What does it take to stay in the business of thought leadership?

Transcript

Hey there! It’s Peter Winick. I’m the Founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And here’s a thought for you today. And I’d love to get your your reactions to this.

In is that there’s a distinct difference between what it takes to get into the business of thought leadership and what it takes to stay in that business.

And here’s what I mean by that. Folks that enter the business and make a living with their thought leadership spend a lot of time a lot of energy a lot of effort building out their work, studying, developing their craft, testing it with customers, researching, re-iterating, changing it, tweaking it, and refining it. And this deep expertise, this deep passion, and this need to get that high quality work out there that is ultimately validated by the marketplace. And that’s fantastic! Very very few people have what it takes to make it into the business of thought leadership.

Now let’s talk about once you’re there, what it takes to stay and have a a viable recurring business. Well, totally different set of skills. And that’s, at this point some of your energy, not all, but some of your energy needs to go into thinking about marketing, into thinking about strategy, into thinking about business development, sales procurement, distribution channels. All of these other sort of more traditional business things that are probably not what drew you into the business in the first place.

And in my work with authors, and speakers, and thought leaders, I see far too many people staying in that sort of first category only developing the work and the thought leadership and the content and the intellectual property. And, you know, far too often neglecting sales, marketing, strategy, business development. All those things that are a little bit foreign, but absolutely critical.

So anyway, I’d love to get your thoughts and reactions on what you’re doing to not necessarily get in the business, I think we’re pretty clear on that, but to stay in the business and make it vibrant, and healthy, and successful, and recurring revenue.

Love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.