Detaching You From Your Thought Leadership | Geoff Woods

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Building thought leadership independent of you

An interview with Geoff Woods about building content and IP that is independent of the thought leader.

Today’s guest is Geoff Woods, the co-founder, and vice-president of The One Thing, a training and education company based on the best-selling book The One Thing.  Geoff is also the host of the One Thing Podcast, which is in the top 5% of podcasts in the world.

Geoff shares how he had a successful job that lacked fulfillment. Then, he explains how he found his purpose after rushing to meet Jay Papasan when he came off stage at a conference. Geoff faced the uphill task of making a successful business based on the content of The One Thing without the ability to use either Jay or Gary Keller as the face.

We dig deep into building content and IP from the book and the business model. In addition, we discuss why thought leaders should distance themselves from their own work and how to ensure the content and assets can stand on their own.

Furthermore, Geoff talks to us about the training they do. Finally, he explains how they’ve found success in the virtual space by looking at what they can become and not getting hung up on what the company was in the past.

If you want to be able to detach yourself from your product to have the freedom of being obsolete, this is an episode for you!

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:

• Thought leaders need to invest time in the creation of content that can stand without them in the room.
• As thought leaders move deeper into virtual events, you need to think hard about how to continue to build a sense of community in that space.
• A common problem thought leaders face is the inability to look forward. Don’t get obsessed with what you used to be to the detriment of what you might become.

If you need assistance creating IP for your thought leadership, contact Thought Leadership Leverage. We can help you develop content and a strategy to propel your work forward.

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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 us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Geoff Woods. Geoff is the co-founder and president of The One Thing, which is a training and education company that’s behind the bestselling book of the same name, one thing. He is also the host of the One Thing podcast, which is one of the top 5% of all podcasts in the world. And after hearing the Jim Worm quote that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, Geoff set out on a mission to surround himself with high level CEOs and successful entrepreneurs. Fast forward and Geoff went from employee to entrepreneurial wanting a company with one of the coauthors of the bestselling book, the One Thing he’s been featuring entrepreneur Akon and is an all around great guy. So welcome aboard, Geoff.

Geoff Woods Thanks so much for having me, Peter.

Peter Winick So let’s just sort of dive right in. So you’re sort of. Unusual in a good way. Meaning? So you’re not really that’s not necessarily a nice way to open, but you’re not sort of the named author. You’re the president of the company based on the IP of Gary. And there was something about that content that obviously resonated with you writing and you decided to go into entrepreneur land with content and IP. So what’s the journey? What did? Because clearly it’s typically not a logical linear like how did you get here?

Geoff Woods I was in medical device sales prior to something, right? So I woke up every day, put on a pair of scrubs, ran through hospitals, sold a device that actually saved lives, tried to get my wife to call me McDreamy. You know, you got your goals and.

Peter Winick And that workout.

Geoff Woods Yeah, and that’s okay. She’s really good at saying no. I think I was where a lot of people have been, Peter, where waking up. And even though life’s good, I was lacking fulfillment. I always knew I wanted to start a business and I wanted to build a big business that made a big impact in the world, delivered real security for the family. But I had these really comfortable golden handcuffs on, You know, it was a really good job. And I didn’t have.

Peter Winick I would say there was probably I mean, it’s not a binary thing. I would think there would be some fulfillment in selling devices that seemed to save lives. I mean, you’re not absolute is and being in the hospital, you actually get to see the outcome and the good.

Geoff Woods Yeah. You literally got to, in this specific role, got to influence the way that patient care got delivered. That’s super cool. Yeah, I still felt this gap I still think is void. I felt like I was meant for more. And as I look back on it, I didn’t have enough pain in my life to compel me to ask the tough questions, search for the tough answers, and take action on them. Two things happened that up my level of pain. First, a colleague of mine had a stroke when he was 35.

Peter Winick Ooh.

