Performance of Thought Leadership | Karen Leland

Peter Winick

How performance is part of delivering thought leadership.

An interview with Karen Leland about using artistic talents in the delivery of thought leadership and the future of our hybrid world.

Today’s guest is Karen Leland, CEO at Sterling Marketing Group, the best-selling author of No Nonsense and The Brand Mapping Strategy, and lifelong artist. Karen Leland has written over 200 articles on business, food, travel, health and lifestyle for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, including: Self, Woman’s Day, Inc. magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Entrepreneur, The Christian Science Monitor, Hemispheres and others.

Improv and the Arts in Thought Leadership

With a lifelong commitment to the arts, Karen shares how the skills learned in music, theater, and improv have given her the ability to handle rejection. Also, these broad skills help her think on her feet and have served her well in business. She believes that the wide range of skills helps her face any obstacle that might present itself.

A Hybrid World

Next, we continue our conversation by looking at the increased speed at which the industry was forced to move to digital events. Karen shares her thoughts on the hybrid world that she sees evolving from the COVID-19 pandemic and what the new normal might be once we are on the other side of it.

Finally, Karen shares two passion projects she is looking at developing. She shares how many professionals are seeking side businesses that support their passion more than their pocketbook.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview

Thought leaders with a background in the arts are often capable of thinking on their feet and being more agile.
With the world forcing thought leaders to change how they deliver content, you have to be willing to figure out a way forward or face extinction.
Thought leaders should be seeking to find a way to apply their area of thought leadership to the way the world has changed.

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, sales and other aspects 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 the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is an old friend, Karen Leland. And Karen and I first met, I think about five years ago when we were sort of set up to be on a panel. And I guess whoever set that up didn’t really realize that we would be in violent agreement. So probably was kind of a boring panel. But it sparked a great friendship. I’ll give you a little background on Karen, freelance journalist, blogger, columnist, media gaffes. So she’s been on CNN, Kosmo, New York Times, Time magazine, etc.. Keynote speaker, spokesperson, board member, artist, actor, author, marketing and management consultant. So I’m only going through the headlines because I want to actually have time to Dr. Karen today. So hey, welcome, Karen. Thanks for coming on.

Karen Leland Thank you. It’s always so nice to talk to you.

Peter Winick Cool. So you’ve got all these categories or labels that people use, right? They can call you an actor. They can call you an author. They can call you a marketer. Typically, what we find in the thought leadership world is there is no logical, linear or even a best path, right? So I guess my short the short version of my question is how do I help you get here? How did this happen?

Karen Leland And that’s a really good point because I often say to clients like, I have a freaky background that just happens to make me useful in the world we live in. You know, I started out, as, you know, as a musical theater major, and I was an artist and a musical theater major, and I was like, Well, I don’t think I can make enough money at this. So I went back to school for organizational development, and then I worked I worked as a management consultant and I wrote books. And then I ran a PR firm. And, you know, the last ten years I’ve been running a branding and marketing strategy firm. But in a way, it’s that thing they always talk about, about when you look at people that are the most successful at work, they generally have a liberal arts education, right? And it’s because there’s a broadness that you get when you’ve got all those different areas. That helps when it comes to creating thought leadership. That’s not to say there aren’t people who are thought leaders in one single field, so you might be somebody that all you’ve done your entire life is study the mating habits of fruit flies and man, you are the thought leader in the mating habits of fruit fly.

Peter Winick But on the on the liberal arts, as a fellow, a liberal arts undergrad. You know, the other the other thing that you learn is you’re probably unemployable in whatever you studied right there, aren’t you? When you go on indeed.com or wherever they go, there’s probably not a big philosopher. Sociologist.

Karen Leland Exactly.

Peter Winick There’s dot or medieval history. You know, there’s not a big demand. So you sort of have to figure it out in terms of where you’re going and where you’re at. The value. I want to touch on the theater background because, you know, it is not uncommon in with the clients that we work with that whether it’s improv. I have clients who have done amazing work in improv, stand up, comedy, theater, music, etc. and not that I would say they sort of gave that up. It’s still a part of who they are and what they do, but some of the core skills, talents, confidence, etc. that they learned in those things, they’re able to move into the space of. Can you touch on that? Because I think that’s.

Karen Leland A really important point because what and I know a lot of people like that as well. And I think, you know, what happens is when you do any kind of art, anything artistic theater, improv music, whatever, you get used to a couple of things. And one of the things you get used to is rejection. So you go to an audition and the director says, Yeah, thanks, we’ll call you if we’re interested. Yeah. You also get used to having to be very think on your feet very quickly, right? You don’t you can’t just go, what am I going to do now? You know, you have to get used to being inventive. You have to get used to being creative. You have to get used to making the best of what’s in front of you and being resourceful. And I think those are all qualities that when you think about thought leadership or business, those are all qualities that serve you incredibly well in business.

