AI Can Create Content. It Can't Create Thought Leadership  🔗 **Source:** [AI Can Create Content. It Can't Create Thought Leadership](https://share.snipd.com/episode/dd3a524b-0859-4d47-870b-605cf20d6742) ## Highlights - **Early Career With Keith Ferrazzi** - Peter Winick described starting with Keith Ferrazzi in 2005 and running his speaking and training business for 3.5 years. - That hands-on launch taught him thought leaders often lack marketing skills despite big ideas. Transcript: Peter Winick So I started working with Keith in 2005, actually, when we launched Never Read Alone. And I worked exclusively for Keith for three and a half years. So I was brought in to build out the training and development business. And I took over the speaking business. And this is in the stone ages, you know, before so many things, but it was an amazing experience. He's still a dear friend. And it really gave me the spark to say, you know what? Why be monogamous? There's lots of other thought leaders out there that could use help because Keith, as you know, is an amazing marketer. Most thought leaders, when you put on a list of paper what they're really great at, marketing doesn't ([Time 0:02:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3b2dc50b-004e-4193-b7fd-00382b145ee7)) - **Thought Leaders Rely On Personal Presence** - Thought leaders on the run rely on being physically present—airports, events, keynotes—to spread ideas. - That lifestyle limits reach and causes unstable revenue tied to how busy their schedule is. Transcript: John Jantsch And it was like, well, that was about a year ago. So you're absolutely right. So in the handbook, you actually introduced five avatars. There's one that's probably the one that I thought was most intriguing, thought leaders on the run. So unpack that one for us. That's kind of the person that's too busy doing the work to even consider themselves a thought leader, maybe, huh? Well, the thought leader on the run, when you break it down by the percentages over the five avatar, is the one that shows up the most. Peter Winick Why? Because it's how they operate, right? So what does that mean? It means, and it's not that it's good or bad, it just is, right? That in order for them to get the idea out, primarily they need to be in the room or in the zoo. So they tend to live a lot in airports, right? They're going from event to gig and they put on the thought leader hat or the author hat or the keynote speaker hat more than they do the CEO hat. Right. So typically when they come to us, the issue is, hey, I love my life. I'm blessed. This is amazing. I get paid the big bucks to go to be in Miami on one day and, you know, Arizona on another day. But I'm a little tired. You know, I'd like to sleep in my own bed. And from an impact standpoint, how do I get these ideas out to more people in more ways? And how do I balance my portfolio? ([Time 0:02:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2b3f819a-a0e0-4cd1-af87-a249aafd8f2e)) - **Match Format And Create System Velocity** - Do match idea formats to audience consumption: books, video, short or long form based on where they consume content. - Build system velocity so ideas travel beyond your personal time and appearances. Transcript: John Jantsch You know, I wrote a book on referrals. My second book was called The Referral Engine. In a lot of ways, that was the premise of that. I think a lot of thought leaders, a lot of business leaders think, hey, I do good work. People will talk about me. They'll talk about the great results, as opposed to doing anything intentionally around amplifying the fact that they are referable. So how do you actually get people to start thinking in terms of like that ties to that ideas can't speak for themselves? How do you get people to actually start spreading that idea that intentionally that they are worth referring? Yeah. So I think there's two questions there. Peter Winick Let me, let me, I hear that as two different or two slightly different things. Usually there's six questions, but yeah, right. One is there are the ideas piece is how do we get the ideas out to the most people, the most relevant people most often. So to me, that's typically a function of format and all that. Right. So, you know, a book is great. People don't read. I mean, that's a general statement, but like a book is not, today is not what a book was. Video is awesome, but if you're reluctant to get on video, you're missing opportunity. There's short form, there's long form, whatever. So one is where do your ideas live and how does that align to where the folks that you're trying to reach and connect with consume that information? That's the first piece. The other piece in terms of the ideas not speaking for themselves is what I would think about as velocity, right? So there's personal velocity. You and I are talking right now, so I can't be talking to someone else right now. Or if I was, that would be pretty rude or whatever, right? So there's a limit to that. So my personal velocity is how I choose to spend my time to get the word out and get the message out. Now, this is more velocity than you and I just having a conversation, although we've done that and that's great. We're recording this. It's going to be on your podcast. You know, lots of people hear it. That's pretty cool. The system velocity really thinks, so personal velocity is pretty straightforward. What is it I, the thought leader, can do to get my ideas out on a consistent basis? The system velocity, what are the other ways it could go out that's not dependent on me? ([Time 0:04:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2056870a-8143-4cfd-8635-74ea2fd293a0)) - **Focus On The Right Few Activities** - Avoid activity without strategy: focus on the few right things in the right sequence. - Convert effort into productivity by aligning tasks to a clear strategy, not just doing more. Transcript: Peter Winick Well, I would say yes end, right? So the yes end is the focus and discipline is great as long as you're focused and disciplined on the right things in the right sequence to get the outcomes, which is strategy, right? So that to me, my