What I've Learned About Thought Leadership After a 30 Day Deep Dive

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.540 --> 00:00:04.120 Welcome back to BBB growth. I'm dan Sanchez with sweet fish media. And 2 00:00:04.120 --> 00:00:09.120 today we're concluding the deep dive on thought leadership. Through the month 3 00:00:09.120 --> 00:00:13.950 of june, I've been interviewing experts practitioners, actual thought leaders 4 00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:19.390 and have been reviewing resources books as well as giving some my own ideas on 5 00:00:19.390 --> 00:00:23.360 this show about the topic of thought leadership marketing shoot. I even 6 00:00:23.540 --> 00:00:27.160 debated somebody who kind of had took a stance against that leadership 7 00:00:27.160 --> 00:00:31.580 marketing just to see where we could land. And this episode is going to be 8 00:00:31.580 --> 00:00:35.710 summarizing uh some of the lessons I've learned after diving deep into this 9 00:00:35.710 --> 00:00:40.070 topic. Now, even before this topic, I did try to read every single book I 10 00:00:40.070 --> 00:00:44.190 could possibly find around the Topic of thought leadership marketing or 11 00:00:44.190 --> 00:00:48.710 becoming a thought leader. And there was about, I don't know, 20 so or so of 12 00:00:48.710 --> 00:00:52.400 them and then maybe like 10 that were like somewhat related around like 13 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:56.800 personal branding or something like that. Um quite a few books and I can 14 00:00:56.800 --> 00:01:00.530 say that there is without a doubt, something different about actually 15 00:01:00.530 --> 00:01:05.190 talking to the experts themselves. Um you can read their books, but you get a 16 00:01:05.190 --> 00:01:09.410 much better feel for the material and what's being said after talking to 17 00:01:09.410 --> 00:01:13.470 actually talk to people about it, actually, working through the nuances 18 00:01:13.470 --> 00:01:18.220 of it. So if anybody's ever interested in that in particular, I think I 19 00:01:18.220 --> 00:01:20.820 probably didn't need to do a whole podcast episode and how to use a 20 00:01:20.820 --> 00:01:25.100 podcast to learn and accelerate your own expertise because it's, it's been 21 00:01:25.100 --> 00:01:29.450 phenomenal. I've done this twice now with the deep dives here on GDP growth 22 00:01:29.460 --> 00:01:35.560 and I could just feel my, my own knowledge and handle over subjects, 23 00:01:35.570 --> 00:01:39.880 like growing rapidly just from actually talking to the people that really know 24 00:01:39.880 --> 00:01:43.800 their stuff. But today I wanted to summarize a lot of the lessons I've 25 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:49.710 learned through this process of this deep dive into the topic. So here they 26 00:01:49.710 --> 00:01:55.880 are first thought leadership is a thing, It is real thought leadership. 27 00:01:55.880 --> 00:02:01.820 Marketing is not a buzz word, it's not a fad, it's going to be here to stay. 28 00:02:01.830 --> 00:02:08.669 It's existed for a few 100 years at least at least, but was only coined In 29 00:02:08.669 --> 00:02:13.250 the 90s as far as the term thought leadership, right? So that hasn't been 30 00:02:13.250 --> 00:02:17.520 around for too long, but it's been a thing for a while, like building 31 00:02:17.530 --> 00:02:22.770 influence through your expertise or your original ideas on the subject has 32 00:02:22.770 --> 00:02:26.710 been around for a long time, being able to do marketing that way has been 33 00:02:26.710 --> 00:02:31.780 around quite a while. Um dating all the way back to josiah Wedgwood who was a 34 00:02:31.780 --> 00:02:37.370 famous potter, but also like brilliant when it came to business and marketing 35 00:02:37.370 --> 00:02:41.550 strategies. Uh a lot of modern marketing concepts get dated back to 36 00:02:41.550 --> 00:02:45.270 josiah Wedgwood and that's kind of another episode in and of itself, like 37 00:02:45.270 --> 00:02:50.460 the brilliance of that man from Back in the late 1700s kicked off the the 38 00:02:50.460 --> 00:02:54.260 Industrial Revolution, but I'm not gonna diverge into a history lesson 39 00:02:54.260 --> 00:02:57.730 here. Let's dive back into thought leadership. Thought leadership fits 40 00:02:57.730 --> 00:03:02.800 somewhere between brand and demand jin because obviously if you're positioning 41 00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:06.520 yourself as a thought leader, of course it's a perception play, it's a