Peter Winick Particularly early on as you’re breaking out as a thought leader. You are the brand, you are the face. You know, you are the face of the voice, of the literary embodiment of whatever your thought leadership is, whether it’s creativity or resilience management, leadership. So you have to be, I would say, in the role the people are looking.

Karen Leland At you afraid to be the one who’s out there and you can’t be afraid to fail and you can’t be afraid that people won’t like you or what you’re producing because that doesn’t get you very far. And all of the arts we talked about require those same qualities. And so I think there’s something you learn doing those arts that help you tap into a path of thought leadership where you’re just less afraid.

Peter Winick Yeah. And I would add to that that on the business side of it, you know, businesses, improv, right, everything. You know, we tend to fool ourselves in thinking we can plan the heck out of anything. I don’t think I’ve ever. Delivered a presentation, been to a meeting, even a call, a zoom that has gone exactly as one would planned. And if I think it would be one you hell.

Karen Leland Yes to think on your feet. And that’s, you know, I mean, I remember once when I was in a I was in a musical revue in San Francisco in a small, small black box theater. And we’re on stage and there’s four of us doing this musical revue. It was all like, you know, songs made up, as you know, for parties. And all of sudden it went dead silent on the stage. And I remember thinking to myself, Wow, somebody we call a go, we call it going up in theater. Somebody got their line. Somebody went up in the middle of the song and we’re all looking at each other and they’re all looking at me. And all of a sudden I went, that would be me. I was the person that went up and dropped my line. So I just picked right up and started doing it. But it’s a little witty, you know, It’s just like, boom. I’ve been standing on stage giving a speech for 10,000 people, you know, a keynote speech, when all of a sudden the big screens behind me crashed and went dark and I just had to keep going. Right. You know, that ability to keep going in some ways was the same as that time that I went, it’s me that’s dropped my lines.

Peter Winick Well, just so you don’t feel bad. So not that many years ago, Bette Midler was in Hello Dolly on Broadway.

Karen Leland So I saw. Right.

Peter Winick Fabulous. So we got tickets. We got great tickets. We wanted to go. We wanted to go. And it’s you know, she’s awesome, right? So we go and there’s one scene where she opens the door to go into the I think it’s the flower shop or the hat shop or whatever it was. And she turns to the actress that that is acting as the owner of the store. And the actress looked up at her. It is clear that it was Bette’s line. And there’s this, you know, it must have felt like hours on stage, but it was about five seconds. So Bette doesn’t like five seconds, and she turns to the audience and says, You tried doing this shit every day at my age, and then went right into which was sort of like at $500 a ticket, funny enough. But it was like, very few can get away with that.

Karen Leland No, but you know, the other the other thing is that when you when you have that ability, you know, that there’s nothing that can happen on any show, in any interview, in any situation where you’re not going to be able to find a path through.

Peter Winick So let’s bridge that to I hate that we were just talking earlier. I hate to say that word, but until they invented.

Karen Leland Right over.

Peter Winick You, radical, radical change in a short period of time, the under control doesn’t flow off the tongue or something. But let’s talk about sort of we’ve all sort of improv our way through Covid to a large degree, right? So we had, you know, a year and change ago, the beginning of 20. This is what my year look like, plus or minus ten, 15, 20%. But we all sort of thought we knew or felt like we knew it’ll be a little different than last year, but maybe mostly the same. And these many clients of book or whatever, and then boom, it hits. And depending on where your sort of portfolio was, not your financial portfolio but the things that you do. So if you were doing live work, so keynoting that’s a big problem. If you’re doing workshop, that’s a big problem. If you happen to have clients that were in retail, hospital or whatever, that’s a big problem. So talk about sort of the moving from the problem of stage of the improv business and how that’s why

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Karen Leland You know, we were talking about this earlier before we started the call. And what I noticed is I had clients and friends that fell into two categories and one category were the people that went well. That was then, this is now, and whatever I thought it was going to be, it’s not. And I’m going to deal with what’s here and I’m going to figure out the best way to move forward. And then I knew other people, clients and friends who were bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t what they thought it was going to be or it wasn’t what it was. And they you know, I had one person, interestingly enough, say to me, this person was a consultant. And I said, look, I think what you need to do is I think you need to do some stuff without charging. So you get a new group of people to be exposed to. I think you need to make some deals with some of your current clients who’ve been hit hard. And the person says to me, I’m not doing that. I’m valuable and I’m not changing the person who’s out of business today, by the way.

