3 Essential Skills for Thought Leadership Practitioners | Org TL Minute

Transcript:

What skills do thought leadership practitioners need to be successful? Well, I think that there are many skills that are useful, but three that are absolutely essential. And they are analytical thinking, storytelling, and empathy.

Analytical thinking helps us see around corners into a potential future. It allows us to identify risks and opportunities that will be relevant and actionable.

Storytelling is how we bring these insights back and share them with people. Storytelling helps us communicate what is at stake, what actions need to be taken, and what success looks like.

And finally, empathy keeps us grounded. Without empathy, it’s easy for us to chase down intellectual rabbit holes. Finding things that are interesting to us but not relevant to the people we’re trying to reach and serve.

And so empathy allows us to focus on what matters to our audience rather than things that are curious or interesting to us.

Over my career, I’ve worked with a number of thought leadership practitioners. Almost all of them have had a strength in one of these three areas: analytical thinking, storytelling, or empathy.

Many have been strong in two areas. But the very best have been strong in all three.

Where are your strengths and what do you need to work on to be more effective as a thought leadership practitioner?

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Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining me on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Brandon Steiner. Brandon is a legend here in New York and elsewhere, but he’s written a couple of books. The first book was The Business Playbook from 2003. His second book was You Got to Have Balls How a Kid from Brooklyn Started from scratch, bought Yankee Stadium and Created a Sports Empire. He was the founder of Steiner Sports. He grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Brooklyn. And so as a kid from Queens, I can dig that. He was a manager at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York, which if you don’t know what that was, that was the place to see and be seen back in the day. He’s now the founder of the Steiner Agency and Collectible Exchange. But one of the one of the cool things about Brandon is this nonstop use of somewhere between thought leadership and PR to drive his business. And the last thing I’ll put from his interesting bio, he claims and I’m a little doubtful of this, that he created the Everything bagel. So come on, come on. He created the everything, babe.

Brandon Steiner Boy. That’s what we’re going to get started. Thoughtful. And it does lead to quite a bit, which is really the moral of the story, is that everything happens probably for a reason. It leads to something. So the whole bagel thing is so crazy. You know, when I was a kid, I was I had a paper route In order to get more people to get my paper out. I delivered them milk and bagels. And back in 1971 now, remember, there were not three GrubHub.

Peter Winick GrubHub.

Brandon Steiner And it was just so it’s crazy. So what I would do is I promised people I’d bring them hot bagels on Sunday and bring them milk during the week. And so I got all the older people in neighborhood to get the paper from me and hit me. So I was delivering more bagels. You couldn’t believe it. So one morning I came in to pick up my bagels and everything. The guy says, You know, you’re unbelievable. Every morning you’re here, you’re reliable. Would you like to bake bagels? I could teach you how to make them and bake them. And we started four in the morning because they were making the bagels for the roots for the grocery stores. Right. So I said, of course I’ll do that. Well, within three months, you know, I remember I was 12 years old and from waking up at four in the morning and then delivering my papers, he gave me a raise, $2.50 an hour. And I was the night baker and the night was much more easier baking. We were baking thousands of bagels an hour in the morning and at night I was just baking as needed for special orders and stuff like that. And I sold all the seasonings and every to try every combination of every seasoning with bagel breeds everything. And one day I was just there. All the seeds that got mixed all together from all different things. I tried and I just threw it on to the bagel and there was the everything bagel.

Peter Winick And there you go. And I thank you too frequently as a fan of the Everything bagel. So now back to our regularly broadcast. If you’ve been early to this game, so you’ve built a major empire and sort of probably created the industry of sports memorabilia as we know it today and are now with standard agency moving that to more of a digital platform. But you’ve always been out there as a speaker, as an author, as an advisor, as a consultant. So sort of talk about how that’s helped you grow and drive your business and awareness to the brand and all that, because I think you’ve done an amazing job.

