The New Rules of Thought Leadership in an AI-Driven Future AI is changing everything—but…
Thought Leader Community Building | Ernie Humphrey
Using Thought Leadership to Build Communities
An interview with Ernie Humphrey about using Thought Leadership at Stampli to build communities.
Today’s guest is Ernie Humphrey, the Vice President of Thought Leadership at Stampli. Ernie was a long time treasury manager before becoming a thought leader and community builder for finance professionals. We talk about what it takes to build a community, how to build credibility, what content to use, and whether you should be monetizing the community you are building.
Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:
- How you can get an audience to take notice of your thought leadership.
- What steps you can take as a thought leader to build a trusted community.
- What you can do to build credibility as a thought leader.
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Transcript
Bill Sherman Hello and welcome. You’re listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. I’m your host, Bill Sherman. Today we’re talking about one of my passions, organizational thought leadership. That is the people who create, curate and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organization. My guest today is Ernie Humphrey, vice president of thought leadership at Stanley, a company that’s changing the realm of app automation by bringing invoices to life. Now, Ernie’s a long time treasury manager who became a thought leader and a community builder for finance professionals. He built a community of finance professionals from 500 to 30,000. And he’s used formats such as webinars, articles, books and e-books to communicate ideas. Ernie, welcome.
Ernie Humphrey Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure and honor to be here.
Bill Sherman So let’s start with sort of a level set question to begin with. What’s your definition of thought leadership?
Ernie Humphrey I bet you’ve heard a lot of different answers for that one. I do. I do. So I’ve got two. One is for me on a personal level. For me for thought leadership that helps people ask the right questions, identify issues and opportunities, perform better at their jobs at the end of day, have positively impact careers. Now, from the company perspective, true thought leadership delivered by companies will enhance our company brands, facilitate newer, deeper customer relationships. And this is most important service professions of those who use their products and services. And that’s really the key in my mind.
Bill Sherman So let’s pick up on that for a little bit. Facilitating relationships. In the case of Stapley. Who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to connect with?
Ernie Humphrey Sure. So it’s deeply we are our main constituent through the office of the CEO CFO, which is a pretty big umbrella accounting accounts receivable, accounts payable, financial planning, analysis and Treasury. And so they’ve got a lot of challenges, right? And they have to interact effectively to drive the company ship in the right direction. So we need to deliver thought leadership, not only make them better at their jobs, but also to be better partners in making their colleagues more valuable as well.
Bill Sherman Now, if I’m in, you tell me if I’m right on that. I’m assuming folks in finance and the office of the CFO, they’re used to being bombarded with people who want their time and attention. So how do you get visible in a noisy environment? How do you reach them and how do you get them to care and pay attention?
Ernie Humphrey So I think the part of it is that, first of all, it takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to earn that credibility. So for myself, I was a long time Treasury and finance practitioner. And so I think that people see what I write and I can tell that I have that perspective. I’ve sat in their seats before, so I know it resonates with them. I’ve also spoken across the country. I have contributed to places where they trust the content. So the Association for Creative Professionals is a place that a trusted resource. So push my content out there. And then the other part of it is I just have a different take on things. I have a little bit more of a sense of humor, a different take out of the box thinking, and I’m much more direct, so I have to be unique. You have to earn the credibility, but you have to earn it every day. Right? Credibility is renegade, right? You have to earn it every day.
Bill Sherman So let’s go further on that. How are you building credibility? Why do people go, Yeah, I need to listen to what her are going to say.
