Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 111 – Jared Kleinert

Peter Winick

Leveraging Thought Leadership Episode 111 - Peter Winick and Jared Kleinert

Reputation is critical to be a great thought leader. Potential clients judge based on reputation as well as content, and it’s important to build a loyal audience. So, how do you build that network?

Our guest is Jared Kleinert, serial entrepreneur, TED speaker, and award-winning author of “2 Billion Under 20” and “3 Billion Under 30.” He’s been named USA Today’s “Most Connected Millennial,” and a delegate to President Obama’s 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

In this episode, Jared shares tips on building a world class network. How should aspiring thought leaders build their connections, and how can you best create a network that will increase your brand’s reputation?

Jared shares thoughts on the long game of being a thought leader, gives tips on why you should avoid asking for too much, and talks about why you shouldn’t take it personally if you get rejected. Listen in!

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 Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Jared Kleinert. Jared is an interesting fellow. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s a TEDx speaker, an award-winning author. He’s been named as USA Today’s most connected millennial and a champion for humanity by the UN and a delegate to President Obama’s 2013 Global Entrepreneurship Summit. So I could go on and on with his other accomplishments because they’re pretty long, but I want to sort of dive into it. So here we are. Welcome aboard, Jared, thanks for coming.

Jared Kleinert Yeah, thank you for having me on your show. And you know, above all else, I’m just a casual, fun-loving guy who enjoys fun conversations.

Peter Winick Cool. Well, we’ll see if we could do that. I think we can. So here you are, sort of in a place where you’ve accomplished a lot from a content to authorship. Speaker thought leadership side. Tell us a little bit about how that happened, how much of it was sort of accidental or luck and how much of it was deliberate in terms of the planning and all those sort of things.

Jared Kleinert Yeah, I think how you describe Leveraging Thought Leadership in your own work and through your company is probably how I stumbled on all of this. And so, you say leveraging and then thought leadership, which means you have to build some sort of thought leadership before that. And you turn ideas into businesses, you know, sort of you it’s, it’s not the other way around. And so my journey starts when I’m 15 and I try to start my first business when I was 15. Like anyone that starts a business at 15, it almost always goes poorly. And I made every mistake you could think of from not having enough capital to not really knowing my competition. At the time, the biggest mistake I made was poor mentor selection. And so I was trying to learn from people that weren’t thought leaders in the space that I was trying to plan, which was education and technology and the startup world. And so I spent six months hanging out with this guy, trying to learn business from him. It turns out that he had spent time in prison for securities fraud on Wall Street way before I knew him and hadn’t necessarily disclosed that information to me until about six months into our relationship. And I guess that there’s something to be said about people sort of doing their time after doing a crime and having a second chance. I certainly made plenty of mistakes on a daily basis for sure and try and make up for it. But after that was disclosed, I saw that there was a lot of poor integrity or low integrity moments in how we interacted, and I ran away from that and really focused on that issue.

Peter Winick So let me give you a pass on that, because you’re 15, so we’ll let you write that one with making a poor decision at 15. We could talk for hours and have a probably a separate podcast on the dumbest decisions we’ve all done at 15. That might actually be fun.

Jared Kleinert No, I did that before the social media. Some of us did that before social media, so we’re more free to talk about that. But let me know now what I would imagine one of the things you learned from that is, you know, you need to learn from other people. You need to partner with other people, be that on the publishing side, be that on the speaking side, be that whatever it is. I would imagine one of the things that you’ve done now is instilled some sort of processes or methodologies to say, Well, let me vet that person just a little bit because I like surprises when it’s my birthday, but not too much when it comes to the folks that didn’t tell me they were in prison. Yeah.

Jared Kleinert So that that really turned me on to screening people for integrity, first and foremost. And that is integrity as an individual, as a person know, are they a good person, which you want to put your family next to them, etc.. But also integrity of their thought leadership or of their knowledge in a space. And so, you know, if you’re relying on other people’s feedback and input to make business decisions like I was, I want to learn from people who are world class and what they do. And I don’t want to settle for anything less.

Peter Winick So how does one do that? Because I think it’s a great point. And I’ve seen this over and over again where really smart people start to go down a path and they might say, I think I’d like to write a book. I think I’d like to write be a speaker. I think I’d like whatever. And then they do what everybody else does and they do some research. And all of a sudden, you know, if you were to Google thinking about writing a book, there’s 8000 people that are willing to sort of, quote, help you for money. Right.

Jared Kleinert Right.

