Finished “products” and works in progress

Transcript

Hi there, it’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here’s the idea that I wanted to share with you today. And that’s this: in most businesses, in most industries, you don’t get to ship anything until it’s a finished product, right? Imagine you ordered some furniture or other goods from Amazon, and it came, but it’s not finished. There are missing pieces, it’s not put together, or there are no assembly instructions—whatever the case may be.

One of the benefits of being in the business of thought leadership is that you can—and should do it on a regular basis—ship unfinished products. What do I mean by this? Let me unpack this a little bit.

If you’ve got an idea that you’re noodling with—a concept, a model, a method, a framework—put it out there, and be honest. Say, “Hey folks, here’s something I’m thinking about, and I’d love to get your feedback on it. Here’s an idea that I’m working on. Here is a model or framework that I came up with, and I’m trying to test it a little bit. Let me see what you think.
How do you react to it? Do you think this would be of interest, of value, etc?”

So, shipping unfinished products and sharing works-in-progress—things that are not yet complete—is something that is totally acceptable to do in the thought leadership space. And actually beneficial to you and your clients and prospects if you do it more often.

So, think about what that means for you and when you might try to share something that’s still quite rough if you will.