Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 15 – Andy Molinsky

Peter Winick

A lot of thought leaders are “accidental,” meaning, they ventured into the thought leadership world after having a great deal of success as a leader, academic, or executive.

Author and Brandeis Professor of Business, Andy Molinsky, joins Peter for an invigorating conversation about his journey into thought leadership from the academic world.

Andy creates thoughtful and engaging content, focused on practical skills development. “Getting out of your comfort zone” is the core of his brand! In this episode, Andy candidly discusses the process of diversifying content into new formats, and the best ways to market those products.

Andy also talks about the challenge of balancing work with a young family, and the rigors of academic research. He shares his experience developing the right blend of investment and time needed to accomplish his goals in the thought leadership space. It’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick, I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and we are on our podcast today leveraging thought leadership. And today, my guest is Andy Molinsky. Say hello, Andy.

Andy Molinsky Hi, everybody.

Peter Winick Great. Let me just give everybody a little background on Andy. So you have a sense of who he is and what he does. So Andy is a professor at Brandeis, the International School of Business, and a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. So business and psychology combined, which is it? Which is a great space today. He has written in Harvard Business Review. He has two books out, one that just came out last year. The first one was called Global Dexterity. And then the second book, which came out, I guess just about a year ago, Andy, which was called Reach. So welcome.

Andy Molinsky Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Peter Winick Great. So, speaker, author, professor, adviser, lots of different things. So give me just a quick overview. When do we start with sort of the essence of your work? Give me sort of a tough question to answer in a brief period of time, but give me a sense of the gist of your content.

Andy Molinsky Yeah. No, that’s actually an easy question answer for me. It’s my work, my work. It’s about helping people learn to step outside their comfort zones and to give them the courage, confidence, tools, frameworks that they need to do that. And they’ve been sort of two parallel paths that I’ve worked on. One is have been about just helping people step outside their comfort zones, period. And that’s what my book reaches about, the one that came out last year. And then previous to that, a lot of my work has been on helping people step outside their cultural comfort zones. And that’s what my book Global Dexterity was about. So I approach these two issues basically, which come together in the idea of helping people step outside their comfort zones, you know, through a variety of ways, whether it’s through my academic research, my writing in Harvard Business Business Review, Inc.com, the speaking, I do the books, starting to do some consulting and so on. So but that’s the quantum.

Peter Winick And I imagine there’s a benefit to that at the individual level, the team level. And then when you’re moving into the corporate world at the organizational level. Is that true?

Andy Molinsky Definitely at the individual level, and that’s where I focused all my. That’s really where I focus my career. Although the team level as well. So let’s say like I focused mostly on the individual and increasingly the team, I haven’t done as much the organization. But you know, my expertise, at least to this point, has been at the individual and team. I’ve got it. So we work with a fair amount of academics across the globe. London School of Business, Warden Tuck’s, etc.. And what always is, it’s always an interesting subset of our client base.

Peter Winick Because, eh, the bar is pretty high to be a full-time academic today. And then that subset of academics that sort of move into the thought leadership space beyond academia. It’s a higher hurdle. So could you give me to tell us a little bit about your journey and your and your story moving from sort of academia to Harvard Business Review, the books, all that stuff?

Andy Molinsky Yes. So. So when I got it. So it’s interesting. I think my story begins in college where I didn’t do any research and I didn’t take one class in psychology or business. So that tells you something about my back.

Peter Winick I sign up today, Professor Lewinsky’s class or business background. That’s probably not the headline, right?

Andy Molinsky Exactly. But no. But I think it’s important because I wasn’t sort of indoctrinated that I came at it. I came at it through my life experience, you know, after college, working, living abroad and so on and so forth. And so I’ve always been interested sort of in the very super practical phenomena out there in the world, trying to help people. Giving people tools, practical insights and tips at the end of it. At the end of academic articles. If you’re publishing sort of on the highest level of academic journals, at least in my field, there is a section for practical implications, let’s say. Right. And it’s pretty much a throw-away and. But I’ve always been most interested in that part. And so, you know, it’s. So when I when I got tenure, which was several years ago, and now I’m a full professor. So that’s kind of the high as I’m wrong in the academic world. You know, I now have the complete freedom to kind of do what I want, really. But, you know, I’ve always wanted to reach people just, you know, regular people, everyday people, employees, managers, executives, you name it. And what’s interesting is when I started to write my first book, Global Dexterity, and I started then to write for Harvard Business Review. What I realized was that my natural voice, my writing voice, my speaking voice was actually this practical voice I had. I kind of had to switch, too, to write for academics. So it was actually a fairly easy transition for me because this is what I always wanted to do. And also, I think my natural voice goes in this.

