Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:00.240 Yeah, 2 00:00:05.240 --> 00:00:08.960 welcome back to BBB growth. I'm dan Sanchez with Sweet fish media. And 3 00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:13.520 today it's just a solo episode Just me, the dance says. And I'm talking about 4 00:00:13.520 --> 00:00:17.030 thought leadership because we're still in this deep dive in the beginning of 5 00:00:17.030 --> 00:00:22.080 june to explore all the facets and nuances of this thing called thought 6 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:26.570 leadership marketing. Now I've been working on this for just about over a 7 00:00:26.570 --> 00:00:30.330 year now. I went and read all the books on the topic. I've interviewed multiple 8 00:00:30.330 --> 00:00:35.110 people um who are experts in this topic already for this deep dive. And over 9 00:00:35.110 --> 00:00:39.990 time I've developed a few ideas of my own and it's some of those ideas 10 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:45.290 actually want to present in this deep dive as kind of a uh I don't want to 11 00:00:45.290 --> 00:00:48.530 call myself an expert because I'm still very much a student, I'm still trying 12 00:00:48.530 --> 00:00:53.260 to figure this out. But as I've read through um the topic, as I've had many 13 00:00:53.270 --> 00:00:57.870 dozens of conversations with other people, other b two b marketers out 14 00:00:57.870 --> 00:01:01.340 there on linkedin and have kind of like worked wrestled with it and 15 00:01:01.340 --> 00:01:04.459 experimented a little bit with customers at sweet fish media and our 16 00:01:04.459 --> 00:01:07.980 own our own marketing. I've started to come to some realizations and I wanted 17 00:01:07.980 --> 00:01:12.630 to share those with you today. I want to talk about the problem of thought 18 00:01:12.630 --> 00:01:16.050 leadership, right? And it's a pretty obvious problem if you ever talk about 19 00:01:16.050 --> 00:01:19.690 this topic, especially on any kind of social network. Yeah you'll start to 20 00:01:19.690 --> 00:01:23.250 find out that there's a lot of people who don't like it. People don't like 21 00:01:23.250 --> 00:01:27.200 the term thought leadership. People think all thought leaders are fakers. 22 00:01:27.210 --> 00:01:30.730 Um And that there's just it's just the buzz word, it's just a term, it's just 23 00:01:30.730 --> 00:01:34.860 the thing people like to throw on their bios that isn't real, it doesn't mean 24 00:01:34.860 --> 00:01:39.840 anything. And honestly I disagree with them wholeheartedly and I'm gonna do a 25 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:44.870 whole another episode that kind of goes into the history um and why the history 26 00:01:44.870 --> 00:01:47.890 of thought leadership where it got coined, where it's been done before, 27 00:01:47.900 --> 00:01:52.100 why it deserves to be its own specific thing, whether you like the term or not. 28 00:01:52.110 --> 00:01:56.450 Um but that's not what this episode is. This episode is talking about um why 29 00:01:56.450 --> 00:02:00.020 there are so many bad players when it comes to thought leadership, where all 30 00:02:00.020 --> 00:02:05.190 the fakers come from and what actually makes for what I'm calling authentic 31 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:09.120 thought leadership or what makes an authentic thought leader. I find that 32 00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:12.430 there's actually three primary ingredients and if you miss one of 33 00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:16.000 these ingredients that explains why thought leadership has gotten such a 34 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:20.360 bad name out there. Because let's be honest, we've all seen it, we've all 35 00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:24.070 seen the person proclaiming and declaring themselves to be a thought 36 00:02:24.070 --> 00:02:28.730 leader and well they're not and you can feel it, it's actually quite obvious. 