How Peter Got Into Business – Helping Thought Leaders-Dropping Bombs Ep 217-Peter Winick

Now how did you get into this deal? You couldn’t have been Peter Winick your whole life.

Well, technically, since the day I was born.

Uh Yes. But not The Peter Winick.

But not The Peter Winick. So yeah…So the way I got to this was really two things that I thought were very different parts me that I realized weren’t. So one, is I’ve always been entrepreneurial. I’ve always loved creating things, and building things, and figuring out how things work, and how to make them better from a business standpoint. So that’s the entrepreneur side. And then the other side of that is I was always just a content nerd. I always love reading books. I always love taking in magazines. I always like just sucking in information. But never really applied any of the business skills to that. Until about 15 plus years ago, I was brought in to do a turn around at a global communications consulting company.

Why you? Why did they pick you? Who picked you?

A buddy of mine was the CEO. He knew I had the business chops, and business skills to do this turn around thing. He had to actually sell me on the deal. Because I’m like “Dude, I have no interest in… Training is the most boring thing that happens. I don’t know anything about.” I tried to un-sell him. He goes, “Nah. I got a feeling. You’d probably be really good at this because you’re creative, and entrepreneurial, and it’s a 40 year old company. It needs whatever.” And we did a great turn around. And I was able to learn at that point. Like holy crap! There’s a whole business underneath this. This whole training business. This whole people development business. And it’s changing really really quickly. The technology is coming into play. The old things aren’t working so much…etc. So I learned that. And then, from there transitioned into individual thought leadership in terms of working with world renowned authors, thought leaders, speakers…etc. And helping them. Because what I saw is a combination of some macro factors. The publishing world falling apart and a bunch of other things. That if you are a true thought leader, if you’ve got some great stuff to put out in the world, now all of a sudden you’ve got to be an expert on social media, be an expert on learning, you’ve got to figure out the speaking business, you’ve got to figure out how to… There is all these other things you need to figure out and my vision was and I’ve validated by working with a couple of folks. Build a moat around those awesome thought leaders and let them just build great stuff and do what they are great at. What their great at might be stage work, might be research. Whatever. And have others figure out the business side of that. How do you market? How do you sell? How do you find the right distribution partners? How do you make the business global? How do you grow? And then it’s that one two punch of sort of protecting the thought leader. You don’t have your quarterback cleaning up the locker room. Right.

But yeah, you help them with all that?

Yeah!