Brandon Steiner Well, what’s amazing is and this is why I never really understand a lot of CEOs and, you know, leadership people that are leading why they tend to not want to speak and why they tend to not want to get in front of audiences or write down their thoughts or communicate. And because I think they’re not only helpful for your own staff to understand where you’re coming from, but it’s motivating, inspiring yourself. It really keeps me moving because I know if I’m throwing some of the things out to my customers and throwing those things out to my staff, then I’ve got to be religious about doing those things myself. So, you know, the more I talk about customer service, I got more customers coming to me. You know, you wrote in your book so and know especially now, you know, I built Steiner Sports. It was a great company. 32 years now, I started collecting 16. When things happened. Not quite the way I wanted them to, but I was excited to start something new. You know, I reverted back to some of my leadership and say, Wait a minute, I’ve told all these people when they’re on the ground now they’re looking at me a little bit where I’ve got to start over. I’ve got so many people to do over the years. And I think it’s so important that you sample. You know, you have to when you are out there preaching, using thought leadership, using motivation, you’ve got to walk the walk and talk the talk, too. So here I am, you know, a little bit lost without my brand. I lost my name in the transition. Sure. And here I am getting something started from the beginning, which I think every company is always going through phases of going and starting things from the beginning. You’re always asking your employees to dig a little deeper and start from the beginning to get something new to grow. And I think you’ve got to set an example as a leader. And I’ve tried to do that to these last, you know, this last year in getting my company set up and also just transforming. You’re asking people always to change. And then when you have an opportunity to change and people look at you got on and walk the walk. So I’ve gone through a lot of changes. And, you know, honestly, I mean, thank God for my speaking and my blogs and everything because it’s been a very, very big motivational force internally as I’ve gone back and started reading my own stuff.

Peter Winick So, yeah. So I love that you’re reading your own stuff, but let’s, let’s split that. So you’ve been prolific is probably an understatement on the blogging side. You’ve been blogging and blogging and blogging for a long time. Yeah. So go back to when you started. Like, why did you start it? And there’s an intrinsic piece, right? So you’re learning in order to put something out there, but there’s also a benefit. So sort of tie those two together, if you would.

Brandon Steiner Well, you know, in my business, there was a guy named Mark McCormack. He was incredibly thought great thought leader in the sports business. He started on TV and he really doesn’t get the credit he deserves for what he did. And I saw that he had a newsletter back in the day and I would live and die by the newsletter. You know, everything. Everything. He didn’t learn Harvard Business School. And so, you know, I’m half the literate. You know, I, I can’t really write and I can barely read. I have always had a problem where it’s really so it’s very ironic, you know, that I’ve been blogging for about 7 or 8 years now with thousands of posts. But what I found is that it got harder and harder to communicate even with my own employees and customers as my employee base group, as my name grew, how am I going to communicate with all these people? I didn’t want to go into a silo. So I would tell on a regular basis, and that’s how I create this indirect relationship with my customer. So it’s probably the most beneficial thing in not only building this kind of brand at the time, and I’m now building my collectible exchange brand, but building my own brand because I see people on the street, they walk up to me and actually start talking to me like they know me because they’ve been reading my blog Now, I think put that said to them that.

Peter Winick That piece of they feel like they know you when you know if someone reads your blog whatever on a on a weekly basis for a year or two, they get a sense of your voice. They get a sense of your style. They can sort of maybe paint a picture in their own mind of what this guy is likely to notice about. So when they see you walking down the street or Yankee game or something, they feel like you’re an old pal. And I think that spills over into the customer relationship, into trust, into, you know, Brandon wouldn’t sell me something that’s crap branded wouldn’t deceive me. But, you know, they there’s a set of your values come out and what you write your essence.

Brandon Steiner Through but you have to be transparent. In my last book, which my half my family’s not talking to me because I was so brutally honest. I think the brilliance really just comes with the honesty and the transparency, which isn’t always beautiful and pretty and is where a lot of leaders think that they can’t show who they really are. For me, when I speak, one of the big benefits I have is people will come up to me and I think I do a really good job speaking. But the big takeaway always is like, you’re a real person because I’m in the trenches and I’m really explaining the frustrations. The failures in my last book were really motivated me about the last book, Living on Purpose was I wanted to really communicate that everything wasn’t all rosy, and I was hanging out with all these big time athletes and I dug out. But there were some really shit storms, you know, there was some bad days and some failures and I wanted to communicate the bounce back on that and how you deal. Yeah.

Peter Winick And I think that that by the time a lot of leaders are known, you know, they’ve got their book at their speaking whatever the public persona is this shiny, polished managed thing like, look at Brandon. He’s hanging with Mariano Rivera and Joe Tory and blah, blah, blah. And then you read the book and you read the whole story and it’s like, wait a minute, This this kid started on the wrong side of the track with three, you know, two and a half strikes against him. And, you know, geez. And it makes you more relatable as opposed to admirable. Right. So I can add. Wow. It’s pretty cool. I’d love to be hanging with all the sports guys and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s that is true. That’s part of your persona. But once you sort of, you know, open the kimono, I think I think more people are attracted to that because everybody’s got their words. Everybody’s got their baggage.