Ernie Humphrey Sure. I think the I guess I would say there’s a lot of different channels that I use. And so I’m actually working on my own podcast. And right now I’m focused a lot on helping people function successfully in what I call the new remote reality. So getting them content that’s kind of top of mind. We have a newsletter where I share content and it’s not just about finance, it’s about how do I succeed in the next normal. So it’s a kind of broad swath there. I contribute on LinkedIn, so I push stuff out to the new groups and I do webinars that are really focused on areas that are most important to them and what are the things that I’ve had success at. Is a lot of times I’ll take other research from other organizations. That really doesn’t make a lot of sense the way they communicated with and I can take that out, pull out the best parts and communicate that in a way that’s entertaining and engaging. And so I’m always looking for different ways in different channels to advocate. And also it’s key to collaborate with other people that are thought leaders. So I think I outreach to people, maybe someone’s that guru and maybe I write an article with them. I have a conversation with maybe on their podcast. So I’m always trying to get myself in front of my constituency in a one too many environment, but align myself with people. I share my commitment to thought leadership, which means to me, you’re not trying to monetize the folks you’re trying to help. You’re actually trying to help them. And if they want the technology or service to reach out to you and ask your advice because they know you’re going to give them an honest answer.
Bill Sherman Now, you said a couple things that are really interesting and I want to dig in on first is you said you’re not trying to monetize them. You’re creating the relationship. And I think one of the distinctions between thought leadership and, say, content marketing is content marketing is in support of today’s sale. Thought leadership is a little bit over the next horizon and helping people see what might be coming in one form or another. And I like your term the next normal, right, which I think is a great term for this environment where we know that things will stabilize, but we don’t know what they’re going to be. Right. So. You’re doing something that I think is interesting, curating content and digesting information from a lot of sources and saying, hey, this is worth your attention and time. Let me tell you why. Because if you tell someone who’s, you know, in the trenches working day to day as a finance or treasury professional, they probably don’t have the time or ability to read everything and go, how does this impact me? Right. So talk to me a little bit more about that curation process. How do you choose what goes in front of the audience? Are you working from an editorial calendar or are you just as you’re consuming information saying, this is good, I should get it out there and amplify the signal for the thought?
Ernie Humphrey It’s kind of a little bit of both. To really have a formal editorial calendar I found is pretty difficult because when you when you do that, then you’re kind of setting what you’re going to talk about. You’re not letting the market speak to you, especially now in the next normal things are changing on a daily basis. So I have to make sure that my content is relevant. And also there might be some new research that comes out, something new, some new technology, as I learn. I want to make sure I communicate that in a timely manner so it does not become stale. And so I think I think that’s a part of the process. And also, I can see people will reach out to me and ask me questions. And so I can at participating communities to see what’s a top of mind of people. But I think it’s about when you understand the challenges that people had. So it’s almost like you have a portfolio. There is content that you didn’t know that kind of will never change, right? We have to do cache forecasting. We have to do this. But as we evolve in other areas, you have to learn how to. Artificial intelligence, right. I’m always trying. I’m always trying to get people out in front of change instead of having their boss come to them and say, Hey, you know about A.I.. So that’s one of my big things is that’s why I focus in technology quite often in business partnering, because I try and I look out and see what I think is going to take on my own AI things that I don’t think are going to work. Like, I don’t like Bitcoin I’ve been talking about for three years and I think it’s garbage is not going to work. So I share my opinion in that up in that again, again, just like webinars, just having a sense of humor and being honest. And I try to be perfect and maybe have typos in my in my content. So I think people learn to embrace authenticity of what I’m doing.
Bill Sherman So I think you’re right in that. And I think the magically this year has seen a greater move to authenticity of content and messaging, especially as we moved into a work from home environment. You know, when you weren’t a professional stage, you didn’t have the lighting, the sound. There was a little bit more vulnerability in communication, but also a lot more authenticity. And so that process of adapting, I think has really put more focus on the content rather than the trappings. Right. If you are enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe.
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Bill Sherman So let’s talk for a moment about something that I think is really interesting. You said not only participating in communities but building communities, and you’ve done that in terms of building communities over your career. You want to talk about that process of building a community and bringing professionals in an area together. How did you do it? What worked? What didn’t? Sure.
