Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 30 – John Baldoni

Peter Winick

A journalistic writing style can be an effective method for cutting through the noise in the internet’s overcrowded blog world.

Internationally recognized executive coach and leadership educator John Baldoni joins Peter this week to discuss modern publishing, and give new thought leaders an idea what to expect when you publish your first book.

Learn how to reach a wider audience by stepping outside traditional publishing, and listen in for more great insights from John!

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, this is Peter Winnick. I am the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, and you’re joining us today on our podcast, Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today my guest is John Baldoni. John is an internationally recognized leadership educator, an executive coach, and he speaks throughout North American Europe. He’s authored more than a dozen books. That in and of itself is a monumental task. They’ve been translated into 10 languages. He was named a top 100 speaker in 2018. And in 2018, Trust Across America honored John with his Lifetime Achievement Award. His work’s been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Blumberg Business Week, et cetera. I am blessed that I have met John a while ago and we’ve shared a client or two along the way and have been exposed to not just his work, as I was a fan before I met him, but the way that he works in person as opposed to just the written word. And I think you’ll have a lot to learn from John. This is John, thanks for joining us.

John Baldoni Thank you, Peter, to Mutual Admiration Society. I really like the work that you’ve done. You’ve carved out a good niche that helps people like me get our messages out, and it’s good to know that we have folks like you and your organization on our side. So I’m pleased to be here.

Peter Winick Well, thanks. And we can end there on a high note. It’ll be the world’s shortest podcast. I appreciate that. Thank you. So let’s the audience here are people like you, john, these are smart people. These are thought leaders, they’re writers, they are coaches, they’re consultants, etc. Paint a picture for us of sort of the planet Baldoni. What does that look like? What are all the things happening in that universe?

John Baldoni you know purpose statement if you will. My work is to help men and women learn to live and lead more purposefully. So how do I do that? Well my vision is that’s essentially what it is to help people become more effective as leaders and managers. My mission is that I do that by being a teacher, a writer, a speaker, and an executive coach. Um, and so I do things like, you know, I give keynote presentations, I give workshops, I write books, I right articles, I do videos. So those are my tactics. My mission stays the same, uh, as does my vision, but I’m always trying to improve my tactics I’m always. writing about topics that interest me. I devolved over time when I first started writing these things. My first book is almost 20 years ago. I was sort of infatuated with kind of recipes about how to do things and that worked for a while. Now I don’t know if I’ve matured or devolved. Doing I’m trying to be more issues oriented. Part of it’s due to the climate in which we’re in. I’m writing, and I have the opportunity to speak on this too, but I’m more interested in the role that ethics plays in leadership and what it takes to be an effective and credible and authentic leader. And so those are things that fascinate me. I, and as you know, I mean, I go to market in a lot of different ways, but I’m getting my message out. Of course, I’m fortunate to write for Forbes and have for quite some time, privacy to that, I’ve written a lot things for HBR, but you know I write for new things. My video work, which is coaching-oriented, is syndicated by Smart Brief, and so every month there’s two new videos come out every couple weeks. And I’m also looking for new outlets. Interestingly enough, I discovered infographics belatedly, so I’ve been turning a lot of some of my white papers and articles into infographics, which is actually going over quite well. And it’s just real simple. I’m not using a lot of visual abstracts. I might have kind of like more visualizations, you could call them poster style, rather than. But they seem to get the message across and they do it in ways that make my particular point. They give it a little visual pizzazz, but they make it accessible and therefore easy to implement and actionable.

Peter Winick Got it, so lots to unpack there, let me attempt. So first off, the core essence around increasing the purpose and ethics in business and all those things, that doesn’t change, right? That’s sort of the core of who you are and everything that you do sort of stems from that. Then what I heard is we’ve got the various formats, the modalities, right, you teach, you write, you speak, the executive coaching, and then you threw in a couple others in there towards the end, you threw the video which I wanna touch on. And the infographics and one of the things that I recommend a lot in the clients that I work with is it’s not only the new idea because creative people thought leaders tend to sort of be overly not overly creative. But if you clear their calendars for a month, and I said to you, hey, john, what are you going to do? You’re probably not going to come back to me and say, I did some business development or I did some marketing, right? There’s probably 50 articles that you want to write or another book that you want to do something along those lines. But what’s beautiful about infographics is You’re taking. content that you know has already resonated with the population in one modality, maybe it was in writing or in a speech that you did, and basically porting it over into a different way to communicate the same piece that’s more visual, which might lend itself to social and maybe millennials, et cetera. But is that right? you’re repurposing it, you’re not necessarily creating a whole new.

