Leveraging Thought Leadership

Today’s guest is Thom Singer, a renowned speaker on growth leadership, author of a dozen books including Batteries Not Included, and host of the podcast Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do.

Thom shares his journey from sales and marketing to Thought Leader and how he realized he wanted to be a keynote speaker. Thom details how he gets bookings and the various touchpoints he uses to stay on the radar of potential meeting planners. Peter and Thom discuss the sometimes difficult task of making both audiences and the planner who hired you happy.

Three Key Takeaways:

• How a Thought Leader can follow up with potential clients.
• The ways Thought Leaders can make the life of a meeting planner easier.
• Why Thought Leaders doing speaking engagements should involve themselves in the conference beyond their stage time.

Today’s guest is Nicole Truhe, Director of Thought Leadership at United Health Care Community and State. Nicole sits down with Peter to discuss how she uses her position to educate the space about emerging health and human services policy. We discuss the different effects of internal vs. external Thought Leadership. Why her position isn’t part of the marketing team and why the number of followers isn’t as important as who your followers are.

Three Key Takeaways:

• How you can use Thought Leadership to influence policy.
• Why building a network of Thought Leadership is important for your own message.
• What stats are truly important to the growth of your Thought Leadership on social media

Our guest today is Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, international best-selling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and the Catalyst. He is a world expert on change, word of mouth influence, and consumer behavior. Jonah takes us through his world as a Thought Leader and how publishing his book Contagion opened the door to new opportunities. We discuss the highs and lows of being a speaker and the types of projects he takes on as a consultant. Last but not least Jonah gives advice on the challenging marketplace both publishers and authors face. This is advice you certainly don’t want to miss. Three Key Takeaways: · How Thought Leaders can position themselves for better bookings with speaker bureaus. · Why Thought Leaders need to understand the purpose of their book in order to get the most out of it. · What Thought Leaders can learn by working in different industries that push your boundaries.

Today’s guest is Jean Accius a nationally recognized thought leader on aging, longevity, and long term health care policy and the Senior Vice President of Global Thought Leadership at AARP.

Jean shares with us what Organizational Thought Leadership is at AARP, who their target audience is, and what successful thought leadership looks like for them. Bill and Jean have a deep conversation about the multi-generational workforce that exists today, how untraditional partners can be the key to spreading the conversation, and how Jean is leading a team to influence the influencers for positive change around the world.

Three Key Takeaways:

• How to take Thought Leadership from idea to impact.
• What AARP is doing to share their Thought Leadership in the age of COVID-19.
• Why Jean encourages his team of Thought Leaders to go out in the community and come back with new ideas.

Today’s guest is Stan Lepeak. he is the founder and Chief Research Officer at Lepeak LLC. Previously he served as head of marketing research and thought leadership for KPMG consulting and global head of marketing research and thought leadership at EquaTerra. Stan has more than 20 years of experience in developing and researching thought leadership. Stan shares with us the difference between working at the back of the house vs client-facing, as well as what can slow down or speed up the process of moving thought leadership between the two.

Stan guides us through what content developers should be thinking about to grab the attention of busy executives and why you are wasting your time if you don’t have a next-step build into your conversation.

We end the conversation with Stan giving three great pieces of advice for anyone developing thought leadership for their organization.

If you are looking to join your organization's thought leadership team this episode is for you!

Three Key Takeaways:

• The key differences between qualitative and quantitative thought leadership.
• Where to find new voices for your organization's thought leadership team.
• Why thinking about thought leadership from the view of the consumer is important.