse. I love that. It's just, you know, why not try it that way? But you said the first nine months or a year were fun. Yeah, I learned a lot, but it didn't move our business. Now we have a flywheel effect in place that is amazing for our brand and is incredibly cost effective way of acquiring net new clients. That's what I want to talk about with you here today.

Sure.

So how does this flywheel work? Like what is working for you? This guesting and getting new clients. Like, why is that working for you?

So I'll go a half a step backwards and then answer the question directly. So years and years ago, probably a dozen plus when I started blogging, I went to a friend of mine who'd had, I don't know, seven or eight pretty well known blogs at the point. And I said, give me some tips, Raj. What do I got to do? And it was this very Yoda like, patience, young man. And I wasn't quite young, but his whole thing was, don't commit to doing a blog, commit to doing 100. I had not necessarily the same 100, but that same mindset when I started the podcast, because I'm like every other entrepreneur. I'm impatient. I don't have time to waste. I want to do something. I want to see a result like yesterday. Immediate gratification, all that.

Right.

Except it doesn't work. Right. So if I would have done five episodes or 10 or whatever, oh, that was a waste. And we wasted money and time and effort and energy. So I committed to. I don't remember what the number was, 50 or six months or some significant investment to work out the kinks and then see any results. So I was watching the metrics, but it wasn't until almost about a year into it that things is sort of the compounding interest effect where things started happening. So in the beginning, for example, going back to your question, I cashed on a lot of chips with friends, colleagues, et cetera. I have a pretty good network. I've got access to lots of authors, thought leaders, speakers, to people that we wanted to be as guests. And I would just ask people to come on, they would do me a favor, and we chat, and voila, we have a podcast. Then what started to happen, which was really interesting, weird, odd, was all of a sudden, out of nowhere, these podcast agencies, or guesting agencies, or call them specialized PR firms started pitching to us. All these different, pretty impressive folks. And I'm like, this is pretty funny because numbers are pretty horrible from a download.

Well, that usually happens in the beginning anyway.

Yeah, yeah, but like, you know, Oprah, Tim Ferriss, you got nothing to worry about. I'm not even in the same universe to pretend to nip at your heels. But all of a sudden, people were spending. So what that led me to understand is certain types of people are spending money to get these people to pitch them to be on our show. So why is that? Well, some of it is the brand that we've had. Well, you know, there's a halo effect. We've had some other great people that look like them, act like them, behave like them, so they want to be in that crowd. So then we develop pretty rigid systems and processes. So if someone pitch us, we would look at that and say, not only would they potentially make a good guest, but as important plus or minus, would they potentially make a good client? And that's what I'm more. I'm equally interested in because I am interested in putting out a good podcast. So we have a Bunch of systems and processes in place where we never put a guest on sort of raw. We always do a pre podcast call. And more often than not, the nature of that call is, hey, let me tell you who I am, what I do, how I do it, who I work with. Tell me your story. So we're getting to know each other and it's a non salesy sales call. We're very often potential guests which who is now taking this call very seriously because they paid someone to get to us and this is like a win for them, is really intrigued. What do you do? How do you do it? Whatever. I'm happy to talk about that, but we're prepping for the podcast. So that sort of model has been pretty effective. And it's sort of a some of the benefits of a sales call, but everybody's much more chill and relaxed and really listening with intent.

Well, see, that's great. And it's also building a rapport, which is part of why your show has bingeability characteristics. Right. Because it has this sense of you are starting farther into the conversation with the people that you are interviewing. You do already feel that you have a rapport with them as a listener.

Right.

And so that, I think, helps with the understanding of transfer of authority between thought leaders. Right. So you're an expert in the thought leadership space.

That's right.

And if this person wasn't really a thought leader, then you wouldn't already have a rapport with them. Right. And so, like, it's actually building on that authority and that value that you're bringing to the guest and to your show. Yeah.

I think there's real power in the sort of the screening process because I don't want people to listen in to, you know, hear their dentist or something. Like, I'm sure there's a podcast for that.

There are podcasts for that, but a totally different model. Right, right, right. So, you know, we talk about binge ability factors here, and what you've got is that, you know, you're passionate and very knowledgeable about what's going on in thought leadership and that and the role that it plays in growing businesses. But there is this, you know, it could get static. Like, it could get like everybody saying the same thing. How do you keep it mixed up as you're going from interview to interview?

