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Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 52 – Lee Caraher
A true thought leader is generous with their thoughts, inspired in their solutions, and gracious and eager to help others learn to do the same.
Our guest this week is Lee Caraher, President of Double Forte and author of “Millennials & Management.” Today, she shares her experience leading and working with millennials, and discusses what it takes to create a thriving business in today’s intergenerational talent landscape.
Lee also talks about what it feels like to have a book deal dropped into your lap, and why you need to master your content space. Listen in, and learn for yourself!
If you’ve got solutions to business’s top problems, you could be an Accidental Thought Leader! Read our blog and find out more.
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’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on our podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest, let me give you a little tee up on Lee because Lee’s a fascinating and fun person. Lee Caraher is the CEO of Double Forte PR and Digital Marketing, which she’s an acclaimed communication strategist. She’s got an amazing PR and digital marketing firm out in the Bay Area and also I believe in the Boston metro area.
Lee Caraher And New York!
Peter Winick New York. That’s right. I forgot. You’re right here, too. Lee has sort of, not intentionally, I would say, but wrote two books. One is called Millennials in Management, although it was intentional when she actually wrote them. And then the other one was called The Boomerang Principle. So welcome, Lee. Thank you for joining us today.
Lee Caraher Peter, it’s awesome to be with you. Thank you so much for having me.
Peter Winick Cool, so let me just dive right in because I sort of have a place that I think I’d like to go today, given that you and I have a bit of a history in a good way. So a lot of people get into the space and it’s by design. I want to be an author. I want be a speaker, right? That’s not Lee’s story, right. So tell everyone, like, how the hell did you get here?
Lee Caraher Sure. So, well, I got a book deal by accident, which doesn’t happen very often with your friend, Jill, your friend Jill. And I was actually meeting with her to talk about something totally different. And we had had we got interrupted by someone on her staff, who didn’t excuse herself, and she’s pretty rude. And when we and when this woman left our little space, Just you know, she’s like, oh my gosh, he’s morning And I said, Oh, what’s the problem? And she told me the problem. I said no, have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have you try this? She goes and she said, no, no. No. I’m like, well, here’s what I suggest. And I just said, you know, my company almost went under because I couldn’t figure out how to work with millennials. And then I read everything about them and it was, everything was so negative. I just decided that I’m not going to listen to anybody who was negative about it. We’re going to figure it out myself. And then she said to me, I will publish that book. And I was like, what book are you talking about? So that’s how I got the book deal, and I had to write it literally in four months, and then it came out less than a year after that conversation. And really it was a very practical, what I had learned by almost having my business go under, because I could not figure out how to reach, I could recruit millennials like nobody else.
Peter Winick So it wasn’t that you all of a sudden were either an academic that had studied the species millennial or this was a very practical right or a social scientist you this is pretty pragmatic you’re you’ve got a business with PR firm those of you that worked at have worked with PR firms know that they breed millennials right that’s without.
Lee Caraher Well, they breed people under 30, that’s for sure. Yeah, I was gonna say, right, right.
Peter Winick You know 30 and under is probably I don’t know what the percentage is but there’s a lot of young Yeah, 70% of that population are young so if you are the owner of a Rapidly growing PR firm in the Bay Area with a competitive marketplace and you can’t figure that out You just said, you know, I have two choices figured out or go out of business and the latter wasn’t an option. So What’s interesting is again not an academic background not a social scientist This wasn’t like oh, I’m gonna do a cool TED talk on this because everybody’s whining about it So you just did it and then randomly talking to a colleague, right, that was in a similar situation.
Lee Caraher Yeah, she had just published a book with them, yeah.
Peter Winick Yeah, yeah. So really, really interesting. So why don’t we get to number one, you started to solve the problem, and then you started to talk about it to friends and then that lead to speaking sort of take us down the path of how you go from being Lee, the CEO of Forte, which you still wear that hat, to Lee, author of Millennials in Management.
Lee Caraher So I think there’s two things on that. So when I first started researching, so you know, when I started my company, I didn’t hire anybody without 10 years of experience. So pretty much no one under 30. And then in 2008, we looked at the, everything cratered, I looked at business model because that’s what you should do as a business leader when you hit an economic thing of any size and say, is this model still relevant? And our model was not relevant anymore, would not allow us to be successful. And that’s when we decided we needed to hire young people. I had had a great experience with that. I had been known for people, you know, as the developer of people, all this kind of stuff, and then this failed miserably. And when I looked into it, everybody who was writing about it was those academics, was those journalists, was the people who are consultants and not actually running businesses. And I’m very different from that.
Peter Winick Some of us consult for a living, so be careful there.
