For the aspiring trailblazer
We are all thought leaders. We all have opinions, deep knowledge and lived experience in some domain of our lives. On a deep level we are also all drawn to connect, educate and inspire others. Some of us more than others, of course but the fact remains that the drive to share our knowledge, wisdom, and insight is a very human thing.
There is little t thought leadership and big T thought leadership. The big T is reserved for the public arena. It falls in the domain of marketing and is what we are here to talk about today.
You’ve heard the quote: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it actually fall?”. Not to get into existential philosophy here but if a thought happens in private and no one hears it did it happen? My answer?
It doesn’t matter.
The art of making your thoughts public and packaging them in a consumable, compelling and commanding way is subtle. It is also not for the faint of heart.
I wrote this for the intellectual trailblazers amongst you, who are ready to take their thoughts public and lead.
Defining Thought Leadership
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the words: “thought leader”? I bet it’s not too far from what ChatGPT generated for me when I prompted it to “give me an illustration based on the words.”
Here it is:
Prompt: create an illustration based on the words "thought leader"
The robo caption that came with it:
"Here's an illustration representing a 'thought leader.' It depicts a professional business person confidently addressing a group of attentive colleagues in a modern conference room, illuminated by a spotlight to symbolize their influential role. The large screen behind the speaker displays innovative ideas and graphs, while the engaged audience takes notes and nods in agreement. The setting is sleek and contemporary, with large windows and cityscape views in the background."
Let’s ignore the deeply problematic fact that it’s a white male in a suit (a conversation for another time) and focus on the thought leader part.
Here are some images and words that came up for me when I prompted my own mind with the words “thought leader”:
Stage (Ted talk to be specific)
Book (Simon Sinek came up)
Expert
Male
Authority
Scholarly
Pedestal
Individual
B2B
Not bad ChatGPT!
The truth is that this man-on-a-pedestal thing is outdated. Thought leadership is no longer reserved for the intellectual elites. It is something any of us can develop and package. In my line of work, I see the benefits across industries and disciplines. Thought- leadership is for the young woman starting a new business, for the CEO looking to bring in new opportunities, it’s for the coach looking to help others on their path, it’s for me and it’s for you. If you are willing to pay the price that comes with going public with our thoughts.
We have entered a kind of post-pandemic democratization of thought leadership.
A new breed of thinkers is entering the marketplace.
Spurred by the so-called “creator economy,” these folks are doing things a little differently.
The Changing of the Guard: The Rise of the Intellectual Influencer
What it took to become a thought leader in the 90s and 2000s is not going to cut it in 2024 and beyond.
The best way to define the intellectual influencer is to contrast them with the traditional thought leader.
Here is how they differ:
The traditional thought leader focuses on sharing distilled expertise and innovative ideas. The intellectual influencer by contrast, leans into vulnerability and shares learnings, challenges and questions. The two also differ in the way they deliver content. Traditional thought leadership is research-heavy and often involves things like articles, reports, keynotes and books, while the intellectual influencer distributes via podcasts, collaborations, digital courses, with a focus on lived experience over theory.
Thought leader & their audience
Intellectual influencer & their audience
Perhaps the most interesting part of this is the way in which these two approaches view their audiences. The thought leader has a top-down approach, while the intellectual influencer has a center out approach (see visual below). What does that mean on the ground? The intellectual influencer views their audience as a group of collaborators aligned around the same mission/ problem. Contrast this with the traditional thought leader, whose purpose is to establish credibility, demonstrate expertise, and influence industry practices and standards. In short- to gain loyal followers.
This fundamental difference in audience approach also affects the communication style and distribution channels. Thought leaders tend to adopt a more formal and scholarly tone, focusing on research-based insights and long-form content, while intellectual influencers are often informal, focused on subjective real-world experience and aspirational identity.
If you want to keep an example in your mind, think of Simon Sinek vs. Gary Vaynerchuk.
Is this a case of ‘same horse, different jockey” in the marketing world? Sort of. There are definite overlaps between the two approaches. For starters, the intent in both cases is to position as experts and move people to a purchase decision.
To me, the most significant difference between these two modalities is the relationship to their audience. Picture Gary V talking to random strangers on the street vs. Simon Sinek from a stage with a seated, captive audience.
"Fortune 100 executives estimate the ROI of thought leadership to be $3.6 million a year."
Moving Forward
There are plenty of old-school thought leadership gurus out there that will tell you to publish a token book because “that is what people do” or to get yourself on some stages where other thought leaders before you have stood.
Nothing particularly wrong with that advice. The act of publishing a book does trigger the needed authority associations in the collective psyche, but it’s got a very short lifecycle. Past the initial rah-rah, this commodity asset is going to live (and die) on someone’s color coded bookshelf with the other ‘orange’ books.
What is compelling about the Intellectual Influencer distribution model is that it’s not about any one asset but rather a living, breathing collective of people united under a common mission and engaged in a constant feedback loop with each other.
Questions that are probably coming up:
So what does that mean for me?
How do I define your own ecosystem and rally people around it?
How do I establish myself as an intellectual influencer?
Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else. - Sara Blakely, Founder, Spanx
The Niche of One: A Better Way to Think About Personal Brand
Anyone scrolling the LinkedIn feed with a pulse will have noticed that personal branding is having a moment. The way personal brand is presented is a bit lacking (in this author's humble opinion). It wrongly focuses on the external manifestation of uniqueness. Brand colors, physical attributes, single-focus conversation. Notice how personal brand people ONLY talk about personal brand and their advice is formulaic.
🥱“I am the guy who wears my baseball cap backwards”
🥱“I am the guy who is always showing up from a beach”
🥱“I am the gal with the pink carousels”
(you know the ones)
This approach does not have enough meat on the bone to keep people interested long term, nor does it make space for those of us who haven’t been blessed with being a peacock in a past life. It’s too “me-me” and not enough “we-we”.
What I would like to put forward is something more substantial than that. Something that is outside the visual merchandising of individuality and more about the monetization of an idea. (introverts may breathe a sigh of relief now).
The creator economy has opened a door for us plebs to show up as ourselves (whatever that means) and if we work hard enough, make something of the weird stack of skills that are unique to us.
Enter the niche of one.
The niche of one is your unique place in the marketplace. It is the intersection between your unique skill set, your unique lived-experience and your unique mission spliced together into an uncopyable entity. It lives outside of vertical and horizontal industry niching and it has nothing to do with what you look like or what beach you managed to get yourself to.
It’s all about the magic that is your youness.
It is the prerequisite puzzle every budding intellectual influencer must decode. If you begin to lean into your true USP (unique value proposition) you will automatically join the ranks of intellectual influencing and begin building a network that resonates deeply with your weird and specific perspective.
Oh, and you don’t need hundreds of thousands of people to ‘follow you’, nor do you need to be young, attractive and extroverted.. That’s the old school model. You need to bring yourself to the table and a couple of hundred true fans.
You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. - Ken Kesey, American novelist
The Hard Work Starts Here: Decoding Yourself and Where You Fit In
The process of establishing yourself as a thought leader is not for the faint of heart. In fact, for a lot of the early days it feels like you are back in high school, trying to figure out which clique you belong to.
Discovering your unique value proposition and learning how to tap into the zeitgeist takes a certain kind of animal. For one, you have to be open to experimentation and its first cousin frequent failure. You have to know how to creatively iterate your way forward and how to read market signals.
Here are some questions to get you started. I use these with my 1:1 clients when we are co-creating their ‘niche of one’.
You Questions:
What unique skills and experiences do you have under your belt?
Compare and contrast what you were doing 3, 5, 10 years ago and what you are doing now. What are your biggest learnings? What would you tell your younger self?
What pisses you off?
What useful activity can you do indefinitely without burning out?
List all the things you have been paid for.
Ask 5 people what your superpower is.
What mission do you want to get behind?
Them Questions:
What questions does your audience have that others have not already answered?
What type of thinking is occurring in your industry that you’d like to challenge? What do you stand against? What do you want to call BS on?
How do you want your audience to improve?
What do you think the biggest missed opportunities are for your clients (current or potential)?
How do you want to impact someone’s thinking?
What do you want them to do after interacting with your ideas?
If you could work with 100 people who you thought were all awesome, what would be their attributes?
How Questions:
What is the most natural way for you to communicate (writing, talking, video, cool visuals)?
Where are your people hanging out?
What kind of content do you want to make and how much of it? What can you commit to? What doesn’t make you cringe?
What do you want to build?
Who do you want to build it with?
Take the answers to these questions, pop them in the cauldron, spit for good measure, and stir. You will find that the potion you brew up is completely uncopyable. It may take you a few tries to get the recipe just right, but the ingredients are there.
Best Practices
Tactics don’s matter. Most people start with “should I write a newsletter” or “how many times should I post” or “what hooks should I use”. These questions are the wrong questions. You have to answer the ones above first, at which point you will realize that tactics are not nearly as important as people want you to think. Sorry if you already blew some cash on those digital courses.
There is no formula. You have to create your own formula. Yes, you can glean ingredients from others, but at the end of the day, there is no framework, no protocol, no standard that will get you where you are meant to go. This means you have to become very adept at ignoring the gurus. When someone comes at you with a ‘proven method’ run for the hills.
This takes time. Sorry, much of this is experiential AND experimental. Knowing and iterating forward comes just as much from a felt- sense as it does from strategic thinking. You have to build the capacity for dancing between these two ways of absorbing information. You oscillate from “that felt good” to “this makes sense”.
You have to acclimate to the emotional exposure that comes with sharing anything online. Cancel culture has really compromised our ability to have a dialogue without having to be right. It’s just how it is. It’s ok- we can rise above. Water off a duck’s back.
The Bottom Line
The traditional thought leader, with their polished presentations and scholarly insights, is evolving. The rise of the intellectual influencer marks a shift towards a more dynamic, engaged, and experience-driven model of influence. This new breed of leaders doesn't just share knowledge from a pedestal; they engage in meaningful dialogues, rally communities around missions, and leverage a myriad of platforms to foster genuine connections.
Remember, the goal is not to accumulate followers but to reach resonance.
Focus on the journey!
You got this.
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