37 00:02:28.740 --> 00:02:31.960 You can tell that they don't know what they're talking about or that they're 38 00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:36.850 just arrogant, you know, I want to say a word but I'm just not going to say it 39 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:41.160 and they don't actually care about people. Their, their ideas aren't 40 00:02:41.160 --> 00:02:45.120 really unique, they're not really that useful but they're really into it and 41 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:49.600 they have massive blind spots, like they just don't see their own issues or 42 00:02:49.600 --> 00:02:52.420 they're just there, okay, maybe they're actually kind of thought leaders, but 43 00:02:52.420 --> 00:02:55.330 the fact that they're just declaring out in front of everybody, they're like, 44 00:02:55.330 --> 00:02:58.420 oh I'm, I thought leader, I've been in the space for so long, you're like, 45 00:02:58.430 --> 00:03:04.540 dude, stop it, just stop, Nobody likes you and you're losing you had some 46 00:03:04.540 --> 00:03:08.640 trust and you're now losing it, goodbye. Like we've all seen this happen over 47 00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:13.390 and over again on social media, on ted talks on stage, at conferences in books. 48 00:03:13.400 --> 00:03:17.590 So now I want to talk about like, what are the three ingredients to authentic 49 00:03:17.600 --> 00:03:21.100 thought leadership that I'm discovering as I've been reading through and kind 50 00:03:21.100 --> 00:03:25.190 of exploring and thinking a lot about this and what happens when you're just 51 00:03:25.190 --> 00:03:29.640 missing one or two or all three of these elements. So first, let's cover 52 00:03:29.650 --> 00:03:33.440 the elements of what I'm calling authentic thought leadership that you 53 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:36.010 have to, if you don't have any, if you don't have all three of these, then 54 00:03:36.010 --> 00:03:40.580 you're not a real thought leader, right? Um, the first one is expertise, right? 55 00:03:40.580 --> 00:03:43.950 Kind of critical. You have to kind of know everything there is to know in 56 00:03:43.950 --> 00:03:48.330 your particular niche topic, whatever it is and the supporting areas, right? 57 00:03:48.330 --> 00:03:51.070 It's not enough to know everything about email marketing. If you're going 58 00:03:51.070 --> 00:03:55.000 to be a thought here around email marketing without knowing things about, 59 00:03:55.010 --> 00:03:59.820 you know, copyrighting and web design and just marketing, funnels and 60 00:03:59.820 --> 00:04:03.630 marketing automation, right? There's a lot of related categories that you have 61 00:04:03.630 --> 00:04:07.310 to not maybe be like the best, know everything there is to know about those 62 00:04:07.310 --> 00:04:10.980 things, which you have to be pretty well. And you have to know a lot about 63 00:04:10.980 --> 00:04:16.430 those topics in order to become a true expert on the topic of email marketing. 64 00:04:16.440 --> 00:04:21.480 Right? So that's step number one, you have to be an expert. The second part 65 00:04:21.490 --> 00:04:26.420 of an authentic thought leader is you have to be a contributor. You have to 66 00:04:26.430 --> 00:04:29.900 actually not just know everything there is to know on the topic. You have to 67 00:04:29.900 --> 00:04:33.950 advance the topic. You have to push the boundaries to where it hasn't been 68 00:04:33.950 --> 00:04:39.470 before. You have to add new ideas, new research, new points of view, new ways 69 00:04:39.470 --> 00:04:43.540 of doing things that are not only unique. Like you invented it, you made 70 00:04:43.540 --> 00:04:47.530 it. You're the one who advanced it. They have to be useful, right? Because 71 00:04:47.530 --> 00:04:50.770 you can contribute things that are just kind of like nobody thinks that nobody 72 00:04:50.770 --> 00:04:53.610 cares about. Nobody asks for that. It doesn't solve any problems. 73 00:04:53.610 --> 00:04:57.410 Congratulations. You added a unique crypto coin to the market and there's 74 00:04:57.410 --> 00:05:00.800 nothing really unique about the crypto coin. You just gave it a new name. Oh 75 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:05.630 wait, does coin, Sorry? There's nothing really unique about it, right? You have 76 00:05:05.630 --> 00:05:12.510 to actually contribute something that's both equally useful and unique and 77 00:05:12.510 --> 00:05:15.780 that's what it means to be a contributor. So you have to be an 78 00:05:15.780 --> 00:05:21.420 expert. You have to be a contributor. And lastly you have to be an authority. 