Geoff Woods My wife and I had just bought a house in Orange County, just had our first child, and she decided to become a stay at home mom. And I’m standing in my kitchen asking the question, if what happened to my colleague happened to me, what happens to my family? It was very intense. And then the next week, my company needed to make a change to our commission structure to remain competitive in the marketplace. And overnight I lost 40% of my income. For anybody who has ever had a job loss or a big pay cut, you know how that can rock your world. And it was those two things that made me say, you know what? This is a good job, but I’m not actually in control of my career.

Peter Winick Right? So you had this, this, this calling to be an entrepreneur because, listen, there’s nothing wrong with having a, quote, job. But there’s a sacrifice there. There’s, you know, there’s pros and cons. Hey, theoretically, you get the paycheck back every two weeks, But, hey, waking up one day and a 40% pay cut, nobody really signed up for that. I know from my journey as an entrepreneur, it was always interesting to me because I was young when I was entrepreneur, like early 20s, like right out of the college entrepreneur type and all my friends for the first five, six years out of college would always be there, like, how are things doing? And I was working really, really hard, but I always felt like at the end of the day, the week, the month, whatever was left over for me is exactly what the market determined I was worth. We did well and what a crappy month. I had no one else to blame but most of my friends in the corporate world. There was more blame on my boss this or I don’t get the opportunity for that. And it was like I always wanted that control. And that destiny doesn’t mean it’s easier, doesn’t mean you always win.

Geoff Woods It’s a personality thing. And you and I are cut from the same cloth there. I wanted to be role. That’s when I heard that your mom quote that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And that was a wake up call for me because I looked at my five and had a lot of gratitude. But the was I actually didn’t I didn’t have anybody in my world that had already gone where I wanted to go. Nobody had built a successful business that made a big impact and delivered real security for their family. And that set me on a mission just to surround myself with mentors and you. Fast forward, it was our national sales meeting for my medical device company. I walk into this ballroom, there’s 1500 chairs, and on every single chair is a copy of the one thing. And on the stage is the image of the book and out right Jay Pappas and who coauthored the one thing with Gary Keller. And for the next hour, Jay blew my mind. And I remember the entire time I was going, How do I get Jay to be one of my five, right? And all the leaves? Yeah. Then all the limiting beliefs started to seep in. What could I say to him that would make him interested? Me? What could I give him that would make it worth his time? And when he came off stage, I did something different than everybody else. Everybody else stood up, clapped, and then sat down. I stood up, clapped and ran. I sprinted down the side of the room and I intercepted J. And that big game began a conversation. What I did not know is that the one thing had already become one of the highest rated business books of all time. Sure, they had a problem because Gary Keller’s one thing is being chairman and CEO of Keller Williams. It’s the largest in the world.

Peter Winick Yep.

Geoff Woods There’s one thing writing books with Gary. They needed somebody whose one thing was the one thing. And I happened to be the perfect fit.

Peter Winick Fantastic. So that’s a fantastic journey. Thanks for that. Talk to us about the business models, because now I want to sort of pivot to the other side. Do you have a platform like the one thing? It’s not typical. We’re a world-class business, but probably one of the top 20. I don’t know what the math is, but probably one of the top 20 business books in the last ten years, I would imagine, from the sales, sold huge brand in Keller Williams, all that sort of stuff. So you’re not starting from ground zero per se. You clearly have some advantages there. But now you have to build a business that’s not a real estate business around the content and the IP. That’s a whole different world. So what is what does that look like? What decisions did you make that were good and what were maybe not so great in retrospect?

Geoff Woods The business model is pretty simple. It’s content reach, create content that reaches millions of people, builds authority and trust. It drives the growth. The second conversation, which is engaged email subscribers so drive the growth of the database and build a relationship with people in the database so that they become a third conversation. A customer and customer can segment into online training events or poor training, certification coaching physical products which can which drives the profit of the organization, which funds the investment in technology, which is where we’re going. That’s the business model content rich engaged email subscribers, customers, profit tech.

