The Best of 2024: Insights from Top Thought Leaders | Best of 2024 with Peter Winick

The Best of 2024: Insights from Top Thought Leaders | Best of 2024 with Peter Winick | 616

How the Best Minds of 2024 Elevated Leadership and Workplace Culture

2024’s best conversations on Leveraging Thought Leadership bring bold strategies and transformative insights from top thought leaders like Kim Scott, Marcus Collins, and Liz Wiseman. From managing with authenticity to building lasting influence, this episode distills the year’s most impactful lessons for authors, speakers, and leaders looking to scale their ideas.

2024 was an incredible year for Leveraging Thought Leadership, bringing insights from some of the brightest minds in business and thought leadership. This “Best of 2024” episode features five remarkable conversations, each offering unique strategies and perspectives on building influence and scaling ideas. If you’re looking to lead with impact, this episode is packed with actionable
takeaways.

Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, reflects on the importance of managing people with authenticity and respect. She shares how frameworks like hers help leaders balance care with accountability, dismantling myths about “nice” managers finishing last.

Marcus Collins takes the mic to reveal how marketers can build deep emotional connections by starting with shared values and targeting niche communities, a strategy he applied to launch his book successfully.

Kate Bravery dives into the future of work with insights from her book Work Different. She confronts outdated HR practices and calls for agility and transparency in job architectures.

Liz Wiseman rounds out the lineup, sharing her secret to transforming keynote speeches into lasting, impactful organizational change. By creating ecosystems around her books, Liz ensures her ideas deeply embed in corporate cultures.

We finish off the episode with Peter and Bill Sherman looking at the highlights of the Book ROI project that has offered never before analyzed insights into publishing a business book.

This episode distills wisdom from top thought leaders into a concise, powerful hour. Whether you’re a seasoned author, a keynote speaker, or an aspiring influencer, you’ll find inspiration and practical advice for amplifying your voice.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today I’m really excited. I get to speak to Kim Scott. She’s the author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect. A pleasure to have you on, Kim.

Kim Scott Well, thank you so much. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation. Part of the reason why the book worked is that I really love writing for its own good, not just to, like, share my legacy as that, you know? But I actually liked the writing part and was actually interested in that. But the thing that really motivated me, like the reason I left Google and went to Apple was that I realized I really didn’t care at all about cost per click. The thing that interests me and my job, by the way.

Peter Winick If you’re a if you’re at Google and you don’t care about that, you probably shouldn’t be at Google.

Kim Scott Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I think your cost per click was taken care of itself. Really?

Peter Winick Yeah, Right. Really?

Kim Scott It was. It was. It was doing really well. But, but the thing that motivated me and, and I think the reason why I was effective at Google was thinking about how do you build teams, how do you set up structures so that people can do the best work of their lives and build good relationships? So so that was the thing that really interested me. And and what Apple offered that Google didn’t was an opportunity to spend full time thinking about, you know, how are we going to how do you manage people? So I think that also the experience spending two and a half years at Apple just thinking about teaching people how to manage was also really helpful. Like I think most people, yeah, most people don’t spend go from leading a team but go back.

Peter Winick To why do you think that? Why did it take off? Because it wasn’t like, okay, went after this with $1 billion marketing budget and.

Kim Scott No, no, no, no.

Peter Winick Whatever. Like what was going on either at that moment in time in the business universe or why did it why did it hit.

Kim Scott Yeah.

Peter Winick Why do you think it.

Kim Scott So that was a long winded. Way of saying. I think part of the reason why it hit is that it’s well read. It’s a good book.

Peter Winick Okay, Good to know. But. Okay. But that but I think that’s important because there’s so many books out for so many reasons that just aren’t there.

Kim Scott Not especially well written. Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Winick Okay.

Kim Scott I think also I was genuinely interested from the time I started and my first management role, and in 1991 I was generally genuinely interested in the management part of, of building a business.

Peter Winick Okay.

