Publishing and the Need for Community | John Jantsch & Andy Paul

Peter Winick

Publishing and the Need for Community | John Jantsch & Andy Paul |434

Building a roadmap from book to community.

An interview with John Jantsch and Andy Paul that originally aired on February 23rd, 2021, as part of our Leveraging Thought Leadership Live series on LinkedIn.

Now that publishing is easier and openly available, we see more books hitting the market than ever before.
With that in mind, how can you elevate your book and create a roadmap that leads clients to you and your offerings?

Today, I invite two seasoned experts to share their experience with publishing, and the tools they used to move their audience up the product ladder.

Andy Paul is the author of “Sell Without Selling Out,” Host of the “Sales Enablement Podcast with Andy Paul,” and is a Top 50 Global Sales Expert, consulting with the biggest businesses in the world.

John Jantsch is the President and Founder of “Duct Tape Marketing,” and author of “Duct Tape Marketing.” As a consultant, he teaches business owners to streamline their marketing approach, increase revenue, and scale strategically.

We begin our conversation by discussing publishing options, and how modern methods are helping authors soar. John and Andy have both published multiple books using various methods, and they discuss the pros and cons of each.

Publishing is only the beginning of an author’s work! A successful book launch needs an established following, one that is ready and waiting for your book to come out. Awareness can be built up through podcasts, blogs, or posts on LinkedIn. Andy and John explain how releasing consistent content helps you build a reputation, giving your followers a flow of bite-sized portions that prepare them for the full meal of the book.

And last, we talk about building community. With so many people working alone, the need to communicate and share with like-minded people has increased. Our guests share how they’ve used cohorts, workshops, and mastermind groups to create communities that reach beyond the initial product offering, building lasting relationships.

If your book isn’t driving the traffic you hoped, this episode can help!

Three Key Takeaways:

The moment you have an idea for a book, you need to start building a following. Don’t wait to build the audience after its release!
Creating content that has value, and deploying it consistently, is key to growing your following and building a reputation.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with ideas – putting them out into the world, and get feedback to help promote its value.

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. You’re joining us on the LinkedIn Live version of the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today’s going to be a lot of fun and get to really, really interesting and seasoned folks. We’ve got Andy, Paul and we both seasoned in the sense of, Thanks, Peter, let’s just let me know. All the fresh faces have been approached. Well, let me give you their quick bios and then we’ll get in and give them the seasoning. So, and he’s got a new book that just came out this week called Selling Without Selling Out.

Andy Paul Sell Without Selling Out.

Peter Winick Without selling out. And this is his third or fourth book.

Andy Paul Third book.

Peter Winick Third book. He’s ranked number eight on LinkedIn’s list of top 50 global experts. His hit podcast, Accelerate Your Sales was acquired in 2010 and since renamed Sales Enablement with Andy Paul.

Peter Winick And then let me give you a little bit on John. If you don’t know John, I’ll just give you the shorthand for John is he is the father of Duct Tape Marketing and there are at least six books, maybe more, out under that theme. And he’s been at it for a long time. So we’ve got marketing and sales. And what I meant by seasoned, Andy, with all due respect, is between the two of you, I think we’ve got ten published books or something, which is more than most folks read in a year or two. So welcome to both of you.

Andy Paul Well, thank you.

Peter Winick Yeah.

John Jantsch Happy to be here.

Peter Winick So let me start with let’s just start with books a little bit because you guys might know a thing or two and it’s changed and it’s evolving. What is different about getting a book out into the universe today and what what’s kind of universal? What hasn’t changed since you both started?

John Jantsch Well, I think for me, the biggest thing that’s changed I mean, my first book came out in 2007 and it was this sort of novel thing for a small business person to have a book.

Peter Winick Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch What’s changed now is that probably since we’ve been talking, 50 books have come out in the business space. So that that’s part of the most dramatic thing that that’s changed.

Peter Winick Well, let’s stay there for a minute, because I think where you’re going because is your focus is on small business is when you did it on ’07, not as easy to do. Now there’s a million services and a lot of other ways for a small business to get a book out, whether to credentialize yourself or whatever the case may be. You don’t have to go through the big New York houses and all that. So that’s an interesting point there. I think there are and there’s good news and bad news and there’s more and more people writing more and more books often. So now we have the signal to noise problem. Right.

John Jantsch Yeah. And there really weren’t very many easy ways to get it out. As you said, if you didn’t have an agent who had access to one of the big publishing houses, it was a very tough road. Self-publishing was seen as kind of a less-than.