clients, and you know this better than I do, thought leaders that we all know, they're not lazy, right? They're working really hard. They're passionate or evangelical in terms of what it is they're doing. But, you know, activity is not productivity. And I think that's a trap that a lot of thought leaders fall into. I'll just get up, you know, I'll work harder, do it faster. I'll get 25 hours in a 24 hours day. And it's like, well, if you have 98 plates spinning in the air, you know, is that really good? You know, as opposed to, you know, your point on the fewer, but it's the right fewer. ([Time 0:07:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/379ad1a9-0575-4861-b308-6ad5ceab51b3)) - **Giving Ideas Away Grows Demand** - Sharing full models and methods increases demand, not reduces it; giving away frameworks attracts more qualified, higher-paying clients. - Examples: Stephen R. Covey's full habits and keynote videos still command fees. Transcript: Peter Winick So like when Stephen M. R. Covey wrote The Seven Habits, it wasn't, well, we'll just publish five of them and you want the other two, you got to send us some money. That's just, you know, stupid. Right. And I think the way it works is we put 20 years of models and methods and frameworks into the book. And exactly the argument you just made. Oh, but if you put it out there, why do they need you? More people will need us at a higher price point as a result of that. The subset of people that buy the book and read the book and do it yourself. That's awesome. I love that. Like if we can help those folks, I never could have helped them. You know, they just can't be clients right now. Now that might change down the road. And I think that's really the piece. And, you know, if you think about it from a keynoter standpoint, you and I have both seen $50,000, $100,000 keynoters and you get their stuff on YouTube. ([Time 0:08:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/637a0eeb-08e9-41b4-ae2e-ffc5e11edc0c)) - **Use AI To Analyze, Not Fake, Thought Leadership** - Use AI for research and pattern extraction, not to generate hollow long content; mine transcripts and episodes for themes. - Winick turned 650 podcast episodes into book material by using AI to find memorable vignettes. Transcript: Peter Winick Yeah, I think, you know, you could fool some of the people. So I'll tell you bad ways or things that are not helpful to you, your brand, your growth as a thought leader to use AI and things that I've seen that are cool, creative, interesting, whatever. So bad ways are you can pick up a tool and say, give me 40,000 word book on this and this in the style of that, this and the other thing. And it'll get something out. Now, anybody, you know, with any sort of IQ that's in the three digits, we'll look at that and go, there's no there, right? Like there's no there, right? There's like, okay, that's a lot of words on a page. John Jantsch It could have been a 700 word blog post. Peter Winick Yeah. Or a pod or a, you know, whatever. So I think, you know, just because you can create a lot of stuff now, I think actually where you can create it, and you know this better than I as a marketer, content marketing, I think AI Can do some really good stuff. From thought leadership, I think you have to say, okay, what is it good at and what is it not good at? So good at examples. I've seen lots of keynoters say, you know, I never spoke to this type of group before. You know, newly minted IT professionals. Let me push my stuff through there and say, give me a few examples that would resonate most with this audience at this company today. So that's research, right? I think for us, we did something that I think was kind of cool, but I'll let you weigh in on that, right? The genesis of the book for us was a couple of years ago, I started playing around with AI and chat and all that. Why? Because everybody else is doing it. I'm like, I got to play with this thing, right? And what I knew was we had a bunch of models and methods and frameworks. And I knew that would never be a book, right? That would be an IKEA manual that nobody would read. Models, methods, right? Like maybe there's a subset of the universe that loves that stuff. My dear friends, the engineers, but like that would not be something I would read, right? But I knew that we had this podcast and at the time we had 650 episodes and we had transcripts. So I said, Hmm, let me take 30 transcripts. And they were all categorized to a similar theme. And I threw it into chat and I played with it for hours and hours over a weekend. And what it taught me was one, my memory is terrible because if somebody asked me, what were your favorite, most memorable things from the podcast you've done? I would answer a few. But if you ask me the same question a week later, I might answer differently, you know, but it gave me themes and it gave me patterns and it gave me things to look deeper on. So what I did was what every sort of ADD CEO does on a Monday morning, they call their much smarter process oriented analytical COO. And I said, Bill, Bill Sherman, hey, I got this idea. You know, we've like talked about writing a book. We don't want to write a book, but like I played with Chad over the weekend. I think we can knock this thing out in like a month, maybe two, you know, and here's why. And he did the, you know, almost like somewhere between a therapist and somebody knows you've gone off the deep end. And he said, well, maybe, which is the noncommittal. Let's go check it out. Well, fast forward, 650 episodes at the time was 2.3 million words, right? So if the average business was 50,000, that's a lot of books. And Bill was able to come up with some real tools to be able to pull those patterns. And then we always went back to the tapes, right? Many times we'd go back to the thought leader and say, you might not remember this conversation. And actually we took it a little out of context, but I want to talk to you about this vignette here, you know, this little story that you told. Can we talk about that? Cause we're writing a book that gave us brilliance. And to answer your AI question, that would have taken us