big 42 00:03:06.530 --> 00:03:11.490 picture thing, which kind of falls into brand, but it also does a fantastic job 43 00:03:11.490 --> 00:03:16.300 of generating demand. And I can tell you just as someone who's kind of 44 00:03:16.300 --> 00:03:20.780 started their journey on linkedin recently and built up uh like a crowd 45 00:03:20.780 --> 00:03:23.560 of friends and just people that we're talking about marketing all the time. I 46 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:26.600 can already see it happening just a little bit for myself and I've gotten a 47 00:03:26.600 --> 00:03:31.170 taste um when people show up to sweet fish media wanting to ask about 48 00:03:31.170 --> 00:03:36.690 podcasting services and people are our podcast, try to just ask like, how did 49 00:03:36.690 --> 00:03:39.720 you hear about it will be like, oh, I've been reading dan for a while and I 50 00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:43.650 just showed up because he recommended it. That's the power of thought 51 00:03:43.650 --> 00:03:47.690 leadership to a degree when you start to build an authority on something and 52 00:03:47.690 --> 00:03:51.200 again, I've only had a small taste of it. Uh James Carberry has been doing 53 00:03:51.200 --> 00:03:54.290 this a lot longer and lots of other people doing this way longer than me, 54 00:03:54.290 --> 00:03:58.170 but I've done enough to do get like a little taste of it. Um it is real, it 55 00:03:58.170 --> 00:04:02.040 does generate demand so that when people show up to sales, they're ready 56 00:04:02.050 --> 00:04:06.530 to buy their interested. They've been, they've been, they are convinced that 57 00:04:06.530 --> 00:04:10.510 you're the one who has the answers to their problems, which makes the whole 58 00:04:10.510 --> 00:04:17.230 sales sales cycle so much smoother. Thought leadership marketing also 59 00:04:17.230 --> 00:04:21.570 impacts your positioning and I'm convinced as essential for category 60 00:04:21.570 --> 00:04:26.540 design, right? To build a whole new category, you have to lead and you're 61 00:04:26.540 --> 00:04:29.830 leading with thinking, right? That's what category category is. It's not 62 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:33.900 it's not a physical thing. A new category is essentially a position in 63 00:04:33.900 --> 00:04:38.540 people's minds, right? So if you're going to create a new category in 64 00:04:38.540 --> 00:04:42.270 people's minds, you have to lead their thoughts. Thought leadership is the 65 00:04:42.270 --> 00:04:46.390 backbone of category creation. Of course, there's a whole ton that goes 66 00:04:46.390 --> 00:04:49.240 into category creation. Thought leadership is not the only part that 67 00:04:49.240 --> 00:04:53.010 plays there. Um but it is an essential pillar of it because you're gonna have 68 00:04:53.010 --> 00:04:56.720 to lead people to creating that new category in their mind. And of course 69 00:04:56.720 --> 00:05:01.120 it affects positioning. If you're doing thought leadership marketing as a heavy 70 00:05:01.130 --> 00:05:06.840 marketing strategy for to influence your your marketing. It's honestly a 71 00:05:06.840 --> 00:05:10.180 positioning play. You're really trying to convince people that you are the 72 00:05:10.180 --> 00:05:13.620 thought leader in the space, in this unique aspect that you're trying to 73 00:05:13.620 --> 00:05:16.810 drive that it might not be creating a whole new category, but you're trying 74 00:05:16.810 --> 00:05:20.960 to differentiate yourself through thought leadership marketing. 75 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:26.670 So at this point you get to the part where it's like, well how do I become a 76 00:05:26.670 --> 00:05:30.300 thought leader then? And that was the question I asked about a year ago 77 00:05:30.300 --> 00:05:33.170 before I started reading any books, I was like, oh great. Like that 78 00:05:33.170 --> 00:05:36.440 leadership marketing sounds cool, even though it's a little cringe e because 79 00:05:36.450 --> 00:05:39.480 so many people have called themselves thought leaders without actually having 80 00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:44.050 any substance to their message. Um but it's still worthwhile. And I went on 81 00:05:44.050 --> 00:05:47.350 this journey to try to figure out like how does one become a thought leader, 82 00:05:47.350 --> 00:05:51.320 especially if you're not already starting with a level of authority? And 83 00:05:51.320 --> 00:05:54.300 that's a lot of my reading was focused around that and this this is what I 84 00:05:54.300 --> 00:05:58.080 discovered. It's not just through um reading, it's also through a lot of the 85 00:05:58.090 --> 00:06:01.570 interviews that I've done here on B. Two B growth, some in this deep dive 86 00:06:01.570 --> 00:06:04.480 and some that predated this deep dive. I've been kind of having interviews 87 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:08.470 about this topic for a while, and here's the general path that I've found. 