Peter Winick Yeah.

John Jantsch Certainly, you know, today there there’s this entire industry around helping people publish books that that are self-published. And it’s become certainly a lot more I think it’s the cache is probably still there to be with the penguin, random house, or somebody like that. But I think it’s become a lot more acceptable but with that is also come it’s become a marketing tactic in a lot of ways. More than that, being an author, it’s almost like this is another channel for me to, you know, to be seen as an expert.

Peter Winick Yeah. Well, and I think it used to be and we’ll get to you in a second, Andy. And the difference between traditional publishing and self-publishing was massive. Oh, well, you weren’t good enough for New York and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think a, that is just not true anymore. And b, a lot of what. And it’s not just black and white. There’s a lot of stuff in the middle hybrid, whatever. And I think what people don’t discuss often enough is their business model variables as well. Right. You know, when you think about, oh, the big New York publishing house and they do some great things as well, it’s typically not the greatest business model for an author. When you take away in advance the risk management of you guys know better than anybody. You’re doing all the hard work to sell the book. So a partnership where you get $0.10 or $0.15 on the dollar? Not exactly a partnership.

John Jantsch Yeah.

Peter Winick But I wanna get your thoughts, Andy, given that you’re.

Andy Paul Yeah. I’ve done all three right.

Peter Winick So yeah.

Andy Paul Yeah. One that was yeah. First was hybrid but leaning toward more purely self-publishing the second one traditional publishing third one I’d say next generation hybrid and with a great business model. And I think it just acknowledges that business model that regardless of who you publish with, it’s still on the author to market the book.

Peter Winick And yeah, and so and that’s a massive, massive, massive point because I hear people all the time, well, my job is to write the book. Ha ha ha.

Andy Paul Ha. As I tell people, we released just yesterday the new book. And as I said and so my one journey ended and another one began, right? So the first journey just to get the book to market, right, it’s we got that done now, you know, now we have to sell it and. Yeah. I mean, I think if you’re going to go to that effort and you have to make that investment, then why not work with a publishing model, with the business model that will enable you to be rewarded for doing a good job?

John Jantsch Well, and I’ll just add on that a little bit. I think a lot of times people you’re absolutely right, Andy, that it’s like write the book and now I got to do the work of promoting it. But the truth of the matter is, if you’re going to be successful promoting it, you’ve got to really start that maybe before you have the idea before the book.

Andy Paul Well, I’m a perfect example of that. You know, I wrote my first book, a sort of my first act of thought leadership. And yeah, I didn’t have a Peter all test because I talked to them right about that time. Yeah, I didn’t have a blog. I didn’t have a social following at all right. And. More than one person, even at that time, asked me, so why did you write this book? And then, you know, the second book was a little bit better. But between the second book and now, especially with my podcasting and we’ve really focused on building the audience, building the following so that when we are in a position to release a book now, we’ve got a much bigger built in potential audience.

Peter Winick One, I think there’s a there’s a disconnect. Inherently built into the business model of the publisher and the author. So, a publisher has to be they self or not look at a book as a sort of seasonal item. We’re not going to invest in this over seven years because we got we got more coming out of the sausage. Right. But for the author, you know, a book not that, you know, everyone is writing Shakespeare or something. Book has a long shelf life. Right now, there’s is 5 to 7 years. You know, there are books that are out there that are 5 to 7 years. And I think what you’ll probably see now, Andy, with the data and John, you can attest to this as well. When you get a new book out, it kicks up your back up close to Sandy Bar. That was a really good one. We wrote another one. John wrote, let’s look at that one. Don’t look at oh, that was written in 2007. So it’s probably not relevant right now, I hope.

Andy Paul We’re hoping so.

John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing still sells very well. And it’s partly because, you know, I’ve really built it’s kind of funny. The book was I mean, I don’t know that I planned this this year, but I had a podcast already. I had a large following already. I was actually doing what the book I wrote about in the book for many years prior to the book actually coming out, which of course certainly helped it sell as well as it did. But then I have a business model after the book. I mean, I still as a methodology that we teach you, we have courses, we actually have a network of licensed consultants who will acquire and use our methodology under the name of duct tape marketing so that that kind of follow on has made it so that it’s still selling. 14 years later, it’s still selling ten, 15,000 copies a year.

Andy Paul Amazing,.