Peter Winick Yeah. And you know, on your point, I saw I would I might use words a little different. I think there are folks that early on sort of froze denial or whatever. This too shall pass, you know, And we didn’t know like, yeah, this will be a month like, okay, you know, whatever. Ha ha ha. Right. And I would add a third category. So there were people that froze, people that immediately sort of went with, went with change and tried new things.

Karen Leland And I think you were and I were one of the group that went immediately would change.

Peter Winick Yeah, well, you don’t have to. I mean to some degree it was an accelerant of things that we’ve already been advocating anyway. But I think there’s this third bucket. And the third bucket was, jeez, lots of smart people with lots of time on their hands for the first time in history. What do they do with it? Well, they typically don’t sit around and just want watch Netflix, are they?

Karen Leland So there was that little bit.

Peter Winick Right. Right. What was the Tiger King or, you know, we all had those guilty pleasures. The Tiger guy, when.

Karen Leland I personally rewatched all of Game of Thrones from the beginning through the end.

Peter Winick But what would I’m starting to see now is as a result of people being hunkered down so long, it was a time to say, you know, there’s ten projects I’ve always wanted to do, whether it’s the proverbial book or the research or the whatever, or have the courage, in essence, got the permission to experiment. Because you can say to your fans, hey, listen, you know, and I know I’ve never done it this way before, but what the heck, I think it’s a good idea. Well, you might not have done that a year and change.

Karen Leland Exactly. And I personally, in my business with my clients, in terms of the branding and marketing strategy, I did a lot of that. I called people up. I knew and I said, Hey, I’m going to do a webinar on this. I’ve never done it before. I’m not going to charge anything for it. I want to explore this area of branding or marketing or CEO branding or thought leadership, and people went great. That sounds great. Not in any substantial number of my current clients came from that experimental work now.

Peter Winick Right, right, right. And there were probably other experiments that you did that didn’t work. And so what? That’s okay, too.

Karen Leland But this is back to this thing about when you come from that theater background or that liberal arts background or that experimental background with anything with the arts, you’re not afraid to fail because you know that often there’s what we call the happy accident. Something will happen that you didn’t expect, and then some things don’t work out. You just go, yeah, that didn’t work next year. This is a crazy, silly example, but like everyone else, of course, I baked a lot during Covid when baking.

Peter Winick Why did all of a sudden the world is ending?

Karen Leland I hate it, but I need to figure out how to make regular like I did because it’s meditative and because you end up with a result in a in a period of time. So I remember I was trying out all these new recipes for baking and I tried out some new bread recipe or it might have been a cake recipe, I can’t remember. And it came out just horrible, inedible. And I called a friend of mine and I’m a good baker. I called a friend of mine and she said, Look, here’s the thing about cooking or baking. If you don’t have some really big failures every once in a while, you’re not trying hard enough and expanding. And it’s exactly the same thing. If you don’t have some failures, you’re not trying hard enough, you’re not expanding, you’re just staying in your safe little world. And I think part of what Covid gave people, if they took the opportunity, was the opportunity to experiment and have some successes and have some failures, but learn from the failures and retool one.

Peter Winick And I think that a lot of people were hung up in their delivery modality. I’m a keynote or I’m a workshop, I’m a consultant, but I always do things in person. And then you realize like, wait a minute, actually all you are is someone that has amazing expertise, knowledge, thought, leadership in a domain, and you deliver that to these types of people. And sometimes that evolves and changes and moves over time. And that intermediate piece, the way that you delivery now, you got to rethink that. So I think it’s been interesting in that everything from secondary education, I mean everything from everything, how do you how do you deliver the value? How do you deliver the content in a way that you can extract value from it in, you know, in a in a different way and be willing to do that? We’re seeing some really interesting things now, and some of them, I think, will become part of the sort of permanent business world and some of them will go away. I don’t believe that we’re going back to I was guilty of it as well. Hey, let’s jump on a plane like, hey, let’s jump on a plane. Right? I’ll meet you in Chicago on Tuesday. That was just normal. And I think now we’re going to go, yeah, there’s a need. There’s a human need for connection. But we have to justify like, wait a minute.

Karen Leland I’ve told all my clients that we’ve gone from virtual being and, and or to and that’s it’s a completely in a mixed bag. And by the way, I think it was heading in that direction anyway. I think Covid just accelerated that. Yeah. I don’t think covid’s the source of that. I think Covid was an accelerant. And I think we’re in a place where we’re even conferences. When we get back to full conferences, I think we’re going to see this hybrid of virtual and live. And I don’t think it’s ever going to go back.

