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Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 119 – Nilofer Merchant
Times are changing fast. Technology is creating innovation on a daily basis, and it can be a struggle to keep up. Are you ready to take advantage of the speed of advancement – or will you be left behind?
Our guest is Nilofer Merchant, author of “The Power of Onlyness,” and “The New How.” She’s been called “The James Bond of Innovation,” and is on a mission to reimagine a future of work that actually works for all of us.
Nilofer and Peter discuss extracting value from your passions, monetization strategies for your thought leadership IP, and how to increase and invest in your brand to get larger returns.
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 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 Nilofer Merchant. I’m really excited to have another Feron. We met in London a few years ago when she was given a pretty, pretty interesting award from the Thinker’s 50. So Nilufer is an author. She’s a speaker. CNBC has called her a visionary. Her big book or the one that most people would recall? I know it’s the one that my favorite is the power of own leanness. Muller first started as an administrative assistant and has moved up to be a CEO as well as a board member of Nasdaq traded companies. And she’s been called, amongst other things, the James Bond of innovation. So I wish I had some James Bond theme music here, but here we are. Thanks. Thanks for coming on board today, Nilofer.
Nilofer Merchant Thanks for having me, Peter Winick.
Peter Winick All right. I’m gonna ask you, like sort of the one simple question of given your background from administration and corporate work and then you’re speaking work, how the heck did you get here? How do you plan for this?
Nilofer Merchant Well, I didn’t plan for it at all, as has a lot of your other fellow thought leaders have said. In fact, I ended up leaving a firm where I was actually doing operational work, so helping companies do strategies and doing it full time. So you’d recognize my fingerprints on the industry when Nokia sold to Microsoft. That was me when Symantec prevented longer.
Peter Winick If you’re under 30, Google, Nokia, because that was a big deal at one point.
Nilofer Merchant And if you remember when Microsoft came in after semantic to take away the business and I helped prevent that. So, I mean, like major, major industry moves. And I love that sort of high level strategy, high level operations. It was almost like a high wire act year. Let me see if I can rescue you from the brink of disaster moment. You know, I loved those moments. And then I had a personal. There’s no other word for it than crisis, personal crisis in the family that required so much of my attention that I had actually asked my team to take over the firm while I dealt with it. They actually all said no to me, all my three senior leaders. And unbeknownst to me at the time, they had all coordinated and said, if we say no, then she’ll stay. So they were trying to, you know, veto me out of my decision. And I actually shut down my firm like the next day because I was like, okay, if no one else can take it over, then I’m done. Because given the choice of what I had to deal with, it was it was really a critical moment. And so I actually sat at home and taking too long. Tell a story. But I sat at home in my pajamas thinking, well, my car is over. I’ve had a good run.
Peter Winick Right. This is good. Boo-hoo.
Nilofer Merchant This is sad for me, but you know, it’ll be fine. Like no big deal. I’ll be this other person. I don’t know what the hell it is, but I will find some way to occupy myself. And so here’s the really funny part is I got asked to sit in on a board meeting to potentially join that board. And I was listening to the fucked up conversation that they were having. And it was it was I can’t name the board because I would be too embarrassing for them. But I’m sitting there listening to somebody that everybody in the industry admires, talking about how to sort of build up the wall of that company, sort of, you know, to build a perimeter even higher so they can maintain a quote unquote, competitive advantage. And I’m listening to them like this is this is are we like in nineteen eighty or something like a robot? And I really lenders and wide, wide ugly ties or no. It was it was the most like people that right now get the front cover of Fortune magazine, kind of I say some of the most antiquated ideas you could hear. And I was like, oh, this is so messed up. And I gotta figure out how to help us. First of all, I’m not the right person for the board. Here’s who is. I recommended someone that I thought was really good. And that person ends up joining the board. And then I actually was still sitting there thinking about their business problem, because remember, my whole thing is always about solving problems. Somebody’s got to like tell them that they’re doing the wrong strategy.
Peter Winick Right.