Peter Winick I love it. So there is, as you know, I would say, healthy tension between sort of academia and the business world. Right. Because you can sort of if you’re someone that likes to divide the world into two categories like I sometimes do. Right. So you’ve got thought leaders that come out of the business world that it’s based on the applied their experience, leadership works, you know, the former CEOs, that sort of thing. And then you have those that come out of academia that have studied the phenomenon, research, it validated studies, et cetera, and have these models and frameworks. And there’s always a healthy friction between the two where the business folks will say, well, the academics don’t, you know, they get to isolate variables into the real world. It doesn’t work like that. And then you’ve got the academics that sort of look at the business folks and say, well, that’s, you know, couple of stories, just not dead data make. So I love the fact that you’re able to sort of thread that needle there. Tell me about the journey, though, of moving now from the highest levels of academia. Full professor at Brandeis, congratulations to author speaker, advisor consulting, because those are various are different business models, different with different operating sort of rules and norms and such. Tell me how you’ve sort of made that bridge.

Andy Molinsky You know, there’s no question you’re right. And it’s funny. I was a very naively, you know, even though I’ve always been interested in writing and consulting and doing work and sort of an applied area. And by the way, when you’re an academic at a business school, you’re already threatening to write all of it because business schools, by definition, are applied. So but I should say that. But, you know, I remember when I wrote my first book, Global Dexterity, I just had this I think I had an image that you press send and that’s that. And everyone reads it and, you know, congratulations. It’s like.

Peter Winick Well, let’s touch on that because I think the press and phenomena is one that it’s not just an academic issue, but many first time authors have this belief because why wouldn’t you that your job is to create great content. You study it, you research it, you’re proud of it. You’re sweating out the details and then you hand it off to this publisher and then you’re done. Right. And then all of a sudden you grow patches on your sport jacket. You start smoking a pipe. And, you know, CNN calling is calling you. And, you know, Anderson Cooper’s outside your door. And that’s not how it works. Right. And I think the disclaimer that publishers, traditional publishers, at least need to make is that you are the SVP of sales, marketing and success of your book. Right. There’s only so much they’re going to do.

Andy Molinsky No question. And that has been an interesting journey for me. I was completely naive, probably like your typical first-time author. And so it’s been an incredible learning experience. I mean, I should tell you, I as of 2012, I guess it was when I published my. Well, my first book, I was 13, but right around there was the first time I was on social media. I remember I used to make fun of my brother, who was an early Twitter adopter, about how ridiculous, about how ridiculous Twitter was. You know, like why would I possibly ever want to do that or like LinkedIn. I remember like when I first was on LinkedIn, I just thought it was so funny. I had to pick my industry. I think I just for fun, I picked agriculture or something like that. I had nothing to do with me just because it was such a, it was so irrelevant, like why would I possibly care about my profile and my platform and so on. And, you know you know, fast forward five or six years later, I’m now a top voice on LinkedIn. I have like, you know, I don’t know, seventy thousand followers or whatever it is or more than that. I’m very active on there on Twitter and so on and so forth. And I like the idea that you need to build a platform, that it’s a whole different sort of set of skills to be able to do that in it. It’s also an investment, you know, a monetary investment.

Peter Winick Now they’re in time. Right. So it’s time and energy and effort. What I would also say handy is not only do you have the followership on Twitter and that you’re very active on LinkedIn, but it’s a reflection of you in the brand that the stuff that you put out there has to be representative of you and you’re thinking, you know, who’s going to tweet out silliness of, you know. Here’s a picture of an ice cream sundae you’re about to eat that has nothing to do with what we get. Right. But people do that. And so, I mean, I think there’s also a bar that’s fairly high because anything that you put out there, it’s there forever. And B, it’s a way for me to if that’s my first entree into sort of Andy world, I’m going to judge that. Right. I’m gonna look at that. Huh? Thoughtful. I want to read some more or thoughtless onto the next thing.

