Publishing, Marketing and the Platform for Thought Leadership | Lee J. Colan and Julie Davis-Colan

An end-to-end journey, from writing, to publishing, marketing, and creating a platform around a core idea.

An interview with Lee J. Colan and Julie Davis-Colan that originally aired on October 19th, 2022, as part of our Leveraging Thought Leadership Live series on LinkedIn.

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 at Thought Leadership Leverage and you’re joining us on our LinkedIn Live, which is an extension of the podcast Leveraging Thought Leadership. So today, my guest, we usually don’t have two people in one box and we I don’t think we’ve ever had two people in one box with the same last name. So that’s a first. Let me give you just a quick intro on Lee and Julie. So Lee Colan is an organizational psychologist and the CEO advisor who applies an in-depth understanding of business, science people and organizations to help leaders and organizations grow hope. Julie Davis-Colin is a CEO advisor, corporate health strategist, and an executive coach who keenly observes and deeply listens so she can hear the unseen and unheard truths and others. They’ve formed a company for probably over 20 years. We’ll get into that called the L Group, and now they’re the coauthors of a new book called Healthy Leadership How to Thrive in the New World of Work.

Peter Winick So, welcome aboard, folks. How are you today?

Julie Davis-Colan Thank you, thank you for having us.

Lee Colan ]We appreciate the opportunity.

Peter Winick So let me let me dive in. We were chatting before we got online about the new book and how you’re excited about that. But what I want to do is do a little bit of history. So most people might not be able to know this, but I think all of the books behind you are books that you’ve authored, right? So that’s an unusual so this is not your first rodeo or as it comes to publishing. So maybe tell us a little bit about what you did this time compared to other ways you’ve gotten your book to market and what you’re learning and what you’re experiencing?

Lee Colan Sure. Well, to be exact, this is our 16th rodeo. So we’ve published three of them through big houses traditionally with McGraw Hill, one with a niche publisher, kind of gift book publisher. But the majority of them were kind of a mid-sized publisher called Cornerstone Leadership Institute. And the latest one we did here, the paperback.

Julie Davis-Colan Banner will be here. This one.

Lee Colan Yeah. Okay. This is kind of a rapid read book. So it’s a we like this model that we use this time. That’s why I’ve done it with most of our books and because it’s a built in publishing model and a marketing model. So we’re able to publish large quantities of the book very cheaply. As you know. You know, printing goes, the more you print, the cheaper it is. But then we also have a process where we can get it on people’s desks. So it’s called a direct mail sampling method. So we have a targeted list of in this case it was 50,000 people, executors, professionals, people that are psychographic, people that pay money to read and learn.

Peter Winick Yup.

Lee Colan So we get it on their desk. They look at it, we give a free copy so we don’t care about them buying one. We’re looking for the quantity orders and that. And if we get it to the right people again, it’s direct mail, relatively small response rate, but the orders come through very nicely. So we like to call it a marketing strategy, kind of a loss leader, but it’s not a loss leader. It has about a 35% net margin on it. So we’re getting out there.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Lee Colan The books make money for us, but as any author knows, it’s not so much about the book, it’s about the other supporting services that you can provide on the book. But we want we like to make sure that the books themselves.

Peter Winick Sure.

Lee Colan Make money, right. You need to make sure that it’s profitable. But this one in particular, it’s like it’s a real passion of ours. We just feel like it could really change the world so, but any author should be passionate about their book, right? I mean, we’ve talked – we coach a lot of people almost like we’ll say like, you know, I really want to do a best seller. I just want to like write something, a legacy book, whatever. But I believe, like, you should feel that strongly about any book that you would walk away.

Peter Winick Yeah, right.

Lee Colan You’d want that.