Kim Scott And, and most people aren’t like, I went to business school and how many classes did I take about managing people? Zero. Not nothing. The thing I did learn at business school is it a good two by two framework can solve all the world’s problems. And I think the two-by-two framework and radical candor is part of what struck a nerve. And the Dubai to framework is sort of vertical line. This care personally horizontal line is challenged directly. And when you can do both, it’s radical candor. And that’s really important because I think we so often feel like we have to choose between being effective and being nice. And you don’t. You can do both, you know, and I think that’s part of why it struck a nerve. It kind of dispelled the nice people finish last myth that is that is really out there. I think a lot of people hate the idea of becoming a manager because it’s like if you think about all the relationships in our lives, most of them have a positive valence, you know, family relationships, parent child like. I mean, obviously there are bad relationships between parents and children, but mostly their positive valence. But if you think about the relationship between a boss and their direct report, it’s a very negative. Even the word boss, manager, leader, all of those words have negative connotations. And yet all of us have managers and a lot of us become managers. And that was one of the things I really set out to fix. So, I think it hit a nerve also because we’ve come to a moment in our economy where people are unwilling to pay the asshole tax. You know, they’re not they’re not willing they’re not willing to work for someone who treats them miserably. Yeah. And but yeah,

Peter Winick So no, I think that’s important because I think, you know, you and I are probably similar age when we’re coming up. It wasn’t really an option. Like if you got stuck in the killer job and the boss was a jackass. It just that was here. Sometimes. Actually, there were synonymous. Like, yeah, the best, the best opportunities came working for toxic people.

Peter Winick I’m really excited about today’s episode. I’ve got Marcus Collins here. He’s an award-winning marketer and culture translator with One Foot in the world of Practice. He’s the chief strategy officer of Widening Kennedy Small Little Agency, and then he’s also a marketing profit, the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He’s got a couple of books out. We’ve got a new one. And before getting into all of the minutia of his bio, I’d rather just talk to him because he’s quite unique. So welcome aboard, Marcus.

Marcus Collins Thanks for having me, Peter Good to be here.

Peter Winick What is it about the way that you’d like to market this book or your approach to marketing this book, given that it’s your first right? That’s different or unique? Because as you know, marketing books is just not easy.

Marcus Collins You know? And thing is what he, what it became for me, it really it really was like a moment of truth in that I approached that to approach launching the book. Like I would launch any product for any client. That’s a very hard thing to do when you are the client. And it was an industry that didn’t understand very well either. I didn’t know the publishing world very well, so had to learn the industry, learn the players, learn the consumer behavior around it, and then designed based on the congregation of people I want to interact with. And what I ended up doing is I literally went to market with the book the way that I tell brands to go to market. That is, start with Who are you? How do you see the world? What do you believe? What is your own culture? Yeah. Who are the people who see the world the way you do? By people who subscribe to the same point of view that you do and you go preach the gospel. And if you do that, if you activate those people based on a shared the sheer conviction that you have.

Peter Winick Yeah, I think there’s some brilliance in that in that. A lot of people, when they get a book out, they’ll say something like, Well, everybody should read this book, and this book applies to everybody. And it’s like, okay, great. Problem is, you don’t have the marketing budget to reach everybody. That’s right. And it’s really, really expensive to be in the conversion business. So step one is, you know, if there’s a whole group of people that believe the opposite of what you do or it’s not important. Okay. Good luck to that. Right. Let me find my people. Let me find my tribe that really will lean in hard. And then they you don’t even have to tell them. They will organically or naturally evangelize and say, man, I just picked up this guy Marcus’s book and hey, man, I know you’re going to love it because I know we think similarly and simply doesn’t mean bland, Right? Like we have similar perspectives. Our perspectives might be totally out there and bizarro. That’s right. We share that.

Marcus Collins Exactly in that way. Yeah, exactly. And that’s the thing is that when we when we approach marketing going to market in that manner, we find that people don’t tell other people because they love you, they tell other people because they love their people and they end up preaching the gospel about you evangelizing on your behalf as a way of projecting their own identity, not because of what you, who you are, but because of who they are. And people write about the book as a way to seem like, Hey, hey, hey, Pete, like, you know, Peter, you and I like. I know you’re going to love this because we always talk about this or do this is right up your alley. And by sharing it with you, you go. Marcus. Thanks so much. Do like that’s exactly what I was looking for. You know me so well.