Nilo Merchant And I actually wrote to friends. So, in fact, you know, because we’re on a thought leadership podcast. Like I remember writing to Saleem Ishmail and Mitch Joel and other people who were in this space thinking about how to use social technology to form a new advantage. And I wrote to all of them saying, hey, who’s written this piece? Charlie Lee was on the list. Who’s written this piece? And I was describing what I saw as the shift. And all these friends wrote back saying, no one’s no one’s written that. Are you kidding? Like no one’s written that in fact, you should. And I said, OK, I guess I will. And I wrote what ended up becoming a five part series in HCR. It led to my second book. And it was only because this is what’s so funny. Peter, I just wanted to fix their fucking problem.
Peter Winick And you weren’t even getting paid to do that.
Nilofer Merchant It wasn’t me getting paid. It’s like you can’t take the problems, all our problems kind of thing. And to solve your problem, whether you want to or not kind of thing. And so that.
Peter Winick You have a problem, which is. Problem solving which addiction, but a bad one, but that’s very cool. So walk me through then. You know, I love sort of the Genesis story there of, you know, someone had a problem and you couldn’t get out of your head til you till you solved it, which really had no horse in the game to solve it other than it sounded like a big juicy problem. So I want to pivot for a moment now to sort of YOUR WORLD TODAY. Right. So there’s lots of things you could be doing, lots of things you might be doing. How do you decide, given all the opportunities that present themselves to you, what you want to do, how to do it and how to extract value for those things? Because this in this case, you didn’t get paid directly to solve that problem. But I would argue that maybe they should be getting world these now, but we could talk about that.
Nilofer Merchant Right. So I tend to I split with the question down the middle. Right. So first I think about where is it that I can be really influential in creating real life long change, like real permanent change. OK. And where are those levers? OK. And then and then I think about where’s the monetization? And I’m actually to be quite honest and 100 percent transparent. I actually suck at the second part.
Peter Winick What’s so interesting there, because you’re coming at it from a purist perspective. I think there are others that come at it and say, where’s the most money? Let me design a cure to a problem.
Nilofer Merchant Oh, yeah, for sure. And I actually abhor that. But it’s almost like cut off your pride, you know, kill me kind of thing. So here’s an example. A lot of people know me by this one sentence: “Sitting is the smoking of our generation.”
Peter Winick Yes. Yes. Right.
Nilofer Merchant And people know me by that because I was asked to give a talk based on what I was already doing. I did not earn any money for the talk. In fact, I paid for the privilege of being at the conference and a moment of my time, too. They never waived the fee, which still to this day, like bugs me, you know, like, why would you not give me back the money? I mean, I served you a lot. That talk is now in the top 10 percent of all TED talks a call Stanford to call me and ask, can you shape a piece of research, which I did. Stanford is now the one who is quoted on that idea. Because they took my work and embedded it into our research. The Apple product manager who witnessed the talk and was so inspired that they built it into the watch, which now millions of people get reminded every day to stand up. That is a direct result of my talk. And I can actually say I have quote unquote changed the world with an idea. If you notice, what I just finished sharing with you is I have no monetization strategy based on that whatsoever.
Peter Winick I’ve noticed that. Yeah, well, but. So that in that particular into.
Nilofer Merchant The apple guy got a raise. The Stanford person got a raise. The world has been benefited and in fact I pay for the privilege to do that work. So when I said when we started this conversation before I think we started hitting record, we said that this could be a therapy session.
Peter Winick Exactly.
Nilofer Merchant I’m not saying I’m doing it right. And so I’m not saying I’m doing it right, but I am saying I’m clear about the steps of what it takes to actually have an idea that can be world changing, what the work is involved in actually accomplishing that change. I have a speaking career that is definitely, you know, like the other day I opened I closed a conference at Peyton Manning and I closed a conference that Jamie.
Peter Winick Actually, you know in terms of getting you back to the monetization, you need to reframe that, say Peyton Manning opened for you up there. Not you know, you only have Super Bowl winners opening for you. Let’s just let’s to try to help you.
