Fasten your seat belt, because this is going to be a fun one. Last week, I talked about how in thought leadership, we make two sales: the first is the “sale” of your expertise, and the second is the actual product or service we sell. Basically, you get a customer before you get a sale. …
How to Make Your Customers Pay for Your Marketing Read More »
I wanted to take this lovely Friday to talk to you for a moment about the business of thought leadership. Specifically, there is one thing that is very different about this business than other businesses. In thought leadership, we have two sales: The first sale is selling our own expertise and our fitness as a …
Here are the two most deadly words to Thought Leadership: “It depends.” As an expert, you know, of course, that oftentimes it does depend. And it depends on a lot of variables. After all, expertise is the land of, “trust me, it’s complicated.” But for the people that need a Thought Leader, that answer simply …
A lot of would-be Thought Leaders have a very transactional view of their business: The Thought Leader provides life-changing information, and the customer pays for it. Truth is, you’re also building a culture within your followers — a feeling of association and fraternity that will provide massive value to your customers in addition to the …
Thought Leadership really is 3D chess. You’ve got to manage several goals and priorities within your thought leadership business, and achieving that balance can be daunting. The first part of the challenge is knowing all the elements you have to manage. You can’t manage something that you don’t know exists, or that it should be …
There’s a trick that all the best Thought Leaders know, and today, I’m going to teach it to you. Abraham Lincoln knew it. William Randolph Hearst knew it. Heck, even Donald Trump and Joe Biden know it. You might know it, too, but you might not be using it. If you want to speed up …
I just got off a video call with a friend who asked me how the coming explosion of AI-generated content is going to affect Thought Leaders. Will you as a Thought Leader be able to compete with the tsunami of cheap information that is going to be hitting your market? As my friend and I …
A lot of Thought Leaders (or wannabe Thought Leaders) have trouble making the turn from teaching to selling the products and services that their business provides. They get all tripped up, because they don’t want to come across as “salesy” or to have the audience feel like they’re being sold to. There is a way …
Have you ever noticed that in a lot of action movies, the villain is often a more interesting character than the hero? There’s a reason for that. People love to have a devil to fight. A blind shipyard worker named Eric Hoffer deeply studied mass movements, and he noted that the people who set off …
Here’s something that everyone loves and responds to: Stories. Everyone loves stories. They live vicariously through the characters in a story, they love to cheer for the heroes, and they especially love to hate the bad guys. You can use stories to provide proof — even with claims that are not supported by math or …