Peter Winick And how do you how do you sort of and there’s some like anything else, right? There’s good there’s bad and there’s ugly, but it’s a bit overwhelming, particularly if it’s your first time down this path. Right. That, you know, there’s certain things that we know, hey, if we’re going to go buy a car, here’s how we would check out which car is better. We’re going to go buy a television. Let’s go get some reviews. But it’s gets a little bit murky here. So how do you how do you navigate that?

Jared Kleinert Yeah, I would agree with you. And that’s why things like being a Ted and Ted Speaker, being an award-winning author, getting the sort of press that I’ve gotten know if you’re listening to this at home, this is part of why I thought leadership is so important and not just having the leadership of being recognized for your thought leadership in multiple ways. And so first is having social proof or having media outlets that are saying you’re good at what you do. Having other organizations basically vouch for you through their brands. And so even in this short intro that you gave me, I’m leveraging the brands of USA Today, Ted, the United Nations with President Obama. And, you know, that gives me some sort of trust, stability or likability or there’s some understanding with your audience that I’m not completely full of shit. And then there’s also another element of it, too, which is that you at home are being introduced to me and these concepts through Peter. And so there is a mutual trust that’s being established here. I am being introduced to you and I’m able to leverage the trust and intimacy that you have with Peter and that that I have with Peter. And so we’re starting our relationship from a much higher standpoint than if you just Googled me online. And so that’s great.

Peter Winick There’s a de facto I just want to add a sort of a thread to that jarred. There’s a de facto endorsement, if you will, right? Because I try my best to have folks on the show that have something to add to the conversation that are smart, that are willing to share, etc.. And I hope that by having a fairly rigid screening process, that there’s a little bit of a trust between not just you and I, which is important, but between myself and the audience saying, Hey, listen, if you’re going to give me 20 minutes of your time, I’m going to bring you really interesting people. Right. And they’re not used car salesmen. No offense to used car salesmen or. But you know that. So I think that’s part of it. So I love what you said in terms of the USA Today, Ted. I mean, those are not, you know, Obama, right. Those are not, quote, brands that lend their shine lightly to others. Right? So I know when I’m seeing a Ted talk, that doesn’t mean I love every Ted talk I’ve ever seen, but there’s a certain caliber of thoughtfulness, a certain caliber of, wow, that’s interesting. And there’s a certain set of expectations I’m going to have that it’s not going to be, you know, a bad stand up comic or something. So you have to that criteria. So yeah, I think that’s a great point.

Jared Kleinert And I’ve really great news for you and I have really bad news for you. And the really good news is that this becomes exponentially easier as you build your network and as you amass some of this thought leadership and recognition of your thought leadership. The really bad news and it’s also sort of like a house of cards situation where it might take you five, ten, 20 years to build up your reputation, become a recognized thought leader, and then, you know, 5 or 10 minutes can go by and you say something really dumb or you do something really wrong and you don’t get a second chance and you can’t make up for it. And so that’s why I’m increasingly obsessed with trying to do things the right way and then being mindful of how to course correct when I do make mistakes. Because, you know, these relationships with other thought leaders, with publishers, with media, with all the different people in your network, that will allow you to become a thought leader and become someone known as a subject matter expert. Know those relationships are really important, and playing the long game is really valuable. And I’m 23, so I haven’t had all the time in the world to sure play the long game. But I think it’s important whether you’re 23 or 30 2 or 65, you know, to think about the long game, especially if you have ambitions of publishing traditional book deals or if you have any anything that you would be covering on that show.

Peter Winick Yeah. So let’s talk about the long game a little bit because I think that is really wise, right? So oftentimes people are, you know, sort of transactional. Man, if I get a Ted Talk or a Ted talk or get this article published on Forbes or whatever it is, the next day, it’ll be, you know, rainbows and unicorns and, you know, I’ll have paparazzi following me. I think that you’re right that it’s incredibly hard to break into those. There’s a reason the bar is very high because you’ve got to have something to say and you have to have good stuff to say. And there’s plenty of other smart people out there. And I think by the time you’re able to break through a handful of those, there’s a bit of a flywheel effects like the ability to get your seventh placement is exponentially easier than your first one. The second one is a little bit easier than the first, the third one a little bit easier than the second, but you start getting into double. Digits. And not that I think easy is the wrong word, but much easier. So I love the concept of playing the long game because thought leadership as a business is a long game. Very, very, very, very few people can get into this space as a, quote, get rich quick piece. You have to think about this. And I always tell my clients 3 to 5 year cycles, 3 to 5 year cycles, it’s not it’s not going to happen overnight. So give me a little bit of thought, because given and I love, you know, you’re 23 and talking about the long game because that’s awesome. So you’ve hit it on the head side and you’ve had a bestselling book. Talk a little bit about the book and what that journey was like from sort of the light bulb going off in your head and then a bunch of stuff happens and then it comes out, the bunch of stuff happens is what I’m interested in. Don’t tell me that.