Nilofer Merchant I know, right. And I mean, I’m on stage with some unbelievable people. And here’s what’s so funny is after I did the talk with Peyton Manning opened for me. There you go. You good? Are there people backstage said they guaranteed that my scores were going to be higher than anyone else’s scores for the six other speakers because they had some unbelievably strong speakers and they said my scores were gonna be the highest. They could feel it as they were letting me exit off the stage. And then they said, and you were the least paid. Yeah, all of our speakers.
Peter Winick Thank you. Thank you. I know.
Nilofer Merchant But here’s the irony or sadness or whatever. So I’m saying it in full transparency. So then I went back to my agency because I had this was the second major time when people had said that. So I went back to my agency and I said, are recharging too little for my speaking? Maybe we should change it. We had this conversation. They. And they ended up saying, yes, absolutely, we should change it. We should pump it up. And then all of a sudden, my entire revenue stream just died. Really? We didn’t catch it for like six months because there were a whole bunch of lead opportunities. And no one came back to me and said, by the way, they’re all resisting the fee rate because you’re not as well known. I mean. And when I finally put together as I’m leaving the stage, they’re saying this. They’re not saying it as you’re coming up. Right. So I’m doing the work. And that’s when they say. Absolutely. Highest value of the whole conference, the post results, like I’d be Aryana every single time she and I are on the same stage. I beat Guy Kawasaki. I’d be like. I’m aware that I’m strong, but my reputation.
Peter Winick Let do take that directly, though, without getting into the specifics of the the weirdness of pricing and the speaking market. Julian, let me sort of backtrack that. So there’s lots of folks that we work with where they’re fairly familiar with this thing called the laws of supply and demand and economics and all that other stuff. So they come out into the speaking scene and they start low like five thousand bucks, seventy five fingers. And I’m like the worst place in the planet to be is trying to sell a speech for five thousand bucks. It’s because you’re selling it to people don’t understand the buy side of the market. So at five grand or ten grand or even to some degree twelve or fifteen thousand, you’re selling into associations. Fairly unsophisticated decision by committee, restricted budgets. This doesn’t sound like a juicy market to me. Right. So what do you do? When I first got into the space fifteen years ago, I made the mistake of listening to some of the agencies said, well, you have to do this, this, this and this and write three books and then get your clients your fees. And it’s like, actually, I kind of don’t want to do that. Let’s just see what happens if we go to twenty or twenty five. And guess what? It is so much easier to sell at twenty five and above than it is at five or ten. No. Then there’s a ceiling. Right. So to go from twenty five to 50. Different problem. But the pricing on the speaking side, you nailed it where they might tell you when you came off the stage like you were better than Arianna and I’m sure she got a couple hundred or God knows what kind of stock got six fingers or whatever, you probably got a fraction of that. But that doesn’t mean that you could sell for that. Right. Because you guy’s been at this a long time. Are you are honest about this little thing called HuffPo that is doing fairly well. So how do you increase it? Maybe. Maybe not the right person. Ask this question based on what you said, but how do you increase and invest in your brand to pay you the returns that others are getting because they have larger brand awareness?
Nilofer Merchant Yeah. So this is this is I haven’t so I’m clearly not the right person to ask. Because like you and I think every single person who like let’s take that story of the sitting is the new smoke up piece, for example. So I got asked to do it. I actually passed on it because I thought I questioned if it was really a new idea. I also noticed, though, at the same time how pervasive this behavior is of coffee meetings. And I knew that was ridiculous that we could change something. I wrote a piece in H-B ah as a test case for the top, basically writing it out first. So the logic and sort of what would really resonate. And I was testing the headline more than I was testing anything else like that. The walk away idea and the HP, our editor.
Peter Winick But I want to I want to just pause on every second. You’re different between testing a headline and formulating a platform underneath that write headlines for sure. So sitting in the new smoking is clearly catching. You got to get my attention. You’re going to whatever. Is that really a platform? Right. And I get that Apple took advantage of it. And some of the folks in office space design took advantage of it. I’m not really sure that there’s a platform in thought leadership around that, actually.