Yeah. So one is, and I find this funny, there'll be guests or people that are their publicists or something that'll send us. Can you send me a list of the questions in advance? I'm like, no, that would be called an email conversation. Like, can you what will we talk about? And I'm like, I'll figure it out.

That's my no, I'm not going to interview you list.

Yeah. Oh, I'm just like, okay, see ya. Right. Because then it's like, you know, they're reading from a list or a script or something like that. So I do my homework, right? So I want to know about them. But because it's sort of my platform, if you will. They're used to being interviewed around, you know, if they're doing a book tour, they can do the book spiel and they can do it in their sleep. And it's like, not that I don't care about that, but that's not what we're here to talk about. So I want to talk about the stuff that no one's asked you about yet. Like how come you published with this publisher, not that publisher. And what's the impact of COVID on your speaking business, which was the driver to your mate? Like, this is a little bit more of the behind the scenes business y stuff. So I think what makes the conversations interesting is they haven't had them a hundred times before.

Yeah, absolutely. So they're open and they flow with it and they're taking it ad hoc. I love that. So you've made some changes to your show in sort of recent days. You have a co host.

Yeah.

Why did that happen? And you know, and when did that happen?

Yeah, so that just happened, I don't know, last 45 or 60 days. So what happened is, you know, again, the podcast is there to serve the business. You know, we don't make money directly from the podcast. So as our business changes and evolved, we decided to sort of evolve the podcast. So traditionally the markets that we've served are the individual author, speaker, thought leader, consultant, academic. And we still do that all day, every day. However, a few months pre Covid, we realized that there is opportunity for us to take the expertise and skillset that we have and work in a totally different market. And the way that came to us is sort of the coconut fell on our head when two very large Fortune 100 companies reached out to us within two weeks. And we're, I mean, we're a 12 person firm. We're not Deloitte a lot of things. We're not in our space. We're somewhat kind of maybe well known, Ish, but certainly not in the Fortune 100 space. But the two calls were pretty much similar. Hey, we're investing in Thought leadership, your name, your firm's name keep popping up to the top somewhat due to the podcast. Can you help us? So from that, Bill Sherman, my chief operating officer, is now co hosting the sessions that we do that we're calling the Organizational Thought leaders.

Ah, so you're having a shift in theme too.

Yeah, so the shift in the theme is it's not only author speakers, thought leaders. We denote it in the graphic and all that on the episodes because not all of our traditional audience would care about that and vice versa. So we're looking like Bill has interviewed the head of thought leadership at arp. I interviewed the head of thought leadership at Cognizant. We've got a bunch of others lined up, but big, big brand name companies, but these are functional thought leaders in big multinational organizations and nonprofits, not the named author of a New York Times bestselling book. So we pivoted a little bit there and it seems to be resonates pretty early. I think we've only put 10 of those in the can out of the 250. Something we've done.

Yeah, I heard a couple. And yeah, it is shifting, but it hasn't shifted in style. So Bill has really adapted and modeled the same style that you do, which is great because now it's always a toss up whether or not when you get a co host in, if you're going to have that kind of same rapport and relationship with the audience at, you know, at the same time, which I think you've done successfully.

Cool. Thank you for that.

Yeah. So you've also done a few, I'm going to call them topic based episodes, Roll up style episodes where you have multiple guests, but they're focused on topics like trust or keynote speaking. Now those are, you know, to the average person, that sounds really cool and like, oh, have multiple guests and have all these feature. And it's like a highly produced show, but it's also a lot more work on the other side of it too.

Yeah, it was actually what we did with that. We did those as an experiment and I wasn't convinced that it was worth the effort. So I don't know when we'll do those again. But the concept was let's do a highlight reel instead of each. Now our shows are only 20 minutes like yours, so I try to keep them short and tight. But then we realized that when we're promoting them on social, you know, a lot of our guests have significant audiences. So then we thought, hmm, so if we take, you know, New York Times bestsellers And we put together sort of a montage of five New York Times bestseller sellers. And my interviewing each of them separately for three, four minutes that we pulled from a show, put it together, maybe that would be interesting. It was somewhat interesting, but it was basically a lot more work for basically the same downloads and reach. So I don't know when and if we'll do that. I mean, to me it's one big experiment.