Peter Winick So I want to push on something that you said or unpack something that you said. So most people, when we talk about the world of publishing the the binary thinking is traditional or nontraditional. Is it self-published or is it traditional? And by the way, I don’t even think that’s the right perspective anymore because there’s a lot of hybrid and variations in the middle. Time is no longer black. And it’s an old model. That’s an old model. Number two, just because you’re not publishing with a big publishing house doesn’t mean it’s less then I think there’s a whole business model issue here. I think there’s this kind of market, I think there’s control. But you put two things together that people don’t often put together where I like to have. I think what you said was I like to have in one house the publishing and the marketing. And I think what happens is if you talk to most first time authors, maybe some second time authors that didn’t learn all that well the first time, they’re shocked that the publisher isn’t responsible for marketing. Like, wait a minute, I thought, like, I, I sit there with my pipe and my tweed jacket and the words flow and then somebody else touches their nose and magic happens and more. That’s a book, right? Tell us how true or not true that is.

Julie Davis-Colan And I’m just – back on that for a second. So we talk. About publishing with two big houses and with this intermediate publisher. And the ones that we publish with the big house are actually extensions of ones that we’ve published, like this larger variation. So as it relates to marketing, the big houses only want you if you have a proven track record and your own list, which is great, is an entry to to get with them. But they don’t market.

Lee Colan Unless you’re a big name.

Julie Davis-Colan Unless you’re a famous.

Lee Colan Massive. Yeah.

Julie Davis-Colan In any case, whatever way you go, your marketing plan, your marketing strategy is yours to drive and pay for and put effort into in order to get the word out about your book. And and or you.

Peter Winick Say that again, it’s not just the strategy. It’s you are the I always joke around congrats. You’re not only the author of the book, but also underneath that I’ve been advocating in parentheses SVP of Sales and Marketing of the book.

Julie Davis-Colan 100%. You can.

Peter Winick You own that function whether you like it or not.

Julie Davis-Colan Entirely, and you can employ people to do so. But it is a very crowded world, as we all know. And I guess the other point I’m just going to piggyback on was a book with this is a learning because you talked about, you know, this being number 16 and what we’ve learned along the way, very wise people have spoken to us along the way. And at first we might have had a great idea. And our first one was our best idea and still is our best seller, but an idea in and of itself that we felt we needed to publish isn’t a sufficient reason to publish. And I think probably your listeners, Peter, are probably well more informed than most. It’s really our platform and is our platform for other engaging services that Lee mentioned. It is not just about writing this book and speaking on the book that is one offshoot. So thinking about the content and how it provides the context for more than just the key idea of the context for the services you provide.

Peter Winick Sure. So stay there for a minute. So the book so there are a couple of things that you said. One is these books have led to traditionally published books, so it sounds like you’re almost doing a little bit of sampling market testing. You know, I don’t how many pages of 100? It’s less than a full. Yeah. So it’s really you’re getting market validation for a publisher for another piece to say, do we go all in and write a bigger book or a bigger play? But I want to talk about that, the platform leading to the other services. So, you know, we said earlier, well, we make some money on the book, you know, 35% or whatever. But the trick is whether that number was 35% or 40 or 20 doesn’t change the world. What are your goals for the book relative to the business? And talk about the suite of services and offerings that you have in the business because that’s really where you make your money.

Julie Davis-Colan Absolutely.

Lee Colan So Julie’s the kind of the marketing guru in the business. And just to give an example, our first book did very well. We’re very fortunate so that I got a role. Then I did five books and the next 12 months, stupidest thing we ever did, Big investment Pie was because we thought, Hey, this is it works so well. Number one, why would it work? Well at all level, right? And then and so then after that, we slowed down and just said, you know what? Let’s make sure that we’re only writing something that supports the platform. So our platform where leadership advisors dedicated to healthy growth so we have a healthy growth platform around creating a compelling purpose, around engaging your team, having aligned culture, positive coaching and excellent execution. So we have books around all the aspects. We call them growth factors to fire healthy growth and orbit around that whole platform is something called healthy leadership. We believe that leadership either inhibits or enhances each of those growth factors. And so that’s where this came from. So we before the pandemic, we started the process of kind of repositioning and just relook at our company. We’ll look like for the next ten years, step back. What are we naturally gifted at? What do we love doing? What do we have resources around? What does the market need? Don’t forget that. What does the market need? And we created this this healthy growth platform. And that has really been very powerful for us to be very clear and honestly, like when we went back to our website now we there was all kinds of crowd out there was like, you know what? We don’t need to list everything we do. Everything needs to be focused on our leadership advisors for healthy growth, for the leader, for the business and for the team. So, so it really helped clean things up a lot. And so it makes it much easier when you think about developing a product or service for sure, or being or consulting. Now it’s like much cleaner and easier and we help other people do that too. Just think about, Hey, the more anyone does this, the more focused you can be, the easier your decisions and your strategies are.