Nilofer Merchant No. So it was in service, right? So I got asked. It was in service. So this is where I got the headline and the HP editor felt me like crazy, like, no, that’s not an interesting headline. I’m like, can you test it for me? Because I can publish it someplace else and test that thing went viral. Right. Right. Insanely viral because I was dead on. And I got total resistance on every inch of the way. And so the question for me is, you know, you said I’m a purist. Yes. I focus on what is the change. And I’ve accomplished the change. So I think that’s the big pieces. Do you want to actually see change in the world or do you want to figure out how to also sell that idea? And on the sitting one? I didn’t think that was a revenue model behind it. I thought it was purely about change. And so I optimized for that. And now I’m working on this idea of only ness, which I’ve been working on now for seven years, which is, you know, just to catch the readers up, I mean, catch the officers up to this. So only this each of us stands in a spot in the world. Only one stands in. And from that place we all formed the perspectives in takes on the world that lets us generate new ideas. So sometimes we say, you know, idea the best ideas we’ll get through bubble bar. But actually, what I’ve been studying now for many years is that actually the best ideas don’t make it there. If that person doesn’t have power because we often ignore that place of power someone has and instead focus on listening to those who have a position of power inside organization. So I so I was arguing actually we needed to pay attention to this singular place of power. Each of us has only us if we’re going to tap the source of all ideas, which every economy, every business, every one of us from a career perspective, actually know we need to pay attention to. So that was the thesis. And then, of course, I’ve turned it into a book and then talks. And the talk is, in fact, for those of you that. To listen to it, I just did a TED talk called How Power Powers Ideas. It’s got some color lines and killer ideas, super spreadable kind of peace. And so I just finished that. And so I’ve been working on that now for seven years. The next logical piece of it is to figure out how would you go retro fit that construct into existing organizations. I’m thinking about what that would look like.
Peter Winick Let me pause there for a moment. So retrofitting the construct onto an existing organization. Interesting. Right. Because you’ve now validated the claim over the last seven, eight years, whatever it’s been on the power of loneliness. People are buying in. Right. They’re buying the book. Buying. You’re speaking. It’s resonant. It’s resonating. So we know there’s a there there. And now the question becomes, what can I do? I being in this case, an organization to get my organization to accelerate the pace by which people can connect to their own leanness. Not because I’m you know, I want to make the world a better place necessarily, because it’s good business. Right. So.
Nilofer Merchant The money, money, money, money.
Peter Winick What if my people are doing this? Will get more ideas, more creativity, more productivity. So tell me how you’re sort of using that the organizational piece and what are the modalities? It could potentially be offered in that would help you spread the message and monetize it more effectively.
Nilofer Merchant For sure. So. So going from here to there. So what I’ve been doing for a while now since I have such a strong operating background, problem solving kind of background, is I used the talks to then create a conversation. So I’ll go into an organization, for example, give that sort of keynote model and then host a conversation in my gift on this is really high. Very strong facilitation skills. I can translate someone’s question back to them in a way that they’re like, holy crap, that is what I was saying.
Peter Winick Give me a specific. This is a really important piece and I think you’re fast forwarding through it. There’s a couple different ways that people go about the craft of speaking, right? So number one is I do the drive by. I get booked for the gig. I’m really, really good. I show up, I do my thing. Standing ovation. I’m impressed with myself. Fly off to the next place. Right. Then there are others that look at every opportunity, not in a it’s not binary in terms of upselling versus, you know, doing a great gig. But what are the other opportunities in there for me as a speaker to help this organization? And what do we need to do? Pre-speech strategically? What do we need to do onsite? What do I need to do? Post. So you just said one of your you know, one of your gives us the facilitation and all that. I’m assuming you’re not waiting until after, you know, someone booked you and say, can you do Scottsville May 7th? And then, you know, you’re waiting for serendipity for the CEO to come up to you after the speech and say, hey, that was really good to have some money I’d like to give you. How are you accelerating that process?