Peter Winick Well, and there’s a piece of that, and I think there’s a piece of that that if I subscribe to the beliefs in the book, whether I’ve thought about it, that when I read the book, yeah, hallelujah, this guy is on the money, right? When I give that to someone else, I don’t have to say this is what I think I’m giving them and say, Hey, here’s a guy that’s much smarter than me. He’s a prophet. Ross is better at it. Look what he thinks, by the way, happens to be what I think, right? Or I wouldn’t give you the book that didn’t. Right. But it all but it’s sort of a weird way of validating my belief system and my worldview.

Marcus Collins It becomes a means of social currency. It’s like sharing, you know, tell your friend about a funny movie because by telling them about a funny movie, it means that you have good taste, right? It means that the you know what good humor is. You know what a good restaurant is or you have good taste when it comes to travel or whatever. We recommend we recommend these things so that we can strengthen relationships with our people, buy the product. In this case, the book is just it’s this currency by which people exchange. Yeah. To bring each other closer together. And thinking about the book that way is a humbling thing to do because this is about you, Marcus. This is about the ideas becoming a way by which people peacock to the world, who they are and people like themselves. So I build the launch in that fashion. Like who are my people who see the world the way I do? Luckily, I had been teaching for, you know, roughly ten years. So I said, I want to reach out to my students. People Exactly. Class. My family love you. Right? Exactly. People who already know the gospel. They already believe it.

Peter Winick And perhaps I think you buried the lead there. By the way, professors do have favorite students. Yeah, right. And if you and if you don’t know who they are, it’s probably not. You just. Just say it. Right.

Marcus Collins I reached out to some of my favorites that all of them.

Peter Winick Some of the most favorite.

Marcus Collins There you go. There you go.

Peter Winick And Marcus didn’t reach out to you.

Marcus Collins But I know that I really I best said I reached out to the ones who not only knew the gospel book, they did well on the course. Yes. But they believe the gospel from the courses that I that I taught. Sure. And they probably tried to institute the thinking in their work since they’ve taken.

Peter Winick So stay there for a minute because again this is one of the working is of marking a book if that’s a word which you’re marketing the book but you but it’s sort of only one thing that you’re marking right. So the book is one place that all these ideas live. Right? Right. And an easy thing you can grab for 25, 30 bucks or whatever it is. But the reality as a thought leader is when you’re marketing a book on some level, yeah, you care about book sales, but on other levels there’s other things that you want to happen as a result of the book. Maybe they book right to speak, or they are usually high praise consultants or whatever. So it’s sort of marketing once removed, right?

Marcus Collins So what I find is that the most important part about the book is just scaling the thinking. It’s getting the thinking in the hands, in the minds, correct.

Peter Winick So, so where I was going with that, if I were you going through a list of my, you know, favorite students, right? They might be more favorite if they happened to be the CMO at a company that looked like one that you might want to do business with right then if they were working at an underfunded nonprofit, you know, bless their hearts. But if one of your objectives was to drive your business, then you got to say, these people are in positions that can really be helpful to me. The book is just sort of the first bite of the apple, if you 100%.

Peter Winick Today, my guest is Kate Bravery. And Kate is interesting. She is the coauthor of a new book. It’s never an old book called Work Different, published by Wylie just recently. And she has been at Mercer for a long time. Her current role is advisory knowledge and Insights Global Leader. So we’ll ask what that actually means in English in a moment. But she has an interesting background and she was previously in a in a previous life at PDI ninth. So she knows the training world, knows sort of all the things that that we tend to talk about. So welcome aboard today, Kate. How are you?

Kate Bravery It’s great to be here with you, Peter.

Peter Winick What I know from my experience is the only thing publishers hate more than a book written by two people is a book written by three people. Right. So now you mentioned it in a positive light of diversity, right? So you had a great year. You had, I think, in Germany, you and someone in New York. So a talk about sort of what was the impetus to write the book, what that experience been like, and now you’re in sort of launch mode.

Kate Bravery You know, now that I’ve actually worked with a publisher, I can totally understand why they would say that and I might actually agree with it. So just because I have a value that you end up landing in a better place because you have diversity of thought, doesn’t mean that that’s the least that, you know, the easiest, easiest course. I think the reason why you end up in a better place is because you have.