Andy Molinsky No question. I mean, the idea that you just the core idea that you need to provide value to your potential readers and that you need to do that for someone to actually make the commitment to follow you or even more than that, like now, you know, in the past several years, I’ve been working on developing an email list as part of my following and so on. And like the idea that someone’s going to actually say, hey, here’s my email, I do want to sort of start this relationship with you. I mean, you got to really provide something of value to them. And that’s in that. That means, you know, being able to step into their shoes and understand what their pain points are, what keeps them up at night. What. What advice and help they could use. And not from like a pedantic, you know, sort of theoretical hypothetical standpoint, but something really practical. And, you know, that’s been you know, I’ve always been interested in doing that. This isn’t a hard sell for me, but it is a different set of skills.

Peter Winick Well, and I subscribe to your newsletter and I actually read it because there’s plenty that I subscribe to, but I actually look forward to it. And I’ll just give you why, at least for me, is you’re giving more than you’re asking, right? So you’re giving meaning you’re putting content out there. That’s thoughtful. That’s relevant that I could read relatively briefly. It’s not long. It’s in a good voice. You’ve got something to say. You’re not self-promotional. That being said, I know that when you launch your book early last year, every now and then, you’d mentioned that the book’s coming out. And I was glad that you shared that, because now I’m like, oh, cool. Here’s a guy I’ve been following for a couple of years. He’s got a book coming out. I’m going to go preorder that. Right. And you weren’t, you know, quote, salesmen. It was. Here’s what’s coming on. And as the fact that you nurtured a community, I’m assuming that bore some fruit for you when you went to the second book. To tell me a little bit now about the difference between the first book, you were under the sort of erroneous belief that you press and the magic happens, unicorns and rainbows come. What was reality like when you published Reach with Penguin last year?

Andy Molinsky Well, so I should tell you, Reach came out the week that Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Peter Winick Excellent timing. I was. So people were really open-minded, looking forward to a book like that. Feeling really good about life.

Andy Molinsky Yeah, exactly. And they, you know, like, you know, all the coverage was of my.

Peter Winick Yes. There was no one at the inauguration because they’re all in your book, if I recall.

Andy Molinsky So that was unbelievably bad.

Peter Winick Thank you.

Andy Molinsky But it was nothing. Nothing I can do about it. It was not. It’s the publisher’s decision. You know, it’s nothing, absolutely nothing I can do about it. You know, I think that, like, what I’ve done is I’ve tried to learn, grow. And then, you know, flip and change. Like I try to change everything I’m doing on these platforms. So in terms of reach, I started to realize, oh, gosh, I got to start an email. I got to start doing a newsletter. I started. You know, I got to start developing a community here, a platform. I started doing more video. I started a little sort of videocast podcast series. I know it’s serious. What I see it as is it’s a series of experiments. And you’re sort of like, you know, try always at the core trying to sort of do something that’s consistent with your brand and that’s providing value to other people, you know. But you’re trying experiments. And then you’re learning from those experiments and then you’re trying more. I’ve also been interested, as you know, in in in trying to figure out ways to. Now that I think I can surf, surf a variety of people trying to figure out ways to as you call it, monetize your content. And so I’m developing an online course. And I had some questions. I had some questions about that. Like, you know, should I have someone, quote-unquote, join for me? And by the way, these are the same challenges that anyone can have at any stage of this stuff. You know, do you have someone do it? Do you do it for you? Do you have someone, Quas? I do it for you. Do you? You know, there’s a whole spectrum all the way to the end of you. Do it entirely on your own and in that, you know, and so there’s always those choices. And as I know, you speak a lot about academics and they’re in their time and so on and so forth. And I think it’s a real question that people need to ask themselves, is this something I want to do? Is this something I’m good at? Is this the best way to make.

