Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 16 – Gregg Stebben

Peter Winick

If you’re looking to position yourself as an authority, grow your audience, and market yourself as a thought leader, take our advice – do not miss this episode!

This week, our guest is Gregg Stebben, co-host of ForbesBooks Radio. He’s here to share his insights on the world of podcasting, publishing, and interviewing. Gregg’s experience as a successful author led him to join the Forbes publishing group, and now he helps other thought leaders achieve success in publishing and marketing their books.

Gregg’s advice is invaluable for a thought leader looking to market their next book project, and the episode is full of great tips. Listen in!
If you’re looking to position yourself as an authority, grow your audience, and market yourself as a thought leader, do not miss this episode.

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 am the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and we are on the podcast today leveraging thought leadership today. My guest is Greg Stebben. Say hello, Greg. Hey. And let me give you Greg’s background real quick. So Greg is the co-host of the nationally syndicated Forbes book Radio broadcast, which is in over 200 U.S. radio markets and a podcast that Forbes Bookscan. He’s the author of 17 books. I know a lot of people haven’t read 17 books, and that’s impressive. It is. And includes White House Confidential and Internet Privacy for Dummies. He’s a columnist and he’s worked for some of the biggest magazines, including Mental Health. Bon Appetit. TV Guide Remember that? And Spy.

Gregg Stebben Yeah. Did you just age me or what? TV Guide and Spy. Wow. Mean, I must have gray hair or something.

Peter Winick I do, I’m sure. Welcome to the club. So you’ve had the privilege of interviewing world leaders, celebrities, thought leaders and noble laureates. I had the pleasure of meeting you the beginning of this year down in Charleston at the Forbes Book Summit, which was an awesome event. Yeah. And you and I met there. I was on your show, and now you’re on mine. So it sort of you were one of my inspiration. So I appreciate you taking the time out of your day and joining us today.

Gregg Stebben It’s great to be here. That’s why I’m so nervous. As you know, we’re going to have to compare like who did a better job And I thought I might lose. And I’m a very competitive guy.

Peter Winick Well, competitive podcasting, Here we go. This is like nerd nerds gone wild.

Gregg Stebben And this is this is the Olympics of podcasting here.

Peter Winick Exactly. Wow. The pressure is on. So let’s see what my opening move is going to be here in like sort of curling or something. So let me. So you sit in an interesting focal point, if you will. Right? So you spend a lot of your time as part of your job with Forbes books, running Forbes books, radio, which is interviewing lots of authors and thought leaders on their expertise and such. So give me give me just sort of a quick sense of trends that you’re seeing, things that people are doing from a thought leadership and content perspective that’s interesting, innovative, creative, etc., in purpose of getting their work out to more folks more often.

Gregg Stebben Well, you know, what’s interesting is this is it’s actually a really fascinating place to be sitting because I’m interviewing I’m sitting in inner I’m like at this apex. Right. Of exactly what you’re interested in at Thought Leadership Leverage and exactly what we’re interested in at Forbes books. I mean, what we want to do is find the best, the most compelling, the most exciting thought leaders in the world, frankly. And we want to show them how to write a book to use that. And I know that’s a big, big part of what you do at Thought Leadership Leverage, but why don’t you have a podcast, as I’m sure you’re finding? Then you get an opportunity to talk to people in a completely different way than I think has ever really existed in the world of business before. And I know that’s a dramatic statement, but I think it’s really true because as I’m sure you’re finding and as I have found, because my interviewing experiences goes a long way back to before there was podcasting and before there was even an Internet. And I discovered even in a young age that once I got someone on the phone and I started interviewing them, they would tell me things. I mean, Vincent Price decided he needed to tell me how he lost his virginity.

Peter Winick Well, I’m not going to know. I’m taking a note of interesting interview questions.

Gregg Stebben No, I did not ask.

Peter Winick Was it a hard not to ask?

Gregg Stebben You would know. And that’s a really that’s a good come back. But I mean, it’s just so I actually think podcasting is one of the most exciting and smart things businesses can do today. Because what people do when you interview that, first of all, they’re flattered to be invited, just as I am now. Right? And then it’s up. It’s like the we all know than when it’s about me. That’s when I like it best. But now it’s about me with spotlights, right? Like, it’s. It’s real about me. Not fake about. Sure.

