Strategic Thought Leadership: How to Stand Out in the AI Age | Expert Guide to Business Innovation

Anthony: 00:00:00

Thought leadership.

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What does it really mean?

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Why does it matter to your business?

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With Chris McNeil, Chris is going to delve into that whole idea of what thought

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leadership really means and why it should make a difference to your business.

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Normally, on Biz Bites for thought leaders, we talk to thought leaders

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who are really talking about their expertise in their space.

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Well, in this particular case, Chris's space is on being a thought leader itself.

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And what it really takes and why.

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Particularly in an age of ai, it is more important than ever to

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exercise your creativity and what the impact it is on a business.

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He's got plenty of examples, plenty of insights.

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This is truly an episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders that you cannot miss.

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It is going to be defining for your business, so stay tuned.

Anthony: 00:01:02

Well, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought

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Leaders and what a great episode we've got coming up because we're gonna

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talk all things thought leadership.

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That's what you should be talking on it.

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We're gonna be talking about it with someone else who has his own

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podcast, but is also, uh, very much in the thought leadership space.

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Uh, Chris, welcome to the program.

Chris McNeil: 00:01:23

Great to be here.

Chris McNeil: 00:01:24

Anthony

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and Chris, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to

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everyone just to kick things off.

Chris McNeil: 00:01:31

Sure.

Chris McNeil: 00:01:32

Um, I'm Chris McNeil.

Chris McNeil: 00:01:33

I. And I am the developer of what's called the Thought Process spelled

Chris McNeil: 00:01:40

funny, T-H-A-U-T, of Strategic Thought Leadership, which is a methodology for

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building a model of thought leadership designed to lead an audience or a

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market segment to a specific way of thinking that's empowering for them.

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And that cast the leader or the business or the client business in the

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best possible light at the same time.

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So it's a method of what I call strategic thought leadership,

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doing it very consciously and intentionally with a method.

Anthony: 00:02:19

I really want to delve into lots of parts of that and to

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talk a lot about thought leadership.

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And uh, I think in order to do that in a moment, I wanna delve a little bit

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into what's led you to this position.

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But just to start things off, what do you define as thought leadership?

Chris McNeil: 00:02:39

Well, when I first heard and saw the term Anthony,

Chris McNeil: 00:02:43

it was very intriguing to me because I took it literally.

Chris McNeil: 00:02:47

It's about leading thought and I was thinking, well, that fits me perfectly.

Chris McNeil: 00:02:54

Having a background in neurolinguistic programming or NLP, which is all about

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leading thought to specific places, uh, systems thinking, which is, um,

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often has to do with leading thought to new places, different perspectives.

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Um, so I was surprised to learn that the most common perception.

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Was a thought leader is someone who has a large social media presence

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and is known for their expertise.

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So I went about bringing it more to the definition I thought it had as

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list lead thinking, and that means, um, it's a little tricky because

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then we're thinking about thinking.

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Which, which is a bit meta.

Chris McNeil: 00:03:40

Yeah.

Chris McNeil: 00:03:40

Um, but it becomes actually understandable and it lends a lot of power to the process

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when you realize that you are building blocks by which you can understand the

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thinking of an audience or market segment.

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Um, both in terms of how a competitors position their.

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Competitive products or services and pitch 'em to the public.

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And in terms of how the public perceives that segment.

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And it's interesting when those things don't match up

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that provides opportunities.

Anthony: 00:04:13

Yeah, absolutely.

Anthony: 00:04:14

It does, doesn't it?

Anthony: 00:04:15

It that's the, that's the, uh, intriguing thing about it is that, uh, without.

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Thinking about the thinking, then you just keep going along

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as is standard and mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:04:28

Also, you don't give an opportunity to yourself, to yourself to put it out there.

Anthony: 00:04:33

I think that's one of the critical things about being a thought leader,

Anthony: 00:04:37

uh, to me, is that if you are, if you have the thoughts, but you

Anthony: 00:04:44

don't share them with anyone, then are you really a thought leader?

Chris McNeil: 00:04:50

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:04:51

I mean, you have to share 'em and you have to know both, uh, what I

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call baseline audience thinking.

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What are the standard mental models or belief systems about your category

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that, that people tend to hold?

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And sometimes it's so fundamental to the perception.

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It's like asking a fish what's slaughter like?

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Hmm.

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People just live within their assumptions and when they become deep and widespread,

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they don't even notice 'em anymore.

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This just how the world is.

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But when you learn to uproot and question the assumptions behind a field,

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you, in every case that I've found so far, they're not fully functional.

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Just, it's how human thinking works.

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It's how language works.

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You know, we connect things.

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And then maybe through generations, maybe through a few product cycles,

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we accept this is the way of doing things and we don't question it

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anymore, but the world changes.