Nilofer Merchant So I think the first thing is I’ve actually the bureaus have watched me have these interactive conversations. So, you know, when everyone who’s listening has actually got to know the scene where like the speakers asked to stay on for a sponsorship kind of panel or something. So just that people have paid extra money to get to like.
Peter Winick A VIP or something.
Nilofer Merchant Exactly right. And so in all those venues, my – I happened to notice that everyone like just was insane about that interactive piece because I’m so personable and all that, but also because my gift isn’t solving real problems. So someone would ask a I heard the big idea here and now I’m sitting here, I think about how to play it. Here’s a specific situation. And they will lay it out. And I will be saying, well, I hear you saying this, but what you’re probably also not saying, but it’s probably happening is this and they’ll nod their head and I say, okay, let me tell you the real answer. Right. And I’ll do that. And so my bureau happened to watch that. And I said, oh, my God, we should be figuring out how to use that.
Peter Winick Yep.
Nilofer Merchant And I was like, yes, please. That’s exactly what I love to do. And so they’re the ones who actually said, why don’t we make that a part of the package so that we can essentially do an upsell as we’re selling the keynote. We can also sell a VIP conversation. We can also sell, you know, so like.
Peter Winick So that’s, quite frankly, from at least from my experience and all due respect to the bureaus. That’s unusual for a bureau yet to be able to sell something that’s not just a key note. Right. Like they’re really good at what they do. Right. But what you’re doing is a little bit more consultative. It’s not specific to what they normally do. So I think you’ve got a great bureau there that’s able to see. Wait a minute. Clients really light up when she does this. It’s a differentiator. It’s whatever that they’ve actually been able to sell it. Because a lot of them just end.
Nilofer Merchant And to be a hundred percent. I think as a specific person, you happen to be paying enough attention. So, Dwight Ireland, the speaker spotlight is just exceptional. And he just figured it out and it to me and said, can we do more? I know. I shouted, right. And can we do more? And I was like, please, yes. That would be so much more satisfying for me. And so we’ve been figuring out how to do this. And then one of the things that I do is once I do give a talk that I really love. I sit there and say, okay, what would be the way in which this conversation would happen within an organization? So how could this be used? For an existing problem, and so, for example, only this is a contrast to the two things. One is it’s a it’s a real deep contrast to the notion of lean in, lean in. Basically, it suggests that those people who are not being heard simply aren’t speaking enough. And at its most general basically puts the argument down to the person who’s actually being silenced to them, figure out how not to be silenced. And I don’t know. In any situation where that’s actually fixable. So it’s a it’s a false logic. And by the way, the research has proven out. It’s a false.
Peter Winick Yeah, I totally agree.
Nilofer Merchant And so I sit there and think, OK. So if people are being told the then and have groups within organizations that are essentially being sold this lie. Mine is the one that says actually stop worrying about the individual and start figuring out how to build the social systems so people can be hurt and love them. And so I sit there and think, OK, where are those people? And so where can I have those conversations that will create real change? And so I put together a here’s what they look like. Here’s where they are. Here’s the conversation already having. Here’s why I fit in. Right. So I’m actually sitting there saying, here’s the conversation I want to have within an organization to create change. And I’ll put that together and post it to my bureau people and say, what do you think? Because this is what I’m hearing from the marketplace. And then they’ll look for pattern matching against that. That’s the first thing. Second thing I do is think about this is an argument against diversity. So every person right now inside an organization, you probably know the buttons. Right. So diversity, bias, blah, blah, blah. It’s all like the buzzwords. Actually don’t think that’s the right construct.
Peter Winick OK. What is?
Nilofer Merchant I think only this is the construct. So here’s the problem with diversity. It says we’re going to start paying a lot of attention to women and people of color, etc. And every white guy in the room feels threatened to no end and thinks that the gender conversation is creating a skew. And I’m like, well, actually, I agree with them. Believe it or not, actually, I think that when we focus on people of color, etc. and we don’t actually focus on the real core issue, which is power is limiting idea. So what case could get unheard? To write the non alpha loud male is just as likely to be ignored. Or silence or beats.