Brandon Steiner Exactly. We’re all better than our worst mistake. And, you know, I think owning up was very healthy for me as a leader, even with my own staff, but certainly with my customers owning up to their mistakes. I answer it and, you know, I go, I shift to this, but I answer a lot of customer responses that complain about stuff. And I’m like, You’re absolutely right, we suck. This is just not acceptable. I don’t blame you. I’ve got to make this right for you and maybe do something extra for you. I don’t just send somebody a gift card and say, you know, by the way, here’s to make up for your problem, which is what a lot of companies do, for example. And, you know, I can I give a lot of honest examples about my mindset about customer service. I treat every time I call you with a problem like it’s your mom that people know. I have a strong focus on my mom. She’s my mentor and a great businesswoman. But I think that the thing that I urge a lot of people when I go and speak, especially to higher level managers, is is to get more honesty on the table and show people that you’re real. You can still be firm and tough and people have to understand you’re the boss. But when you show both sides and the way to do that is you don’t want to get into intimate details like, I had a fight with my wife last night. Yeah, right. There’s a story telling because, you know, there is a certain level of distance you do need to keep. But I think, you know, storytelling about issues and lessons you’ve learned with your kids and parenting, what lessons you’ve learned with a customer that really works right and turns you around is critical. So, you know, for me, I always enjoy the storytelling, and that’s what I’ve learned to do with my communication and the place I just worked.

Peter Winick 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 us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Brandon Steiner Want me to do that?

Peter Winick Was the blog the launchpad to speaking? Were they unrelated? They happened simultaneously to talk about you know in the good old days when speaking was a business pre-COVID sort of how that that happened for you.

Brandon Steiner The funny thing is I couldn’t get 100 people to read my blog and I was really frustrated. I’m like, Jesus, nobody’s registry. I know. I sent out a memo, Right. You know, I have about 110 employees that said if you don’t register for my blog in the next 24 hours, I can’t guarantee you employment. And that’s what I got.

Peter Winick And you still can get 100 or you got 109 at that point. Yeah, You know, that was funny how that I.

Brandon Steiner Kind of laughed because, you know, one of the initial intense of the blog was for my own employees to get a better understanding of where I’ve been and what I think about what I’m trying to build and grow the company. So my initial intent was just to do stuff, my staff and just my immediate customers, and then it just started. Then it just started growing like weeds. People started sharing it because some of the stories were a little different. And I definitely my style was very different on blogging. So that was happening simultaneously. When I got into the Harvey McCay, our roundtable was a big game changer for me. Yeah, I came home and I said to my wife, I want to join the roundtable. And she’s like, That’s a stupid idea. I don’t think you should do that. And I generally don’t outvote my wife on those kind of decisions. But I was like, I need new friends. And this group has its people. So as a thought leader, I like, I get to get around some people that are not playing ball, managing big sports. And the McKay Group was like 35 people. There are only two sports people in the whole group I think this year.

Peter Winick And for those of you under 50, go Google Harvey McKay. But a legend, a total legend in the space. And I was like a legend.

Brandon Steiner For me and Alicia.

Peter Winick Nobody is.

Brandon Steiner Ready to get to know Harvey, as I did prior to the brainstorming saying, I mean, I read every one of his books. He’s definitely a big part of my, you know, the kind of business person I am. I stole, and I should be in jail for the amount of information and guidance he’s given me that I’ve stolen and put to use. So when I get in this Harvey McKay group, people are looking at me like, you’re crazy, you’re completely understating all of your stuff. You know that story just told you you’re trying to be funny is incredible, inspirational story. You should tell it. And that’s really led me to you. You got to have all that. And every time I go into a party, there’ll be five deep waiting for me to want to know how I started. Because this is an intriguing business. People really go.

Peter Winick Back on the Harvey piece for a second, so we’re going to parallel the Harvey pieces. You’ve been surrounded by world renown athletes in every sport. You’re not an athlete per se, right? So it’s not like you’ve got your trophy or your World Series ring. So you’re a bit of an outsider in that world, right, In terms of you can’t tell about, you know, when you were in the World Series of the Superbowl or whatever. What was interesting, I think I don’t know if you ever made the connection. When you went to the Harvey Group. Those are really dedicated, committed speakers that are also top of their game. And you dove in there, one deliberately saying, Get me out of the sports place for a minute to sort of get your ideas into my brain. And by the way, I need to be surrounded by the best. Right. So was that was that an intentional 100%.

Brandon Steiner You know, I you know, I’m 50 and I always tell people, like I said, I needed to make new friends. And I fired some of my existing friends that were just bored with it. Just the relationships were just not interesting to me. I know it’s tough.