Peter Winick So let me unpack some of that. So there’s obviously sort of two sides to podcasting. So podcasting is not a new phenomenon, but it’s relatively new as medium go. Yes. One of the reasons we started to we launched ours is I’d been a guest on a bunch of them and I sort of like it. So I’m lazy, meaning I’m not a great writer. It’s worked for me to get blogs out. They tend to be okay, you know, broadly speaking. But I have more fun just sitting around talking to people. So then I started to be guest on podcasts. I’m like, This is kind of cool. I don’t I don’t have to do a lot of prep, but you know, I do some. It comes naturally to me conversation. You never know where it’s going to go. It’s not scripted, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, okay, great. It’s launch one. So, you know, you’re seeing it from both sides. Greg Being a guest is one way to Leveraging Thought Leadership and get stuff out there. And then ultimately hosting a podcast is another way to get it out there so well.

Gregg Stebben And I think people are going to begin to discover that. I mean, this is really part of what we’re doing at Forbes Books is first of all, what Forbes books is ultimately in the authority business, and we use books as a way of building your authority. You have to have authority to build authority, and you certainly have to have authority or be an expert or a thought leader to write a book. Because if you don’t have some authority, then that’s a lot of empty pages. Take it from a guy who’s written a lot of books. I mean, they don’t just magically show up there. I think podcasting is yet another way to exercise it. And you pointed to one of the real benefits of it, frankly, is that if you’re if you are an authority at something and you begin to think about something like podcasting as another tool in your toolbox or, you know, what does the arrow in your quiver or however you want to say it, if you are already in authority, one of the things that’s going to happen if you are the host of a podcast, is that you’re going to attract people that otherwise maybe you couldn’t have reached or you just maybe, maybe you couldn’t reach them easily, but you wouldn’t have reached them.

Peter Winick That’s an amazing point because we do a lot of work with our clients to help them get their content and their work out on social media. So, for example, everybody has, in my opinion, sort of a content preference, right? So if you’re inherently a writer words or anything, if you’re not a writer or might be video, people are consuming content in all sorts of interesting ways today. Right? It’s they’re sitting at, you know, in front of a screen but they’re controlling what and when. You know, back in the old days of when I was growing up and when you were growing up, Greg, you know, 8:00 on Tuesday, you had three choices, maybe four. That’s right. Right now, it’s like any time, day or night, I have a choice. I know the guy or the guy next to me at the gym. They’ve got, you know, pads on or whatever. They might be listening to a Ted talk, they might be to music, they might be listening to a podcast. So if you’re not in the podcast game, for some reason, you’re missing a potential subset of your market as a way to connect to them because it has it doesn’t matter what you like, right? If you’re not into listening to podcasts or it just doesn’t meet your, you know, do it for you, great, that’s fine. But there’s a big chunk of the world out there that does. And why exclude yourself from that? Meet them where they are. And as a as a marketer, I’m always a big advocate of that. So it’s interesting that you mentioned that from a from a format perspective.

Gregg Stebben Well, and one of the things we’re doing at Forbes Books is we recognize the value of this in a lot of ways that I think are frankly, completely new within the podcasting space. So the first thing I say and I want to I said and I want to say it again just to reinforce it, is think about the person in your industry or your world that you have never been able to successfully connect with. Right? Too busy. They’re too they’re just they’re out of reach for you. One way to reach that person might be and this is kind of a long game, frankly, but might be to build a successful podcast within your industry. You know, you’re I if I understand Thought Leadership Leverage, you understand the value of playing in your niche. And so we at Forbes Books build a successful podcast within your niche. Leverage your friends and your colleagues and your professional associates and your thought leadership position. And then once you’ve built something there, I mean, you have how you’ve been doing this for how long and how many interviews do you have in the camp?

Peter Winick So we just started this ultimately as an experiment. I think we started about a month ago. I’ve got a dozen or 14 in the can and we’ve published.

Gregg Stebben So in a month, in a month, you have a dozen or 14 interviews in the can. You have what we’re talking about. So imagine you had a specific target in mind in your industry. And I think this doesn’t really apply to you per se, but imagine you’re in financial services or the fertilizer business, whatever, whatever it is, whatever your niche is, hopefully you know very specifically what your niche is, so you know who you need to reach. Go get those 14 interviews with some of your friends who have good market value, who have, frankly and this is the important part, flattered to be talking to you because you have a podcast and they don’t.