79 00:05:21.430 --> 00:05:26.820 So many times I get pitched for people to come speak on this podcast that 80 00:05:26.820 --> 00:05:30.990 you're listening to right now and they have PhD So they're clearly experts on 81 00:05:30.990 --> 00:05:35.200 the topic And as a PhD, I know they've done unique and original research that 82 00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:40.950 may actually be complete, 100% unique and 100% helpful. It covers a real, a 83 00:05:40.950 --> 00:05:44.960 real problem. It's well researched and they've taken the time, you know, 84 00:05:44.970 --> 00:05:49.070 stripped down the thesis, the big dissertation and put it into a helpful 85 00:05:49.070 --> 00:05:52.220 book and now they want to talk about their book on the podcast. The problem 86 00:05:52.220 --> 00:05:55.490 is, I've never heard of them. I don't know them, so I can't trust them. I 87 00:05:55.490 --> 00:05:59.130 don't really know whether their stuff is good or not because they're not an 88 00:05:59.130 --> 00:06:04.280 authority on the topic. So that's the problem you run into is you have to 89 00:06:04.280 --> 00:06:08.340 actually be an authority. And while I'll do future podcast on how you can 90 00:06:08.340 --> 00:06:12.290 actually build your expertise, become a contributor and build your authority 91 00:06:12.290 --> 00:06:17.650 over time, you do have to build all three and the steps to do so can be a 92 00:06:17.650 --> 00:06:20.970 little counterintuitive. But again, that's for another episode. Let's talk 93 00:06:20.970 --> 00:06:24.020 about what happens when you're not one of these things, which is why I thought 94 00:06:24.020 --> 00:06:28.630 leadership gets such a bad rap, because there's so many unauthentic thought 95 00:06:28.630 --> 00:06:33.790 leaders. What happens when you are an expert and you're a contributor, but 96 00:06:33.790 --> 00:06:36.920 you're not an authority, right? You're like the ph D s I just mentioned, and 97 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:42.540 that essentially just makes you unknown and by unknown, you're just not trusted. 98 00:06:42.550 --> 00:06:45.920 You have all the expertise, you know everything and you have the ideas and 99 00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:49.620 that's got to be a difficult position to be in, luckily, you can take a lot 100 00:06:49.620 --> 00:06:52.960 of steps. That's probably of all of all the three positions you can be in to be 101 00:06:52.960 --> 00:06:55.960 missing one of these, It's probably the best because at least you've actually 102 00:06:55.960 --> 00:06:59.780 done due diligence and you actually have something useful and you have, you 103 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:02.820 have the goods. The problem is nobody knows you, nobody trusts you, nobody 104 00:07:02.820 --> 00:07:06.660 likes you yet. And that's okay. That's, that's easy to fix. You need to become 105 00:07:06.660 --> 00:07:10.700 a marketer or hire someone who knows good marketing in order to Sprinkle 106 00:07:10.700 --> 00:07:14.370 your ideas out there to slowly build that trust. I mean, it would have been 107 00:07:14.370 --> 00:07:18.280 nice if you had started from day one that way, but you haven't, that's okay. 108 00:07:18.290 --> 00:07:22.680 You can start building authorities slowly now. So that's what happens if 109 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:27.440 you're missing authority. What happens if you are an expert and you're an 110 00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:31.890 authority, but you have no unique contributions or maybe you do, and 111 00:07:31.890 --> 00:07:34.380 they're just not useful. They're not unique. You know, they're just, we're 112 00:07:34.380 --> 00:07:39.470 not just, they're just not contributions. Well then at worst, 113 00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:43.150 you're kind of a rip off because you're ripping off other people's ideas and 114 00:07:43.150 --> 00:07:47.830 kind of claiming them as your own. At best, I can call. You may be a public 115 00:07:47.840 --> 00:07:51.940 intellectual, you are an expert on the topic and you have authority. So you're 116 00:07:51.940 --> 00:07:56.530 good at bringing critiques to other people's ideas, you know? So that's at 117 00:07:56.530 --> 00:08:00.500 best. But generally what we're seeing out of the market when people are 118 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:03.570 declaring themselves thought leaders, which you should never do, by the way, 119 00:08:03.580 --> 00:08:06.580 even if you are an authentic thought leader, never call yourself a thought 120 00:08:06.580 --> 00:08:09.620 leader. It's just safer that way. No need to brag If you're if you're a 121 00:08:09.620 --> 00:08:13.210 thought leader, everybody knows it, no need to say it. But most thought 122 00:08:13.210 --> 00:08:18.730 leaders are masquerading as if they have unique ideas and they're not so 123 00:08:18.730 --> 00:08:21.890 they're rip offs. And that's why I thought leadership leaves a bad taste 124 00:08:21.900 --> 00:08:26.960 in people's mouths, right? Because they've actually well studied and the 125 00:08:26.970 --> 00:08:32.570 true, the good expert authorities, the public intellectuals will certainly let 126 00:08:32.570 --> 00:08:35.520 