Peter Winick When you fire a friend. Do they get severance or how does that work?

Brandon Steiner They you know, they just quietly drift off into the sunset. Sometimes I’m you know, the when they call, you say, let’s get together Thursday. I’m like that like now I’m not good Thursday How about Friday night. How’s never Yeah never good if.

Peter Winick It’s never good. Yeah. Don’t call me. I’ll call you. Right.

Brandon Steiner So, you know. You know, I tell my kids it’s hard to make new friends when you get older. Yeah, I felt like it was something I needed to make some new friends, particularly outside the sports thing. Because I’m such a sports guy, you know, going to 100 events a year. So to go and sit with a group of people that really did not understand my world and didn’t really care.

Peter Winick I also think it’s rare at certain stages of life when you’re top of your game to consciously go into something with a beginner’s mind and go, Geez, everyone else in this room is probably far better at this than me. Holy crap, I’m surrounded by an office full of people that go, Yes, boss, Yes, boss, I’m in the press. But I think that takes a lot of courage. You know, I would say.

Brandon Steiner Balls. Thank you. I was excited about it. And you know, the other thing is, there was a little failure looming. I written one book and I grant I grinded it out. Yep. Had no idea what I was doing and would give what most people that do their first book, they just have no idea what’s about to jump into. And you know, I did sell a lot of books, I think about 30,000 books. It’s been the hard way. I went to 60 schools and, you know, really wigged it out. And I was frustrated because I really thought I’d start giving speaking engagements. I just didn’t I mean, I think the highest fee I got in my first book was, I think, $1,000 to be somewhere. And, you know, I mean, actually not that funny, but, you know, it was it was kind of funny that my family gets so my family I’m going to be speaking now. My wife’s like because I remember when I did the second book, I told my wife that I wanted to donate all the money to charity, and she did her usual role, a prize, you know, I’m like, Yeah, right. Yeah. So when we started really making a lot of money on the second book, you just donated $50,000 to each. I would you get that money from I said, I told you I’m donating the proceeds. And the third thing was, is that when you sit down with a group of people that have all written multiple books, it’s just you can’t. I always tell people like, how do you know what you don’t know? And especially when you get to a higher level, nobody really wants to remind you what you don’t know because these people are working for you. So it’s so important to get it’s a group where people are brutally honest with you and I can’t.

Peter Winick Get your jokes. Got less funny, right when you left the office. Your jokes are clearly less fun to be around you.

Brandon Steiner Exactly. And, you know, it was incredible for me because I just can’t believe how much I didn’t know and how much I didn’t do in my first book. I mean, blatant, obvious stuff. So when I came out with my second book, you know, and then the last book was almost like, you know, it’s like you change your kid’s diapers in the morning, you know, it’s the first kids are awake. My God, I got to get this right. Thank you. Thank you. Throw them on the table. Boom, boom, boom. And then, you know, like, you have to think twice about it. And that’s how I felt with my third book. It was, you know, I really understood the nature of the business. And it started kind of popping for me. Not that I’m jumping into a fourth book, as I’m probably not, but enjoy. I enjoyed the books that I wrote. I enjoy the feedback I get from the books. It’s extremely important to you, but.

Peter Winick You’re also competitive and wired to win, right? You’re very competitive and you’re wired to win. And if you put a book out.

Brandon Steiner There, I’m wired to learn maybe because I grew up and I didn’t think I was that smart. So I always thought I had to work harder to learn. But for me, I was like extremely excited about the learning process from the feedback I got from the books. So when I really got to have balls, there’s one comment. I read every Amazon comment, probably a couple of hundred on Amazon, and this one guy said, How convenient it is for you. Steiner Everything worked for one thing to another. You grew up poor. Then all of a sudden you’re now hanging out with Jeter, and then now you live in the good life. And I was like, You know something, guys? Right? Like, I probably didn’t put in a full transparent stories or shit storms that was in I definitely over accentuated the good shit and I don’t know if I did enough of the real tough stuff throughout the book. And that’s what really motivated me to write the entire purpose book. Some guy that I never met or even know, but really went at me a little bit with one of his comments. And I think, you know, if you felt that way, wrote about it. There’s probably a lot of people that think that way, maybe misunderstood the trials and tribulations I went through and how maybe I wasn’t being. This is transparently and. Fully honest they should have been. And that’s when my speaking took to another level, by the way, too, because I stopped going at the talks talking about all the good stuff. And I really got into a mixture of everything which people found much more fascinating. You know, when athletes fired me and do the right thing or I missed out on something, and as well as the craziness of being resilient and chasing players down and figuring out a way to do a deal. So it was great.