Peter Winick Or even it might be that they do and their podcast, their audience and now you’re exposing them to cross-pollinating.

Gregg Stebben I mean, either way, I mean it’s the same principle, right? But you put in the legwork to do what you’ve done. Peter Yep. And then at the appropriate time, use your podcast. Don’t call the person you want to have the pit you want to make the pitch to or make the sales call to and say, Can I get an appointment to give you the pitch or the sales call? And you have your producer call and say, we’d like to interview you on the Thought Leadership Leverage podcast.

Peter Winick Exactly.

Gregg Stebben And it’s a completely different conversation. And then when that person gets on your podcast and is being interviewed by you, they’re going to tell you all kinds of things they wouldn’t have told you in a sales call because it’s not a sales call Would Exactly. And they want the world to know the stuff that’s most important to them, which is also just coincidentally what you want to great advice.

Peter Winick So let me let me drill down onto a couple of things you touched on earlier. So at Forbes, you focus on authority marketing and we could debate. Is that different than content marketing or thought leadership marketing? It’s in the same sort of wheelhouse, if you will, in terms of.

Gregg Stebben Yeah, I don’t even I don’t even want to have that debate. You can have that debate with somebody else.

Peter Winick And then I know my point wasn’t the debate, but, but it’s basically taking folk with deep folks with deep expertise and helping them get to a wider platform and leveraging their content and their IP forms, as you know, is nothing short of a stellar brand. Right? So they’ve been around and I was fortunate, like I said, to meet you down at the Forbes author event, and Steve Forbes was there. It’s pretty impressive. UN be? Well, I don’t know if I can actually speak on behalf of Forbes, but you’re probably getting more people asking you to publish with you. Then you’ll accept. So how would I, as a budding author, speaker, thought leader, position myself now so that when the time is right for me to write the book and I wanted to be part of a Forbes imprint because of the brand cachet, etc., to separate sort of the signal from the noise. What do I do to make myself attractive to you? That sounds like an odd thing after you mentioned Vincent Price’s virginity, but. You really can’t.

Gregg Stebben Have that story like that. So if we get bored, I’m just going to namedrop, you know, Stephen King and Elizabeth Taylor, because that’s what I used to do was interview people. I still interview people I used to.

Peter Winick And if we and we can take up, you know, a five second moment of silence and memory of each of our loss of virginity, but I think we will not do them.

Gregg Stebben Let’s save that for another podcast or maybe an Anderson Cooper. Stormy Daniels other conversation. So the here’s the thing that I think is fascinating about what we’re doing at Forbes Books. And I think it’s really important to recognize the first thing is really to answer your question. Forbes books is not the same thing as Penguin books. So I’ve been published by Penguin Books. I’ve been published by Harper. I’ve been published by. Most of the biggest publishers in New York. I love the Forbes books model better, a lot better. And I’ll tell you why. Because when you unless you’re already a rock star. When you publish a book, the traditional way the conversation goes something like this, let’s publish a book. Here’s a book. Okay. Publish the book. Do you notice anything missing in that conversation? I’ll tell you what’s missing because it’s driven me crazy 17 times. The conversation should go like this. How are we going to sell the book? Right. What’s the business goal of the book? That conversation doesn’t happen unless you’re already John Grisham or Seth Godin.

Peter Winick When I say all the time.

Gregg Stebben And the publisher doesn’t.

Peter Winick Have it, he gets the one business where if you and I decided we’re going to open a bakery, the first thing we’d figure out before we put our money on the table our time and energy in is how many donuts do you think we can sell in a day, or do we need to sell in a day to stay alive?

Gregg Stebben And then we know how much flour to buy and we know how many employees to hire. So I have a friend who’s who at one time was the fastest growing small book publisher in New York. He’s not he doesn’t he would still have that title except the outgrew small publisher. I mean, he’s his company is hugely successful in the world of book publishing. It’s not Forbes books. It’s a traditional publisher. And I every time I see him and I’ve had his company publish books, I’ve published books with him. But I tease him every time I see him. Very good friend of mine. I always say, you are in the craziest business in the world because you produce a product that has 50,000 individual parts that have to be put in for exactly the correct way. And you don’t even know how many people want the product.