Peter Winick Three different three different people with three unique excuses to missed deadlines which publishers love.

Kate Bravery And the sky. Anderson, who’s in Germany of judgment. And also because obviously things take longer to just end up crashing into him having a four month sabbatical. So you can imagine what we were all saying behind his back as well when something goes wrong. Anyway, he’s made it up since. But I know it was tough and, you know, so my learning was one thing I know that Ms.. Is really good at is we’re really good at executing. And because we go to executing, that’s sometimes a problem because if you, you know, the more important thing is getting the ideas right, the ideas that linger, the things that you go look, this is the stuff that we would say when we’ve had like two bottles of wine, but we probably wouldn’t say direct to our clients. And we wanted this a book where we came off me on the things that we thought were fundamentally broken about what that really is going to trip you up if you didn’t do it. And in the first version, it had loads of swear words, which my boss, who’s in America, all took out. But the book is quite not aggressive, but it does say the stuff that we probably wouldn’t say as a keynote speech. And I think we felt really passionate that we were having these professional conversations on interesting topics like the move to skills powered organizations and modern reward practices. But having the honest conversation with yeah, let’s be honest, it doesn’t pay to stay. And yeah, actually things have shifted and skills on the new currency of work and my God what are you going to do all about your job architectures and you and all the stuff that we supply to you today because a lot of that’s not going be relevant in a more agile world. So those are the sort of things that we weren’t talking about. And so we were like, Let’s do it this way. You know, we even don’t even have mercy on the but.

Peter Winick Give me give me the origin of the book. What was it? Who had the idea and when was it over, You know, how many bottles of wine And it would be it would be jolly good idea for us to write a book.

Kate Bravery You know, I think a lot a lot of people in our profession might say, hey, we should put some of that down on paper at some point. I know this wasn’t this wasn’t the start of the book, but I think it was the one that maybe tipped us over where in the US and Eylea and I think I was writing for flight then you know all the signs. Click, click, click, click, click comes up Cancer Council would delight. We’re going to be there for about six hours. So we did what all good consultants do, you know, get you got to be productive, got to be productive.

Peter Winick Well, I was going to say hit the bar at the airport. But okay.

Kate Bravery I think it was about $0.11 probably even for us. And then we start over here, conversation, you know, like you do in a cocktail party and, you know, you shouldn’t. This number is just too good. Yeah. Yeah. So and it’s obviously someone in the function and they’re on the call to you, someone on the other end and they’re like, I know, I know. We can’t hold on. We can. We can bring the young people in because you’ve got a great brand, we’ve got great training. But yeah, you know, that’s it. They’re going to leave after 18 months. That’s what you know, that’s what Gen, Gen, gen wise do. They don’t want to stay around. Okay, maybe some of it’s ours because, you know, we don’t move. I mean, you have to be in a role for a year before you could do. And then then they mentioned their competitor. Yeah, I know. They’ve gone to the direct competitor and they said, whoa, they give him a sign on bonus. You know, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve even given equity to young people, you know, blah blah, blah. And then the best bit was it ends by saying, but you know what? I I’m not worried about the people who go because I think they’re the clever ones. I think the bright ones stay there. Just don’t have that, don’t have that, don’t have the guts to renegotiate or don’t think that they can get a job elsewhere. That’s what I worry about, that we’ve now got a business of people that that don’t think that they can go even when they can earn a lot more by moving. And that’s what how would you.

Peter Winick Think at this moment in time because I think there’s always been this issue of. If you’re at that super elite rock star level, you know, the, you know, the voluntary employees, hey, you know, and I know it. I can go across the street any time I want. So you’re going to you’re going to treat me with kid gloves. But that’s such a small percentage of the overall population.