Ernie Humphrey So I think as you’re not going to be surprised, I think I talked about credibility. That’s important. But I think about also content. Content is king. So you have to earn that credibility through content, but you also have to give people what I would call a noise free environment. So people want a place to talk to their peers without being bothered by sponsors and exhibitors and marketers. And I do my own marketing, but I’m a very I mean, I do my thought leadership, not really marketing, but so you have to have that environment. So I think when we’ve seen companies try and do this, it’s always gotten tainted. So I built the community up quite a bit and at the end of the day, we sold the day they sold the business and people wanted to monetize that community. Right. You can’t have that community by trying to monetize it. I think that’s why associations are going to go away, because on the surface they say they’re trying to serve the profession, but they’re not. They’re trying to pay. And they’re trying to monetize their members. And so for me, I’m in the process of building another community for the office of the CFO. And so I’ve been building my content now. I have channels. So I have to engage people with content. I’ve got podcasts, blogs, webinars. I’m going to have a virtual event. So I’ve got to get people from those channels to want to join that community. Hey, there’s great content here. Hey, if I asked you a question, I’m going to get an answer. And so you have to give the community love. You have to make sure the people’s questions are answered. You can’t allow noise in there and you have to engage people in the community. They’re also influencers. So I need evangelists. I need people that are I’m connected to 60,000 people. I want other people that are connected to 60,000 people to be maybe angels. And then they’ll bring in their network and they’ll see that, hey, this is a place that I can get answers, especially now, right? Everyone, even me, has been in a remote world for several years. I feel like I don’t know what to do. I would love to be able to just speaking to you because I don’t get to talk to people that do thought leadership. That’s amazing to me. I like I don’t know. I’ve never had the opportunity to do that. So to me, that’s so you guys have about like, that’s awesome. I can come in here and share and this is the trust environment. I’m taking that to the next level, taking it kind of mixing two things what an association should be and what LinkedIn should be. That’s really what my Nirvana is for the community I’m trying to develop.
Bill Sherman So one of the things you talk about community and this is an interest of mine personally too, is one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast and that we’re building the community for organizational thought Leadership is we realized that if you look across organizations, there’s two, maybe five people, maybe ten at most, depending on the size of organization that understands about leadership perspective, Right. And I’ve spoken with many people who have said there are other people out here like me. I’m used to being the only one in my company that understands this perspective. And I’ve got a senior executive who understands and supports what I do, but they don’t really understand. And so when I interface with classic marketing work or executive communications, they sort of raise an eyebrow and say, What are you doing? And so I think the importance is, you know, creating that sense of community where people can come together. And like you said, it’s about nurturing. It’s nothing that you can rush. And there’s often, like you said, surprise and delight of the hey, there are other people facing the same problems. I am. Right. So tell me a little bit about whether it’s a current project you’re working on or something you did in the past. Something that from a thought leadership perspective, really knocked it out of the park. And you were proud of what have you done that stood out as a thought leadership activity?
Ernie Humphrey First. I would say probably it wouldn’t be one thing. It really would be more of a team effort of the team that I lead. So it performative when we build that community of senior level finance professionals from 500 to 30,000. That was pretty mind blowing. And when I saw the value that people were getting out of the community, that was pretty impressive. More recently, just thought leadership. I’ve gotten a lot of interest in a concept called the social CFO, which is really talking about how CFOs need to build relationships across the enterprise and be more social and invest in their teammates. And so those are those are a few of the things. But I’m always like I said, it’s my philosophy. Success is writing, so I’m always trying to figure out what else I can do to add value. And I think on a daily basis, when I do a webinar and someone says, Wow, that was amazing. I’ve never seen a webinar like that. You’re changing the way webinars are done. So I think it’s that it’s that affirmation that I see. And sometimes when I just see people communicating with each other and adding value, when I facilitate that and I see that take off and I go on both sides, that’s pretty satisfying as well.