Jared Kleinert Yeah. So if we’re talking about the long game and you take nothing else from this conversation that Peter and I are having, the thing I would prescribe to you at home or at work is to build a world class network because you know who you know is going to determine what you know and what sort of thought leadership you’re able to both share and research and access. Then it’s also going to allow you to get these opportunities over time because it’s other people that are going to write about you or other people that are going to sign those checks for those deals and or pick you to speak, etc.. And so, you know, you asked about how I got a book deal, how I got Ted Talks, all that. It was really, you know, all through my network. And so, you know, coming off of the negative mentor experience, I looked to Forbes actually, and various other media outlets that were talking about other thought leaders. And this was when I was only time out.

Peter Winick So when you’re 16. So I just want to because this is really interesting to me. Most 16 year olds, their networks are a bunch of 16 year olds. Clearly, you didn’t get to Ted or get a book published because your 16 year old friend said, Let’s go, let me go walk into Random House. So there’s a piece there where you had to, I’m assuming and I want to hear about this, make a deliberate effort, strategy, etc., to develop a network that could be supportive of your objectives and goals. So tell me about that a little bit.

Jared Kleinert Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to launch into. And it starts with, you know, being 16 and not, not just having a network of 16 year olds, but having a negative network because the only person in the business world I knew was a former white collar convict and had spent time in prison for Wall Street activities. And so I’m reading an article in Forbes and I’m trying to self educate on that. And you can access other thought leaders through this. You know, you can have virtual mentors that never meet and learn from what they put out. So that’s really important to think about as a leader and as someone trying to access it. But I read an article about this, this gentleman specifically who is called the most connected man you don’t know in Silicon Valley. And long story short, you know, everyone in Silicon Valley who was a co-founder of companies like PayPal or Who or people like Tim Ferriss, they all knew who this guy was and he offered them overwhelming value. And. Right. I hosted these really fun dinner parties. And so I just reached out to my sense of a cold email and ended up offering to work unpaid in exchange for his mentorship. And it was that one.

Peter Winick Night I’m out there doing this. Hold on.

Jared Kleinert Because a lot of time out.

Peter Winick Now know because the time out you’re throwing out jams and just sort of going over them quickly. So you reached out to this person who’s an incredibly whoever that person was connected, valuable person. Now, most people would reach out and say, my God, could you do this for me? Could you do that for me? Can I have a call? Could take, take, take. Not in a selfish way, but you know. My God. I want something from you. Sure. But what you said was brilliant was I offered to intern for free. I offered to. You know, you were generous and you. And you basically realize, listen, this equation is an equal. He has you know, I have more to gain than he from this relationship. So what can I do to be thoughtful to do something? And it’s not quid pro quo, but do something that would be beneficial to him because I’m sure you’re not the only one emailing the connected person in the Valley.

Jared Kleinert Sure. And you know, for another, you know, overwhelming jam, you know, if if I said that you’re sort of building a world class network is the number one way to build the leadership, in essence, the best way to build a network is a three-step process. And it’s to being a good person, which means to have integrity in who you are and also what you do From a subject matter expertise standpoint, your craft is to provide value up front. And so it’s to actively think about how to offer value to other people. And then the third is to focus those efforts on the right people or, you know, my case, they’re super connectors, these well-connected individuals. In your case, it may be your ideal clients. And so the right people is is more subjective, but you want to be mindful of how you’re spending your time and who you’re trying to offer value to with your limited time. And so I focused in on on this gentleman who, yes, he could offer me a lot of value compared to what I could offer him, but, you know, I led with the value I could give him, which was my time and my willingness to take my entrepreneurial energy and put it behind his company and end up spending two years working for him, going from unpaid intern of being an early team member at his startup and then helping like marketing and sales and, you know, doing everything except for coding, really. And it was that one connection that led to like 90% of my network today. And so, you know, I could literally map out how he brought me into a conference with someone like Evan Pagan, who’s a legend in the online info product space. And when I went to that event with Evan, I met, you know, 150 people, many of whom were like your like authors and so on and so forth. And then there’s a lot to cover in that seven year span. I mean, emailing this guy and now but that has provided me all the opportunities I will ever need and then some. And so then it’s a matter of continuing to to refine your craft. It’s a matter of building as many of those influential relationships as possible with the long game online. So, you know, trying to offer value, not maybe asking for too much. If you ask for something, you don’t get it. That’s okay. Just keep offering value and come back to that relationship later on.