Peter Winick One – A good a good litmus test of a platform is how do previous books fit in that and work and the current book. Because what happens often and you might have been slightly guilty of this writing five books in 12 months, whatever it is, every time there’s a new book, there’s there’s a new platform, and then your client base is getting whiplash because we’re not sure. What to expect from you. When I get in my car and I leave it on the gas station, when I come in the next day, it’s going to be on the gas. That’s the expectation. Right. And I think even though most thought leaders are incredibly smart and curious and prolific and all that, you know, the point that we make it, what does the market want? Forget about what you’re curious about. That’s important. Right. But it’s that place where something that you’re mulling over, thinking about knowing at whatever is aligned with the platform and and where the market perception.

Lee Colan That it’s going to be. And really the focus is really key because if you have a clear platform, it helps you stay focused. And I would say I want to just credit Peter, you and your firm, because your models around what it takes to have a good platform and supporting tools and all that, we use that to help us think through the process. So all of your thought leadership in that area was really helpful and value added for us. So thank you publicly for that of thing.

Julie Davis-Colan I would say that the thinking that we did pre-pandemic that led us to the healthy growth model is to help you. Leadership is the most intensive thinking we’ve had in years since we started the business. Yes, really try and get clear and clear thinking iterative. It was so iterative and just we have a light bulb moment and you think it’s there. And then what we do is noodle on it is I mean, I don’t even know how many permutations there are, but just thinking through to get to crystal clarity, which is not easy and it’s I don’t even know if you ever get absolutely there, but you think you’re there eventually. But that’s hard.

Lee Colan On our kids is like papers in high school have they help me out And I say well where’s the outline? And so what? I’m an outline, but I’m just all over the place. I was like, Well, you can’t have clear writing or clear speaking without clear thinking. And I think for a leader that’s really key too. It’s like sometimes we just like to produce stuff, right? But it’s that clarity of thought. And if you can get clarity of thought around your platform about what you’re all about and how you want your passion and skill that intersects with what the market needs, now you’re onto something. But it doesn’t. Just like for one planning session.

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

Peter Winick I want to go back to the clarity of thought piece, but first what I want to do is give us a two or three minute overview of the book, and then I want to go back to the clarity of thought thing through the lens of the avatars of who the book is, and that makes sense. So give us a little a little, you know.

Lee Colan So the book is based on the research that Gallup’s done. It just says this is what today’s worker needs. And so there are lots of shifts that today’s worker wants to work for a purpose and not a paycheck. They want to work for development and not satisfaction. They want a coach and not a boss. So thinking about the broad context of the worker and then what that means for a leader. So honestly, ten years ago, if if a leader did the things that we’re talking about in this book, they would set themselves as like a great leader, right? But today, with the market dynamics and there’s a lot more places for people to go, if people will look to see healthy leadership in the workplace, they’re just going to go look for it somewhere else. So now it’s like table stakes. So it’s basically founded on three principles and three practices. The principles are basically what you would consider your mindset, if you will, the principles of love, positivity and growth. Right? And we get a lot of pushback in the beginning when we developed the model. Remember Julie, particularly from HR friends, Oh, you can’t. But love is love in the workplace and all that. And so of course now it’s the number one thing people, it resonates with the mindset and we just defined love as doing what’s in the best interest of others.