Peter Winick Right.
Nilofer Merchant And so I’m like fix the real problem, which is what are the social structures that allow each of us standing on that spot in the world? Only one stands to contribute. Fix the social structure and you fix it for the white guy as well as the person of color as well as a woman. And so I’m like we actually start to change the conversation to one that’s actually more engaging, more in ruling and actually leads to the kind of change we want. And so I just, for example, realized that a couple days ago, like, oh, my God, I actually could talk to that group. And so I wrote a piece on linked in. And I’m kind of seeing like that. And so essentially what I’m doing is parroting, is that a place I can go and have that conversation? Do I have credibility there?
Peter Winick What I love the piloting concept there, because what will happen in a couple of months is you’ll either get a thumbs up or thumbs down from the market, which is more important than anything you can come up with on your own. That could be, you know, the world according to you could be it’s brilliant, but nobody’s willing to back it up with dollars and time. Onto the next one.
Nilofer Merchant So this is this is where my pure my pureness on the idea is now matched to my ability to actually find the marketplace. But I’m not actually. I know that there’s value being created. The question is, where is the value going to be captured?
Peter Winick And when you say where, ideally you want to be part of that, unlike the Apple Watch, which is now, you know, preventing people from sitting and not sending you a royalty every time somebody scratches their risk or stands up in the middle of the afternoon, that might have been a different one.
Nilofer Merchant Right, right. Right. So I’m just saying, like so I understand the difference. And but I definitely like I think it has to start really heavy footed on what is the change you want to see.
Peter Winick Yup.
Nilofer Merchant And the secondary part I consider much I’m not saying I don’t need to eat. Mom, I love shoes. All that I could.
Peter Winick Right.
Nilofer Merchant But it has to start in this place because otherwise I think what ends up happening is you end up being the person who, you know, produces eighty thousand year book when you only have thirty thousand words of ideas, or better yet, you basically a blog posts of an idea and read.
Peter Winick Or that could have been a TED talk that didn’t need to be told in forty seven paraphrasing them.
Nilofer Merchant Right. And so, so the thing is I think a whole bunch of us feel so dissatisfied with our service. Right?
Peter Winick Right, exactly.
Nilofer Merchant Because we haven’t done the what is the real problem solving and how do I think really deeply about that problem so that there’s the depth on which I do it.
Peter Winick Yeah, great point. As we have to wrap up here, because a rough one and a little bit long. Any final little tidbits of wisdom? Just someone that is in this space contemplating going into the space. What you didn’t give me one or two definitely do this and. But we don’t do that.
Nilofer Merchant Yeah, I think that the one thing is you have to. It’s now seven years, you’re seven have only a.. And I have been told so many times that I should change ideas because it’s it’s not creating traction. And I think a part of you has to decide, is this. Am I just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn and or is part of me really committing to something I believe is a real lasting change in the world? And I think most of us don’t know where that is and we have to figure it out. And I think that’s the question we have to have, is to say you won your idea through your idea, a 20 year idea, and then invest in it. Accordingly, I actually believe I have a 20 year idea, like maybe even a 50 year idea. And so I’m investing in reporting later. Do the depth of work.
Peter Winick What are the reality? Is, one, your ideas are great, but it takes a toll. You know, it’s like a startup. You’re not going extract the maximum value out of whatever your idea is in a year. So I love the fact that you’ve been able to ride only this four for seven or eight years and it looks like you’ve got another ten or fifteen to go. And it’s not the regurgitation of the same thing. It’s the evolution and the addition of additional thoughts on top of the foundational base that you laid there. So I love that. Great. Well, this has been awesome. I really appreciate your sharing with us. You’re the good, the bad and the ugly. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Nilofer Merchant Thanks, Peter Winick.
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