Peter Winick There’s an empathy piece here, right? Because you get maybe enamored, whatever the word might be, to say, Wow, if only I can meet so-and-so, man with that person could do it for me, man. The connections they can make, like there’s a little bit of, my, you know, gaga over that, right? But I think what you need to do is flip it and say, okay, if I was that person and I’m really connected and I’ve got a ton of money and I’ve got, you know, whatever these great businesses or whatever, what could so-and-so meaning you possibly do for them, Right? And I think that’s really the part where you have to put the energy and effort in because guess, you know, maybe out of the kindness of their hearts or whatever. They’ll speak to you for 20 minutes or make a connection here and there. But to really form a deep, meaningful and going back to sort of your elongating piece. It’s got to be a little bit better. It’s got to be a lot better than that. You’ve got to really differentiate amongst the other inbound. Please do for me sort of query someone like that, get So I love the thoughtfulness that you’ve put into this process and criminology.

Jared Kleinert And let me say that you’re as you’re building your own thought leadership, you know, think about this. So when you’re when you’re pitching someone at Forbes, for example, you know, an editor there, think about how you can offer value to their audience, how you can make their life easy, etc., etc.. And so maybe you give them 3 to 5 headline ideas, maybe you write 2 or 3 articles to show them what you’re capable of and you offer to do something, by the way, of promoting the pieces when it goes out so that they understand the value you can provide as a contributor. You have to make it easier for people to say yes to what you’re asking. And that is true when you’re building thought leadership and getting a column. If you’re reaching out to a literary agent, you know, show them how you’re going to work to make a successful book deal for them and ultimately make them money. Same with the editor, a publishing house. You show them how your book is going to be successful. Give them a marketing plan that you’ve really thought out in advance, and then you put the onus on them to say yes or no or to take that next step. But you have been empathetic in the process.

Peter Winick This sounds like a lot more hard work and thoughtfulness than luck.

Jared Kleinert Yeah.

Peter Winick Yeah. So let’s talk about that, right? Because a lot of people see folks that are out there in the space authors and thought, we didn’t say, geez, you know my stuff so much better. They just got lucky or, you know, that they had that one break or whatever. But I think what you’re talking about here is a you’ve got to be great at your craft, period, full stop. There’s no shortcuts there. And you’ve got to work your tail off to make those around you that can accelerate your success successful. And you’ve got to do it every day and be thoughtful about it and not be afraid to put in the hard work. You know, luck is great, but, you know, serendipity is not a strategy.

Jared Kleinert Yeah. No, I’m curious. You know, you do this for a living. And so when people are coming to you and saying that they want to become a thought leader, you say that it’s a 3 to 5 year outlook. And then what parts of that equation do you share with them to showcase how much work it is? I’d be curious to learn more.

Peter Winick Well, it’s not so much that they’re coming to us saying, Hey, I’d like to be a thought leader. It’s usually they are authors, thought leaders and speakers at different stages of their career. Some of them are early on. Some of them are world renowned and already killing it. But looking to take it to a different level on the enterprise sales. So to me, I think it’s the way I would answer your question is everything’s connected and start to think and systems. And the reason that I started the business that I started, which is focused on thought leaders and authors and speakers and such, is that the way the market has been serving them, in my humble opinion, is not efficient for the thought leader, right? So if you’re going to do a book deal, they’re sort of the book industrial complex and they’re all good people, right? Whether they’re agents and publishers and the nontraditional publishers and all that sort of stuff. But at the end of the day, all those people care about sort of different slices of the pie. So a book agent wants to get you a book deal. Then they have to go on to the next thing. They can’t move in with you and stay with you for two years. Right? A publisher wants you to sell books, period. Right. But you as an author or a thought leader and I and I think words matter. I think you need to say, listen, I’m going into the content business and there’s one stream that might be authorship. There’s one stream that might be my speaker side. There’s another stream that might be where I have developed a bucket of content that is applicable to this market, and I want to get it out into the corporate world. What’s the underlying business models there? I’ve got content that I use for marketing purposes for maybe, maybe I’m a contributor on Forbes or Ted Talks, but you have to sort of see how all those things play together and not treat them in a siloed and isolated way. Because when you think in terms of systems, then the connections between speaking and speaking in front of the right audiences to sell your solutions to the enterprises, and then getting books out to those people that read the books that buy those things, it all becomes connected and it becomes actually early on it’s harder, but then it becomes really easier to make smart decisions because it’s easier to say, Wait, you know, this serves my goals or it doesn’t, or this serves my objectives or it doesn’t, versus sort of being reactive and responding to requests or going down various rabbit holes.