you know that actually those ideas aren't unique. They've come from other 127 00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:40.429 places and there's a fine line there, right? Because there's certainly, we 128 00:08:40.429 --> 00:08:43.380 all stand on the shoulders of giants. We've all taken and borrowed and 129 00:08:43.380 --> 00:08:45.890 stretched and done different things with different ideas. So there's really 130 00:08:45.890 --> 00:08:51.020 nothing unique under the sun, at least truly unique. But there are still, I 131 00:08:51.020 --> 00:08:54.260 think there are unique approach is unique. Ideas are unique ways of 132 00:08:54.260 --> 00:08:57.830 looking things that are unique enough, luckily, if you never call yourself a 133 00:08:57.830 --> 00:09:00.860 thought leader, you never really have to play with defending it because 134 00:09:00.860 --> 00:09:04.950 you're not calling yourself one. Just try to be helpful and useful to others. 135 00:09:04.950 --> 00:09:07.960 And it's not something that doesn't have to be a problem. Now, if you're 136 00:09:07.960 --> 00:09:12.510 missing the last piece, this is where the most problem problems are created, 137 00:09:12.510 --> 00:09:15.790 right? And these are the worst kinds of quote unquote thought leaders we ever 138 00:09:15.790 --> 00:09:20.420 see out there is if you are contributing unique ideas and you are 139 00:09:20.430 --> 00:09:26.220 actually like, well known, but you're not an expert. That's a huge problem, 140 00:09:26.220 --> 00:09:30.310 right? Those are what you call charlatans. And by definition, a 141 00:09:30.310 --> 00:09:34.810 charlatan is a person falsely claiming to have special knowledge or special 142 00:09:34.810 --> 00:09:40.590 skill and is indeed a fraud. It's not okay to present your ideas with 143 00:09:40.600 --> 00:09:44.550 authority as if they've been well researched as if they've been tried and 144 00:09:44.550 --> 00:09:50.080 true without actually having the expertise behind it. And expertise can 145 00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:53.370 come from a lot of different things, but generally people can tell really 146 00:09:53.370 --> 00:09:56.510 quickly, especially if they have a little bit, even just a little bit of 147 00:09:56.510 --> 00:09:59.460 expertise in the category itself. Um, you're gonna get found out, 148 00:09:59.840 --> 00:10:03.940 unfortunately because some people are so good at marketing. Um, a lot of 149 00:10:03.940 --> 00:10:07.560 people will buy into it. A lot of people will buy the lie and by the rip 150 00:10:07.560 --> 00:10:11.430 off products, you know, if you're a marketer like me, you see all the cheap, 151 00:10:11.440 --> 00:10:15.310 like crazy ads that are running on Youtube and on facebook targeting 152 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:19.080 entrepreneurs who want to make a quick buck and they're like, hey, they're 153 00:10:19.080 --> 00:10:22.050 standing in front of Ferrari or making fun of the people standing in front of 154 00:10:22.050 --> 00:10:25.630 Ferraris and claiming to say like, oh, drop shipping on amazon or this or that. 155 00:10:25.630 --> 00:10:29.090 They're pretending to be an authority there, pretending to have useful, 156 00:10:29.090 --> 00:10:33.480 original ideas, but they're not experts. They're like, they're like 21 years old, 157 00:10:33.490 --> 00:10:36.840 right? And it's not that 21 year olds can't be experts. There are a lot of 158 00:10:36.840 --> 00:10:40.670 them, but generally you're like, uh just puts a bad taste in your mouth, 159 00:10:40.670 --> 00:10:44.400 right? So we've all seen those people, Well we've all seen the unknowns, we've 160 00:10:44.400 --> 00:10:47.300 all seen the rip offs, we've all seen the charlatans and that's why I thought 161 00:10:47.300 --> 00:10:51.850 leadership has a bad name. So let's change that. Let's actually seek to 162 00:10:51.850 --> 00:10:57.570 become authentic thought leaders by slowly working on our expertise as we 163 00:10:57.570 --> 00:11:02.580 work on our expertise, finding and contributing unique and useful ideas 164 00:11:02.730 --> 00:11:06.480 and slowly building authority all without ever proclaiming, being a 165 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:09.410 thought leader. Shoot. I mean, if you're listening to this now, you're 166 00:11:09.410 --> 00:11:12.580 like dan, is that what you're trying to do with this deep dive in some ways. 167 00:11:12.580 --> 00:11:16.120 Yes. But also I'm also declaring like, dude, like I've only just started 168 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:21.080 studying the subject um and I have years to go, but this is my