Peter Winick So tell me what But again, tell me what is it that I need to do? So if Forbes Books is to use the analogy of the Olympics and I’m a decent, you know, pick a sports skier, what do I need to do to get into Forbes Olympic shape so that at that point in time, I’ve got what Forbes is looking for? Because, you know, I think there’s a misperception in the world that, I’ve got this brilliant idea and I’ll just go shop it to all the publishers and they’ll, you know, they’ll fight over me, like you said, unless your name’s Godin or Gresham or your. You ran for president. And that ain’t going to happen in this lifetime.

Gregg Stebben Or let’s not forget about Winick. He’s got a great name too. So really? So the point I was trying to make here is that for Forbes books, we want to publish books by people who are thought leaders. And have an idea or at least open to the idea of how they’re going to successfully market their book. And it’s probably not becoming a New York Times bestseller because you’re probably in a net. So let me.

Peter Winick Pause you and unpack that. So what you said there is remarkable for on a couple of levels. And number one, A, you’ve got to be a thought leader. So to me, that means you’ve got to have amazing content. You’ve got to have something to say. You have to be able to say in a different way. It’s got to be thoughtful. However, we want to define that. And that’s where most people stop, where you move to, which is where I rarely hear folks talk about as they’re moving into the space, as content experts is, and you’ve thought about how to market it and drive it, etc.. Not at the New York Times bestseller list level because The New York Times bestseller is Yeah, nobody doesn’t want that. But all that really means from an algorithm perspective is you figured out how to sell somewhere between 10 and 13,000 books during the course of the week, distributed over all the channels, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, there are more New York Times bestsellers today than ever before because everybody knows how to sort of play that game. You’re looking for a book that is a product that has a lifespan beyond the ten days you tried to dig the list or something, is that correct?

Gregg Stebben Well, and it might be that. So let’s be really realistic about this. Your reason for writing this book should be that it L. Remember when I said authority, marketing authority, branding your reason for writing your book? I’m speaking kind of generally here. I mean, there’s room for variation, but. But, but the big idea is your reason for writing the book is that it’s going to elevate you in the eyes of a certain group of people, and that elevation is going to bring you. More speaking gigs, a higher price on speaking gigs, whatever. Whatever it is, it’s that elevation.

Peter Winick So we’ve got to have a market specific.

Gregg Stebben Yes, a specific population.

Peter Winick And you’ve got to have a vision around what success looks like. So basically what you’re saying is as a result of publishing this book and it being successful, I will do X to Y, right? Y is right. Write specific target market, raise my fee, attract more clients. Be able to speak more, whatever the case may be. And that’s not a place that a lot of folks spend a lot of time because they’re so deep in their expertise and they’re so deep in their content. And I’m not advocating lighten up on that, because that’s just unfortunately, table stakes. You got to do that. But that in and of itself is going to lead you to be, you know, the Lake Wobegon reality of averages. Right? The average business book sales, I think it’s 2000 units. That’s not a lot. So anyway, what else should I be doing to get ready?

Gregg Stebben Well, because of this, this is specifically answers that question because Forbes Books is unique from other publishers in another way, in that this is really important. Maybe your almost a thought leader. Maybe you’re aspirationally a thought leader, but you’re not there yet. One of the things. Coming to Forbes and talking about a book and hopefully for you hope eventually publishing a book with Forbes is worth marketers who publish. So maybe you don’t know what the marketing plan is, but you know, there should be one. You let us talk about you, your industry, your expertise, your aspirations, where you want to go. We’ve done this a few thousand times. We might be able to help you see where the marketing opportunity is and we might be able to execute it as well. And the reason I brought up the aspirational thought leader is this Maybe you’re trying to figure out your place in the ecosystem. You’ve got a great position. You’re committed, but you’re still you’re still working it out. Sure. I can tell you from the experience of writing 17 books that if you come to us with some of the pieces and we can help you put the rest of the pieces together and you start writing a book with us. In the process of writing the book, you were going to become the smartest guy in the industry, because writing a book forces you to learn stuff and think about stuff and work stuff out and talk to people. That those conversations and thoughts and collections of things in your head never would have come together if you hadn’t been forced to put it all together to produce that book. So this is rocket fuel.

Peter Winick And it’s a, you know, as you said, it’s a forcing mechanism with timelines and deadlines and others holding you accountable. So let me let me sort of flip this the other way. So I’m out there and again, I think many of the things that you’re talking about are relevant to folks, whether they’re with Forbes books or not. Right. I don’t want to make the shirts, of course.