Peter Winick You know, I love the way you framed it as experiments because, by definition, some experiments succeed and some fail. And it’s very much a learner’s mindset. And I think as long as you’re being honest and clear about what your assumptions were when you tried that experiment and then you’re objective and you don’t get too emotionally connected to some of them. And so, you know, that one just didn’t work. You know, I’m not a vain guy. Right. And that’s OK. You know, because to me, you know, I had a similar experience to you probably seven or eight years ago when Twitter started. And like, this is the silliest thing ever. Like, why would anyone want to spend five minutes on this just noisy mess of just nothingness right in it? To me, it was always like if I wasn’t sure, you know, that you had nothing to say, I would follow people on Twitter and that would confirm my suspicions. Right. And now, you know, fast forward, you know, we also have a ton of followers. We get net new business from there all the time. It’s a great way for us to broadcast and connect with the community that we like to nurture. And, you know, you sort of have to suspend your judgment around your personal preferences of, oh, would this be the thing that I would spend lots and lots and lots of time on? I don’t know. But are the people I’m trying to reach there are. And if they are, get over yourself. Right. That’s sort of been my mantra. Let me talk now about. So you go from academia to writing an age before. Now you’ve got a couple of books. You do. You’re also doing some speaking and consulting. So multifaceted approach. Tell me about sort of your foray into the. When I say speak in theory about paid professional speaking. Tell me about your foray into that and more importantly, the how you get in front of the most desirable audiences.

Andy Molinsky Well, I wish I knew that. That’s a very good question. I can’t say that I am like the most in-demand speaker in the world. But I’ve but I’ve. But I have done paid speaking gigs. I’ve also declined paid speaking gigs. You know, that’s an issue. You know, I have a young family. I have a date. I’ve full-time job. What’s what? What’s nice, I guess, about my situation is that I do have a day job, so to speak. So a lot of the stuff that I’m doing here is kind of like some of it is fully consistent with my day job, like writing a book. But other parts of it are sort of at the fringes. I might work on the weekends or at night or something like that. So there are certain I’ve been asked to go to, you know, I don’t know, Africa, India in the last year enough to client. I think there would have been if Africa and India to do paid speaking gigs. Big companies, I know those, just some little examples. There’ve been more. Would that have declined? I haven’t even gotten to the point of asking right or telling them my fee because, you know, there was no fee really for me to be able to do that just because I simply couldn’t do it, I. Right. Right. I can’t do it. So but there are plenty of other ones that I have done. And, you know, I’ve developed I have two keynote speeches that I think are pretty, pretty good. And I get really strong feedback and positive reviews on them. And, you know, I think, you know, I think for part of it, you know, each keynotes basically consistent with each one of my books, I’ve probably done each of the keynotes about 50 times. You know, I’ve I I think the I think that that that in terms of all of this, you need to sort of find something that works for you in like sort of like that’s sort of in the spirit of my own work, actually customize your own version of trust. Like maybe you love speaking. You know, nowadays there’s a lot of virtual opportunities. Yes. I mean, paid virtual is a little more challenging, but it’s certainly possible you can sometimes even do consulting. You asked about consulting, right? You can do consulting in a bundle in paid virtual as part of the engagement.

Peter Winick I mean, I was one of my observations is that going back to there’s two types of people. There are two types of speakers, those that want to speak more. And those that want to speak less. So it’s a bit of a careful what you wish for because, you know, everybody sees the sexy romantic flying first class side of it. I know for a fact that if you’re speaking one hundred times a year, that means there are 200 nights a year where you’re not in your own bed, you’re not your own home. That’s probably a beautiful home that you get to visit on occasion. And it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. That being said, there’s plenty of amazing pieces. Most people don’t go to work for forty-five minutes and get paid twenty thousand bucks in their day and a standing ovation. So believe me, there was made to make a living. But it’s not just a binary race. It’s I love the fact that you’re finding the right temperature. Because? Because going to India is a week of your life at least.

Andy Molinsky And I can’t I simply can’t do that. I mean, that’s why I’ve sort of been dabbling in online. You know, what can I do to sort of like stop trading time for money, so to speak? As the expression goes, how can I sort of leverage the amazing like technology that we have now, like online courses? I was actually working on this morning. You know, I’m sort of I’m about 80 or 90 percent done with it. You know, like, wow, what you can do now versus what you could have done, I think, five years ago. It’s pretty amazing. So that’s fun. I should also say about speaking is that not everyone’s comfortable speaking. I mean, you know, I happen to I’m a professor, so I kind of do it for a living. So it’s not so hard for me to do it. But I know a lot of people who are quite uncomfortable with public speaking. So, you know, I don’t know. It’s there’s a range of possibilities for people. And that’s what’s kind of exciting about this space, but also a bit daunting, I think, for some people, because you kind of have to feel your way.