Jared Kleinert Yeah, and I respect that because with, with my last Earth, my two books and then looking at the business I currently run, they are related, but it certainly requires giving my customers, my readers a bridge so they don’t have to leap from one. Activity to the other. Whereas I probably could have thought more strategically about the total roadmap that someone could go on with me and how they can get from point A to point B. And so you don’t get me wrong, I really love the books that I wrote. I think they are fantastic pieces of work. It was part of my tool for building a world class network because both books actually feature 75 top performing millennials, ranging from like founders of WordPress to Duolingo to Elite daily to major social media influencers. And that’s 150 people across both books. And then all the different individuals who recommended the contributors and who helped promote the book. So I met hundreds of incredible folks through that journey. But these days I run a mastermind group for established thought leaders and for, you know, seven figure business owners that have bootstrapped their companies who are visionary in some regard. And so some of my readers fit that mold. And some of my book contributors are certainly qualified for that group. But I have to then go to my readers and be like, Hey, I have this thing that you may be interested in, as opposed to saying the book leads directly to the course, leads directly to the mass, my group. And so it works still, but it definitely requires little maneuvering.

Peter Winick Right? But I was going to say, the content is the same DNA across all these different things that you’re doing. So whether I read it in a book for 25 bucks or whatever, or ultimately become part of a mastery group at some extreme multiple of the $25 book number, it’s got a different value prop, a different format, a different modality, a different set of expectations where you’d say, well, why would someone pay, you know, whatever x thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to be in a master group when I could buy the book for 25? Well, it’s a totally different game, even though the way I might have been exposed to the place I may Fall in Love With you is a book or an article. And I think that’s the whole point, is keeping that connected and then really listening loudly to your followers and your audience and figuring out how to serve them in multiple ways. So this has been great chat. Unfortunately, we’ve got to start to wrap it up here. Sure. As we start to close. You gave us lots of things to do in terms of being generous and being thoughtful and being strategic and willing to give more. Give us 1 or 2, you know, don’t do’s.

Jared Kleinert That’s a good question. I would say don’t take things personally. And so if you are reaching out to influential people and they don’t answer your email or they don’t have time to connect with you right away, or even if you are sort of in a sales situation, you’re selling a book or selling any product or service and someone says, No, don’t take it personally. You know, maybe they are really busy or it’s not the right time, or maybe they just need to better build a relationship with you. And so you can use that invitation to continue building and Leveraging Thought Leadership establishing more social proof, continuing to build your network, and then circle back with them or continue providing them value. And maybe they’ll come back when they’re ready and you won’t have to reach out to them. They’ll come to you. And so, I mean, that’s actually something I need to be telling myself today because my friendship is hard. And I’ve had a quite a few rejection emails this morning in my inbox. So that’s more for you at home and definitely for me too. But that’s one. And what’s the second? Delete, not listen to these podcasts and not reach out to the guests. And so if you haven’t at this point reached out to Peter and you’ve heard like three of these episodes, then you should send Peter an email, tell him that you appreciate this content and maybe ask him a question or offer some sort of value. Feel free to reach out to me. My email is Jared Kleiner at gmail.com. So just say a r e. K l e i and your t a female.com and I would love to hear from you. And so you’d be surprised at how many shows like this. I go on I never hear from the person on the other side. Right. And it’s you know, I don’t want to hear from people if they’re just going to ask, ask, ask and have zero interest. Right. In the relationship. But if there is some genuine interest in having a continued conversation, then I welcome it and I would love it. And so that’s the reason I do these sort of interviews and I want to get out there. Great. And yeah, this is part of why you do it as well. I’m sure you want to attract your fans and, you know, people that keep getting like that so that you keep doing it.

Peter Winick Exactly. Well, this has been great. I appreciate all that you’ve shared. There’s a lot here, a lot of unique perspective. And, you know, from playing the long game to being generous, to being thoughtful, lots and lots of really, really wise information. So I appreciate your time. And I have a. Feeling given that you’re playing the long game, you’re going to be in this game for a long time and I hope your So. Best of luck with everything.

Jared Kleinert Yeah. Thank you. And I appreciate you having me on your show.

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.