Peter Winick So the lesson there is don’t listen to H.R. I’m only slightly kidding.

Lee Colan We have that that mindset of you’re helping. These are principles that it’s almost kind of sets the context and really when you think about this is really a way to thrive not just at work but in life. You can anyone should read this book and they’ll say, this is how my family, my relationship, So the fundamental principles and then they’re supported by three healthy leadership practices, practices of clarifying, of coaching and connecting. So I would just talk about this. So is there rocket science in this book? No, but there is science in the book. It’s all based on even the positivity. One sounds like, Oh, Pollyanna, Julie’s one of the 1300 experts in the world certified as a positive psychology practitioner. So we draw on the science of the brain and how it works and how we could manage against negative negativity bias. To make sure we’re bringing our best selves to the table. So there’s a lot of science to support it along with. Just say some examples and stories to kind of bring it to life with really great subtitled and actionable guide for leaders. So it’s really about all the tools. We’re very tool based kind of a how to company. So it’s like, yeah, all the tools in the book so people can take this and deliver training and they could be off and running if they wanted to.

Peter Winick I think that tool approach where it’s more applied and theoretical, there’s a subset and sometimes what happens is thought leaders fall in the trap of thinking everyone’s like them. You all know more about this stuff than almost everybody. Right. So you you are not writing for you as the audience, right? So where you might be more theoretical, more abstract, etc., it’s that applied, which, which leads me to where I started a little while ago is talk about the platform. You guys lock down your platform. Then we talk about the board. Look, it’s very focused. Give me a sense and I think people don’t spend enough time here. We call them avatars, but who’s the book for? And I know it says leaders and all that, but meaning, who is the book for relative to your business objectives? Obviously, anybody can read the book, front line people, whatever. But yeah, give me that sense as it relates to your direct mail and all that, we’re all going to come together.

Julie Davis-Colan Well, I mean, ideally our audience is the absolute leader of the company, the CEO. If he or she embraces these concepts, it trickles down. So that is always our goal. Start the talk. We spend a lot most of our time coaching and interacting with people at that level. And so that is always the goal. However, what size organization?

Peter Winick Because when people say at the top, yeah, if you’re a solo practitioner, you’re at the top. But if you’re.

Julie Davis-Colan Yeah.

Lee Colan On the small end and we used to try to describe this, but the fact is ideal client, it’s more about their mindset and the value they see in our kinds of services versus the size of the company. That said, on the small end, maybe a $50 million company and we go easily up. In most cases, our companies are multibillion dollar clients.

Peter Winick So okay, so wait, wait. I want to expand on that, though, because I think and I call it sort of lazy marketing, it’s easy to pull a list of heads of H.R. A 50 or 250 million, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When you were calling the mindset or call it the psychographics, that’s harder to find. So what are those mindset? Because I think that that’s really the hardest part about the definition defining as an avatar. It’s not age and income. It’s that is a piece. But that other piece about that and how you how you marketing it.

Lee Colan And that’s the that’s the one that really the primary and sole criterion is for the mailing list is people that pay money to read and learn. So someone that subscribes to magazine, someone that way. So someone that attended the local university executive MBA program, someone who purchased some videos for their for their team. So any buying pattern, it doesn’t have to be a big dollar amount. But this shows that they’re investing in themselves and in their team to learn.

Peter Winick So that would also tell me two other things. One, they’re a lifelong learner, right? Because I’ve seen the stats on how many people have not read a book in the last five years, and it’s depressing so that they’re not.

Lee Colan On the other side of that. If you look at the stats, on the average number of books a CEO reads on,.

Peter Winick Oh yeah. It’s like 50 – 50 a year.

Lee Colan A year, which is. Yeah. Yep.