88 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:11.760 Um and it's not a unique path, like as I've talked to other people, it's what 89 00:06:11.760 --> 00:06:16.060 I've found is that like this these are kind of like well known things. Um 90 00:06:16.070 --> 00:06:19.800 everybody kind of gives it a different word or a different phrase. And while I 91 00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:23.990 have three major points, people might break it up into four or five points, 92 00:06:23.990 --> 00:06:28.510 maybe sometimes two points. Um but when I've talked to other thought leadership 93 00:06:28.510 --> 00:06:34.200 practitioners, I have discovered that we all have similar thinking, that we 94 00:06:34.200 --> 00:06:38.560 just give it different terms in how we describe the path to becoming a thought 95 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:44.060 leader. So this one is my own. Um but like I said, there's many, many others, 96 00:06:44.070 --> 00:06:48.430 um and these are my three, I guess you could call them pillars, I call them 97 00:06:48.430 --> 00:06:52.150 three essential ingredients to becoming a thought leader and I call it being 98 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:53.060 expertise, 99 00:06:54.440 --> 00:06:59.480 having original ideas an authority or to simplify it, you have to be an 100 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:03.330 expert, you have to be a contributor and you have to be an authority in 101 00:07:03.330 --> 00:07:06.900 order to be what I'm calling an authentic thought leader. If you're 102 00:07:06.900 --> 00:07:09.680 missing any one of those three ingredients, you're not an authentic 103 00:07:09.680 --> 00:07:14.420 thought leader, you can be a faker, you can be a charlatan or you could just be 104 00:07:14.430 --> 00:07:17.210 unknown because you're not an authority and nobody knows about your awesome 105 00:07:17.210 --> 00:07:20.820 original ideas, right? And I covered that in a different episode on 106 00:07:20.820 --> 00:07:23.930 authentic thought leadership. I won't diverge into that now, but here's kind 107 00:07:23.930 --> 00:07:27.960 of the step by steps in order to build each one and I generally, well you kind 108 00:07:27.960 --> 00:07:31.420 of build them all at the same time, they kind of go in an order, right? 109 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:33.820 Like if you're not an expert, you should probably start there. You need 110 00:07:33.820 --> 00:07:38.510 to learn and grow and become an expert in the topic. Yesterday I published an 111 00:07:38.510 --> 00:07:43.540 episode called The 30 30 30 plan um that I think is a great quick start to 112 00:07:43.540 --> 00:07:46.870 becoming an expert, but there's also a lot of people listening right now where 113 00:07:46.870 --> 00:07:49.750 you're already kind of an expert in this thing, you're beyond professional, 114 00:07:49.940 --> 00:07:53.860 like people pay you a lot of money just for your time to listen to you talk 115 00:07:53.860 --> 00:07:57.690 about this one subject for the, for people like you, it's good to do an 116 00:07:57.700 --> 00:08:00.920 inventory and make sure that you know everything there is to know about the 117 00:08:00.920 --> 00:08:04.610 topic. Like actually go and read all the research reports, actually make 118 00:08:04.610 --> 00:08:08.750 sure you understand what people are asking there on the, on the on google 119 00:08:08.750 --> 00:08:11.430 search engine. Like you'll find a list of keywords and make sure you have good 120 00:08:11.430 --> 00:08:15.890 answers for all of those. Um I would just make sure to cover all your bases. 