What thought leaders do you admire most?

Transcript

Hi there, it’s Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here’s the thought I’d like to share with you today, and that’s this: Who is out there as a thought leader that you admire? And let me sort of split that question in two.

One, you might admire someone as a thought leader because their work is amazing, and it resonates with you. And every time they put a book out, you’re the first one to go to Amazon and do the pre-buy, and it just speaks to you, right? And it’s great stuff. In your mind, that’s great. Who do you admire from a content or a thematic or style perspective?

The other way to look at this or think about this question is, who do you admire from a business perspective? You may or may not love their work. In fact, you might not like it at all. But can you learn from what they’re doing with their work, what their business models are, how they’re scaling, how they’re leveraging it, how they’re licensing it, how they’re productizing their intellectual property? And I think far too often, in my conversations with authors and thought leaders and speakers and such, they actually don’t spend enough time looking at what else is going on in the marketplace. In any other industry, you would be consistently doing a competitive analysis, right? Coke knows what Pepsi does, and McDonald’s knows what Exxon does, etc.

So anyway, my suggestion for you would be this: think about thought leaders that you admire, and then think about thought leaders that you would admire from a business perspective. Follow what they’re doing, internalize a little, think about it, see if it sparks any ideas for you to implement in your business.

Love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.