Peter Winick And the grit and the struggles and, you know, I think sometimes people connect and resonate more when you’re able to tell them, listen, you don’t, you know, yeah, you see me with Jeter hanging out, blah, blah, blah. But let me tell you what it took me to get these other five deals where I was a mad man that chased people down and did things other. Yeah. So I was determined and gritty.

Brandon Steiner Yeah. So I just. I just did a virtual talking and, you know, I said, look, you know, rather than, you know, obviously, you know, they want me to fire their people up because this is an unresolved set. But, you know, I, I started the talk with like, listen, when this virus hit, I just started a new shoe companies nine months ago. I said the first because people say what’s the first thing you did when this virus hit? I said I was looking at all the different bridges to see which one I was going to jump off. So I wanted to make sure that I make sure it would be over. It was done. I mean, I was really bad shape for about a month when this happened. I mean, I’m not I’m not perfect. All right? When I put my when I put my head back up again a month later, it’s unbelievable. I said, you know, I’m going to stop watching the news. I’m going to start focusing on what I want things to be like when this virus is over. And all of a sudden what happened? Everybody went home, start cleaning out their garages, cleaning out their play rooms, and all of a sudden, my site quadrupled. So I think, you know, a lot of a lot of your success is mental mindset. And sometimes it does start with the dark in a dark place. And that’s okay. You can start at the dark place and end up flipping it. You just got to decide you want to do that. And I think that was an honest way to start the conversation because I’m a pretty optimistic, positive person in a virus like this and in adverse situations, I do tend to thrive, by the way, because that’s what I grew up in. So that I know is, you know, you’re in a dark hole. How do you get out and how do you, though, make the most of it? That’s almost.

Peter Winick You get you get familiar with that you get back into the zone. So as we start to wrap up here, Brandon, if somebody is out there in a totally different industry, totally different business and they’re scratching their head, maybe I should write a book, maybe I should speak English, blog more. But you know what? It really matter in my opinion, because I don’t think the playbook and sports memorabilia was get a CEO that’s a little nuts that writes and blogs and speaks It would typically you’d be sort of riding the wave of the fame of the you know the athletes. So I think that’s interesting. And I think there might be parallels and others. But what would you advise someone else that’s thinking to sort of make the leap into this thought?

Brandon Steiner I mean, it’s all good. Always going back is what what’s your intent? You know, what do you what do you really want to get out of this? And who is this for? You know, you don’t have those two answers. It’s really difficult to move forward. But I think what really is the underlying common denominator is you do have to be great at something like give advice. Many people give me a little more credit than I deserve, but at the end, I am very, very, very good at something. I’m very, very, very good. Maybe one of the best, I think. And that’s always, always my goal, to be the best at something that ever was. So when it comes to talent, procurement and hiring talent, particularly sports talent, and when it comes to collectibles, I am one of the best that ever was, frankly. But so that gives me the opportunity, the platform release, to be able to speak to people, say, maybe this guy is on to something. So if you don’t have a platform that is that nucleus, that sturdy and you haven’t really done something that’s really, really good, that’s the first thing I really recommend people as well look at the thing that you’re really, really the best at and really see about the storytelling and see what aspects. And the second thing is sample it, you know, you know, I would say, for example, small cell where it’s like sample it so, you know, write some storytelling things about what you’re thinking about, what the angle that you’re trying to communicate to people are and sample it, send it to your family, your friends and your employees and see what they think about it and see if it’s helpful. Because the only reason I would write my blog is that it’s helpful to people. I don’t try to write my content. I’m sure speaking everything goes to charity. So when I get up and I speak, I’m like, Listen, I’m hoping you guys like what I’m talking about. But I know that the children’s charity that I’m donating this money to is going to.

Peter Winick Like it is going to benefit.

Brandon Steiner You all here today. We’re buying.

Peter Winick Somebody when.

Brandon Steiner We’re buying the furniture, this gets all. So I think, you know, it’s really important to understand like what you’re trying to do. I always felt that my story was interesting enough to motivate others. And when I stopped getting those emails and that feedback, I stopped writing and stopped speaking.

Peter Winick Well, great stuff. So I want to I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for the Everything bagel. Thank you for breaking apart Yankee Stadium and turning that into an industry. Google that story if you haven’t. And I appreciate it. Appreciate you being here today. Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Steiner Thank you. Appreciate you.

Peter Winick 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 at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.