Peter Winick So, so anyway, so number one, is there a lifelong learner which is a trait. But number two, you have validated that with a purchase, right. Yeah. They bought, you know, if somebody went to an executive MBA would all the things you describe. Right. That’s interesting. Right. So I think, you know, and then then you can double click on that and get the size of company, etc., etc..

Julie Davis-Colan Yeah. Right. And Peter, I would say on a micro scale, one of the things that LinkedIn provides beyond LinkedIn learning is the ability to see how people think and what they respond to. And in particular, this problem where I, I try to link with like minded talk business leaders and not just thought leaders, but people in companies who have like mindedness and is very clear to see that based on what they post about their company and all that. So in as a supplemental strategy, we can we can look at micro level at who actually may not have been on that list, but who thinks in this realm, because convincing someone to have this mindset is not what we’re about. We want to give people tools that have an open growth mindset to execute these principles within their company and their leaders.

Lee Colan And then to piggyback on that, Peter, I think something for thought leaders is really important that that we’re always thinking about pushing stuff out. But we spend most of our time just trying to add value for people. So we host CEO lunches in our local in Dallas area. We don’t charge them with just freebies. Come in, we’ll talk, we’ll help you out or blah blah. We’re sending out these free blogs. We have free newsletters. We’re coaching the kids a. Our clients. I mean, just any way we can help people to add value to their life. That’s really we consider our business kind of a personal calling, but I think sometimes thought leaders get can get caught up like this pushing their stuff out. I think the thing is, too, is we’re focused on like, yeah, we want to push good stuff out, but it’s really also about how do we add value? Like, how do we help them? And so that’s.

Peter Winick Great.

Julie Davis-Colan That remuneration at the end of every relationship, but very few of them. But we just have to and I think if you’re doing that, when people do have a buying decision, we find that it’s not competitive. They call us. It’s like, Oh, you guys are helping us, we want your lunch.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Lee Colan Yep. And they’re not as price sensitive. So those are two big things for someone. So to me, it’s about when.

Peter Winick I think I think you’re right, because I think there’s an old school thinking amongst a subset of authors and thought leaders that, well, if I give it away and nobody will pay for it, and it’s actually the opposite. Right. So the more you give away and I’m not saying you give it away to someone that would have been a paying client. The more that work is out there, the more they’re interacting with, the more they’re reading about your stuff. A They’re more familiar. And exactly like you said, when they’re ready, it’s it’s interesting. We see this a lot, too. We call them lurkers, right? So when you’re following or doing your analytics on your social media or whatever you say, oh, these are the people that are actively engaged in my content. Great. That’s fine. And oftentimes it’s the same couple of dozen or 100 or whatever the case may be. And then every now and then, it’s sort of like the, you know, the snake snake bite, like out of nowhere comes someone and they get you on the caller. Okay, Ready to rock and roll? Let’s go do this. You’re like, where the heck did they come? They’ll say something like, I’ve been following your stuff for years, and it was on or off or their quote back to, you know, something that you wrote or something you did or a video that you did. And I find it’s hard to know when they’re going to strike, but it happens consistently enough that it’s not an anomaly, that people are consuming your stuff. And I think what happened is all of us are professional services. We theoretically always have the supply, right? What we don’t know is at what moment in time does the client have the demand based on all the other things they need to do, could do can afford to do. So I love the fact that you’re giving it away. And like you said, you’re not competing. Right. Right. They’re less price sensitive and it’s an easier it doesn’t even feel like a sale. It’s like, okay, obviously it’s time for us to work together, right?

Lee Colan Yeah, it’s it’s really competitive. And I think as a service provider, you have to take the long term view and just feel like you have to just kind of so the ground sell the good seeds and help people out and not keep track of it. When I helped him out, I hope he buys something like just keep doing that and know that you’re going to repeat over time.

Julie Davis-Colan And one thing that we started doing, since this is a new book, is we as we mentioned, we also really one people want one book, they go to Amazon, but for our large orders we follow up and offer for their leaders. If the top leaders want to have a book discussion after they’ve read the book or a couple of things, we will give a complimentary hour and just have a parallel with them and just talk about the book or how it resonates with them, how they might use it, what fits, what doesn’t fit. And again, there’s no charge for that. But we start with a thought process. We these it right, but.