Kate Bravery I think it is now. And I think that’s the thing is as these ebbs and flows. So at that time, we were like, when do we stop valuing loyalty and is this actually the businesses we want to raise? So we obviously. Mercer Large consulting firms. We had a look. Now, what’s the pay difference between people who switch and people who people use? Day? And at the time it was a huge difference, particularly in the US. And so that got us talking and is a very tiny difference in like Germany where you’ve got, you know, more collective bargaining. So that got us on that path saying we sit on enough data to actually say, are these just fables and people griping or is it a truth? And if it’s the truth, how do we fix it? So that’s sort of how we went into it. But then you’re absolutely right. I mean, coming off the pandemic, people had some so many job choices and we had, you know, was in the US, 50 million people quit, I think, in 2022. Yeah, we knew that it’s not just pay. We’re getting a lot more wrong than that. And global talent trends, which I’m just about to release at the end of February. 1 in 2 people believe that work is still fundamentally broken and 82% feel at risk of burnout, which is higher than it was two years ago. So some of the indicators I saw before the pandemic, I mean, they were back down in the 60s is still there. People still feel exhausted deplete. And so we’ve got a world, a new world, stuff that I think needs fixing.

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 a five-star review at ratethispodcast.com/ltl and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcast.

Peter Winick And today I’m really excited. I’ve got a really special guest, Liz Wiseman. She’s a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership at the top organizations world worldwide. She wrote The New York Times bestsellers, Multipliers, The Multiplier Effect, and the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Rookie Smarts and Impact Player. She’s the CEO of the Weisman Group, a leadership, leadership, research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. And she has worked with Apple, AT&T, Disney, Metta, Google. She’s received all the thinkers 50 awards. And basically in the world of thought, leadership is what we technically call a rock star. So welcome aboard, Liz. Thanks for joining us today.

Liz Wiseman Happy to be here. I have zero musical talent, so definitely not a rock star, but. Exactly. Yeah.

Peter Winick Exactly. So you’re not announcing the drop of your newest album?

Liz Wiseman No, no. Like, my nightmares are like, I’m on stage with a guitar and I don’t know how to play, so I’m an anti rock star.

Peter Winick You’re an anti-rock star. There you go. Cool. So a lot of folks kind of, I would say, obsess on the keynote, but stay very much in the keynote space because if you do that well, the money’s great. And, you know, you don’t need to have a whole staff and all that. But in reality, my experience has been that the keynote should be the beginning of a relationship with the client, not the extent of the relationship. If you really want to drive measurable outcomes, if you want them to embrace your ideas, if you want their leaders and managers to practice what it is that you’ve researched and studies, and that doesn’t happen in the form of a keynote, you have to actually think through what is that suite of products and assessment tools, video based learning, etc. What have you done there to sort of drive stickiness in an enterprise and behavior change at the at the org level?

Liz Wiseman Yeah. Peter, to answer your question, is it okay if I like take you back to my careers? So I ran.

Peter Winick We’re doing a flashback now. We need like we’re.

Liz Wiseman Flashing back to the corporate learning function. And I worked for a huge global software company. And so part of that was management training and professional development. But a lot of it was product technical training. And so when Oracle launched a new version of the database or a new suite of tools, it was my job to make sure that every single person in that company was trained on the new product, meaning they knew how to install it, sell it, tune it, you know, support it.

Peter Winick Which probably took priority over people. Right. Product probably trumped people in that culture.

Liz Wiseman This was a software company run by Larry Ellison.

Peter Winick Yeah, that was what I was going for.

Liz Wiseman And so I spent almost two decades, like with this mindset, which is when you have a product, you need everyone ready, like equipped with the tools, the training, the support. And so when I released my first book, like on release date of my first book Multipliers, I’m like, okay, well, here’s the keynote, here’s the workshop, here’s the assess, right? I wasn’t thinking about it from a business and how to produce income. I had had this trained into me, which is you don’t put something out there into the world without the tools that people need to be successful with it. To me, it was a.

Peter Winick But it’s the basis of a far more robust business that’s not dependent on is lives in the room or in the zoom today.

Liz Wiseman Absolutely. And it turned out to be, I think, one of the strengths of my work and research and books has not been the books themselves. It’s been the ecosystem, the support system that companies can get training and roll it out, you know, like multipliers. You can get that from Franklin Covey or our partners beats. You could make these like we like we’ve got that whole little universe around it to help people be successful with it, which means it can grow deep roots inside of organizations. But I’m just confessing that this was not business savvy or genius on my part. It’s just the way I had been trained to think to run a large learning.