Bill Sherman So I like the term of social CFO in that there’s the traditional assumption that you’re delivering the quarterly earnings report in a slow monotone that sort of lulls investors to a sense of confidence and calm rather than someone like you’re talking about now, who’s out internally and externally, proactive building and nurturing relationships. And one of the things for a thought leadership platform that becomes effective is when you have something, a short phrase, 2 to 3 words that catches attention might be counterintuitive, but gets people to go, that’s interesting. Tell me more. So as a platform name, I really like that. Now, how are you measuring success for your thought leadership efforts? You said a couple of times I’m not necessarily looking at terms of monetizing today. So how do you measure success at this point? Right. What metrics are you tracking? What do you care about? Where do you focus your effort?
Ernie Humphrey So I think it depends on the vehicle of thought leadership, so as close to monetization as I come. So really, at the end of day, a big goal of my career for the last ten years is being able to do what I do and not charge the people that consume my content and my insights. And so for my webinars, I have webinar partners of mine that let me deliver thought leadership. And in turn, when people sign up for a free webinar, they have their contact information that I pass along to my partners and I try and facilitate relationships when it makes sense. That being said, my webinars last year I had 13,500 people register. I got zero complaints from my registrants of the sponsors reaching out to them and selling them things. So I have to build those relationships with companies that get top leadership. And so it’s about who did I want to get to the webinar, Were they engaged? Were they actually looking or maybe the technology I saw? So that’s a part of it. The other part of it is if you’re posting on LinkedIn, right. How many views you’re getting, how many likes you’re getting, how many shares, Not only that, but who’s liking it, who’s resharing it? And then when you’re building a community, you say, What’s my community growth? What’s the engagement? How many people are liking power? So how engaged is the community based on those metrics? And you have these metrics to make sure that you’re pulling the right levers. And so that goes into every piece that goes with me. So for emails, what’s my open rate? Was my click to read my newsletter or my podcast. So all these things are channels for community growth. So how effective am I in leveraging these channels? And I have to constantly say, Is this a good channel? Can I find a new channel? At the end of the day, it’s all about engagement and, you know, getting people to a better place. So it’s kind of a win win. I teach someone something, I make them better at their job, and then also I get them connected with someone who can offer them the best product and service that they can possibly get on their terms.
Bill Sherman So we’re going to need to wrap up here in a moment. But if I were to ask you to give advice and you could say you had a room, say you were doing a webinar of thought with all leader practitioners in the room, right. So folks doing what you’re doing, what advice would you offer them? What tip? Would you say? Here’s something based on what I’ve learned that you should think about when you’re doing thought leadership?
Ernie Humphrey I think the first thing is to always engage others too, and send them to do thought leadership. And so everyone loves to tell their story. A lot of people think they don’t know anything and they don’t think what they know is valuable. So always give someone a little bit of an ego boost and you’ll be amazed. And then some people don’t know what thought leadership is. So have a conversation. Ask someone. Had you ever communicated with a peer about X, Y, Z? Like CFOs have never done that. When you tell them that they can actually do that, they’re like, I didn’t know that. I would love to talk to someone. People really. People really care about what I had to say. And so you have to be passionate and you have to really, at the end of day, when you set it out in terms this is going to boost your ego and you’re going to help somebody do their job better and you’re going to get a little bit of fame, whether that’s internally or externally, you’re going to have a good profile in your company and it helps your career success inside your company and outside your company. So those would be a few things, but I can’t be brief. That’s not why. But that’s about as brief as I can be for you.
Bill Sherman Fantastic. So in summing up, some of the things that I’m taking away from this is you’re using thought leadership as a vehicle and you focus obsessively on your audience in terms of finding ways to be relevant to them, to provide value and build relationships. And I think that’s a fantastic use of using thought leadership to build communities. Ernie, I want to thank you for your time and for this conversation. It’s been fantastic.
Ernie Humphrey My pleasure. Thank you so much.
Bill Sherman Thank you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please join our LinkedIn group. Organizational Thought Leadership. It’s a professional community where thought leadership practitioners talk shop about our field. So if you’re someone who creates curates or deploys thought leadership for your organization, then please join the conversation in the organizational thought Leadership LinkedIn.
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