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So our models grow stale.

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So I see it as a necessary component of innovation.

Chris McNeil: 00:06:00

Yeah.

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For, and, and you know, Peter Drucker said there's only two things that

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create results in business marketing.

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I. And innovation.

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And to me, strategic thought leadership is where they meet because it's

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innovation in marketing, it's innovation in messaging, uh, and even if you

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have a really powerful innovation in a product or service category, something

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that delivers much more benefit, it's easy to just anticipate that the public

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will automatically appreciate it.

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But in almost every case, you need to bring the public up to speed and get them

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to embrace it by leading them to a better way of perceiving your category so they

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can fully appreciate your innovation.

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And it's extremely effective when it is designed from the

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point of view of the recipient.

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That's kind of the magic of it, and that's what we miss in business.

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You know, one of my.

Chris McNeil: 00:07:04

Um, favorite gurus in marketing's Jay Abraham, and he said something

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that impacted me powerfully.

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I picked up many years ago, and I said, in almost every business, the business

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person falls in love with his or her product or service or business or company,

Chris McNeil: 00:07:23

when really you should fall in love with the customer in the market segment.

Chris McNeil: 00:07:28

Uh, and I was influenced largely, um, by a methodology called the Vanguard

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Method out of the uk, and it's a systems thinking based consulting

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program developed by gentleman I've become friends with named John Seton's.

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Brilliant man.

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Written a number of books on it and, and they go into businesses

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and they create breakthroughs.

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They will reduce expenses by 30 or 40% and increase profits by 30 or 40% in a matter

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of months, and it's How do they do that?

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Well, one way they do it, one essential part of it is they take

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the leaders of the business to the point of contact with the customer.

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And study the transaction point.

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And John told me recently that almost every business person

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initially goes to the front lines and they wanna study their employee.

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He's like, no, we're here to study the customer.

Chris McNeil: 00:08:27

I. What's the purpose of your business in customer terms, not your lingo, and

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then how many ways does your business, your business's mental models, your

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ways of doing things create friction for the customer getting what they want?

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And it changes minds because they see it.

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And you know, my innovation in this was to take it to marketing

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and ask if we consider all of our media part of the business.

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What if we went and studied it from the customer point of view to remove

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friction as well, because then you're asking the question, what do people

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want in their pre-purchase research?

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What do they want to learn?

Chris McNeil: 00:09:10

What empowerment do they need to feel like they're making a smart decision?

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Or how can we help them extract more of what's important to them?

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More value in our category by leading them to better ways of using it,

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better ways of perceiving it, smarter ways of making decision, elevating

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it to new and higher purposes.

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And what this does is it makes our content way more magnetic because it's so

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empowering and it's so customer focused.

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And it's about giving, not giving, but you know, by giving.

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We earn their attention.

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By earning their attention.

Chris McNeil: 00:09:44

We earn their purchases when they're ready.

Anthony: 00:09:47

It's so powerful what you've just said, and it really speaks to the

Anthony: 00:09:51

heart of marketing, because too often the businesses that you're doing marketing

Anthony: 00:09:58

for, and as someone who's, you know, done a lot of marketing over the years,

Anthony: 00:10:03

that too often the business leaders.

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Fall back on what they want, what they like, rather than

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what actually suits the clients.

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And it is a big area where things go wrong.

Anthony: 00:10:19

I mean, even I, I think I've used this example before, perhaps on

Anthony: 00:10:22

the podcast, but you know, I recall doing a branding exercise with,

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uh, a particular organization and.

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This is just an example of where it goes astray.

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And we did all of the research came up with the colors, everything

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that suited the audience.

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And one particular manager said, no, I like everything in fluorescent pink.

Anthony: 00:10:45

And just went ahead and did everything in fluorescent pink

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because that was her favorite color.

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And it was like, but you are not the audience.

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You know, it's not about what you like, it is about what resonates with your

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audience and doesn't mean matter whether it's you're talking about color or

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content or any number of other things.

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It is ha, your audience has to be first.

Anthony: 00:11:08

I. And mm-hmm.

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Too often businesses I think lose sight of that very simple idea

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that that's the reason they exist is because of their audience.

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Not just because they thought this would be a good idea and

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want to thrust it on people.

Anthony: 00:11:22

The audience has to think that it's a great idea.

Chris McNeil: 00:11:26

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:11:27

And you know, it's our job in doing strategic thought leadership.

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If we're offering something that truly benefits people better than the current

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choices, to help them perceive why and perceive how to get that benefit from it.

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And you know, in almost every category there is value left on the table.

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That customers could extract and businesses could benefit from because

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customers aren't getting as much value as they could with leadership.

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Here's how you use it.

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Here's something you didn't think of.

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You know, here's, here's a ca, here's a way it fits into your life

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you probably didn't imagine before.