John Baldoni I mean, I may come up with an original infographic, but for the most part, it’s adaptations of ideas expressed in a book or an article.

Peter Winick Right, which is awesome because then it’s just another door. And I’m always sort of working with folks to say, the more doors that you have to enter into your sort of universe, the better. So if somebody’s first hook to you is a book, that’s a bit of a commitment. 300 pages, 250 pages, seven hours of my time. But if the first thing that sort of stopped and got my attention was an infographic, and then I clicked and I clicked, and I click, There’s so much more that you have to offer. And it’s just another door, right? It’s not going to be the beginning and the end of a potential relationship with a client or a reader or whatever. So I love that. Then you mentioned video. So that was the first thing that you mentioned outside of teaching, writing, speaking, and executive coaching that is not dependent on you being in the same room when you’re delivering it. So tell me about what you’re doing on video and what the model is and what goals are out there. Let me clarify a little bit.

John Baldoni Let me clarify a little bit. When I say I speak, I coach, and I teach, those are my core strategies. Those fulfill my mission, all right? The video, the books, all of those kinds of things. I mean, they’re processes, my writing and video, it’s an acting. Those are ways of getting my message out. So I’ve been doing video now for I’ll bet you 10 years now. And so, and I’ve been, my stuff’s been syndicated on Smart Brief, which I highly recommend anybody to sign up for, because it’s free, and they have some major channels related to, certainly one called Smart Brief Leadership, get that, Smart Brief Workplace, and then some other channels too. But then many, many business channels related to individual industries. they’re always looking for content. So the videos work for me. I’m a coach. So people need to see and they see how I express myself. So hopefully those messages are accessible and people like them. I’ve been doing them for, you know, a while now and the reaction seems to be positive.

Peter Winick Got it. So similar to, let’s say being a contributor at Forbes, video is another way to get the brand out there, get exposure, but you have the visual, obviously, so people can sort of look in your eyes and see your energy level and all that sort of stuff as well. So is the purpose of video as a tool for you is really the brand building and the marketing? I’m not monetizing them, no.

John Baldoni it’s more brand building. And I, you know, call me naive, I really, of course, all of this stuff is brand building, Peter, let’s not kid ourselves. But I always go in with the idea of trying to educate people, trying to help them in an avenue. And from that, that’s my mindset. And that from that attitude, I think good things happen. Because if you Think only of brand building and all of those kinds of things which are important and diminishing them but that’s kind of a selfish enterprise and it can be very frustrating so if you think of more of it is the process of giving it’s a more enriching experience.

Peter Winick Got it. But the giving, and I understand that, but the giving that you’re doing, ultimately you have choices to make every day. And there has to be some return on that. It doesn’t have to be financial. It could be, if you said to me, listen, Peter, I haven’t made a nickel on video and I spend 20 hours a month on it, but I love it. I just love doing it. And it forces me to be crisp and articulate and it connects to my speaking. That’s all fine too. it has to have some…

John Baldoni It has to fulfill something. It’s both self-enriching, because I take satisfaction of it, but it’s also good. It’s another way of me getting my message out, and when I get my message, I know people are taking away something positive from it. So that’s a dual form of fulfillment, if you will.

Peter Winick got it. So given that the vast majority of your content is out there in the written word, right? So because we can’t memorialize a speech unless we videotaped it or something. And you’ve been writing books for 20 years, and you’ve written a bunch of them and you’re a contributor at many, you know, HPR and Forbes, etc. Give me a sense of your perspective of the publishing universe today, sort of a loaded. I’ve had many discussions.

