Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 115 – Michael Zipursky

Peter Winick

When you’re just starting out as a Thought Leader, it takes time to build your audience and gain acclaim and recognition for your content. But what if you could accelerate that process?

Our guest is Michael Zipursky, CEO of Consulting Success, host of the Consulting Success podcast, and author of the Amazon best seller, “The Elite Consulting Mind.” Michael’s spent most of his career helping consultants elevate their visibility and find new ways to accelerate business growth.

In this episode, Michael talks about why thought leaders need a very clear understanding of their target audience, and how specific you should get when trying to identify a target market.

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

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on our podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Michael Zipursky. He is the CEO of Consulting Success and Coach two consultants. He’s advised organizations like the Financial Times, Dow Jones, RBC, Omron Sumitomo and helped Panasonic launch new products into global markets. More importantly, he’s focused on helping consultants. So he’s worked with over 300 consultants from around the world in 50 industries, helping them get to six and seven figures. He’s got 34,000 consultants that read his weekly newsletter and is the author of the Amazon bestseller The Elite Consulting Mind. So here we go. Michael, tell us how to be a successful consultant. Welcome aboard.

Michael Zipursky Great to be with you. Great to be with you. Yeah, that’s a big question and happy to explore as much of that or as little as loud as you like.

Peter Winick Let’s start with you. Right. So your expertise, there’s a little bit of a meta thing going on here, right? Is helping consultants be successful, Right. So there’s lots and lots and lots of consultants out there. There’s lots of lots of sort of sub disciplines, be they technical or marketing or whatever. And then there’s lots of reasons that people go into consulting voluntarily and voluntarily or terribly, etc.. How did you come to how did you decide that that is a market that A needs some help and B, that Michael should be the guy that gives them the help. That’s to say, Michael and your and your partner and your cousin.

Michael Zipursky Yeah. So my cousin Sam and I run a consulting success. We’ve built and sold and, you know, been together through a whole bunch of different businesses over the years. But, you know, I am where I am today because I’ve always been a consultant. Our first business together was just when I left high school and going into university. We started at that time I was a web development and design firm, which later kind of morphed into our second business, which was a brand and marketing consultancy. I went over to Japan, open up the branch office for that company, and that’s where I had the option work. Some very large Japanese organizations and then global organizations consulting with them and really advising them on getting their products and services into English speaking countries. Okay. So I’ve been there and done that in terms of I learned a lot of lessons about what it takes to grow a successful consulting business. I’ve made plenty of what people call mistakes. I just call them learning experiences along the way, like, you know, every single one that you could probably imagine and then some like. So consulting success was born really out of a place where in some and I had run multiple businesses together and we kind of went off on our own, each doing separate kind of businesses and careers for a little bit. But we were at a family barbecue one summer and, you know, it’d been a little while since we’d done a business together and said, Hey, it’d be really fun to do something together again, but this time let’s do something online. So this was around the time where it was still new for a lot of people. It wasn’t discussed about this idea of running a business online and being able to really travel and live where you want. And for both of us, we spent time living in different countries, and so we wanted to build a business that would essentially allow us to be location independent. And the first part of that came through, okay, well, let’s put up a website. That’s where we’ll share our experiences of building consulting company. And so I wrote a lot of articles. I put out content, and there was no monetization plan behind it. Peter It wasn’t like, Hey, we’re let’s put ads up and let’s start charging people for this. Let’s share what was working for us and what wasn’t working for us. And that built a community in that community then wanted more and deeper strategies and tactics and ideas. And so that led to us developing a course for consultants that led then to us creating a coaching program, trainings, talks and more courses. And that kind of that’s been now over a decade of consulting success. But the whole journey in consulting started about 19 plus years ago.

Peter Winick Got it. So one of the things, one of the many things I like about your model is you have a very, very clear target market, right? You know who you serve and who you don’t. And because you’ve been there, you have an understanding of their pain points, right? So you’re not selling some get rich quick nonsense. Your been there, done that guy. You speak from experience and then you’re able to sort of exponentially share the success because now you’ve got hundreds of clients that have employed the methodology in their own ways and gotten their level of success. And we know what works. So talk to us now from the perspective of thought leadership, how you make decisions on what to create from what to deploy and all that from books to, you know, maybe start from sort of the marketing end of the continuum all the way to the stuff that you’re monetizing.