So yeah, you know, it's always that, you know, a lot of people do that kind of style episode on your 100th and I noticed that you did that as well. And I think you did a two parter on your 200th. Yeah. And so, you know, you do that and it seems like, oh, this will be fun and easy. But it's not easy because you have to go pick the spots and you have to do that. That. Because you can't just sub that out to someone because it needs to be the right clips with the right people to effectively send the message that you want to send to future guests, to clients, to the right people that you want.

Right. And I have a great team. But that was really the gist of it is going through each of the episodes to stitch it together so it doesn't, you know, it doesn't look like have a junker car go by you that's got a blue fender and a green hood or something. Like we didn't want that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, well done on those because I know how difficult those are now. You know, when you started from the very first episodes, there's obviously that you skills as an interviewer had skills before you started the show. Where did you get those skills and how did you develop, continue to develop them as you've gone through your 230plus episodes?

Well, I mean, the first way I came to realize I might have these skills by realizing the skills I don't have. So, you know, I was blogging for years, because that's what you did, and putting content out in various forms for years. But I don't particularly enjoy writing. I don't think I'm that good at it. Probably adequate, you know, and we've had blogs that have gone, you know, quasi viral and I've done hundreds of them. But then I said, you know, what, what do I do all day? Like I'm with clients talking day, I'm in meetings all day. And I do that fairly well. And I'm like this podcast thing kind of sounds like a typical phone call that I do. I can be lazy. I don't need to do a lot of prep. I don't need to do a lot of work like the blogging where you get a little nuts with it. So that would be one factor. The other factor is I'm constantly consuming content. So I'm not an audiobook guy. I read books. I read lots and lots of books.

I can see that. So if you're listening to the podcast and not watching the video, Peter has tons of books behind the shelf. I'm looking at my shelves, so you can't see them. But I have, I have, I have equal as many books as you because I'm a big reader.

Yeah, there you go. And it goes all the way to the studio.

Oh my gosh. I'm just jealous. I love that.

Yeah, but so I read books. I'm not an audiobook guy because I think with like add, I'd have to put it on like 10x to get the speed that would keep me. But I do listen to a lot of podcasts, so I think I've picked up a couple things along the way because there have been some authors that I love that have podcasts that are awful because it's a different skill set. And then others that are awesome podcasters, that their books are horrible and everything in between. So I just try to pick up what I can and make it conversational.

Now, what do you think is, are some of the things that you learn the most from doing this that you'd love to have? Our listeners who are aspiring podcasters, aspiring business builders, what have you learned that's really worked for you that you think are key factors in building a show?

Yeah. So one is you've got to separate the church and the state. Meaning I'm lucky in that I chose not to do this until I had the team around me or part of our team skilled up to do everything I don't want to do and not good at in terms of the technical. So there are a tremendous amount of invisible systems and processes involved in the pre guest process, production, post production, social media. I mean, there's like 50 things that need to happen. I only have to do one thing, which is hit record and talk for 20. So I've got the easy job and I knew that I didn't want to be involved in the other stuff. So we've got really tight systems and processes in place every step of the way. And, you know, the goal was to treat me like a 7 year old. What do I have to do? When do I have to do it? Sit here, show up, hit A button.

Sit here and talk. Yeah, that's it.

Because there's all kinds of stuff that I don't want to know. I mean, I got enough going on running a company. So I think if you're not in a position to do that and you don't need to be, make sure you have a full understanding of what it takes, you know, and you know, listen, the tools get better and better every day. We were going to do this four or five years ago and I was like, at that point I was traveling a heck of a lot more than anybody is today.

Well, that's why I have a business today.

Right.

Six years ago I had to figure out all the systems and process and team and then people were like, here, Tracy, do it for me.

Exactly.

And that's how I have a company. Right. So, you know, that's exactly it. You've hit on it. What many, many find.

Yeah.

It was extremely hard before. It's still not as easy as it should be for most, but it is improving every single day here as to how to start a show and. And support systems. But it's. There are some things you cannot do that must be done by you and your team. And in your case, because of your guest strategy of wanting to be connected to the right people who could potentially be clients who refer you to clients. Yep. You are the only people who would know that you cannot sub that out right now.