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That can help you at a higher level.

Chris McNeil: 00:12:12

Uh, you were thinking it was for this purpose, but actually if you

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use it for this other purpose, it'll solve problems you didn't even

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consider connecting to this category.

Chris McNeil: 00:12:22

And those are the kind of eye-opening kind of statements when you back

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them up with fully built out models that are truly empowering.

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It also solves a problem for us as business people because it

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gives a coherence and a sense of purpose and a sense of organization

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to the content that we create.

Chris McNeil: 00:12:43

It makes it much easier.

Chris McNeil: 00:12:45

We have a plan.

Chris McNeil: 00:12:46

It's well organized around customer thinking and what I've seen that,

Chris McNeil: 00:12:52

that prevents that, um, we were talking about earlier about,

Chris McNeil: 00:12:56

you know, standard thinking.

Chris McNeil: 00:12:58

This is how it's always been done.

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Now, back to Biz Bytes

Chris McNeil: 00:13:41

and what I've seen that, that prevents that, um, we

Chris McNeil: 00:13:45

were talking about earlier about, you know, standard thinking.

Chris McNeil: 00:13:49

This is how it's always been done, but there's also social

Chris McNeil: 00:13:54

media, which has a lot of.

Chris McNeil: 00:13:57

Positive benefits.

Chris McNeil: 00:13:58

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:13:59

Um, but when you start following all the thought leaders in your category,

Chris McNeil: 00:14:02

everybody starts sounding alike.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:05

And, and I encourage clients to step away enough to gather information from fresh

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sources and analyze it in different ways.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:14

We call it audience attunement, to discover unmet values in a

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category and stale mental models that are ripe for improvement.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:26

And we create these graphs like um, XY graphs of the market, landscape of

Chris McNeil: 00:14:33

value satisfaction and, and all the current offerings in the category.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:39

And then visually you see a gap.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:41

Oh wow.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:42

Nobody has led them to connect it this way.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:46

There's an opportunity for thought leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:14:49

And to me that's the beauty of this way of thinking is when you learn to

Chris McNeil: 00:14:52

see the world in terms of assumptions, mental models and values, marketplaces,

Chris McNeil: 00:14:57

that way there's an abundance of opportunity everywhere you look.

Chris McNeil: 00:15:02

I. Because human thinking is, uh, faulty by default because of

Chris McNeil: 00:15:07

the, um, problems with language.

Chris McNeil: 00:15:10

Language doesn't capture reality fully, but it's our way that our

Chris McNeil: 00:15:14

filters through which we see reality.

Chris McNeil: 00:15:16

We don't operate on the world directly.

Chris McNeil: 00:15:18

We operate on our maps of the world or models of the world that we create

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largely with language, which is, you know, a problem in humankind.

Chris McNeil: 00:15:26

And it's a great opportunity for us as strategic thought leaders.

Anthony: 00:15:31

It's so much to unpack in everything you've said, but I I, I

Anthony: 00:15:36

want to pick you up on two things.

Chris McNeil: 00:15:39

Okay.

Anthony: 00:15:40

The idea, and, and it goes back to the definition.

Anthony: 00:15:43

The really interesting thing is, is you've, I. I talked quite a lot

Anthony: 00:15:47

about being an original thinker.

Anthony: 00:15:51

Mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:15:51

And there's two parts to thought leadership and the one part is, is

Anthony: 00:15:57

having the courage to think differently.

Anthony: 00:15:59

Yes.

Anthony: 00:16:00

And put it out there, which goes hand in hand with the second part of the equation,

Anthony: 00:16:04

which is your ability to actually lead.

Anthony: 00:16:08

And to me there's a bit of a, um.

Anthony: 00:16:14

I, I, I guess it's a, I don't know whether it's a peer pressure or it's, there, there

Anthony: 00:16:19

seems to be a, a, um, communal pressure to repress both of those ideas because

Anthony: 00:16:26

people want to fall back to what's always been done or what everybody else is doing.

Anthony: 00:16:31

So even those people, as you say, that are trying.

Anthony: 00:16:34

To have, uh, new thoughts are often restricted by what they've already learned

Anthony: 00:16:39

and seen and a need to, uh, fall back to somebody else and which p. Parks into

Anthony: 00:16:48

that second idea of do they have the courage to actually lead, to actually

Anthony: 00:16:53

put themselves out there and tell people about it and be seen as the new leader?

Anthony: 00:17:00

Because there's always this whole idea of do we, um, are we worthwhile or not?

Anthony: 00:17:06

And so I'm, I'm interested in what and what you and what your take

Anthony: 00:17:11

on both of those concepts are and piecing it all together as a thought

Anthony: 00:17:16

leader and what it truly means.