Lee Caraher I understand that. However, they weren’t running businesses of these people, right? And they’re reporting on it and not in it. Yes. And I’m a member of Entrepreneurs Organization, which is the YPO for entrepreneurs. And it’s a very gestalt organization where you share your experience and here’s where and I was like, you know, this does not resonate for me. None of this stuff resonates for me as someone who’s been in business for over 25 years, who’s run, started her own company twice, blah, blah, bleh. And so when I decided to do, I mean, I was very excited. I mean I did want to write a book that wasn’t the book I wanted to write. And it wasn’t on my, I had a plan actually to write my first book in 2020. Got ahead of myself, which is great. And then I just basically looked at the market of who was talking about these topics and what could I offer that was gonna be very different. So there’s two things I could offer that was very different, everybody else writing about this, everybody talking about this. And one was, I’m a woman. and most of the people writing on this topic are men. And the other was that I’m a CEO founder and most is people talking about and actually running a business of these people.
Peter Winick So let me pause you there for a second because you’re ahead of 98% of the people that dive into the book space, right? Most people sort of dive in. No, and I mean this just from my observations sort of blindly, hey, I’m passionate about growth or execution or leadership, you know, whatever. And they don’t put on the business hat or even though they’re smart business people, they take off the business and they don t do an additive analysis, right. So if you’re gonna open a donut shop. in your community, you’d probably go look at the other donut shops and say, I’m gonna be an upscale one or a mass college town one or the branding’s gonna be this or whatever, you basically did that because you’re a business person first and said, ah, what’s my differentiator? I’m female, great, right? And I’m doing this from the place of, I have a laboratory where I can experiment every day, it’s called my business, right, as opposed to actually being me. Exactly. And that was your, basically your differentiator for the book.
Lee Caraher my differentiator. And then I had been in EO then for three years and I was really into the gestalt, share from your experience, don’t tell people what to do kind of thing. And so that’s where, and then I, the other piece of that was what, you know, what was my problem with business books? And I have, I’ve always had problems with business books, not because they’re not great. And I always should find a great kernel. I don’t think I’ve read a book in the business realm that I can’t get a kernel from you know that I can apply. But my biggest complaint about these books is that they’re written for the leader and not for the team. And so actually, I had two fights with my publisher, one on the title, which I really don’t like, but the sales people were like, we gotta tell people what it’s about. I’m like, all right. And then about the format, the format of the first part of the book is all of the data on why we’re here. And the back half of the book is what to do, and the back. page of the last page of every chapter is do’s and don’ts, both for managers and for employees. And when I sent in my transcript, they’re like, my manuscript, they were like, yeah, you need to drop one of those. You can’t have a book that’s an audience with two audiences. And I was like, you’re not getting it. The audience is the team.
Peter Winick No, so that’s I mean, and that’s fascinating, because most people attacking the millennial problem was sort of a seniority down. How are you how are you going to get that fall in line, blah, blah blah blah, and you almost approached it as this might not be the right analogy, but sort of a cultural we’re different, right? Absolutely.
Lee Caraher Absolutely, absolutely comfortable.
Peter Winick The way we take in information, and I’m speaking as a millennial, which I’m not right, but the way the millennial consume information might be different than the way us boomers do it, right? It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but you know, if you put it in the realm of cultural and say, wait, I could learn from them, they can learn from me, we’re all just different. So instead of just driving each other’s nuts, let’s just sort of understand that.
Lee Caraher Exactly. Cool. So I basically, they gave up on the title. I gave up in the title, they give up in the format and it’s basically, and frankly, when I started, um, talking and having people read the book, it’s actually doing better now than it did at the front. And it was a, it was top seller in a category for, you know, I don’t know, almost a year, um at the time, every team I go and talk to, they’re like, oh, wow, wow. God, finally a group, we get a book we can all read together and we can find ourselves in it and not just talk about other people. So that is really what I did. And then, um, from there it was like, how am I going to look different? And most people, you know, the big, the speaker circuit is more dominated by men than it is by women. And I have one of that. I do have my own imposter syndrome problem, which is ridiculous. I get it. It’s ridiculous, but I, you know, like, Oh, why would someone want to talk to me? I have a small company. That’s why they want you to talk to me. Cause my company is almost 16 years old. 95% of businesses don’t make it past three years. I have made it for 16 years. We have changed the business model twice. We are business, public relations, digital communications. Digital communication didn’t exist when I started my company. I started in my company before Twitter. So, you know, we’ve been through many transformations and that is a reason, and being confident of saying you should hear my story and I can, you can learn from my story. Not that I’m perfect, not that I have all the answers. But you can find a grain here that can help.