We've explained over and over again to a lot of these are the types we're looking for or whatever. And still many of them, you know, seven out of ten they send us. I'm like, that's a dog trainer.

Like why, yeah, that's that dentist I don't need to talk about. Yeah.

But some of it is about incentive. Right. So part of it is when you understand some of the agencies incentives, they get paid many on a per placement basis. So there's a lack of alignment because I engage some of those services as a guest prior to launching the show to sort of learn a little bit. I wanted to be on the other side of the mic for a while and I realized, like, wait a minute, you know, they're trying to convince me to sit yes to everything. Like, I got better things to do with my time. I don't deal with, you know, micro business. I mean, I don't deal with stay at home mom. Like, there's lots of things I don't do great. Just I have no reason to spend time there.

That's not a part of your show. That's right. Yeah. You know, normally on this show, I will go over the five things that you've learned about booking great guests and doing some of these things. But you've already done that. We already covered that in the Authority magazine article. So for those of you listening to this, this is a reason to come to the blog post for this episode@thebingefactor.com because there's an infographic that has Peter top tips and there'll also be a link through to the article so you can actually read about what in depth, what he thinks about those tips. So he's going to share that offline and separate. So we're mixing it up a little bit here. But I do want to share with the audience what you consider to be your binge ability factor. So normally on this show I always ask the guest what their binge ability factor is and then. But you actually gave that to me before. So we're going to go over that really quick and then I normally give my view of it. So it's like a psychoanalysis of your show. Right?

There we go.

Yeah. So you believe that your binge ability is in the tight focus, the obsessively focused on the unique needs of our tightly defined marketplace. You know, that's really great. And that seems like that was strategic from the beginning. Did you hone it in over time? Like, did that happen? Did you just hit on it and you knew it?

No, we knew from the beginning that this isn't a hobby, you know, that why are we doing this? We're investing real marketing dollars in a format in the hopes that it yields a return. So only if it was going to do anything else that any of our other marketing investments do, would that be true. So all we did, and this is where I think people get jammed up, whether it's social media, outbound, whatever, it's. They get enamored by the medium and it's like, no, you've got to have a really tight marketing strategy or a strategy in place first which will dictate what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Yeah, well, so let me add on to my binge abilities factors for you, is that actually what you have is a high shareability factor as opposed to the binge ability factor. So you have about 75% of the traffic that comes to your website and to you, which eventually will translate to your show overall is coming from social. And that means that whatever you're doing right in your relationship, building on the show with the guest, they're sharing it so your team is doing something right. And the guests are doing that.

Well, that's part of our process in that I realized that nine episodes out of ten, the guest is far more well known and interesting and probably has a bigger following than I do. And that's not an accident.

Right. And so that in and of itself, a highly shareable show should become a more bingeable show. And so those two things do go hand in hand, because especially if there's synergy in the thought leaderships, the thought leaders that you're interviewing, their audience is right for your audience. They're interested in that.

Sure.

So that's really where we see the binge ability can help a growth of a show. And in your case, the shareability can help the growth of a show. So. And it helps you get better guests.

Yeah.

At the end of the day, is part of your strategy.

Exactly.

For the new podcast out there are those ones that are sitting on the fence, aspiring to be one, but they haven't taken the leap yet. What's your advice?

Number one, think about, you know, hey, it's a year from now and all your dreams came true relative to podcasting. What are those? Why are you doing this? Right. And be really clear now. It could be fun, it could be ego, it could be whatever, but the more clarity and specificity you can get around that, the more you can stay focused and stay tuned into that. Right. If you're just doing it well, everybody else is doing it. That's a dumb reason. Right. I'm doing it to grow my brand. I'm doing it to build my network. I'm doing it to find new clients. All those are great things, but really document them and hold true to them.

As you're saying that, it's starting to occur to me that though there are probably a lot of things to say, it's cool to be a podcaster nowadays. Right. There's an authority building factor to that. So what has that effect been on the other side of your business? Like you getting asked for more speaking events or maybe asked to be featured in publications. Has that had an effect just being a podcast host on this particular topic? Has it grown your ability to do more of those things?