121 00:08:15.900 --> 00:08:20.300 Um read every book on the topic that you haven't already right. And in order 122 00:08:20.300 --> 00:08:24.120 to know the existing conversation, because that's important to make sure 123 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:27.510 you you are indeed an expert before you move on to trying to create original 124 00:08:27.510 --> 00:08:31.180 ideas, because oftentimes you'll come up with an idea other, otherwise you'll 125 00:08:31.180 --> 00:08:35.299 come up with an idea that already exists and that's kind of embarrassing 126 00:08:35.299 --> 00:08:38.390 when you're like, champion this idea and six months go by and somebody's 127 00:08:38.390 --> 00:08:41.130 like, actually somebody already said that. Yeah, it was published in this 128 00:08:41.130 --> 00:08:46.280 book. Uh, yeah. You haven't read that yet? Uh, yeah. You don't want you don't 129 00:08:46.280 --> 00:08:49.240 want to be caught in that situation. You want to try to have read everything. 130 00:08:49.240 --> 00:08:53.610 And I understand what the history on this topic has been, where it's where 131 00:08:53.610 --> 00:08:56.900 it's going and what the current conversation is currently taking place 132 00:08:56.900 --> 00:08:57.550 on the topic. 133 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:01.920 But once you've gotten there, once you've been there, you can start 134 00:09:01.920 --> 00:09:05.860 contributing original ideas. Now, I'm not saying you can't have a hypothesis, 135 00:09:05.870 --> 00:09:10.790 I thrown out a lot of hypothesis is on, can you, Is that right? Hypothesize? I 136 00:09:10.790 --> 00:09:15.600 don't know, I've thrown out a lot of ideas on thought leadership marketing, 137 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:18.870 but I haven't, I've read all the books, but there's still a lot, I don't know. 138 00:09:18.870 --> 00:09:22.790 I still have a lot of people I need to talk to. I'm only a year into the topic 139 00:09:22.790 --> 00:09:25.850 and while I've gone really deep this year, I'm still throwing them out. 140 00:09:25.850 --> 00:09:28.980 There is just ideas. They're not validated. I've tried some of them, 141 00:09:28.990 --> 00:09:33.960 most of them myself, but that's not enough evidence to say with uh with 142 00:09:33.960 --> 00:09:38.670 authority. Thus safe. The research, the data, the empirical evidence points to 143 00:09:38.670 --> 00:09:42.910 this being true. No, I'm not there yet. Um so it's okay that while you're in 144 00:09:42.910 --> 00:09:47.550 the learning phase to throw out a hypothesis, especially, I would even 145 00:09:47.550 --> 00:09:53.230 recommend doing it publicly. Like I am here on this podcast um because that's 146 00:09:53.230 --> 00:09:56.790 part of the learning process, right? If you do it publicly and say things like, 147 00:09:56.790 --> 00:09:59.850 hey, this is just an idea. This is what I was thinking. Then people can 148 00:09:59.850 --> 00:10:03.760 actually show up and with humility. You can accept their feedback or critiques 149 00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:07.460 or they tell you that actually know somebody else invented that already. 150 00:10:07.740 --> 00:10:10.720 And then you can humbly accept it, which is a lot easier to do when you 151 00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:13.160 didn't throw it out there as as fact. 152 00:10:14.340 --> 00:10:17.790 So once you've gotten to that point, you can actually develop some original 153 00:10:17.790 --> 00:10:22.800 ideas and these are some of the three um, most common ways of doing it. 154 00:10:22.810 --> 00:10:26.200 There's a lot of ideas around how to generate ideas in the thought 155 00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:30.710 leadership, marketing market or in the space. But these are the ones I found 156 00:10:30.710 --> 00:10:34.450 to be the most prominent are most likely is one you do original research. 157 00:10:34.460 --> 00:10:36.960 There's nothing like doing your own research where you actually have 158 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:41.860 empirical evidence of really good survey work or lots of 159 00:10:42.940 --> 00:10:46.350 interviews that you can actually catalog and show empirically that 160 00:10:46.350 --> 00:10:50.360 something is this or at least based on the one research report you've done 161 00:10:50.370 --> 00:10:53.720 right house. If you've done it over multiple years or done a longitudinal 162 00:10:53.720 --> 00:10:57.250 study over time that only gets stronger and stronger and stronger. So there's 163 00:10:57.250 --> 00:11:00.890 multiple ways to do research. But original research is one of those ones 164 00:11:00.890 --> 00:11:06.060 that we all know works really well for doing thought leadership marketing. 