Chris McNeil: 00:17:19

That's a fantastic set of questions, and there's a few

Chris McNeil: 00:17:23

questions in there, but let's see if I can cover all that territory.

Chris McNeil: 00:17:28

What you said is part of the reason that I use a coaching and consulting model.

Chris McNeil: 00:17:34

Training model as well as opposed to an agency model is what I found was doing

Chris McNeil: 00:17:40

marketing through an agency model worked extremely well for certain businesses,

Chris McNeil: 00:17:45

but a lot of business owners would see it is down the hierarchy, you know, and,

Chris McNeil: 00:17:51

and, uh, someone the just delegate to here's some money, go get us some leads.

Chris McNeil: 00:17:56

When to do strategic thought leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:17:59

You have to engage the thinking of the leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:01

'cause really gotta come from them.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:03

And my job is to help pull it out of them.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:08

But that means it's not just the external thought leadership of the campaign and

Chris McNeil: 00:18:12

the organization of the thinking and the components, the building blocks of it

Chris McNeil: 00:18:17

that we create, like the, the backstory report and defining thought leadership

Chris McNeil: 00:18:23

positions a certain way, understanding audience thinking a certain way.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:27

Um.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:28

You know, creating what we call position papers, which are kind of

Chris McNeil: 00:18:32

the internal manifesta manifestos.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:34

There's our position, here's what people think, now here's you wanna

Chris McNeil: 00:18:36

lead them to, here's a library of talking points that undermines the old

Chris McNeil: 00:18:41

thinking and supports a new thinking.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:44

That's external thought leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:45

Then all the media we create from that, and it might live

Chris McNeil: 00:18:48

in a form of a manifesto, in a themed podcast or a book or ebook.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:54

Um, and, and there's lots of ways to do that.

Chris McNeil: 00:18:57

Then there's internal strategic thought leadership, and I see it as an authentic

Chris McNeil: 00:19:02

path to self-mastery, because if you are going to commit to leadership, that

Chris McNeil: 00:19:10

requires stretching yourself, and that's one thing I love about it, is it calls us

Chris McNeil: 00:19:17

to draw upon what I've heard called hidden human reserves, the unlimited capacity.

Chris McNeil: 00:19:26

Within every human levels and levels we were, we're not even aware of that

Chris McNeil: 00:19:30

we can tap into if we confidently call upon ourselves to draw

Chris McNeil: 00:19:35

resources, to cross the bridge to new territory for a strong enough reason.

Chris McNeil: 00:19:42

And that's why I do a lot of work with values, because if you can elicit

Chris McNeil: 00:19:47

a leader's values then and higher values to me are the ones that unify.

Chris McNeil: 00:19:53

And they're about service and contribution.

Chris McNeil: 00:19:56

And the good news is in entrepreneurship, service and contribution lead to profits

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'cause you're making a difference.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:05

When you act in alignment with your values, you're happy.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:10

When your behavior matches your highest values, then you feel good.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:14

It's when we don't act in accordance with our values.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:17

So to me, that's a big piece of it.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:20

And I approach it like a sports psychologist with an athlete where

Chris McNeil: 00:20:24

it's not like counseling psychology where we wanna relive a troubled

Chris McNeil: 00:20:27

childhood and analyze these things.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:29

Now this is about performance psychology.

Chris McNeil: 00:20:32

How do we model the characteristics of peak performers and integrate those?

Chris McNeil: 00:20:38

Of being able to step into the zone automatically when we need to, to be

Chris McNeil: 00:20:43

able to call upon reserves of high level confidence, how to get into the zone of

Chris McNeil: 00:20:49

focus, a cocoon of concentration, and, and these are skills, mental skills that

Chris McNeil: 00:20:55

I think are all the more important in this day of distraction through devices

Chris McNeil: 00:21:01

and apps that are designed to consume our attention and keep us engaged.

Chris McNeil: 00:21:05

So these.

Chris McNeil: 00:21:06

Companies can sell ads by keeping us on their app for longer and things like that.

Chris McNeil: 00:21:10

But it creates a, a real attention economy that if you can manage your

Chris McNeil: 00:21:16

attention and manage your focus and manage your state and step into that

Chris McNeil: 00:21:20

confident self, then you can use this as a path to self evolution as well

Chris McNeil: 00:21:25

as to making a difference in making a lot of profits in the marketplace.

Anthony: 00:21:30

Yeah.

Anthony: 00:21:31

Does that answer

Chris McNeil: 00:21:31

your question?

Anthony: 00:21:32

It it, it, it does, it definitely does.

Anthony: 00:21:34

And I think, um, it, it, it's, to me, the, one of the keys in thought leadership

Anthony: 00:21:43

is that recognition of the fact that we all process things differently.

Anthony: 00:21:50

We make sense of things differently.

Anthony: 00:21:52

Mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:21:53

What tends to happen is.