Peter Winick Which it which is because I want to talk another issue that you guys both have in common, although you might not have thought about it this way, is people always talk about the book. It’s a heavy lift. There’s a launch, you know, open the curtain, blah, blah, blah. There’s a lot of. Not the average, but there’s a lot of effort and energy in the launch game, all this other stuff. Both of you do really, really amazing and beautiful things in terms of using leadership almost on a daily basis to elevate the brand and do the other things you do. You don’t you know; you don’t go into hibernation a couple of years. In between books, you talk about the importance of the use of consistently developing, deploying and curating thought leadership to meet your business objectives. Because I think you guys are two of the best examples out there.

Andy Paul Yeah. I mean, for me, it’s all focused on LinkedIn and yeah, when I started my podcast in 2015, yes, I had virtually no following anywhere. And just through making the decision to be very consistent about creating content that could be posted on LinkedIn, whether as a promotional post for the podcast or some other piece of thought leadership, you were try to do something at least once a day that that seems to have value for people. And it’s it worked, right? We started gradually building this this following. Now we’re up 180 plus thousand followers on LinkedIn and we’ve. Pretty good engagement and we’ve saw it last couple of years. Yeah. It’s more focused on, on that as a metric. And we track that track that very closely. And, and yeah, we’ve seen sort of exponential growth in the number of views we get that leads to other, other business opportunities.

John Jantsch And I always tell people I use my day job to inform my books. You know, I wish I could yeah, I wish I could go get in a cabin and write a book, you know, but what I really do is I do the stuff that I write about. And so consequently, you know, by staying in the game, by practicing marketing, you know, every single day, it kind of informs my ability to then write about what I see and don’t see and what works and doesn’t work. That’s why look how that’s so integrated for you, John, in terms of there are people and some of it is style, some of it is writing style, whatever. I’m in book mode, maybe alone, you know, hold, hold my call. A little blogging. You go to the proverbial cabin or whatever and you know what you’re saying. And we see this a lot as well as, listen, every day I’m out in the field, I’ve got an opportunity to learn something. Every client I interact with, every you have stories bubbling up from your coaching network, etc., to say, Well, what to do? What are people doing with clubhouse or something topical or whatever? And then you could not forensically but use that as the feed into the book. Because to me. I would rather put something out on LinkedIn. It took me an hour or two that failed miserably, then a book. Right. So, there’s there is the effective use of sort of thought leadership on a frequent basis as a market test.

Andy Paul Yeah. What I can say, it’s like the comedian going out and playing small clubs as you’re developing material and you test material on LinkedIn, and I’ve got yeah my Evernote file that I keep my ideas go record idea file. I don’t know I think I’ve got close to a thousand ideas in there that are just sitting there waiting for me to say, okay, I’m going to write on this one or this, you know, I’m back inspired to be inspired by this one again and a post something on it. So you just to John’s point is, yeah, I’ve interviewed 2000 plus people for my show, my own set of clients I deal with. It’s like.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Andy Paul I’m just gathering.

Peter Winick Yeah. The shortage of ideas is typically not the struggle. It’s which ones to go after. And I think I love that we’re living in a world where you can separate your own ego or judgment from reality, meaning oftentimes somebody put something out as, Oh, wow, that was the most brilliant thought I ever had, and man, everybody’s going to love it. And then crickets. And then there’s another time where you almost embarrassed to send because you’re like, this is, you know, I’m not happy with it. And that’s the thing that takes off. And I think, you know, it’s about having the data today through all the tools to say, wow, I hit a nerve here. Let me throw something else out. Let me let me let me try something else. Let me let me do that. And if you’re developing an isolation, you’re missing those opportunities on a minute-by-minute basis.

Andy Paul Yeah.

John Jantsch I was just going to say, I’ll tell you a story about writing my last book. I actually signed a contract for the Ultimate Marketing Engine on March 15, 2020. So, people a minute or two to think about what was going on. Right. And I was like, oh, crap, you know, I don’t want to write nobody wants to read a book about how to market it in a time of a global pandemic. Right. And so, I was kind of like, I’m at a loss of the direction I’m going to go with this. Yeah. And it actually the real through thread of the book came about from me working with some of my clients and seeing how they were responding but seeing the ones that were really thriving were actually ones that that were important in the lives of their customers and that that sort of learning that spotlight, you know, on that sort of a central idea was something that became crucial to the whole book itself. And it was really to the point of paying attention to what I was seeing emails come back from customers of customers, you know, saying things that really ended up informing, you know, hey, this is how we have to market today. This is the idea of getting cut, being customer centric. Can no more be lip service? You know, we have to actually make it central, a central strategy to not just to our marketing or to our business.