Michael Zipursky Well, I think that’s a great question. The most important really idea for us or consideration is value. Like we’ve explored. And I think when you when you talk about thought leadership, there’s a lot of different kind of avenues and paths and crevices that you can crawl down into. Some people start exploring like the benefits of SEO and crafting content that Google likes. And so there’s lots of different places that you can go. But the end of the day, if you’re really focused on creating valuable content and my definition of valuable content is content that your ideal clients are actually excited to consume, they gain value from it. It causes them to take action. Maybe not that exact moment, but at some point to bring them closer to you. As long as you focus on that, then you’re going to see a positive result. But with content, that positive result doesn’t necessarily come right away. It can take time. But I think there’s a lot of people who make decisions based on, you know, things that they hear, like trends in the marketplace or the latest algorithm change.

Peter Winick So let’s talk about sort of I call it changing the algorithm, right? So developing really good and really thoughtful and really impactful. Content is not easy and there’s no sort of hack for that. There’s better ways to do it than others, but there’s no sort of here’s the easy way to do it. There’s an app that can do all that stuff for you, right? There are lots of folks, whether it’s on the CEO’s side or the hashtag side or whatever, that are sort of chasing the wave of, I have a way to sort of crack the Amazon algorithm. Or if you do this on Twitter and, you know, whatever, and sometimes you might get a spike from those things. But they’re tactical.

Michael Zipursky And it’s short term. Exactly.

Peter Winick Yeah. And if they’re only used as a hook to get people to, you know, crappy or mediocre content, what’s the point? And I totally agree with you that. At the end of the day, solid, thoughtful content designed with a specific end user in mind beats everything. Not all the time. Every day. The other thing you said, and I want to like you to get a little bit deeper on it, is on the one hand, as a business owner, we want to measure our ROI, right? If I’m spending ten hours a month doing X, I want to see what the return is on X after doing it for some time. And you need to do that. You need to have the discipline to do that with thought leadership and content. But you can’t do it down to the level of. Well, and the you know, in the article I wrote two weeks ago Tuesday, that was 320 words that took me 90 minutes netted out to X, Right. To speak to that a little bit.

Michael Zipursky Yeah. Well, I mean pure content marketing from our organic perspective, you’re right. It’s hard to connect an ROI, you know, directly to it because you might as posted on your website and not see the benefit of that right away, especially if you don’t have a captive audience. Right. If you have a list of 30,000 or 50,000 or a hundred thousand people, you can put up an article and see an impact from it right away because there’s a call to action that article and that drives leads or sales or whatever it might be. But if you don’t have that yet, then it can certainly take some time before your content gets indexed and Google and people start seeing it. Yeah. So I think that’s an important just understanding for people to have that. If you’re going to play the content game, which I think any authority an expert should definitely be thinking about, you know, in one form or another is that it does take time. There’s ways to accelerate it, though, right? You can take a really great piece of content and you can leverage either an existing platform, let’s just say like LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever your ideal clients hangout or an industry association or partnerships or alliances or whatever you have. Or you can also do very targeted advertising to that piece of content as a way to test it out or as a way to see what kind of impact it has.

Peter Winick Perfect. What I would add to that from my experience with some of my other clients experience is there also comes a point where there’s a bit of a flywheel effect where dividends are being paid, where I know, for example, last year I wound up with I think 3 or 4 net new clients that came in. And basically their initial email was, I’ve been following you for quite some time or I’ve been reading your stuff or watching your YouTube or whatever for a couple of years, but now is when I chose to reach out because there’s something going on in their world that I would have no way of knowing as a marketing person. But they know what you do and how you do it and all those sort of things. And the timing is always up to them, right? So we can’t force timing, but when they come in, those clients are ready to rock and roll, they’re ready to move forward. And that sales cycle is really, really, really small, really Well, because we’re.

Michael Zipursky Not we’re not selling socks, right? This is the big difference in a lot of people I think don’t understand is that if you’re selling to other businesses. Right, you’re not selling to a consumer. It’s not just, okay, I’m going to go, you know, pick a pair of socks or buy a tie or buy a drink. There’s a thoughtful decision process that has to be in place. And so it can take time. And, you know, you’re right. And in our case, we have 35,000 plus people on our email list and we have people reaching out to say, I’ve been on your email list for three years and now I’m ready to to invest. And it becomes a client that, you know, invest six figures with us and stays with us for a while and great things like we do a lot of fun stuff together. Yeah, we also have some people who reach out and it’s like, Yeah, I just heard about you yesterday or I saw this ad or I read this piece of content or someone that I know shared this piece of content. And so I think at the end of the day, what’s important for people to think about is how many different places can you show up where your ideal clients are? And I’m not suggesting that you get really fragmented or just throw stuff on the wall and hope that something sticks. But in this day and age, especially if you’re going after a savvy, you know, decision maker or someone who has to actually think about the investment, it’s not just they’re not just buying on impulse because maybe it’s a 10 or 50 or 500 or $5 million, you know, decision investment that they’re making. Then you need to you want to be thinking about what can you do to provide value to this person over time, nurture that relationship, really cultivate it because they might not be ready today. They might be ready in six weeks or six months or six years from now. But as long as you are staying top of mind, you’re putting out valuable content and you’re, you know, getting in front of them, Then when they are ready, you want to be the first person that they think of.