Peter Winick So if this was a business that was born 2025 years ago, I would argue it’d be very, very heavy events, very, very heavy back of room because that’s what was done. And I love in this new world. Yes, events are never going to zero other than in like the first and second quarter this year. But events can’t be the end all be it can’t be the center of the universe anymore because it’s just not the world that we live in.

Geoff Woods There are a few things that I heard from Gary and Jay right off the bat that were counterintuitive to I think a lot of these types of businesses that ended up becoming very fortuitous for us. First thing Gary said to me is, Good luck. You’re going to need it. That was literally my first time meeting him. He said, Nice to meet you. Good luck. You’re going to need it. And I said, Why? And he said, Because you’re going to want to make me your product. I will never. Product. You will never get me on camera. You will never get me on an interview. If you need me to succeed, then I don’t need you. So go.

Peter Winick Let’s stay there a minute, because that’s a critical, critical point. And I can give you 100 examples of that. But I joke often with my clients is, you know, they say, well, why would we hire you? And I say it’s to make you irrelevant. And at first they look and they and then they look and they go, Ah, right. Because there’s only three ways to make money with content. You do more of what you’re doing. Gary doesn’t need to hire you, with all due respect, to do stuff. He’s got plenty of things to do. You can charge more for it because you’re a brand and then you have to digitize it. But I think the whole piece is very, very few thought leaders have the ability to separate themselves from the intellectual property and create businesses where the IP and the assets stand on their own. Even though they were born of someone’s mind.

Geoff Woods Well, can we dive in there? So they’re out. Let’s go. Gary is a master of models and he’s really good at writing things down on a single sheet of paper and drawing it out in the way the people get it. When this is the journey that a business owner can go on, if they really want to build an empire, it starts with I do it right, and when I do something, I have a job. And then you start being successful and you start bringing on leverage and all of a sudden we do it. So me and my employee, we do it together. But when we do it. As the leader, you still have a job when the goal is to move from I do it to we do it to they do it to do it independently of you. And when you move from we to they, you cross this imaginary line called freedom. Yeah. Here’s where Gary steps in the moment. You can move from I do it to we do it to they do it to them feeling like it’s theirs. Now you’re talking about building an empire. And I remember Gary asking the question, How can I give myself permission to make my world so big that any talented individual can step inside my world, have everything they could ever want and never need to leave?

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.

Peter Winick Easier said than done, obviously, right? Because number one, many authors and thought leaders have control issues, right? It’s their IP. It’s their I mean, it came from them and they’re very it’s their baby. And we get that right like because it is it is an honor and a privilege to be given someone’s IP and say run with it because there’s integrity underneath it and there’s values underneath it and all that. And then there’s trust. And not all of them have the business because I always look and say, Well, how to be a successful thought leader to number one, you got to be a thought leader, which is not easy to do. And then later on, all the other elements of the things that one needs just will be sales, marketing, distribution, whatever. It’s rare that one person has all those skills, if ever.

Geoff Woods And they may not, but do they have enough to get it as the thought leader, as the creator of the IP, Can you think like a business owner and realize that no one succeeds alone? Can you be hyper clear on the job description of who you’re looking for? And when we say job description, we mean something specific. We mean the 2 to 3 things. They have to do exceptionally well or they’re fired. Not everything. They have to do the 2 to 3 things. So Gary and Jay came together and said, Gary, you’re one things. KW Jay, you’re one things books. We need somebody who’s one things the one thing great. So what’s the 2 to 3 things? They have to do exceptionally well or they’re fired. They have to be able to cast a vision for the business. They have to be able to drive revenue if they have to be able to recruit talent. So when I got hired, I had 90 days to prove that I could do all three things or I was fired. I’m not good at motivating. Yeah, right. Well, that’s motive in there is your focus and in a talented person would say game on which I said of course. And I and I did it all. And along the way, as a co-founder, you start to see, okay, where is my sweet spot and where do I now need to bring on leverage? And now we’re just getting into straight up succeeding through others and building businesses. But that’s what it looked like.