Peter Winick Well, I think that’s the difference between sort of the theoretical and the applied, right. What we saw way back in March of 2020 and we’re seeing sort of starting dovetail a little bit is if those that list and those that really figure out like, wait, I have a restaurant that used to me that’s a place where people come to dine. How do I redefine what that is like when actually this is a place to nourish people when they can’t compete, right? So it forced people to really think who they are and where they fit in the lives of the customer and sort of open these windows of experimentation. And I think you’ve seen some folks do a splendid job of that and some folks do an awful job.

Andy Paul Yeah, I think that’s really true as. Think about that. The journey of writing my own books is. After I started it, I had a draft then right before the start of the pandemic. And yes, I set it aside just because I wasn’t I wasn’t really motivated for a while to really sort of finish it and sort of see what was going on. And yeah, my book about human centered approach to selling and, and this are funny seeing at the start of the pandemic as already saying, Oh yeah, we really got to lead with empathy. And I’m like, this is this is new.

Peter Winick Right?

Andy Paul This is new knowledge for us to lead with empathy suddenly. And it’s inspired me to serve double down on that part of the book that I’ve written and sort of cut out some other things was that. Yeah. I think people have served missed the opportunity in large measure of the lessons that we could have learned through the pandemic and to serve, especially in the sales world. I think there is not the B2B sales are an going to really fundamentally reset how we engaged with clients and how we help them through their buying process. And I think unfortunately, I mean, I don’t partially cause I think will help people by my book, but I think we were I think we missed an opportunity to do that.

Peter Winick And when we talk about terms like, you know, trusted advisor, I mean, there’s a lot of terms that get thrown out there in the abstract like mom and apple pie everybody agree with. But I think now that the dust has settled a little bit, organizations, you know, to your point and on the B2B sides of wow, that entity, that person were a trusted advisor during a time of need. They were really there and they couldn’t say to me with the level of authority or gravitas, this is going to be okay. We’ve done this 100 times before, which is how we usually work with them. They’re going to say, Here’s what I’m thinking. This is why I think it’s going to serve you best. What’s let’s I’ve got your back. Let’s do this. And I think that that was really interesting.

Peter Winick If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at Thought Leadership Leverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick I wonder if I want to sit for a moment to think about or share your thoughts. More importantly on. You know, a book is not the end all, be all. And if we think of it as a product roadmap, I think that oftentimes what happens is people think of the book and they put all the effort in. And a book to me is one door into the store or realistically the beginning of a potentially long-term relationship. So, we start with you, John, because you’ve got a lot of interesting sort of moving parts to your business. So how do you what’s the journey, what’s the product roadmap that you hope folks take because you’re really clearly defined on your end user in the market in terms of small business. But what is the hope that you’re going to where are you going to take them?

John Jantsch Well, to me, it starts with a point of view. I mean, a book is really just an explanation of that point of view for me at least. I mean, I know a lot of people do all kinds of research and come to a conclusion about a book and or what should be in a book. But for me, it’s always started with the fact that the idea that marketing is a system. So that kernel of an idea was a it was a huge innovation in the world of small business. At least I covered I went out there and said it a couple of times in front of audiences and went, Oh, they’re all nodding their head. And so I was like, Maybe I’m on to something. So that kernel or that point of view is really informs everything. So then the book just becomes a very large conversation with the reader about that point of view. But I think in terms of the roadmap, my blog and my podcasts were probably more critical in terms of kind of launching that because it was 300-word, 500-word conversations, 700-word conversations that led people to want then the through thread that connected all together.

Peter Winick Well and stay there for a moment, because I think that’s a radical shift in the consumer. The end user of the book, right. It used to be the choice was, hey, this guy’s got a book, I’m going to read it. And that I don’t even care about the money, 20, 25 bucks, whatever. But it’s like, jeez, I don’t know this guy, John, 6 hours of my life, I don’t know. But that was the choice we had. And then the world changes 15 years ago. Ted, talk 18 minutes. All right? Now it’s like, oh, my God, 18 minutes is like, you know, reading War and Peace or something like that when it was in a book. So how do I get a little essence of, you know, yeah, I could be standing on at Starbucks on my phone reading a little piece. So then I go a little deeper and a little deeper. So I like that, that concept of sort of a build to the book from that standpoint.