Gregg Stebben Yeah. No, I mean, everything I’m saying applies to anybody. So. Yes.

Peter Winick So give me a sense of the things I should not do. Meaning, you know, time is time. Money. Energy is limited. So what are the things that you see lots of folks do that are moving into this space that either have neutral or negative impact. So, you know, there’s a Bob Newhart video of just stop doing that. Would you stop doing that advice?

Gregg Stebben I think the biggest problem people make today, and when I say people, I mean people, individuals, sole proprietors, thought leaders and even up to the organizational level, large organizations is they don’t commit. So I think if you’re going to do a podcast and you tell people you’re going to do a podcast, you better do a podcast. If you’re going to use Facebook aggressively, you better use Facebook, you better have a blog if you’re going to blog. I think one of the worst things you can do today is keep promising. First of all, it’s a it’s a lack of focus on your part. It’s terrible if you have people in your organization because they are you know, they they forget how to commit. But it also signals to the.

Peter Winick World how many times I know often for me, when I’m talking to a potential client, I’ll go and look at their stuff, look at their site, and, you know, they go on their blog. And the last post was August of 2014. That tells you, right? You go on their Twitter account and you can see, you know, sort of the then they moved to Twitter and they were tweeting 11 times a day, but haven’t done that in 11 years. To me, I think you need to stick to it. You know, at some point, if it’s not reaping benefits, don’t do it. But I think you need to stick to each of these activities longer than you would expect because none of these are get rich quick things under these are path to, you know, short term success. So you’re not going to blog five times and all of a sudden, you know, you know, the sun, the moon and the stars are just lining up. So everything’s perfect for you. You’re not going to do three podcast as a guest and, you know, the phone rings off the hook. It doesn’t happen. This is I always thought this is a long game. If you’re looking to get rich quick, you know, jump to Las Vegas and, you know, bet red or black or whatever. Good luck with that. Right. Put the energy in and the effort in and consistently do that. That’s great. Give me in the minute or two that we’ve got left, give me 1 or 2 other tidbits of either things to start doing or to stop doing or do less of.

Gregg Stebben Well, I think along the lines of what we were talking about, I think before you jump into something, whether it be a book, a blog, a podcast, Twitter, whatever it is, the reason anyone can start something and then realize it’s not valuable and stop. It’s not that that’s going to go away, but the level at which people stop and start is really the problem. And if you’re stopping and starting things over and over again, to me, I would take that as a clear sign that either I didn’t understand it to begin with. Or I didn’t have a plan for how it was going to be useful. And in today’s world of social media and social media is really about community. I think people forget that community means giving more than you take. And when I go to a company or a person’s Web site and I see what you described as they blogged a few times, they tweeted a few times, they Instagrammed a few times. I think what happened was they never intended to give. They only intended to take and there was nothing to take because they didn’t give. And that’s a that’s a fundamental flaw that needs to be addressed at a much higher level.

Peter Winick No, And I love sort of the spirit of content generosity. So as we close up, if people want to find out the punch line here of how Vincent Price lost his virginity, how do you think you might?

Gregg Stebben And I don’t remember, but I actually was just thinking about this over the weekend and thinking, I’ve got to go find that interview. I should start podcasting my old interviews. And so that may be a project for me.

Peter Winick And there’s a hashtag in there somewhere. But. Okay, if you want if you’d like to find that out. Or more importantly, if you want to know how.

Gregg Stebben I lost my virginity, I will be happy to share.

Peter Winick There you go. Or if you want to get in touch with Greg and find out about Foreign book, what’s the best way to do that? Greg?

Gregg Stebben Yeah. Come find us. Forbes Books icon slash radio. And by the way, we’re, you know, just as the Forbes books model is open to people who are looking at how to be a thought leader. The podcast has been a great way for us to meet those people, too. So if you think you might be a good guest, come to the page. Forbes books.com/radio, go to the bottom, hit the Contact Us button and if we think it’s a good fit, we’ll invite you to come online and do an interview. Well, that’s great.

Peter Winick I appreciate your time, your insight. You certainly have a great vantage point and perspective and you’ve been on the author side of this, and then you spend your days working with authors and thought leaders. So lots to unpack here. And I appreciate your generosity of sharing and being here with us today. So thank you so much for your time.

Gregg Stebben Greg You bet, Peter. It’s great to be here.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. To reach me directly, feel free to email 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.