Peter Winick Yeah. So one of the things you said there I thought was one of the several things you said there I agree with, but one of the things that I thought was really wise was oftentimes people get into this thought leadership deployment mode and it’s a firehose. Okay? So I’m going to just buckle down and I’m going to create a bunch of stuff and I’m going to get it out there, get it out there. And what you said was really important, you know, put it out where you know they are, right? So, for example, you know, I don’t I don’t know your business all that well, but I would imagine LinkedIn is a better place for you than Instagram. So it’s okay to not participate in every form of social media if that’s not where your clients or prospects are. Like, you don’t have to be everywhere. You have to be everywhere where your clients might be. So can you talk about how you determine that? Because I think a lot of people get confused there for sure.

Michael Zipursky So, I mean, it’s really like as simple as that. That the simple. Art is go where your clients are. The hard part of that is that a lot of people don’t lay the foundation or the groundwork to understand who their ideal clients really are. And so they end up, you know, just putting stuff out, not really knowing where it should go or where to be consistent with it. So you want to get really clear on who your ideal client actually is. And I’m not talking more to saying, yeah, we work with people in manufacturing. You’ve got to go way deeper than that.

Peter Winick So go, go. So give us an example, because I think oftentimes people say one of two things my work, everybody could benefit from that. That’s the first OG. No, they can’t because you can’t afford to reach everybody. Or then they’ll say, No, no, no, I have a target market. It’s leaders think, okay, great. There’s only, you know, like 47 million, quote, leaders and, you know, in the workforce in North America. So what’s the right level of specificity where, you know, yes, that is targeted enough where I’m not wasting resources trying to attract folks that can’t buy or targeted to.

Michael Zipursky Okay. So this will change depending on kind of where someone is in the maturity cycle of their marketing. If someone’s, you know, got a really robust pipeline, they’re going to have more leeway or more kind of space to adjust things maybe go a little bit broader. But for someone who’s newer to the marketing aspect, the more specific you are, the better. So you might be targeting, let’s say, an executive C-level executive or call it a CFO or CEO or CEO at a manufacturing company that has between 50 and 500 employees in the Midwest that focuses on, you know, safety related products.

Peter Winick Okay.

Michael Zipursky Now, the reason why this is important is because in in my observation and what from what we’ve seen with many clients, that the most compelling and impactful content that actually generates results is the most specific. If you’re trying to reach, let’s say, the CEO or CFO of one of one of the companies I just mentioned, being able to put together a piece of content, whether it’s a video or an article or case or whatever it might be, but that speaks directly to them and what their pain points are or desires are is going to cut through the noise and the clutter a lot more than just writing about like leadership for, you know, manufacturing companies because you’re now you’re competing with a lot more people and your message isn’t going to resonate with those people as well as it can if it’s being specific. So that’s a really important, you know, thought process to go through.

Peter Winick So I want to talk about the balancing act of that, right? Because when you go super specific, it’s great because the resonance on the receiving end to the right person is really, really high. They’re going to read that or watch that building go, Wow, Michael made this just for me. This is exactly my world. Or he gets it or whatever the case may be. If you only sort of focus on micro customized stuff that could be super duper time consuming. So, you know, one of my ways that we work with our clients is, hey, listen, what is your core stuff? What’s your message? What is the tenets of who you are and what you’re about and what your content’s about? Great. That’s not going to change. That’s your Ten Commandments or whatever. But how do you put a wrapper or a veneer or ad, you know, five, ten, 15% to that so that the resonance to me, whoever your target market is, is off the charts, right? It’s the same thing that you should have going from sort of leadership and manufacturing what we want versus leadership in manufacturing in the mid Midwest to a second tier automotive supplier that’s got higher resonance. Right? So can you talk about how you could balance the customization with the efficiency of the content?