John Jantsch Yeah. And I think to the point we talked about very early on, the fact that there’s so many books out there now. You know, my last book came out on September 21st. There were at least seven people I knew who had a book come out on September 21st. You know, there were like friends, you know, what was it like, other genres? I mean, they were business marketing’s, Facebooks and so now that that idea that somebody is going to choose one book over another, they’ve got to they’ve got to already have that trust established. Now, just because, as you said, to invest the time. Yeah.

Andy Paul That’s spot on. I mean, that’s again why we invest so much time on LinkedIn. What we’re doing is because we’re building that relationship, building that level of trust and we do it. Yeah, small bite at a time. Consistency is really hugely important. Topics. Yeah, we could be more aligned on the topics we’re going to put out, but a little more purposeful. But yeah, we always are experimenting and see what people are going to engage with.

Peter Winick And so now move, move that from the marketing side, right? So basically the book, the short form all like in essence is you’re building your brand that’s a marketing function and maybe attracting. Net new clients or whatever into Andy World and John Wall. Right. Then what? So once I read the book and fall in love. John, we’ll start with you. What if I’m assuming I’m the target avatar? Because why else would I be interested in reading this? What would you like me to do next? Or What am I? Action.

John Jantsch That’s a gateway drug for where we’re going. Peter, so my hope is that that some people will then say, you know what? I love the book, I love the concepts, I love the action steps, but I need a little help doing that. So here’s our 299 option. Come join our community. That is $1,000 a month. Some percentage of you are going to really want to be in this high-level mastermind with me. That happens to be $40,000 a year. And so that, you know, as a business model, those are just kind of made-up numbers. But as a business model, that’s how I think we need to think about a book, is that some people are going to then come into your community and whatever the number is, 15, 20% of them are going to want. More than 20% of that group are going to want more and 20%. That group are going to want more. So, to really maximize the book, you want to have that some people call it a ladder of products, but you have to maximize a community of followers. I think it really is just a proven practice to have that ladder of launch and there’s a big relationship. I think we’re big.

Peter Winick You need to make that connection between content and community because I read a book, it’s a solo activity and now it’s like, Whoa, there’s a whole bunch of other likeminded marketing folks. Why would you think about it?

John Jantsch Let me just add one more point on that, that I also think we’ve gotten kind of tired of the oh, I’m going to go take another course or I’m going to read an e-book. Right. And so this idea of cohort, small cohorts, I think, is and maybe the pandemic sort of caused a little bit of that because we’re not going to conferences, we’re not getting together in sales meetings like we used to. And so I think that that idea of facilitating small cohorts is right now at least is extremely powerful.

Peter Winick One of the cool things about the facilitation is if I go to see a workshop that either of you are presenting or keynote, it’s you’re the expert and I’m the sponge for the cohort. We can all learn. I mean, just by its very nature is. Yes, you’re still the expert, John, but I could learn from Sally, Mary Jo, and Steve, that are in the group as well. So, Andy, what’s your take on sort of the product innovation ladder or whatever you want to call that, the roadmap?

Andy Paul Yeah, well, try to follow a similar path, as, you know, where we’re sort of rebuilding ours as we talk, but. Yeah, I sort of look at it sort of three levels I guess is from the selling perspective or sales perspective, as is I see the book as sort of a level of creating perspective change. So on an individual level, what can individuals do this or change their perspective on the task that’s in front of them? In this case, B2B selling. See the next level service behavior change. And so we do have a digital the online community, the people enjoying low cost of courses and we’re looking at tourism cohort stop out of that as well. And then the third level is more culture change because of the sales world and more of an enterprise where people change the culture so we can change, initiate change from both directions, from the top and the bottom. So there we’re looking at, you know, doing assessments and diagnostics to be able to say, okay, let’s identify these problems on a systemic level and how can we address them?

Peter Winick And I think there’s a continuum for people to think about. And it’s there’s a consulting side, right, where the organization or whatever you can apply the intellectual property that lives in a book or region or other thought leadership as a consultant, it doesn’t mean you only have to be you have to be the only one doing the consulting. But like relatively high tech in solving a real problem for a real client in real time based on their data, they may or may not care about the tools that you do. And then the other side of that continuum is totally scalable solution. But you know, John need course where. Okay, let me what I’m selling to you is capabilities development so that you too can be a marketer do this piece. And there’s a lot of stuff in between. And I think, you know, one of the places where the creativity is applied is on great thought leaders. That puts them out there in so many unique and creative vehicles. Like that’s where the fun stuff happens to me.