Anthony: 00:21:57

That people are afraid to speak up and to have those different thoughts.

Anthony: 00:22:04

I, I, I recall learning this many years ago when I was involved in, in, uh, with

Anthony: 00:22:08

a company that does market research.

Anthony: 00:22:10

Mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:22:11

And one of the first things I observed and, uh, of the, when you do market

Anthony: 00:22:16

research in a group environment, is that they'll always be a leader.

Anthony: 00:22:22

Suddenly, and whatever anyone says, they'll start nodding

Anthony: 00:22:24

their head and saying, yes, that's what I was going to say.

Anthony: 00:22:27

And, and you find that Uhhuh, any kind of, um, any kind of environment where

Anthony: 00:22:32

you do that, I mean, you know, if, if anyone listening out there, if you

Anthony: 00:22:35

think about it in a work environment, in a family environment, how often

Anthony: 00:22:39

do you say something or someone says something and then you, you sort of

Anthony: 00:22:42

notice around the room that people say, oh yes, that's what I was going to say.

Anthony: 00:22:47

The question is, were they really going to say that?

Anthony: 00:22:49

Were they really going to say that in that way?

Anthony: 00:22:51

It's very interesting in market research that before you actually get in a group

Anthony: 00:22:57

environment, people to, uh, to discuss a particular topic, whatever it is they're

Anthony: 00:23:02

looking at, to get them to write it down on a bit of paper first and to find

Anthony: 00:23:07

out what their original thoughts are.

Anthony: 00:23:10

Because we are so influenced by those people around us and

Anthony: 00:23:16

our, and our desire to comply.

Anthony: 00:23:20

And that's what suppresses thought leadership.

Anthony: 00:23:24

And you spoke about innovation earlier on.

Anthony: 00:23:29

What fascinates me about innovation is most people attach

Anthony: 00:23:33

innovation to, uh, technology.

Anthony: 00:23:37

And that innovation mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:23:38

Has to be based on some new piece of tech that is doing something.

Anthony: 00:23:43

But in fact, innovation is very much about what is human nature.

Anthony: 00:23:49

Mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:23:49

In the way that we have original ways that we think about things and make

Anthony: 00:23:54

sense of anything that we observe.

Anthony: 00:23:57

It's not necessarily the same as the next person.

Anthony: 00:24:02

And it's not about being right or wrong, it's about being different.

Anthony: 00:24:05

That then allows you to have different original thoughts in other areas.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:10

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:11

And thoughts worth sharing of others.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:13

You know, and I, I mentioned values and this, understanding the values of

Chris McNeil: 00:24:17

your audience and your market segment that the attach to your category.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:24

You know, it's people like to go see a band play, you know, it's fun.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:30

Would be a value.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:31

For instance, you know, people buy the latest technology, maybe

Chris McNeil: 00:24:34

competitiveness is a value.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:37

People that are paying to learn a skill might be achievement.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:41

You know, everybody's a little different in values, but usually

Chris McNeil: 00:24:44

there's prominent values and when you can find, there's areas that your

Chris McNeil: 00:24:48

segment doesn't quite satisfy because.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:51

Of their, the outdated thinking of the segment.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:54

Well, there's your opportunity.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:56

I'm such a contrarian thinker.

Chris McNeil: 00:24:58

I've never had that issue because I've always been one to see the

Chris McNeil: 00:25:02

need for something different.

Chris McNeil: 00:25:05

Um, but I, I have seen it in others, um, where there's a pull towards the familiar,

Chris McNeil: 00:25:14

strongest human desire according to gsam, um, is the pull to the familiar.

Chris McNeil: 00:25:21

So I relate this kind of, um, boldness in leadership, you know, both to

Chris McNeil: 00:25:26

managing your state, if you can get yourself in the right state of confident

Chris McNeil: 00:25:32

daringness, you know, and we're not asking people to give up everything

Chris McNeil: 00:25:39

and start all over in a new field.

Chris McNeil: 00:25:41

Not that kind of daringness, but the daringness in breaking patterns.

Chris McNeil: 00:25:45

It's the most important human attribute in business is creativity.

Chris McNeil: 00:25:50

According to Success Magazine and Eat Magazine, they both had cover

Chris McNeil: 00:25:54

stories on that, especially in this day of artificial intelligence.

Chris McNeil: 00:25:58

I. Where repetitive things and things that depend on organizing past

Chris McNeil: 00:26:03

knowledge in this knowledge economy can be done now very effectively

Chris McNeil: 00:26:08

by ai, much faster than humans.

Chris McNeil: 00:26:10

But what AI doesn't have is the ability to access the creative

Chris McNeil: 00:26:14

state to make a break from the past.

Chris McNeil: 00:26:17

And that's why I, um, sometimes describe creativity is how different your

Chris McNeil: 00:26:21

behavior is from what AI could predict.