Lee Colan We don’t even keep track. Like if they happens it happens.

Julie Davis-Colan It’s furthering the message.

Lee Colan And you have to be that passionate about it. You really have to feel like your book can change the world in some way, that you’re happily willing to do that without kind of trying to.

Peter Winick But I also think you need to have a boundary. I mean, most folks don’t take advantage, but if an organization wants you to come in and do ten, you know, free lunch, you learn, you need to have a conversation. So there’s something that the other.

Lee Colan Classes that for the most part we assume the best of people. And for the most part. Nine Sure, people are actually more respectful of our time than we would like to offer an hour. And we just got one today, which will take 30 minutes and like will offer an hour. You take the whole hour. Okay. Right. But but occasionally you get that. You just you just manage that one off. But I’m a believer in building systems and processes around the norm, not the exception. And no one expects you to do all that.

Peter Winick Excellent. So as we start to wrap, any final thoughts or observations around what you’re doing this time and how well it’s working or what’s different? Or maybe because you’ve been at this quite some time, maybe it’s a generational piece. What’s what’s universal around getting a good message in a good book to market and what’s changing based on buying patterns, demographics, life, whatever?

Lee Colan Yeah, you know, we we, we send out you know, we used to send out 40,000 free copies at a time, Right? This time we also sent out 15,000. Just because it’s harder to find these lists because due to privacy concerns, people are more concerned about giving a list like, did we buy it? But even selling their list, Right. We understand that. So that’s kind of up a little bit. But I would say like in general, our big thing is like we’re always trying to learn, like we’re always testing something new from a marketing standpoint.

Peter Winick I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lee Colan That it works. We double down. If it doesn’t work, we go something else we never really get complacent about. This is the thing that works. We. We find some things that work. We keep doing it, but we’re always testing something. So I would say you have to be willing to spend a little time, a little a little money, have a little bit to say, let’s try this out. Will they be testing here or something? We’re trying something different and to try to stay relevant. Julie’s looking into book talk now on Tic Toc. Yeah. Yeah. Anything. And it may or may not work, but I think the other thing is you got to make sure you stick with something long enough to make sure it’s working. Sometimes people want that immediate result. Okay, we do try that. We move on, but.

Peter Winick Right, I did two TicTok’s. And I’m not. I’m not out there.

Julie Davis-Colan Well, and I guess we have a foundational system of newsletters that of like the CEO luncheon some day, some product promotion or relationship building techniques which are firm. And then, you know, as an example, we I just say get creative like this year, actually the next month we’re doing a virtual book launch. So we just did one in-person in Dallas, which was lovely and fun and our favorite kind. But now we’re doing a virtual rooftop book launch with Remo.

Lee Colan Yeah, it’s a bunch of, of, of very real kind of.

Julie Davis-Colan Like a metaverse experience.

Lee Colan Where people, let’s call it literally go into a conference room table and it’s a rooftop, it’s a rooftop with fireplaces, fireplaces, and then they can actually talk very simply. It’s not like doing breakout and zoom.

Peter Winick Right.

Lee Colan Presentation.

Lee Colan So just always trying something, you know, something different. So I guess you have to have somebody in your group that puts on a creativity hat and say what? What could get garner attention in this very crowded world?

Peter Winick Yeah, I think the one thing you said that’s important is, you know, you’re not making bet the house bets, but you have this experimental mindset and you know upfront like listen out of ten. Three or five aren’t going to work. We just don’t know which ones. And that’s okay. Right. And I think it’s easy to get stuck in the. But we’ve always done it this way because the world is moving too quickly to just do that. So this has been phenomenal. I appreciate both of your time and your work and sharing your story with us. And thank you so much for.

Julie Davis-Colan Thank you so much.

Lee Colan Thanks.

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.