Andy Paul Yeah. Well, I think John’s right though. The trend with the cohort is, is whether it’s a mastermind, which is not specifically core because that’s more as open ended in terms of duration. But yeah, I’ve seen a big trend of wanting to do things together.

Peter Winick Well, that’s the peer-to-peer thing, and we don’t know if that’s a function of COVID or we haven’t all been to Orlando in Las Vegas 32 times a year like we used to or whatever. But no, I.

Andy Paul Think I think some of it’s just trends. I think part of it’s generational to degree. And I think it’s I think it’s good. I mean, I think from a thought leader perspective, I think that’s something my perspective an easier sell than, hey, let’s go get 10,000 people to sign up to be a subscriber individual subscriber to something.

Peter Winick And I think it’s also the sort of the inherent nature of accountability and taking action and things that happen in those cohorts, too, because I think we all go it’s like, Oh, that was a great speaker. That was great information. Or you read a book you go through, of course, and there’s no there’s no sort of lever to make you take out that positive peer pressure to say, exactly, I don’t want to go to the next session. And somebody asked, Well, what did you implement? Or The dog ate my homework because it’s easier for us to let ourselves down and then to let down others that that we’re working with. Totally right. Yeah. Interesting. And just to.

Andy Paul Really to show up and participate as well. I think that’s a big part of it because. You know, you look at what the value people get from masterminds. Yeah. It’s the peer interaction.

Peter Winick What I think the other.

Andy Paul Key thing, it’s not the leader necessarily now when they’re sitting down with your experiences or other people. Yeah. Surveil people in the mastermind. I think the value John or the value is everybody else that’s in the group.

John Jantsch Well, I think most people, if a masterminds put together the values in the other people that the facilitator knows. Right. And that because that’s we’ve all been in these where there was a good dynamic in the group and then you’ve been in ones where you’re like, wow, this group, they’re all rock stars, you know, right there with me kind of thing. And that’s what makes it sort of magical.

Peter Winick Yeah. And I think another thing that both of your audiences might have in common is a sense of loneliness. Right. Words tend to be lonely. And individual sales contributors, even though they’re part of a part of it or are lonely. And I want to be with people like me that are struggling from the same issues. Any thoughts on that?

Andy Paul I think it’s very powerful. Yeah. I think that that that’s actually sort of the tagline we had our digital community assume you never have to sell alone. And because. Sure. Yeah. The individual may work for a company or whatever. You own the number, right? You’re you just go to sleep at the number at the top of your mind. Yeah. No, not sharing it with you. So yeah. Loneliness I think is a big thing. And seeing the impact of that in sales because especially in COVID is, you know, some majority of B2B sellers in a recent service are reported some mental wellbeing issues.

John Jantsch Yeah, in my consulting network, about 75% of them are solopreneur because that business model is possible. But they it’s funny, we survey them all the time and over and over again. I came for the tools and the training, but I stay for the people because our is kind of a renewal membership type of thing. And so we thought we were building training and we really built a membership organization too.

Andy Paul Yeah.

Peter Winick And I would argue, John, that when they’re signing up, they’re not they’re not even thinking about the community, like that’s. So, they might sign up for the content.

John Jantsch That’s right.

Peter Winick They stay for the connection and the opportunity because after a while you kind of go through, yeah, the content is not infinite. It’s bringing it to life contextually with people that you’ve come to trust and admire and become friends with and all that. That brings more so cool. So as we start to wrap up here, any final no pressure but incredible words of wisdom from either of you.

Andy Paul I think. Well, I just say, yeah, you think about writing a book to John’s point earlier. Start building your audience well in advance.

Peter Winick Yeah, great point. And John, what do you got?

John Jantsch Well the advice I’ve been giving people, maybe for years, but seems more relevant right now. There’s a whole lot of overwhelm in in marketing because there seems to be the new channel, new platform, new way to participate in platform. You know, I tell people, write them. Tell me right now, figure out what you don’t need to be doing. You know what’s working and focus on that, double down on that and do less. Spread yourself less then and you’ll have a much greater impact.

Peter Winick Yeah, great. Great stuff. I thank you both. I appreciate you both.

John Jantsch Thank you, Peter.

Peter Winick Fan of both of yours and wish you all the best. Thanks for spending time with us today.

John Jantsch Thank you.

Andy Paul Thank you.

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.