Chris McNeil: 00:26:26

Even given all the data on your past behavior, how different is it?

Chris McNeil: 00:26:29

How creative is it?

Chris McNeil: 00:26:30

And then you run into the belief systems that inhibit creativity.

Chris McNeil: 00:26:36

Oh, I'm not creative because my second grade music teacher

Chris McNeil: 00:26:40

told me I wasn't creative.

Chris McNeil: 00:26:43

Because people think of creativity is just, if you're a painter, a

Chris McNeil: 00:26:46

musician, then you're a creative.

Chris McNeil: 00:26:47

Hmm, but doesn't creativity apply to every human endeavor?

Chris McNeil: 00:26:52

It's, it's your ability to see outside of patterns and to access that creative

Chris McNeil: 00:26:58

state, and which means, um, and, and the work I do, I, I try to encourage clients

Chris McNeil: 00:27:04

to make things really efficient with ai, where they can, where it doesn't

Chris McNeil: 00:27:09

inhibit creating fantastic products and services, but to free up time to reflect.

Chris McNeil: 00:27:17

You know, people often access creativity when they're moving, like walking a

Chris McNeil: 00:27:21

dog, like that's when I get my ideas.

Chris McNeil: 00:27:24

So I use an app called Rev where I can wear decent quality earbuds

Chris McNeil: 00:27:28

and record my ideas on the fly.

Chris McNeil: 00:27:32

But then I'll use AI to help me organize those ideas.

Chris McNeil: 00:27:34

I. They're the creative ideas and use the AI for the organization.

Chris McNeil: 00:27:38

So it's creating these workflows where you had create space for creativity,

Chris McNeil: 00:27:43

but then you kind of create a production line where you then organize that

Chris McNeil: 00:27:46

creativity into models and chunk it into action steps and bring it to life.

Chris McNeil: 00:27:54

You know?

Chris McNeil: 00:27:54

So I see it like an assembly line, but, but I think when people remember

Chris McNeil: 00:27:59

that there's been times in really everyone's life where they've been.

Chris McNeil: 00:28:04

A bold leader where they've had to act boldly in the moment, maybe to step

Chris McNeil: 00:28:11

in to save a child from walking in the road in front of a car, you know?

Chris McNeil: 00:28:15

Or, or maybe, um, when they came up with an idea out of the blue that worked

Chris McNeil: 00:28:22

and they just trusted that would work.

Chris McNeil: 00:28:25

But what we aren't always good at is recognizing how many of these.

Chris McNeil: 00:28:29

Uh, peak experiences of creativity and creative leadership we've got in our

Chris McNeil: 00:28:33

personal history that we can grab a hold of, grab a hold of that feeling and

Chris McNeil: 00:28:39

bring it more fully to life and apply it on a regular basis to make life better

Chris McNeil: 00:28:45

for ourselves and for our customers and our families and those around us.

Chris McNeil: 00:28:49

You know, and to me that's living life belongs to the creative.

Chris McNeil: 00:28:53

You know, it's, if you're creative, you're close to life.

Chris McNeil: 00:28:56

Now musicians tend to be pretty happy people because they're close to life.

Chris McNeil: 00:29:00

They're always in the creative mode, you know?

Chris McNeil: 00:29:02

But we can bring that to business too, and we should,

Anthony: 00:29:05

it's fascinating when you talk about, uh, musicians,

Anthony: 00:29:08

uh, artists, and even comedians.

Anthony: 00:29:10

I. You hear them talking or see them demonstrating through music,

Anthony: 00:29:15

through artworks, all of these things that have happened to them.

Anthony: 00:29:19

And you think, why do all these things happen to these people?

Anthony: 00:29:22

And nothing happens to us, but in fact it is happening to us.

Anthony: 00:29:25

We are just not being observant of it and not providing an

Anthony: 00:29:29

outlet to push it out there.

Anthony: 00:29:32

And I think that is a, a huge thing that increasingly we have to learn from.

Anthony: 00:29:38

The creative arts field because if in an age where AI is being used more

Anthony: 00:29:45

and more to stand out, you actually need to embrace that creative energy.

Chris McNeil: 00:29:51

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:29:53

Uh, it's a strategic asset the way I see it, and in, in teams and organizations.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:00

It's finding space for people to go into that creative mode, giving permission.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:08

I. To come up with outlandish ideas.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:11

The more outlandish, the better, because we don't wanna put limits on

Chris McNeil: 00:30:14

that stage of the creative process.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:17

I think Walt Disney had it right?