John Baldoni I always invite, first of all, anybody in our position, yours and mine, it’s valuable to write your message and get it out and publish it in however many formats there are. To be honest, I think there’s too much content out there. I mean, the business has changed since when I started blogging 15 years ago. And, you know, I hit the curve at the right time, perhaps. Um, but if I were advising a young person or whatever, I would, I would never say, don’t write. I would just say, be more selective on what you do. Right. And have an editor with you who can help you just don’t, um, write from a knowledge standpoint, you know, beam in when you’re starting out, be more journalistic. So what do I mean by journalistic? much less you and much more reporting on the issue. You can give your, you can report the facts and give your spin on it, but if it’s just spin, which so many blogs I read are, why bother? So I say, you know, discipline, research the topic. You can write from experience, obviously, you now, either, you no, disguise an identity or whatever you have permission to do. but always be less of you and more of your message and back it with factual materials, statistics, data, things like that.

Peter Winick And what you say is amazing because I think what happens today, because we have all these tools and they’re virtually free and everybody could be a media empire or whatever, there’s a lot of crap out there. There’s a lot noise. And that editorial process, which was really a selection process, forget about the craft piece here, but selecting what goes in and what doesn’t. Because there was a much higher cost of publishing when it was in print or a book or whatever. you had to make those selections to serve your audience. And that function has been eliminated for most bloggers, right? So now you have a 23 year old or a 43 year old for that matter that comes onto the scene and all of a sudden puts a stake in the ground. I’m the expert on this. And it’s like, what, who are you? Like, I love the idea of starting this from a journalistic perspective and being able to tell the story with some research and some rigor or whatever. And then maybe being humble enough to sort of grow into. that thought leadership piece, everybody wants to start and say, Oh, I’m a I’m, a thought leader. And I’ve written on this as well. Don’t ever call yourself that ever, ever calling yourself a guru or the car salesman telling you to, you know, trust me as the oil is leaking at the bottom, but starting at the journalists as through the eyes of a journalist, that’s I love that.

John Baldoni resonated with you, and I agree with you. It’s funny. I have been called a leadership expert by others. I remember I’ve been quoted all over by publications worldwide and whatever, but I remember one of my favorite publications is the Atlantic, and they quoted me something I had written on an issue. And they said, and my attribute was, I think they mentioned I was an author, but a self-described leadership expert. So I really felt, I thought, oh man, I wrote back. I said, I’m not the one calling myself that. Others do that, you know, but.

Peter Winick But today it’s easy. You can just say, well, they’re fake news and it doesn’t matter what they think.

John Baldoni That’s kind of funny, but I do agree with…

Peter Winick said, Peter.

John Baldoni Yeah, if you call yourself an expert then

Peter Winick But let me continue with that thought, because you’re at this 20 years, you’re at this a long time and you even though I would say you’re quite humble, you are one of the best in the business in terms of the, the, quality of the content, the quantity of the content, that the, perspective, the point of view, things that you put out there, well, I’ve never seen anything that you put it out there and said, wow, John had a bad day, but you take pride in what you do. Um, when you get there. Oh, my pleasure. When you get there, how do you decide sort of what lanes to stay in and what not to write because you’re known as a leadership expert, the focus on purpose with a focus on ethics and business. There’s so many other things that you can chat about and talk about and might be passionate about. How do you decided when to stay on your lane and when to maybe get outside of that? That’s a really good question.

John Baldoni good question it I write about things that move me and so you know I’m not you know I not an expert in and I try to stay in my own lane so I know about leadership or so recently I’m intrigued with ethical issues okay because that’s a natural bridge X era Avenue of exploration for me because leadership without ethics is no leadership. So exploring that topic. is fine. And the issues of the day like the Me Too movement or our tribalism, our echo chamber, fake news, all of those things kind of fall within a purview of how I cast it. Now if I of vehicles, well that would be fine, but that would kind of be confusing and it wouldn’t be from a leadership perspective. So I would almost have to, I might use a pseudonym if I were doing it.

Peter Winick And I think the confusing piece is right because you might not like to think of yourself as a brand, but there’s a certain expectation that I have when I pull up the latest article from you or open the next book or whatever of what’s going to be broadcast from sort of that channel, right? And what you said makes sense, leadership and if you’re going to touch on me too and things that are going on, that all connects. But if all of a sudden you’re writing about, you know, late sixties, you’re American hot rods or something because you live in Michigan. I kind of get it, but it wasn’t what I expected. And I don’t want to be surprised, right? I want something that meets an expectation. And because you’ve built a following, I want to hear what you have to say.