Peter Winick let me ask you this now. So now there is theoretically or hopefully a couple of folks out there that sort of fit into the lead bucket. Hey, I’m not really an author or a speaker. I’m just, you know, I own a business or a, you know, a mid level manager or whatever. They’re observing a real life problem. They have figured out a practical way to work through it, tackle it, win, right. And they want to share it. What would you what would you recommend to them? Because this wasn’t, you Your day job, if you will, is running your business. This was sort of a.
Lee Caraher Exactly.
Peter Winick a thing and it became a thing.
Lee Caraher My side hustle. Yeah, we know the side hustle, but at the same time, you know, which now has turned into a revenue generator for, you know, for the business. I think actually the evolution of where communications is going is around culture, all this kind of stuff. So it really, you know, um, I’m well-positioned. Uh, there’s no other agency in our business who has someone who’s an author on this topic that has hit number one in any category. So that’s good. But what I would do if I was, you know, if that was that person, I had things to share. I would start sharing them. You know, and the most important thing as a thought leader is to share, be generous with your thoughts, to be generous, with your help. And the more generous you are with them, the more the market returns to you. Um, but you have to be, generous in a relevant way, right? You didn’t have to me generous, you know, in the bathroom, you need to be generous in irrelevant way. So being really clear on who you’re trying to help, like this get niche, niche, niche, that down to say, who am I trying to help and what do I have to offer? And then how are you going to share? And there’s lots of ways to do that, but one is that content. What is that kind of going to be? You have to have a content strategy that you can deliver it and.
Peter Winick And just to clarify, this isn’t post book. So if you’ve got an idea that’s working and you’re playing with, you’re doing something cool in your company, you don’t have to go wait two years till you got a book out, right? You could- No, oh my gosh. It’s wet cement.
Lee Caraher Oh my gosh. I mean, I was, I did it back ass words, right? But I had the opportunity to write a book and that was going to be third party published that just literally fell into my lap. So, I mean in my second book, I was way ahead of myself. I’m not ahead, but I got into a better position than I was in my first book. But yeah, you start sharing. So I would say, you know, and the most important thing in the marketing side is that you own your own stuff, right. You own your own stuff because if the Facebook algorithm changes again tomorrow, You’re not dependent on them or the Instagram or the Twitter or whatever, right? So owning your own stuff is super important. You need to have your own URL. You need have a blog, it could be a podcast, I don’t care, but you have to have something that you own, that you control. and then leverage it into other people’s platforms, like Facebook, like Twitter, like Insta, like Pinterest, like LinkedIn. So you’re not in, you’re at the mercy of someone else changing their algorithm or purging millions of accounts overnight. Because they will. Because they will. Because they will right so I mean absolutely they’re gonna change You know Twitter’s change their algorithm four times this year No one talks about it because Facebook, you know is getting rid of Russians but So the first thing is one decide what you’re going to share and you I would say choose three or four Topics so that you don’t get bored on the topic and then just start just start sharing You can be and I would probably if I was going to start from scratch Create a website with if you can get your name even better. A lot of us can’t. I’m lucky. We care. No one else is a leaker apparently. So, and then just start sharing stuff. And not only your own stuff, but stuff that you appreciate from other people.
Peter Winick Well, that’s a key point. So the burden of you is not to, you don’t have to create everything. You could be known as someone.
Lee Caraher The Curator.
Peter Winick Yeah, curator and you add original there as well. So let me ask you this. So oftentimes when you hear that the CEO or founder of a company has written a book, the natural assumption is, you know, you’re the CEO of a digital marketing and PR firm. It’s gonna be 101 ways to be the best digital marketer. It’s going to be a connection there. Right. And then that sort of becomes your calling card. Right. If I’m an interior decorator, I’m going to write a book about, you know, the interior decoration. So your book is totally not related to what your firm does. It’s how you do it. So how, if at all has the success of the book and the speaking and all the things that happened with that helped your core business because that’s really, you know, where your bread is butter.
Lee Caraher Yeah, absolutely. So I think two things. One is, you know, we are a communication firm and we handle, we serve our clients by helping them with their internal and their external communications. Number one. Number two is that everybody is their own media channel today. So the actual practice of public relations has become actually dealing with people, not just arbiters like media and analysts, but actual people who have their own Facebook. You know, just think about Susan Fowler from the former Uber person. She puts something on Then she puts it on medium and boom Travis is gone. So everybody’s at their own media channels. So having a communication person be, you know, an expert in that, which I am, and then also running a business of the leadership is communication. And we see that more and more and more and those two things actually together are very symbiotic. So our business has What had happened is I deal with mostly with the CMOs and CEOs in our client base and the problem they had was not with the stuff we were solving for them in our services, but with their people internally. And our point of view on communication is that your first audience is your employee, which is not normal. I mean, we don’t see that often from PR firms. So if that is our differentiator in our business, this is a natural extension. So there’s some work that, it has been a calling card for, Because a lot of the work I talk about is just how to communicate, which I know a lot about.