years and six grad level interns and they like pizza and beer and to get paid every Friday. So that to me was a smart use of AI in terms of for us to get to the book where we wanted it to be. ([Time 0:11:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/92f3e733-dc7c-41d9-817c-049f6132af3c)) - **Impact Equation Condenses How Ideas Spread** - The Impact Equation needs four parts: simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience. - Simplicity makes ideas accessible; share of audience lets you target the vital 0.01% who matter. Transcript: Peter Winick Yeah. So I think every thought leader wants their work to have impact. Yeah. Right. They just do. Like we're not writing this for ourselves, although sometimes we are at a moment in time. But the impact equation, it was a way for us to say, how do you do this? Like, because Keith's secret sauce is the power of developing relationships. That's his secret sauce. Right. And Never Read Alone and a lot of his other books were sort of what that looked like. And then he's evolved into sort of some different thinking today. So we looked at the impact equation because equations are cool, right? Like they just are. And said, here's how, what it looks like. Number one idea, simplicity. You got to get it down to its molecular. Now that sounds obvious and easy, but ask an that spent 25 years as the top of their game or world-class at whatever, tell me the gist of your work in two or three sentences. Most can't do it because it's been beaten out of them. It's not how they're trained. It's not whatever. And if you can't make it like simple, then it's not accessible. So there's no point there. The next is the relevance to the audience, right? So you might have something that's really simple, but if you gave me the simplest way to knit a blanket, it has no relevance to me. I'm not someone that knits. Now somebody else that might be, oh my God, that's a hack that I'll use every day. But like, what's the relevance to me? And then the next is this, the velocity. We talked about velocity before. What are you doing to get it out there? And then what is the share of audience? And I think the share of audience piece is interesting. ([Time 0:16:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/052a9ea4-5636-4f31-8a5f-780d53d1f915)) - **Be Explicit About Who You Serve** - Do define who you are for and who you're not for so prospects self-select and you avoid expensive conversion efforts. - Target the small percent that truly needs your thinking instead of chasing everyone. Transcript: Peter Winick You know, if this was a startup, we'd be talking about total addressable market, but one of the most freeing things for me and that I try to share with my clients is, guess what, John, you're Irrelevant in 99.99% of the people on this planet. And that's an amazing thing, right? Because all you need to do now is say, what can I do to be as relevant as possible to that 0.01% that matters most? And maybe it's 95% or whatever, but like for the most part, you know, you're irrelevant, right? I'm irrelevant. And the beauty of that is I don't have to spend my time chasing my towel, right? Like I know that I want to talk to people like you. I don't want to be on a podcast for, I don't know, stay-at moms in Iowa. Bless their little hearts. Those aren't my peeps. John Jantsch That's one of my favorite lines from Sandler. I had David on the show a couple times over the years. It was just, the best thing you can get is fast nose. The idea of the people that are like, the worst thing in the world is maybe because now you got to like worry about it for the next six months and send 87, you know, follow-up emails. Yeah, exactly. You know, but for somebody to go, no, you're not for me. And, you know, and obviously that's in a sales environment, but as a thought leader, clearly understanding who's for you, who's not for you and communicating that. So people sort of self-select whether or not they want to be in your universe, right? I mean, that's part of the equation, isn't it? Peter Winick Yeah. And you don't want to be in the conversion business, right? If you spend a lot of your energy and effort, you know, it's a great business model for the Mormons. It's worked for them. Like it's really expensive to try to convince someone that your way is a better way, that your way of thinking might help them. You can do a little bit of that. But if I got to spend, like you said, you know, 10 phone calls trying to show you that my way is better than yours. Why wouldn't I talk to someone that's already sort of absorbed some of my thinking and said, you know, I kind of dig what you say and I think you could help me. ([Time 0:17:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fe53b3e0-f55b-4c66-87da-2efa32e318f4)) - **Niche Leadership Created Market Timing Win** - Winick shared a case of a gay divorce attorney who positioned himself early after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage. - By publishing relevant thought leadership he became the go-to when the market demand arrived. Transcript: Peter Winick Right. I'll give you another example. It was, you know, you got to be smart. I think it was 10 years ago, my math could be wrong, when Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage. Okay, that's cool. So what does that mean? Well, there was a divorce lawyer that happened to be gay and he said, geez, here's what's going to happen in the next six 1824 months. I can put a stake in that ground and put out some thought leadership on the nuance of gay marriage because I'm gay. I'm a divorce attorney. So I've got an advantage. Let me start putting this stuff out there because as they're walking back down the aisle is probably not the time to handle my card. This will take some time. And it did. Like you didn't have to be a genius to figure out more people that weren't able to get hired. John Jantsch A new category of business, so to speak. Yeah. Peter Winick And when that time came, he was already putting articles out there and things out there or whatever. ([Time 0:21:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b3361430-818e-4525-808b-70b8659b1b8e))