John Baldoni Yeah, that’s a very good point of view and it’s kind of like think some things I’ve wrestled with in my career because I would, you know, my original career was marketing communications, writing and all of those things. So that’s hence I migrated that area. But you know when I went back to school and became educated in different areas, I had to recast myself and so people who knew me as a communications person were distant to the idea of me being an executive coach. So that took a long time. For new people, they didn’t know anything. So that was fine. But for old people, I had one client that it took me 10 years before they would accept me as something else.

Peter Winick Well, because first impressions, right? When you first came on the scene, they knew you as a Markham guy. And now all of a sudden, you’re the artist formerly known as whatever. You know, of course it’s gonna take a while, but the new folks, as you mentioned that you, that came to you at that point, they didn’t know that history. And it wasn’t that you were hiding that history, but you had the goods to back up what you were moving towards.

John Baldoni I think within the genre that I’m in, I can flex myself. I have fun writing, choice of vocabulary or words. I also challenge myself. I can, at times, if I want to be lighthearted, I can do that. I sometimes get pushback from my editors on that, but I can have my own channels if I wanted to do it. But no, you raise a really good point about being consistent. with who you really are because there’s an expectation.

Peter Winick What else would you comment on with regards to the state of the publishing universe today so from your first book 20 years ago to your last one a couple years ago what are the two or three sort of incredible differences as an author.

John Baldoni Well, it’s interesting, and almost as I think about it, I don’t have another book in the works. I may at some point, but I’ve written a lot of them. But my first book was self-published, and I highly recommend that because I learned the nuts and bolts of publishing, at least as it was 20 years ago, and it’s changed. And then I went with McGraw-Hill and then Amicom and others. but I think it’s much easier to get your content out there. To me, the biggest advantage of working with a recognized publisher is one thing is interesting. Someone told me this a long time ago and it gets tied to our conversation. Publishers, for the most part, do not have a brand. Authors do. So, for example, Stephen King went from one house to Simon & Schuster or vice versa, whatever. Who cares?

Peter Winick But wait a minute, let me push back on that because I agree with it 1,000%, but the argument that I hear, which I think is false, often is, oh, I have a choice to make as an author, right? I can go with a big New York publishing house or self-publish as they sort of snootily look down their nose. And everybody knows the McGraw-Hills or the Wiley’s or whatever, those brands, those really make a difference. And my argument is exactly what you said. It’s like, wait a moment, I don’t buy a book from McGraw Hill, I buy. John Baldoni because I want to know what he has to say. And quite frankly, I don’t care who the little logo is on page seven. And you know, it that doesn’t matter to me. What matters is you’ve got the brand, you’ve got something to say, and not that the, you know a big, newer publisher would put crap out there. But I’m not you know just because they published another author I like doesn’t mean that they’re gonna give me somebody else I like. And I think that’s you hit on it on and I think it’s just Such a false…

John Baldoni I totally agree, now I mean I think there are the New York houses that you mentioned and so what I would call it as a credibility factor, is there a difference between currency and McGraw-Hill? Well one specializes in trade, another one doesn’t, so yeah, but that’s a credibility factor and if you want back and forth between them, who cares? But people want a book by the author, not by the publisher.

Peter Winick And given that, depending on what numbers you read, 35 to 50% of business books are digital, I think I’m one of the only dorks left that when I open a book on my Kindle, I go back to the filler pages to see who the publisher is because I’m curious. But I think, I would argue that I’m in the very, very, very, very small minority of people that are dorky enough to do that. You might be- I do exactly the same thing.

John Baldoni but I do exactly the same because we are in the business, that’s why, but I don’t think everybody else cares, so.

Peter Winick Well, thank you for that. And anything else on the publishing side that is radically different or painfully different today than it was in the past?