Peter Winick Fantastic. So what have been some of the biggest surprises along this journey for you? Good, bad and ugly. We thought this would kill it in this market and it was a flop or this other thing that we wrote off as a wild success or whatever.

Geoff Woods Here’s where some of the counterintuitive things came into play. When we established the vision for the company and we started saying, All right, how are we going to drive revenue? We looked at online, we looked at events, we looked at corporate. And very quickly I remember Jay saying we wrote the book to the cubicle, not to the corner office. Right. And that’s why it did so well. Let’s make sure that we do that with the business. So we started doing selling to individuals online. Because Jay said to me, you know, we never want to be disrupted by anything. We don’t. We want to be a virtual training company that has events, not an events company that has virtual training because it’s a more sustainable business. Well, how fortuitous was that?

Peter Winick Yeah, exactly.

Geoff Woods Right. For the moment.

Peter Winick So it’s interesting now because. As the events, you know, have been pulled back and who knows when they’ll go back to what they were, if ever. Right. At the rate because I think the more for forget about Covid, forget about the recession. Forget about all that. The more people get used to doing things in a different way, like distance, like digital, like whatever. When events do open up again and they will, people are going to go. Do I really need to? You know, it’s three days in my life, I, I got to jump on a plane and live in a state hotel. And they will. But they’re going to. But there has to be some really secret sauce and something really special about the event. I’d love to get your take on this, because one of the things I’m seeing and hearing from clients and sort of this weird place that we’re in right now is getting underneath why people are going to the events and the content is key. But there’s also this community piece. So there’s a self-selection. And if I go to a one thing event, I know I’m surrounded by not clones, but people that like are like me or think like me. How do you do that in a digital world? Just create that, wrap your great content and community because that’s a human need.

Geoff Woods It’s a big question. We’ve been able to do it. We’ve been able to do it better.

Peter Winick Pivoting better than in an event.

Geoff Woods I would argue there are some things that you just never there are some things you can never replace by being in person. Right. Right. If you ask the big question. How might virtual allow me to do it even better. And if you’re willing to search for the answers and take action and test, you’d be amazed what you can explore. I was certain that all of our from the corporate training and consulting side, I thought that part of the business was going to go away. It’s up by an order of magnitude. And I thought, there’s no way I can deliver the same experience as me or one of my people being on stage. We can do it even better now. There are there are going to.

Peter Winick Push there for a minute because what you said was very different. Most people have started with, I used to do events or speak and whatever the live workshops. I can’t do that. So how do I take that and force it into another modality or format? So if you take the great attributes of a keynote speaker and throw them on Zoom, it’s take it down a notch, dude. Right? Like this, this, you know, overzealous, overly charismatic, whatever. That doesn’t work in an intimate setting. So I like how you said sort of you design from what can virtual do better than event. So you didn’t you didn’t start with the sacrifice mindset. You know, we won’t be we won’t be there. So I love that as the starting point.

Geoff Woods Here’s a quote that’s worth writing down. What stops us from reinventing ourselves is an attachment to the way things used to be.

Peter Winick Right.

Geoff Woods And I’m seeing a lot of people in this space who are attached to the way things used to be. And because they’re so focused on the rearview mirror, they’re not actually looking out forward and asking how might we be able to change? And again, this is just the gift of surrounding yourself with five and being around somebody like Gary. I remember from week number one being asked the question, what’s the business that will put you out of business? Right. And how do you build it first? These are the types of questions that I was getting asked early on. You can see why he’s a self-made billionaire. So and they also wrote a book called Shift, because real estate is a cyclical business and there’s always recession. So Gary and J wrote a book that to help agents tackle tough times. And I don’t care if in your real estate or not, the principles are agnostic of industry. So the moment Covid hit, I literally got a call from Jay. He said, Your GPS, which is what we call our business plan, has a guide to where you want to go. Your EPS is dead, we’re divorcing. You have all the financial commitments you’ve made to the board. It’s dead. Now, recognize that there is a gift in every shift. Go figure out what it is.