intro to it. 169 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:24.800 This is my first beginnings this year. The first ideas like all good thought 170 00:11:24.800 --> 00:11:29.520 leaders come from somewhere and especially can do well if they come 171 00:11:29.530 --> 00:11:33.830 with a sense of humility. If they come with a sense of just servant hood and 172 00:11:33.830 --> 00:11:37.590 helpfulness to help other people. I have enough people coming to me asking 173 00:11:37.590 --> 00:11:41.830 me uh help them with their podcast. And one of the big motivations why they 174 00:11:41.830 --> 00:11:44.880 started a podcast is because they want to position themselves as thought 175 00:11:44.880 --> 00:11:48.270 leaders. So it's actually from all those questions that I've had, the 176 00:11:48.280 --> 00:11:53.310 desire to like learn how to coach people in this. And I still have a long 177 00:11:53.310 --> 00:11:56.380 way to go. So as I'm going, that's why I'm interviewing all these 178 00:11:56.380 --> 00:12:00.870 practitioners to test ideas with and even doing this episode now. Um I've 179 00:12:00.880 --> 00:12:04.170 talked about this one at length multiple times on linkedin now, so I 180 00:12:04.170 --> 00:12:08.570 think it resonates it rings true. I still have some time to continue 181 00:12:08.570 --> 00:12:13.280 testing it with our internal Lincoln evangelist. We call them in our company 182 00:12:13.290 --> 00:12:18.080 and with customers to actually put out more research that says that these are 183 00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:22.580 indeed the three key elements so far. It's looking good though. As I've 184 00:12:22.580 --> 00:12:25.560 talked to other thought leaders who have been in this game longer than I 185 00:12:25.560 --> 00:12:29.760 have. As far as validating that these are really the three critical elements. 186 00:12:29.940 --> 00:12:34.260 But this is just my, my findings so far and I'm presenting it to you. So 187 00:12:34.260 --> 00:12:37.740 hopefully this episode has been helpful. I have more solos, just like this one 188 00:12:37.740 --> 00:12:42.890 coming down of things that I found to be true, things that I found to be 189 00:12:42.890 --> 00:12:47.280 helpful to me and I want to share them with you. But I don't pretend to come 190 00:12:47.290 --> 00:12:50.690 with these as well researched well backed, like things that I've been 191 00:12:50.700 --> 00:12:54.450 experimenting with for 10 years and have statistically validated with math 192 00:12:54.450 --> 00:12:58.930 and science ha um, no, they're not that these are just ideas that I'm roughly 193 00:12:58.930 --> 00:13:01.930 putting out. There is like, hey, these are something findings I've had after 194 00:13:01.930 --> 00:13:06.320 my first year into this topic. Um, I have years to go and these are 195 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:12.640 essentially a hypothesis. So take that as it is and uh if you like it, run 196 00:13:12.640 --> 00:13:16.720 with it, play with it, make it your own idea. If you so desire. Um, and if this 197 00:13:16.720 --> 00:13:21.800 has been helpful, please give us a rating on your podcast app of choice 198 00:13:21.810 --> 00:13:27.430 that always helps us a ton. So this show gets found by more people and if 199 00:13:27.430 --> 00:13:31.230 you want to talk and connect with me on this idea in particular, please find me 200 00:13:31.230 --> 00:13:35.800 on linkedin dot com slash I N slash digital marketing dan would love to 201 00:13:35.800 --> 00:13:40.540 chat to you about authentic thought leadership or if maybe if I had some of 202 00:13:40.540 --> 00:13:44.040 these off, would love to hear about those two. I'm still a student and I 203 00:13:44.040 --> 00:13:48.150 need as much help as I can get. So thank you for listening. Mhm. 204 00:13:50.240 --> 00:13:56.760 Mhm. Mhm Gary V says it all the time and we agree every company should think 205 00:13:56.760 --> 00:14:01.960 of themselves as a media company first, then whatever it is they actually do. 206 00:14:02.440 --> 00:14:06.210 If you know this is true, but your team is already maxed out and you can't 207 00:14:06.210 --> 00:14:10.600 produce any more content in house. We can help we produce podcasts for some 208 00:14:10.600 --> 00:14:14.530 of the most innovative BB brands in the world and we also help them turn the 209 00:14:14.530 --> 00:14:19.560 content from the podcast and blog posts, micro videos and slide decks that work 210 00:14:19.560 --> 00:14:22.930 really well on linked in. If you want to learn more, go to sweet fish media 211 00:14:22.930 --> 00:14:27.460 dot com slash launch or email Logan at sweet fish media dot com.