Michael Zipursky Well, I would say that the balance again, comes from where you’re at right now. I mean, for most of our clients, they don’t need to learn 100 new clients at one time or even in one year. You can have a pretty thriving, successful, profitable business with not that many new clients. So I think if someone has like 60 ideal clients that they’re really targeting and they’re going after those people and they build a good kind of pipeline and a good follow up sequence, and they’re very focused on delivering value. They can make a lot of good things happen for them. What’s also important is that there’s no one like best approach, right? For some people getting very, very focused and targeted with like a a very specific market segment is going to be the best way for them to make things happen, you know, based on their model for other people who might have a different model, maybe they’re a more productized offering. They might allow themselves just more like room or flexibility to say, Yeah, I’m not going to just target people in the Midwest, even though that’s me, we’re going to start. I’m going to target, like all entrepreneurs or all manufacturing companies, as long as they have these criteria in place. And that’s all they need to kind of go off to the races. But one thing that I just want to add, Peter, I think it’s really important, is we’ve talked a lot about content. Content is key. But the other side of this is promotion. Like you can have great content, but if no one sees it then and this is a big area, I think a lot of people spend time developing their content and trying to get it just right, but then they don’t have a good plan of actually how to promote it. And they’re putting so many of their eggs in this great piece of content they’re spending a lot of time developing. And then when they, you know, share it with the. World, nothing really happens because they haven’t had a good promotional plan, right?

Peter Winick No, I think you’re 100% right. I mean, one of the things I see I see people do exactly that, that they’re they have a high bar. They put out quality content. They’re smart. It takes them you know, they’re not just cranking out nonsense over a restaurant they went to. It’s thoughtful. It’s good stuff. And then they say that, okay, well, how are we getting that to the right people? They say, we have it on our blog, right? And I’m like, okay. So the same, you know, 500 people a month that go to your website are going to see it over and over again. The universe of people that don’t know who the heck your is exponentially greater than the universe that does. And I think that’s just a strategic slash tactical place where people go, I don’t know how to do that. I know how to create good stuff, but how do I get it out in the right format to the right people, at the right cadence to get the business results I’m looking for?

Michael Zipursky Yeah, definitely. Both sides are important.

Peter Winick Got it. So less sort of area I want to touch on with you is if we think about your space, which is helping support consultants to grow their business, right? Many consultants, like many other industry, are being commoditized today, right? So if I have a need for a marketing consultant, I can go on One end of the spectrum is probably Fiverr or some sort of low end solution where I’m competing with Romania or whatever, which is gonna be a price problem. And then the other end I can go to sort of the best agency in town that’s going to have a seven figure solution, right? I think that if deployed well, content serves as a way to suppress the competition and commoditize you right. So unless you want to play in the fiber game, which I don’t think anybody on this listening here does, you want to command a premium price in the market. You want to be paid well for the value that you deliver. Talk about sort of the power of using content as a way to commoditize and separate yourself from the pack in your space that’s competitive.

Michael Zipursky Well, I think if we look at, you know, any industry segment or market, typically, you know, the vast majority buy 90% plus of the authorities and recognize experts in that market are putting out content like that’s how you know that they are an authority, an expert. There’s very few. There are some, but there’s very few people who are considered to be experts who don’t put out content in one form or another, whether it’s a book or a blog, you know, articles or videos or podcasts, experts and authorities put out content that’s like one of the characters characteristics of being an expert in authority is that you share your ideas, you share your opinions, you, you know, you give, you provide value to others. And by doing that, that’s what, you know, raises you up above everyone else. And it’s an easy way to differentiate yourself because you’re right, you can have someone that can maybe do something similar to someone else, but if one person’s talking more about it or going into more detail and sharing that with others, they instantly become kind of the perceived authority. Great.

Peter Winick Well, this has been fantastic. Michael, you’ve shared a lot with us in terms of the ability to commoditize yourself, the power of getting content out there in a consistent basis. I mean, I like how you tied it to the maturity cycle, but lots of interesting nuggets here that I think are relevant, not just to consultancies and independent consultants, etc., but more broadly speaking, to folks that are using or considering using content and thought leadership as a way to grow their business directly, meaning monetizing the content directly or as a way to use it as a marketing tool. But I want to thank you for all that you shared today as we close any tip or two of definitely do this and definitely don’t do that. Do you think that you’d sort of throw out there is the world according to Michael.

Michael Zipursky When it comes to content, I think the most important kind of application is making sure that the content hits on, you know, the pain points or desires that your ideal clients have. I see far too many people are just too much content that is too general. Express was not specific enough. It doesn’t really hit the pain point. It’s more about the the author, the creator, than it is about the reader or, you know, the visitor or the viewer. So always put yourself into that person, you know, your ideal client’s shoes and ask what questions would they be asking, What do they care about? And then develop your content based on that. That typically does a pretty good job of separating you from others in the marketplace.

Peter Winick Fantastic. Well, I appreciate your time and I appreciate all that you’ve shared with that. There’s a lot that I hope everybody listening took away from that. And I want to thank you once again. Thanks, Michael.

Michael Zipursky My pleasure.

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 ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.