Peter Winick But it gave you, I think, that when you came out on the scene as a thought leader, it gave you a competitive advantage because lots of folks have great ideas in books and they make for a lovely keynote and people can chat about them over the cocktail party. And then, you know, three days later, like, how was that? That was kind of cool, Like, whatever. But when it moves from speaking, being maybe the beginning of the journey, you’re going to take an organization or a team or a function unit, functional unit through. It’s really, really different, right? I think it’s just really different when they start to use your language and your models and your methods and your frameworks.

Liz Wiseman Yeah, we offered a system to organizations that want to deeply implement the ideas. And, you know, it’s, it’s always, you know, it’s my favorite form of feedback is not like, hey you spoke at our company and it was great or I read your book and I loved it. That’s nice to hear. What I love hearing is people saying, wow, you came in, like spoke at our company or we went through your workshop, Right? That was like five, six years ago and we are still talking about it and still using those ideas. That’s what I work for.

Peter Winick Love it. Yeah. And the sustainability of the ideas. Because otherwise you get, you know, a lot of ideas. Unfortunately, you get the sugar high, everybody’s into it for a little bit and then you crash and then you move on to the next, you know, donut or whatever the case.

Liz Wiseman I know, but Peter, don’t let’s not forget how great a good sugar high is.

Peter Winick Yeah. No, we love the.

Liz Wiseman Daughter of a donut maker. And man, I love you.

Peter Winick Really? Am butter. That sounds like the album cover that you’re going to do. Daughter of a donut maker.

Liz Wiseman Yeah. I hope it doesn’t involve me having to play a guitar.

Peter Winick No, no, no. We know we could probably just do it with catchy beats or something, but there’s a bit of a donut maker. I like that. So I want to talk a little bit about the publishing landscape. You’ve written four books, five books.

Liz Wiseman Four books. And then one book was a second edition, which was as much work. So my mind, I’ve written five books, but.

Peter Winick I will call it four and a half for technical.

Liz Wiseman Thank you for placating me on the four and a half.

Peter Winick We’ll give you for 4.8, whatever. What’s different now about. How you go about writing a book. And then I want to talk about the, you know, the world that is or the insanity that is the world of publishing.

Liz Wiseman Well, you know, I’d like to think I’m a little smarter about the process and have kind of a big picture. And so there’s some advantages. Like, I know what it involves. The disadvantage of being a multiple book author is, you know how hard it is. And, you know, honestly, I kind of am nostalgic. I really kind of yearn for the days when I didn’t know what I was doing. And I just jumped in. And, you know, when I had written multipliers, which I think is like sold over a million copies or something, it’s like it’s kind of up there. I had never written anything longer than an email note, you know, maybe like a three-page report and then, you know, essays in college or what have you, and maybe a Christmas letter every year. But I didn’t know what I was doing, but I signed a contract saying I had an idea, right? So if I needed to write a book and so I jumped in like, you know, headlong into this process. And I was the same way with my second book, Rookie Smarts. Like, you know what? Hey, I really enjoyed that book writing process. Like, you know, I told my publisher I like I think I loved every step of this publishing process, everything except perhaps the index creation, which, you know, they set out to do that. But I didn’t really love that. But I loved every bit of the research, the writing, the editing. And I said, I think I might have the bug. And she said, no, you’ve got the gene. Like, you’re sort of big. And so I jumped into my next book, Rookie Smart, and then I’m jumping in and now I’m like, slow down. Like, I now know how hard it is. I know many how I know the grind, I know the loneliness. I know the intensity. I know the like, roller coaster of emotion that goes into the process. So I’m a little slower to do it because it’s scarier.