Chris McNeil: 00:30:19

Not the company, the man he, he was famed for combining creativity

Chris McNeil: 00:30:25

and business acumen together.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:28

Forget the starving artist, you know, archetype.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:31

You know, he was this very successful business person

Chris McNeil: 00:30:33

who's also extremely creative.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:35

I. And his creative process that he ended up calling Imagineering

Chris McNeil: 00:30:40

involved three separate rooms.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:43

One was for the dreamer, where he'd go in and dream up futures

Chris McNeil: 00:30:47

with no limits visual process.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:50

Uh, another one was the realist, where he'd take those dreams

Chris McNeil: 00:30:55

and break them down into steps.

Chris McNeil: 00:30:57

So that first step has a high probability of success, and his animators actually.

Chris McNeil: 00:31:05

In that room of the realist created storyboarding by taking the cartoons

Chris McNeil: 00:31:10

and breaking them into scenes and putting them on a wall so that you

Chris McNeil: 00:31:13

could see each chunk of the journey.

Chris McNeil: 00:31:15

Mm-hmm.

Chris McNeil: 00:31:16

That's where storyboarding came from, but that's a kinesthetic piece where

Chris McNeil: 00:31:20

you take the visual dream or break it into action steps that you can do.

Chris McNeil: 00:31:25

And then the third room was the critic was, which is an auditory

Chris McNeil: 00:31:29

strategy where you're thinking, what's the criteria for this?

Chris McNeil: 00:31:33

Market category, what are the things we want in this and how

Chris McNeil: 00:31:35

does our product compare to that?

Chris McNeil: 00:31:37

Does it match up here, here, here, and here?

Chris McNeil: 00:31:40

Um, and then in, in Disney's model, it was somebody viewing the movie from a

Chris McNeil: 00:31:45

critic's perspective and critiquing it.

Chris McNeil: 00:31:46

Whatever the critic came up with, then they would take that

Chris McNeil: 00:31:49

and bring it to the dream room.

Chris McNeil: 00:31:51

So Disney's innovation was in separating these states so each

Chris McNeil: 00:31:55

could unfold completely without being contaminated by the other.

Chris McNeil: 00:32:01

And that's where people mess up as they try to do all the states at once.

Chris McNeil: 00:32:07

Instead of taking time to go as deeply into the creative state and not have it

Chris McNeil: 00:32:13

tied so tightly to the production state, for instance, and, and like Disney,

Chris McNeil: 00:32:18

create a workflow out of the different states that you bring your dreams to life.

Anthony: 00:32:24

It is, it's so interesting because, uh, you know, I've worked with

Anthony: 00:32:29

a number of businesses and organizations over the years, and when you go into them

Anthony: 00:32:36

and you pull people out and you offer them a rare opportunity for them to be

Anthony: 00:32:42

creative, and where you say nothing, there's no such thing as a bad idea here.

Anthony: 00:32:48

Let's throw them all out there and see mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:32:51

Where it goes.

Anthony: 00:32:54

It's such, um, it's such a rare thing that happens in, in an organization and it's

Anthony: 00:33:01

amazing what can start getting into the flow and how rejuvenated people can feel.

Anthony: 00:33:07

I. Then you have to take them through that, you know, that real exercise

Anthony: 00:33:13

later on to say, well, what's realistic?

Anthony: 00:33:16

What, what is going to work within the bounds of which, you know, it

Anthony: 00:33:19

might be budget, it might be the structure of the organization.

Anthony: 00:33:22

There are any number of things which bring it back down, which doesn't

Anthony: 00:33:26

mean that, that you can't work towards that bigger idea because

Anthony: 00:33:29

now you've got an idea of, of.

Anthony: 00:33:31

Of where you could go.

Anthony: 00:33:33

And I think that is something that businesses very rarely do, take themselves

Anthony: 00:33:39

out of it, allow that freedom to.

Anthony: 00:33:44

Generate new ideas and to see where that could take the business.

Anthony: 00:33:49

And yet that is exactly how businesses thrive in an environment where we

Anthony: 00:33:55

all have competitors, where there's always someone doing something

Anthony: 00:34:00

very similar to what you are doing.

Anthony: 00:34:02

So you have to be out there and trying something new.

Anthony: 00:34:05

Otherwise you just fall back into the.

Anthony: 00:34:08

Into the main populace.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:10

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:11

Even if you are competitive now, if you are not innovating in reinventing

Chris McNeil: 00:34:17

yourself or your company's category in some way, shape or form, your

Chris McNeil: 00:34:22

competitor will do it or the marketplace will shift somewhere else.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:26

So, so I see it as necessary.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:28

It's competitive advantage and it's competitive necessity in

Chris McNeil: 00:34:32

this kind of fast changing world to unleash the human spirit.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:36

And untether it.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:38

Um, not all the time, but enough to create a critical mass of fresh ideas that are

Chris McNeil: 00:34:44

untethered from the constrictions of limiting belief systems from limiting

Chris McNeil: 00:34:50

mental models, which is to be is also the beauty of strategic thought leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:34:55

We're helping people loosen the hold of limiting mental models or limiting

Chris McNeil: 00:35:00

beliefs about a category and what is for.