Peter Winick But it’ll be a tiered structure. Like, I want to go to Vegas for this one or I don’t want to go to Vegas. I’ll pay less money and be in the balcony, you know what I mean? I’ll be digitally approving it so I won’t get to meet you at the bar, but I can get the content. You know, I like I like the way you frame that, because I think that’s right. And I think that this hybrid, What’s Next World, you know, is kind of cool, you know, and it forced you to, you know, question like just the basics of I mean, I have friends that, you know, my age, like their world was you got up at X time in the morning, you got your car, you got to the train or you drove and you went to like all those things that they were net. Why did you do that? Well, that’s what we do. And now it’s like, okay, well, now we’re going to change all that. How’s that working out for you? That’s like. Nobody likes the change at first, but then it’s like, This is pretty damn good. I just gained two hours of my life back. I can work out. I can, you know, whatever. So I think it’ll be interesting to see where it went.

Karen Leland And I totally agree with you. I don’t think it’s ever going to go back to what it was. I think it’s going to really evolve moving forward. And of course, that brings with it a whole other series of challenges. It challenges not just for people that are thought leaders, but for people just everyone who works for thought leaders in particular. It brings a set of challenges, which is how do you apply whatever your domain of thought leadership is, right? Yep. Mine is branding and marketing. You know, you’re you know, everybody has their different domain. But as a thought leader, how do you apply your domain of thought leadership to the new world we live in to the way things have changed. And I think that that is on thought leaders to also update the way they are putting things out in the world to take that into consideration.

Peter Winick Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, I don’t I don’t think it’s going back exactly. I don’t think it’s going to continue to be everything remote because we’ve had to do that. I think it’ll be blended. But, you know, I don’t know anyone that says, you know what I really miss? I really I really miss being on the subway two hours a day.

Karen Leland Really you know I don’t miss being on a plane quite frankly.

Peter Winick Right. Yeah. And yeah, no, I don’t miss that either. I mean, I miss a little bit of it, but not the. The exhaustion. The. You know, there’s nothing worse than O’Hare in February. Right.

Karen Leland Getting stuck or maybe Dallas in February, but.

Peter Winick Yeah, exactly. Well, you can always go to Cancun anyway. What do you see as we start to wrap up here? What do you see? Sort of. Next. What do you see on the horizon? I mean, you’re probably still doing more of what you’ve done. Maybe a little bit of a different way. And what do you see happening a little bit differently for you in the next.

Karen Leland Well, you know, it’s so funny because there’s two there’s two businesses I’ve always wanted to start and one is related to what I do, right? It’s it has to because I’ve written ten books. So it’s in the publishing space. But it’s an interesting it’s a little different idea for that. And then the other has to do with, as you know, because I have that art background, I’ve always been a painter and a photographer and it’s in that art background. And I think one of things that happened during Covid was I started to look at how I would do those businesses. So I think for me, even though I love my business and I’m going to still keep being a branding and a marketing strategist and working with CEOs, and I really, for myself, started to see that I want to pursue these other two businesses as side businesses. And I think I’m seeing a lot of people who, even though they have a main business, have realized there’s something they have a passion for and they don’t even need to make a lot of money at it. It’s not about making a lot of money. They might, but they might not. But I see for myself that I’m at that age in the place where I don’t want to delay some of these bucket list things that I’ve always wanted to do.

Peter Winick Well, I think any time we have these traumatic shocks to the system, Rachel after 911, there were a lot of people in New York like, I don’t want to be a broker and I want to be a trader for. The rest of my life. I could have been in that building or whatever. And then after 28 people, you know, people’s businesses got blown up or were broke or whatever. God, I want to be a mortgage broker forever. So I think I think it forces you to think. And for some folks it’s, yeah, I love what I do, but, you know, I’ve got to pick up the paintbrush again or whatever the other thing.

Karen Leland Exactly. And I do love what I do, but I also realize that there’s some other creative expressions. Sure. That are not necessarily not related to what I do, but they’re slightly different that I that I don’t want to not take the time to do.

Peter Winick Sure. Sure. Well, there are certain things that you know again and you and you know this that would be on brand and not so the things that are not on brand correct you can still do they’re just sort of off line like if you want to be baking or something.

Karen Leland I’ve always told people that, you know, there’s a difference between things that hook into the narrative of what you do and things that are completely different. So, you know, I’m a branding and marketing strategist. If I decided to go back to school and get a degree in oncology, those things don’t go together, right? They really would be separate. But if I decide to start a publishing company that easily could fit into the narrative of what I do.

Peter Winick Yeah, yeah, that would be sort of a logical or at least understandable line extension. Exactly. I know when I started a publishing company in this market, unless you said it was a nonprofit, it’s a good experience. Anyway, this has been fun. I’m glad we got to catch up and spend some time together.

Karen Leland And you’re always fun to talk to. Yeah.

Peter Winick I’ll see you. I’ll see you in the real world soon. Thank you so much.

Karen Leland Pleasure.

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