Peter Winick Yeah. So this has been going on for several months. So I’ll start with sort of the origin story and then handed to you to talk about what we did and what we learned and where we’re going with it. Anyone interested in downloading the survey, it is available for free. It is the business book ROI Research study. And you can download it at Author ROI. So you can just go to that site and download it and you’ll be good to go. So let me give you the quick back story here. A couple of months ago, my friend Dan Gerstein, who is the founder and CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters, called me up and he said, hey, I had a client ask me this question and I’ve been trying to find the answer to it, and I haven’t had any luck. I thought you might be able to give me some insight on it. And I said, sure. So what the client asked him was, Wow, okay. It’s a significant investment between the ghostwriter and publishing an opportunity costs, etc., to write a nonfiction business book. Has anybody done any research on the ROI of that? So Dan snooped around, found nothing. I said, That is a really good question. Let me see if I can help. I spent a day or two snooping around, making some calls and I couldn’t find anything. So I called Dan back and I said, We have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is I can’t help you. I can’t answer that question. The good news is I think we identified an opportunity, and we should go forward and figure this out. So we reached out to a couple of folks that are good friends. Narain At Amplify Publishing. Dan at Gotham Ghostwriters. Smith Publicity. And then we engaged Josh Bernoff to help us write this. So those are your sponsors of the survey. And to add to that, it takes a village and Bill will get to this in a little bit. We talked to a lot of people. We talked to hundreds and hundreds of authors. And even though we have a pretty slick network, we needed to reach out to our network of friends to help us do that. So we reached out to probably a dozen other supporting sponsors, if you will, everyone from Betsy, the Greenleaf Book Group, Jane Westman, Page two Publishing, Marshall Goldsmith, 100 coaches, and probably about a dozen others. I didn’t mean to leave anybody out, but I want to get to the podcast instead of just thinking it through and write this book, A Village to Get Through. So anyway, let me let me end to back to you, Bill, and give us the A. What was the methodology that we used here? And then B, what were the maybe the top three things that we were.

Bill Sherman Yes. So let’s dive in with a couple of things. As you said, this wound up being the largest nonfiction book study that we know of. I mean, in terms of understanding authors, revenue expenses, experience. And that data wasn’t collected anywhere. Right. And so, as you said, it was an opportunity. More data driven thought leadership, the ability to answer questions that an audience that we deeply care about. Was asking. Right. Or would be deeply interested in. And so to reach this audience, we had to ask people who had written and published books. And you can’t simply go to a group like SurveyMonkey and say, Hey, will pay a bunch of money. Can you pull some people for us and collect some data? No. It takes a village, as you said, to find people. We had over 350 authors respond. 301 had published a nonfiction book and two thirds had published multiple books. And so that was a fantastic response from the nonfiction and business book author community. And so I want to give a shout out to everyone who. She heard that Paul leaned in and sat down and took the survey, which wasn’t a quick three minute, you know, Likert scale 1 to 5 and you’re done. We asked some deep questions and in order to get meaningful data, we went deep. And the participants, those who completed the survey, spent over 20 to 30 minutes on the survey providing meaningful information. So there’s a layer of gratitude not only for the sponsors and the people who help amplify and reach out to their communities of authors. And then finally, the authors who said, yes, this is worth my time.

Peter Winick Great. The investment that everybody made in time and energy is duly noted and greatly appreciated. Okay. So that being said, let’s talk about what the top 3 or 4 takeaways were from the report and everybody out there listening. Again, you can go to author ROI, SI.com and download the full report to read for yourself.

Bill Sherman So let’s go into a couple of the top line pieces. Number one, good news. 64% of business books showed a gross profit. And the median profit for a book that had been out for at least six months was $11,350. But let’s go a little bit further. Authors who invested in the book to make it more successful through things like a strategy, launch, PR and ghostwriting. All of those activities were correlated with increased profitability and so on. The revenue to strategy correlation books with a strong revenue strategy had a median gross profit of $96,000. So the question becomes, if you know what you’re trying to accomplish with your book, you have a much better chance of accomplishing it with a clear strategy. And if your goal is financial, you need a clear strategy to be able to elevate those returns.

Peter Winick So it was great to hear this return number that people got that invested in a strategy. Selfish in speaking for you and I. Bill Right. Like, given that that’s how we spend most of our days developing strategies for people that are writing books or are thinking about writing books, that was really important to hear. I think it’s also equally important to realize that the magic formula, there is no magic formula here, but if it was, is not something as simple as number of units sold time, some gross profit margin per unit, that varies whether you go hybrid or sell for traditional.

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.