165 00:11:06.340 --> 00:11:10.650 Another one is just unique. Takes. This was probably the most common. Um, but 166 00:11:10.650 --> 00:11:13.530 you have to be the most careful with because unique takes or having a 167 00:11:13.530 --> 00:11:16.720 different angle on things because maybe you have a different background or your 168 00:11:16.730 --> 00:11:19.860 your company's trying to become a thought leader in this space and has a 169 00:11:19.860 --> 00:11:25.800 unique take because of your expertise or experience in a certain field or 170 00:11:25.800 --> 00:11:27.950 you've done a certain thing. Um, 171 00:11:29.040 --> 00:11:32.960 but generally those are the fastest ones because. Oftentimes when you are 172 00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:36.860 going into a subject and you have expertise from an unrelated subject or 173 00:11:36.870 --> 00:11:41.080 another subject that's close but still doesn't cover a lot of the same 174 00:11:41.080 --> 00:11:45.860 material. Oftentimes you can have unique unlocks, um, unique insights 175 00:11:45.870 --> 00:11:50.480 about how things could be done just based on the overlap of bringing in new 176 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:53.350 information and a new project management style that didn't exist in 177 00:11:53.350 --> 00:11:56.520 this niche before that existed somewhere else. And you brought it in 178 00:11:56.530 --> 00:12:00.440 that could be thought leadership, right? Um, so there's lots of unique, lots of 179 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:04.240 ways to do that, but just finding other fields to bring ideas in to bring fresh 180 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:07.950 ideas and from other fields to solve old problems. And then the last one is 181 00:12:07.950 --> 00:12:11.820 just finding the problems that your audience is dealing with and then 182 00:12:11.820 --> 00:12:16.330 trying lots of stuff to solve it, and then sharing your learnings as you 183 00:12:16.330 --> 00:12:19.830 start to find things that work better. Obviously it's overlaps with the last 184 00:12:19.830 --> 00:12:25.650 one of having you unique take. But I think if you have to start somewhere, 185 00:12:25.650 --> 00:12:29.300 just start looking for the problems that nobody else has solved, yet, 186 00:12:29.310 --> 00:12:32.030 problems that lots of people are talking about in the niche and then 187 00:12:32.030 --> 00:12:36.200 just going after even making it a journey, like posting it on social Hey, 188 00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:41.250 like I've noticed everybody struggles with this. Um I've seen some takes on 189 00:12:41.260 --> 00:12:44.110 how to solve it, but I don't think it's enough. I want to be able to solve it 190 00:12:44.110 --> 00:12:47.650 to this degree. I don't know what the answer is yet, but I'm going to start 191 00:12:47.650 --> 00:12:51.870 finding it. And then actually posting your learnings along the way is a great 192 00:12:51.870 --> 00:12:55.880 way into my next third pillar right here, which is authority, right? We 193 00:12:55.880 --> 00:12:59.670 talked about expertise, we talked about bringing, being a contributor with 194 00:12:59.670 --> 00:13:04.640 unique and original ideas and the last one is authority. Like if you can be an 195 00:13:04.640 --> 00:13:08.530 expert and have unique ideas, but if nobody believes you, nobody trusts you, 196 00:13:08.530 --> 00:13:12.040 it's a problem. So we have to be able to build up that kind of trust and a 197 00:13:12.040 --> 00:13:16.220 big part of that. Like I said before is uh an episode I already recorded was 198 00:13:16.230 --> 00:13:19.470 learning in the light like starting your journey early, especially on 199 00:13:19.470 --> 00:13:24.580 social media or wherever your niche is hanging out online or in person and 200 00:13:24.580 --> 00:13:28.260 getting in front of them and talking about it. Even as you're early on, even 201 00:13:28.260 --> 00:13:31.870 as a student, you can start asking good questions and learning. This is a way 202 00:13:31.870 --> 00:13:35.320 to start building a third authority early on from day one, you can start 203 00:13:35.320 --> 00:13:39.570 doing this, it takes years to build the authority, but it starts, you know, 204 00:13:39.580 --> 00:13:43.240 when is the best time to plant a tree. Yeah that whole thing. Another way to 205 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:48.240 build authority is by using a podcast using a podcast throughout the journey 206 00:13:48.240 --> 00:13:52.350 of becoming a thought leader is probably like in my opinion like the 207 00:13:52.350 --> 00:13:57.520 secret hacked and going through all of this. Um You can use a podcast to learn 208 00:13:57.520 --> 00:14:01.370 and become an expert because you can interview the experts um like I have 209 00:14:01.370 --> 00:14:04.310 with thought leadership and then threw it, you kind of build association with 210 00:14:04.310 --> 00:14:07.800 them. People start to see you like oh dance hanging out with so and so and so 211 00:14:07.800 --> 00:14:10.440 and so and so and so he must be in the thought leadership because he's hanging 212 00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:13.120 out with all the thought leadership people on his podcast and posting about 213 00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:17.010 it right? Like you start to just build credibility just through pure assoc 214 00:14:17.020 --> 00:14:24.050 association. Um It's a great way to uh package and then distribute your unique 215 00:14:24.050 --> 00:14:27.610 ideas like I have in this podcast, and then it's a great way to build 216 00:14:27.610 --> 00:14:30.840 authority because the whole time you're creating content with it and then 217 00:14:30.840 --> 00:14:34.510 distributing it out there and people are listening and consuming and getting 218 00:14:34.510 --> 00:14:38.300 to know your ideas right? A lot of you have listened to a lot of these 219 00:14:38.300 --> 00:14:41.360 episodes already and I've had people reach out to me on linkedin and be like, 220 00:14:41.640 --> 00:14:45.450 hey, like I I wasn't subscribed to be to be growth before, but now I am 221 00:14:45.450 --> 00:14:50.180 because I've been really eating up all this content on this one subject um and 222 00:14:50.180 --> 00:14:53.370 that's happened quite a few times, so I know it's happening, I know it's 223 00:14:53.370 --> 00:14:57.400 working and I'm just sharing it for my personal perspective to kind of like be 224 00:14:57.400 --> 00:15:02.950 a little bit vulnerable because it almost feels inauthentic to talk about 225 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:07.150 what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. But I'm also trying to share with you 226 00:15:07.150 --> 00:15:11.410 everything that I'm thinking and learning and trying um while also 227 00:15:11.410 --> 00:15:14.890 trying to build authority, but in the most helpful way possible. And I think 228 00:15:14.890 --> 00:15:17.920 that's a really important note when building authority, you actually have 229 00:15:17.920 --> 00:15:23.250 to do it for the, for the benefit of other people, not to put yourself up on 230 00:15:23.250 --> 00:15:28.650 the pedestal, but to help genuinely help other people. I put a lot of time 231 00:15:28.650 --> 00:15:31.660 and effort into linkedin and a lot of that comes back in revenue for sweet 232 00:15:31.660 --> 00:15:36.140 fish, but honestly, I don't really, I don't always expect it to, I go and 233 00:15:36.140 --> 00:15:41.290 record 5, 10, sometimes 15 minute long video is just to help explain something 234 00:15:41.290 --> 00:15:45.160 to people or not even just people like a person, a person has a particular 235 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.630 thing they're asking me about and I just do it to serve and to bless and to 236 00:15:48.630 --> 00:15:52.350 help as many people as I possibly can without going so overboard that I'm not 237 00:15:52.350 --> 00:15:55.490 actually getting my job done here at Sweet Fish, right? Um I'm trying to 238 00:15:55.490 --> 00:15:59.370 help and bless as many people as I possibly can. If you kind of take that 239 00:15:59.370 --> 00:16:02.340 approach to thought leadership, you will build authority, especially when 240 00:16:02.340 --> 00:16:05.710 you're doing it humbly, you're you're not getting defensive when people 241 00:16:05.710 --> 00:16:09.880 challenge your ideas, I even invite people to challenge my ideas um when 242 00:16:09.880 --> 00:16:13.930 you're doing it humbly and you're trying to just be helpful, it goes a 243 00:16:13.930 --> 00:16:17.560 long way in building authority, especially as a thought leader. 