Peter Winick But I would say in a competitive marketplace, anything to differentiate, right? There are a zillion firms out there and you’ve got your own pedigree and case studies and excellent work that you’ve done for a long period of time. But it’s yet another way, if we’re making the decision as a buyer, as a client to say, we’re gonna spend a couple hundred grand on a PR firm, we’ve got these three to choose from. Well, that Karaher woman, she’s a little nutty. Like, wait, she got this book and that’s really interesting and I like the way she thinks and she’s been in here to speak. I mean, it’s gotta be a tiebreaker in some instances.
Lee Caraher Absolutely. And I’m just sort of like the value add, right? Oh, and we get her along with it. Cause I don’t run any account here. And I think the it’s worked the other way when I’ve gone to speak and then they hire us a PR firm, but in general on the speaking, if I go in and I’m doing a pretty high profile culture consulting, well, it’s not really consulting, I’m really sort of the interim CEO’s chief of getting shit done, so excuse my language, um, for him while he’s in this interim role. I purposely say, I am not in the, I will not ask for, I will never bid for your PR business. I purposely said that so that people don’t even think about that. I’m there for the communication, internal reason. But what has happened when I have that point of view is because I’ve taken myself out of that PR market, my business, double forte business market, I get more referrals from the people I’m helping on the book side of my life because of that integrity line. So it’s sort of like just living into what the market wants to hear and see and not being a slime ball, frankly.
Peter Winick Which is probably always a good sort of rule to follow.
Lee Caraher Always a good idea!
Peter Winick I think that’s a.
Lee Caraher I’m a pro, a professional, let me tell ya. Don’t be a slimeball.
Peter Winick That’s another book. Is that the book that’s coming out in 2020?
Lee Caraher You know what? That could be my 2020 book. Don’t be a slime ball. Oh my god.
Peter Winick This means you and that’s probably not a big gift market for that book, right? We don’t want to go there
Lee Caraher Right? Exactly. This means you know, I think it’s a good it’s probably a good ghost market for that though. And if you get more than one, honestly put on your desk, you know you want to run, you know, that can be my marketing plan, right? Put this on the desk of someone you hate. Getting this in the office. Why does that happen? Why it keeps coming on my desk?
Peter Winick That’s funny. Anyway, so this has been awesome. So let me just sort of do a quick wrap up and then tell me if I missed anything. So one is the fact that, you know, if you’re able to crack a code in your business, even if it is beyond your domain or professional expertise, and there might be a thing there, and you know that by talking to friends and colleagues, feel free to share it and codify and do stuff with it, even If it’s outside of your world, and then take it where goes and take advantage of it and differentiate as a. and offering. Would you add something to that Lee?
Lee Caraher and I just think own your own content. content.
Peter Winick That’s true.
Lee Caraher And so you don’t need a book deal to make that happen. And then when you do just, book deals, you can publish your own book if you want, point of view of that, depending on who you are. But it’s very hard to get a business book deal without being known for something. And the fact that it just dropped in my lap, I mean, I think Jill had an opening in her slot for the next, I was just timing. It was just so serendipitous.
Peter Winick Serendipity is good, it’s not typically a strategy, but you know, things happen for a reason, so that’s cool.
Lee Caraher I think it’s too much of a strategy for some people and then I win the lottery and then right Yeah, cool
Peter Winick So how do people get in touch with you?
Lee Caraher The best way to see my stuff is go to LeeCarahur.com, L-E-E, C-A-R-A, H-E R.com. My blog is there, my books are there, my agency, you can get to that, my agency from there. And I tweeted at Lee Caraher and I’m on Instagram at Lee Caraher as well.
Peter Winick Cool. Well, thanks so much for sharing with us today. I think your path has been a different one. I think a lot of people can now relate to that because they haven’t heard a story similar to this that says, well, that sounds like me. And I’m so glad that you were here and that you’re able to share. And it’s been a great ride for millennials in management, as well as we didn’t talk much about your other book, The Boomerang Principle, but it’s a cool path and I’ve enjoyed having you on today.
Lee Caraher Thank you so much, Peter, it’s been a great thing to share with 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 thoughtleadershipleverage dot com and please subscribe to leveraging thought leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.
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