Yeah, so a little bit of, you know, speaking, it comes about a lot of guest opportunity based on people sort of understand the style and all that. But I also think from a value prop to the. To my clients, potential clients, we could talk about podcasting with authority because we do it not, hey, you should, you know, maybe you should podcast like, no here's what we've done, here's what we've learned, et cetera. The other piece that's really interesting is in my conversations with prospects, oftentimes there's, you know, if they're, if they're serious at this point, they'll say, you know, I was listening to an episode, da da da da da, and you said this. And they're actually quoting me in the initial calls. I'm like, well, that's a little creepy.

Quote me back to me. That's an awesome thing.

No, but they're saying, oh, I heard you when you interviewed, so, and so you said this. And I think I have that problem. The other thing that lets us do is we, we're pretty good on the back end of hashtagging and all that internally. So if I'm talking to somebody and I know their issue is they're struggling with am I going to publish in a traditional manner or in a hybrid or non traditional manner? After a call, take me five minutes, I can say, by the way, here's three episodes you might want to listen to. There's a publisher of Greenleaf Publishing, and here's a publisher at Wiley, and here's someone that did it both ways. And I think those three would be interesting things for you to listen to that like, wow, they know what the hell they're doing.

That adds a lot of value. Well, that follow up is so critically important. So that's the last thing I want to touch on before. What do you think is one of the key factors, besides mentioning and sharing episodes with them is a key factor in getting those guests to share your show?

Asking, asking and asking and asking. And make it easy because there's one email that could say, hey, Tracy, I posted our episode today. Can you share it? And you go, sure. There's another one that here's. We do all the heavy lifting. Here's something you put on Instagram. Here's like, you got, you have a job, you don't need me to give you more work to. So if I'm asking you for a favor, the burden is on me to create the graphics and do all that stuff, which we do, and then we start letting them know before we remind them, et cetera. And it takes a couple times. There are people that are amazing at it and there are people that just aren't. They don't have the team or whatever. But we are constantly reposting old, you know, recycling, if you will, old episodes through social. And it's amazing watching, you know, a guest from an episode a year and a half ago. The ones that are tuned in on Social will constantly still retweet it and share and comment and all the things that actually, it's part of what I would consider good guest etiquette to be doing those things.

Absolutely. I agree. Yeah. If you can't be a good guest, you know, that doesn't bode well for your show as a host either, if you want to ask them on your show later. So you got to do both. I love that. Well, Peter Winick, thank you so much for coming on this show.

My pleasure.

Leveraging Thought Leadership is a great podcast. All of you should check that out, See the things that Peter's doing. Definitely check out those interviews and hear how he's building rapport over the course of the interview.

Thank you.

So I hope you found that as interesting as I did. You know, this thought leadership idea around podcasting, contributing to that, building the platform around it being a place that people want to guest. Right. This is a robust conversation that's going on right now in overall in the business building and growth area marketplace. And Peter Winix tapped, like, right into the middle of the thought leadership around platform building for speakers, authors, and experts. That in and of itself is really what's driving the show growth for him. Right. It's driving his shareability factor, as we talked about, because it's prestigious to be on his show. Look at all the great tools and the ease at which he's made it so we can share it. Right. Like, all of those things are tying together and really helping his show grow in the way that it's helping to make his business grow. So that's why I'm always bringing you some diverse ones. That defining a successful podcast isn't always defining a successful podcast in terms of number of listeners. And I want to be really clear about you with that, because Peter's listenership has nothing to do with the success of the show because the listeners aren't his clients. And that's not what's growing his business. It's just a different model of building a podcast. But that is working for him tremendously. And he believes it has one of the easiest and simplest paths that he's taken yet. And as you put it, is like, all he has to do is show up and record. So luckily, he's built that whole team around him too. And that has really worked in his favor as well. So make sure you check out Leveraging Thought Leadership and you can check all the links to Peter Winick, to the show to his website to all of the things we talked about in today's episode. You can check that out@thebingefactor.com and as I mentioned, you want to check out the video and you also want to check out the infographic and the connection to the Authority magazine article which always follows all of these and in this case preceded these interviews. So want to check that out as well and you'll find that@thebingefactor.com so everyone, the website's all brand new, all revised. Don't forget to go there if you think your show or you want to nominate a show that you love to be a guest on the show show, you can do that@the Bingefactor.com as well. We've got a couple of features and we've got some new things coming up as we continue to revise and build and grow this show to be better for you, our listeners out there. So thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next time with another Binge Factor. This is Tracy Hazzard.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.