Peter Winick So this has been great. So as we start to wrap here. Tell me a little bit out there right now. Is you 10 years ago, right. A younger Andy, that’s an academic at a university, somewhere passionate, a learner looking to sort of make the foray into this space. What would you tell them to do sooner or do more of what would you advise them to do less of? And you’ve done some of that in our talk today. But give me just a little recap on, you know, the younger and older say wiser, but the younger Andy that’s out there today.

Andy Molinsky Well, I think. I think writing a book still is a great thing to do for someone like me. And it seems to be kind of in academics at least it’s like the thing like I cannot tell you how many times I open up like Facebook and I see some colleague of mine, a former p.h.d student or something years out now, professor. It’s like I just wrote my new book. You know, it’s like Harper Collins is, you know, so like in the world that I operate in, it’s actually seemingly like super common for people to sort of pop out there. But I think what people I think what academics I think academics have to have to make a decision about where they want to make their mark. So some people, I think, want to write a book, but then kind of retreat back to doing that. The basic reason that the book itself is their opportunity or attempt to translate what they’ve learned to a more general audience and they’re not so interested in doing it along multiple media and so on and having more of a multi-faceted career and that they want to dig back into a forcing mechanism or their capstone.

Peter Winick But they’re not so focused on the launch and the marketing and the getting the book and writing the book is writing for them, not writing and getting it out into the abyss.

Andy Molinsky Exactly. Exactly like the book. It’s not like some people see a book as sort of like the new business card. That’s like, you know. But I think for some academics, they don’t care about that. That the book of the books, The End State. But for someone who feels that the book is not an end state, but as a stepping stone, you know, I think that I think, you know, you if I were recommending what to do, I would say talk to a lot of people, talk to people just like you read, for instance, people who do this for a living. Yeah. Exactly. Talk to people. Link me. Talk to people who have been through it. Talk to people. Talk to people who have done the complete do it yourself version and talk to people who have hired someone like you and maybe have done it. Done it. Sure. Your version and sort of seeing what fits best for you. See what your goals are. See you know what your ambitions are. There’s so many ways to kind of to build an audience, to communicate to your audience, to serve your audience and so on. So many different formats and modalities. And you kind of need to feel your way through and see what fits you the best. And again, kind of treat it as an experiment because what you’re doing in 2018 might be different from what you do in 2020.

Peter Winick You know, my experience is that there’s almost the secret handshake and sort of the thought leader, author, speaker, community, where people are willing to share and be pretty transparent around, you know, especially you reach out to someone, hey, I read your book last year. I really liked it. You know, it really helped me. And here’s what I did. Tell me what that experience was like. And people were pretty fairly open to share as long as you come at it in a mindful and respectful way. So thank you so much for that. How can people so two final pieces for you here who should be reaching out to you and then how should they reach out? Who could you best serve? And then how did they find you?

Andy Molinsky Yes. So on the corporate front, anyone who’s interested in learning about stepping outside their comfort zones, adapting across cultures, managing global virtual teams come at me. The best way to find me is through my Web site, which is www.andymolinsky.com. And if you spell it wrong, don’t worry about it, because I was here’s one of the here’s an insider move. I bought two domain sites of my name spelled wrong and they hit it forwards to the correct one anyways. So that’s the best way to reach me for anyone who’s in it. It was a budding thought leader in the academic space and want to talk. Feel free to reach out to me. And anyone who cares about the topic of stepping outside your comfort zone, your personal your cultural comfort zone. Absolutely. Reach out. I’ve got to is as you mentioned, I’ve got a newsletter. I’ve got lots of free content. You know, I’d love to love to hear from you. I love to connect with you.

Peter Winick Well, thank you so much. I’m so glad we had you on that. This was chock full of information and honesty and transparency and creativity. I appreciate your time. I love your work. And I wish you nothing but the best. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Andy Molinsky Awesome. Thanks for having me on.

Peter Winick To learn more about thought leadership leverage. Please visit our Web site at thought leadership leverage dot com to reach me directly. Feel free to e-mail 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.