Peter Winick I love that.

Geoff Woods This is the mind.

Peter Winick So that’s a mindset, though, because most people would say, geez, so how do we you know, we had the plan and the plan said we were going to do this and we’re not going to meet plan. And people that are wise enough to say, well, when you wrote the plan, there was a set of assumptions the world would look like this, people will do this, whatever. If those assumptions are invalid, it’s ridiculous to hold people to a plan in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. So I love the idea of starting with the blank slate again. And they didn’t say take the year off and just ponder things. Geoff, will you, my boy? That’s okay. Let’s reinvent. And I think that’s the big mental piece now, is there are people that are in a zoom mindset. I can’t like this is over so I can go back to doing the stuff I used to do. This is a reinvent moment and if you’re not of that ilk, your debt.

Geoff Woods And I think if you just if you are a student of business, you benchmark other companies and look at what has happened. Some of the greatest companies today. We all have cycles. We all have ups and downs. But the companies that are dominant today, when they went into recessions or crises, they came out stronger. Yeah, and that’s Gary’s history. Every single shift, every recession. KW came out with more market share. And a lot of that is the mindset of the leader and understanding that the moment that things change, it’s a combination of survive and thrive. What are the things we needed immediately to survive? Stop the hemorrhaging, make sure we can keep our head above water and now immediately, what are the strategic investments we need to make that will allow us to come out of this with even more market share?

Peter Winick Well, I think the other piece is removing. The ego from the plan. Right. Just because you wrote a plan when you wrote it, you were proud of it and you were smart and you work hard on it and there’s a pride in it. But being able to have the ego lessness, if that’s a word, to throw it out and say, well, just not valid right now. Correct. And now meaning color. But it could also be I was just wrong. I read the tele drawing something changed, technology uplifted it. How do I. The quicker I can remove my ego from what I created in order to sort of reinvent. If I don’t do it, someone else will.

Geoff Woods That’s correct.

Peter Winick Awesome. So as we wrap up now, any words of wisdom to somebody that gets put into your similar role? Because it’s definitely unique where you know you’re not this, you’re not that, but you are the leader of the entity. And what was the quote that you said? Gary said, you’re going to good luck. You’re going to need it. Good luck to you and good luck. Then you’re going to need it. What would you say to someone taking on a role similar to yours?

Geoff Woods I think you have to ask yourself, why are you doing what you’re doing? And what’s the real mission there? I mean, for us, we’re on a mission to change the way people view time. It is normal that people go through their day spending, their time not investing. It leads to a life of regret. And for us, if we want to change the way that people view time, if we want to change what is culturally acceptable inside of corporations, where people do not go through their days, just checking email, going to meetings and saying, yes, you got a minute, that they actually start having clarity on what matters most and they can say no to other things. Then I would be I would be undermining our mission. If I made the success of the business, rely on Gary showing up or rely on Jang showing up or even working on me showing up, I’m already looking at who’s on my bench, who can replace. How do we make this business not hinge on my face?

Peter Winick And there have been very, very few in this industry over the years that have successfully done that for more than the lifespan of the creator of the content of the.

Geoff Woods Design review beginning or right now. It’s an opportunity for a new beginning. You have to start designing it. And I would I would just say, how can you detach yourself from the way things used to be? Yeah. How can you. Objectivity. Yeah. How can you look at the assumptions you’ve made and say, All right, I assumed it had to be me, but let’s play an interesting game. What if it couldn’t be?

Peter Winick Exactly.

Geoff Woods What if you. Today was your last day on earth, and the mission of the business had to continue. How would it happen?

Peter Winick Right. It happened. Right.

Geoff Woods Start asking different questions, searching for those answers, and take action based on it.

Peter Winick I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Geoff. There is a lot a lot that we covered. Great stuff. I love it. I love it. I appreciate you so much. I appreciate you and I appreciate you coming on today. Thank you. 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 Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.