John Baldoni You know, from when I started 20 years ago, obviously there was Amazon, but there wasn’t Amazon self-publishing, as it was, and Amazon has been both, you know, the best thing that really has happened to business authors has been Amazon, because you can get your message out there and your books, in a way, stay perpetually in print. Not exactly, but they can be. So that’s a good thing. I think the thing is, is I always tell people, if you’re going to, I usually have this kind of Much many fewer of these conversations than i used to so i think the buzz is off of business book publishing so. I think that if you have an idea and you want to turn into a book fine you should go for rest assured that you’re probably not going to make any money from it but that’s okay because it will help because first of all you have any idea that you wish to share with others want to help somebody with your. point of view. And if you don’t, then why are you writing a book? Secondly, it will give you a credential that will give you, you know, a sort of a badge of you’ve accomplished something. So that’s good, but don’t expect to make any money from it. So that in fact, it may cost you money.

Peter Winick Well, even if you publish with a big house because there used to be these things that have gone extinct like the dinosaur called, you know advances, you So without an advance and the burden of marketing even at the big houses Especially at the Big Houses being pushed on the author. It’s not that it’s just going to You know, it will cost you money because if you don’t invest in the market, it’s gonna die. That’s where you help it’s going to die on the line.

John Baldoni That’s where you help authors, you know, the great work that you do. It’s absolutely because promotion is so critical. You have to get your message out there. And so it’s important. That is going to be an investment and that’s going come out of your own pocket.

Peter Winick And the reality is, and we’ll just sort of end on this piece on the publishing side here, is there is not alignment between the goals and objectives of success for the author and the publisher. So for an author, for example, it might be, it forces me to get it out there, it’s a brand builder, it’s about the cachet, and the monetization is once removed, right? So I’m gonna spend. whatever, $50,000 launching a book, blah, blah. But I’m a speaker, I’m an executive coach, and all I need is X number of those engagements to break even, or to be profitable. But the publisher says, jeez, we’ve got these costs, and we’ve get this. If we don’t sell 10,000 units in the first year, we got burnt on that. And that misalignment is getting further, and further, and further and further apart today. And as the author, you’ve got to have in your bag of tricks, what’s the monetization strategy? Or if there isn’t one. being aware of that and saying okay this is why I’m doing that it’s one of the reasons I’m put on the planet or I’m passionate about it etc but the monetization strategy for almost everyone today is not number of units sold times some sort of a you know

John Baldoni Right. And there’s something else that someone I knew told me or a respected author and speaker told me that the speaking business and the writing business or authorship are two completely different businesses. And that’s true. It reinforced your point. that there are different hats that you wear, but there’s also different ways of going to market. Just because you have a book doesn’t mean you’re gonna be a good speaker or even be hired as a speaker. And just because there’s a speaker doesn’t means you’re going to be able to write a book. So there are two different ways to go about it.

Peter Winick disciplines there well and even from a skill set perspective some of the world’s greatest writers I remember years ago when Malcolm Gladwell first came on the scene I got to see him speak and I loved everything he was doing and he was an awful speaker and then I was like Of course he is he’s sort of this nerdy super smart Introverted guy that works as a New Yorker, but he worked at it And then I saw him three years later, and he is as good of a speaker as he is a writer But they’re very different skill sets. Yes, right and people just they’re not They’re not the same, you could be an amazing speaker, charisma, energy, passion, whatever, but the ability to put thoughts to paper in a coherent way, not so good. Anyway, we’re running out of time here. I could talk to you for hours as I’ve had, and I feel like I’d be breaking open a bottle of red shortly if we continue, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. As we sort of wrap up here, John, how do people find you, how do they follow you?

John Baldoni How do they get in touch with you? Well, good. My name is my website, johnbaldoni.com. I also have an archived blog site, which is johnbaldonyblog.com, and on the blog site are links to my infographics. Um, but also check if you just Google my name, you know, and Forbes will come up or Google my name and Smart Briefs and it’ll come up. So I’m pretty accessible and I appreciate anyone taking the time to look up. And if they’re interested, write me a note and, um, I can put them on my newsletter.

Peter Winick And I can tell you firsthand from my experience, John is the real deal. From a coach perspective, speaking perspective, to an author, he’s one of the best in the business. And if you haven’t read his work or been exposed to it, I would strongly urge that you do so now. So anyway, thank you so much for sharing so much with us today, John. Lots to learn, lots to learn from you today, and I appreciate your time.

John Baldoni Well, thank you very much, Peter. You know, I’m a big fan of yours, and it’s an honor to be on this program. So thank you.

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 thoughtledershipleverage.com, and please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.