Is your work valid AND valuable?

Transcript

Hi there, it’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here’s an idea that I’d like to share with you today, and that’s this: as an author, as a thought leader, as an expert in your space, you need to be able to clearly articulate to clients, in order to be able to scale, two things.

Those two things are number one, validity and value. What do I mean by validity? I mean that the ideas and the models and the frameworks and the concepts that you have are actually valid. They’re backed by research. They’re not just you opining or it’s not charisma or pumping it up or whatever the case may be. You have a valid model, method, and framework that you can speak to, speak of, and show that it’s been validated. That’s the first thing.

Now, just because something is valid doesn’t mean that it’s valuable. So that’s the next piece that you need to talk to: that as a result of the client investing in your work in a variety of modalities and formats and such, that they will extract value from it. How do they extract value from it? Well, if it’s about developing a capability in an individual, what does that mean for the organization? If more people in that organization had these capabilities, how does it tie to a business outcome that’s measurable? You know, if it’s negotiating, how do they negotiate better? If it’s communicating, how do we measure that they’re communicating better? Whatever the case may be.

So, I would be keeping in mind, and I would love to get your thoughts and feedback on this, number one, where do you need to work from a validity perspective, and what could you do to improve the way that you articulate the value that the client will extract from your work? Love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.