244 00:16:19.640 --> 00:16:23.210 And the last thing I just want to point out about thought leadership is the 245 00:16:23.210 --> 00:16:27.300 number one rule of thought leadership. You can't call yourself a thought 246 00:16:27.300 --> 00:16:31.860 leader. It's noble to aspire to become a thought leader because if you're a 247 00:16:31.860 --> 00:16:35.750 genuine and authentic thought leader that wants to just help people or help 248 00:16:35.760 --> 00:16:41.510 a niche or an industry that's a good and noble task. But and you should 249 00:16:41.510 --> 00:16:44.350 aspire to it, but you can't call yourself a thought leader. If you're 250 00:16:44.350 --> 00:16:47.340 listening to this, you have Thought Leader written anywhere on any of your 251 00:16:47.340 --> 00:16:52.770 material about yourself, take it off, Just do us all a favour, remove it. If 252 00:16:52.770 --> 00:16:56.130 you're a thought leader, like other people will say it about you. You don't 253 00:16:56.130 --> 00:16:58.850 have to say that about yourself. 254 00:17:00.440 --> 00:17:05.400 The 2nd rule of thought leadership is you can't call yourself a thought 255 00:17:05.400 --> 00:17:10.140 leader right to kind of reference Fight Club, right? Just don't do it. There's 256 00:17:10.150 --> 00:17:14.170 it's so important that I I like to reference Fight Club because I'm like, 257 00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:17.400 it's so important. It needs to be the first to rules because so many people 258 00:17:17.400 --> 00:17:20.670 break it and build a bad name for thought leadership marketing when it is 259 00:17:20.670 --> 00:17:24.569 a really true and worthwhile thing to pursue because it is effective 260 00:17:24.569 --> 00:17:28.480 marketing. It's also good and genuine marketing that's actually useful. It's 261 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:31.440 not wasteful. You're actually helping people, you're going and solving the 262 00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:34.170 problems. You're adding your unique point of view. It takes a lot of work, 263 00:17:34.340 --> 00:17:39.090 takes a lot of work. So it's not like it's not like just passively done, you 264 00:17:39.090 --> 00:17:42.810 have to actually work at it and it takes years to build the expertise, 265 00:17:42.810 --> 00:17:48.330 takes years to build and work through your ideas to prove them. It takes 266 00:17:48.330 --> 00:17:52.360 years to build the authority, but it is a worthwhile path. It's the path that I 267 00:17:52.360 --> 00:17:55.820 want to be on. It's a path that I'm taking and I'm only just starting in my 268 00:17:55.820 --> 00:17:59.930 journey towards that. But you will never hear me call myself a thought 269 00:17:59.930 --> 00:18:05.770 leader, It's not worth it. I am a student, I have some ideas. I still 270 00:18:05.770 --> 00:18:10.200 have a long, long way to go and even if I get there someday I still wouldn't 271 00:18:10.200 --> 00:18:13.280 call myself it because it's just one of those things that just doesn't need to 272 00:18:13.280 --> 00:18:17.460 be said if you are, you are if you're not, it didn't matter because you 273 00:18:17.460 --> 00:18:20.660 didn't call yourself one anyway. And that way we can actually clear up some 274 00:18:20.660 --> 00:18:26.210 of the crunchiness that's going around about this topic now to wrap up this 275 00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:32.330 deep dive for this month. I want to take a poll on linkedin. But if you 276 00:18:32.330 --> 00:18:36.070 don't have time to see that poll tomorrow about these deep dives, I'd 277 00:18:36.070 --> 00:18:41.270 love to get your feedback. Please find me on linkedin dot com slash I. N slash 278 00:18:41.270 --> 00:18:44.890 digital marketing dan let me know if these deep dives are worth it. It's 279 00:18:44.890 --> 00:18:49.730 something that as they don't know, I guess I'm the, I don't know what to 280 00:18:49.730 --> 00:18:53.150 call myself, but I'm in charge of GDP growth Swedish media. I guess we don't 281 00:18:53.150 --> 00:18:56.640 really have a title for it. Um I'm still trying to figure out how to 282 00:18:56.640 --> 00:19:00.320 always make this podcast better, how to make the content go further, reach more 283 00:19:00.320 --> 00:19:04.340 people and of course be more helpful, right? Like I said, I want to be more 284 00:19:04.340 --> 00:19:07.970 helpful to more people and that the overall show is the most helpful that 285 00:19:07.970 --> 00:19:13.890 it can be. So any feedback you've given, I appreciate it so much. Come find me 286 00:19:13.890 --> 00:19:17.120 on linkedin. Um you can also go to Sweet Fish Media dot com. Just go to 287 00:19:17.120 --> 00:19:19.410 the contact for and be like, hey, I was listening to be, to be growth, this is 288 00:19:19.410 --> 00:19:23.830 my feedback and then we can get it there. Thank you so much for listening 289 00:19:24.150 --> 00:19:26.670 and thank you for in advance for your feedback.