Chris McNeil: 00:35:05

And your stories, you know, I've got stories of those.

Chris McNeil: 00:35:07

Um, I dunno how much time we have, but, uh, sometimes it helps to

Chris McNeil: 00:35:10

bring it to ground with the real life example because we're talking

Chris McNeil: 00:35:14

a lot of concepts here, obviously.

Chris McNeil: 00:35:15

Hmm.

Anthony: 00:35:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Anthony: 00:35:17

Well, you know, I think it is important to to bring that, to bring that back

Anthony: 00:35:21

because you're right, we have talked, we have talked very much to the thought space

Anthony: 00:35:27

of all of this and encouraging people to lead and hence the thought leadership.

Anthony: 00:35:31

But yes, there is a need to understand how does this actually play out.

Anthony: 00:35:37

For a business in, in reality because, um mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:35:42

You know, we, it, it, it's it.

Anthony: 00:35:44

I often use this example in the past where I said, it's all right to

Anthony: 00:35:48

have this idea that I'm going to fly to the moon and land on the moon.

Anthony: 00:35:56

But if you have no ability to become an astronaut or build a

Anthony: 00:36:00

rocket ship, what's the point of, of talking about walking on the moon?

Anthony: 00:36:05

So you, you need to have a way of being able to work out that pathway because

Anthony: 00:36:13

thought leadership isn't just about the end concept, it's about how you get there.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:18

Absolutely.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:19

And, and you build bridges and, and again, it's just so, so much could

Chris McNeil: 00:36:24

be done just by identifying and freeing people from limiting concepts.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:29

And concepts are limiting by nature.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:31

You know, it's the nature of language.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:33

If something's this, it's not that.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:36

So by definition it breaks things into two.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:39

There's a company that does youth sports fundraising that I consulted

Chris McNeil: 00:36:45

for, and the created an app to help kids, sports teams raise money.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:52

And it was a very crowded field.

Chris McNeil: 00:36:55

And, and here in the US there's companies like high praise that have

Chris McNeil: 00:36:58

a lot of market share and you know, but millions and millions of dollars

Chris McNeil: 00:37:02

and, and funding kid sports teams.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:04

And the general mental model of this whole category was he used to do baked

Chris McNeil: 00:37:09

seals, used to have to do car washes to raise money for your soccer team, uh,

Chris McNeil: 00:37:14

or your hockey team or whatever team.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:17

And now you have an app.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:21

So we did our market listening research and we found natural conversations

Chris McNeil: 00:37:26

where people speak openly online, thus places like Reddit or in the, um,

Chris McNeil: 00:37:33

comments threads of a polarizing block.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:35

'cause you can find gold there.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:37

'cause if a blog divides people around a topic, if someone feels like their beliefs

Chris McNeil: 00:37:43

and values are being stepped on, you can be sure they will tell you what they are.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:48

If you know how to see between the lines.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:51

Well, what we found out with the coaches and parents, the people who

Chris McNeil: 00:37:53

made the decisions weren't saying, oh, glory, these things make it easy.

Chris McNeil: 00:37:58

They're saying, what the hell is that?

Chris McNeil: 00:37:59

Teaching the kids, we used to have to work to raise money.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:02

I walked uphill to and from school, and now we just give 'em an app

Chris McNeil: 00:38:07

to click a button and raise money.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:09

Aren't they entitled enough already?

Chris McNeil: 00:38:11

So I went to the owner and said, David, every competitor.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:18

Is preaching convenience.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:20

Your app is just as convenient as theirs, but the real unmet

Chris McNeil: 00:38:25

value is growth for the kids.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:28

So we created a model of partnering with nonprofits, with charities.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:33

So the kids' sports team would co-promote a charity's message and they would share

Chris McNeil: 00:38:39

a small percentage of the money they raised, maybe 5%, or do volunteer work

Chris McNeil: 00:38:43

if they couldn't afford to do that.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:45

And this elevated the whole business dramatically.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:51

He got front page sports section exposure in major newspapers.

Chris McNeil: 00:38:57

He got an exclusive deal with a large sporting goods chain

Chris McNeil: 00:39:00

to be the only provider he.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:03

Constantly according to him, getting regular emails and messages of sorts,

Chris McNeil: 00:39:08

saying things like, we've been looking to get the kids involved in the community.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:13

We never thought about doing it through the sports fundraising.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:16

We're only going to use you from here on out.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:21

That message cut through the clutter like a knife through warm butter.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:25

I wasn't trying to make a rhyme, but I'll take it this time.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:28

Sure.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:29

Um, and, and it was just a, but it just, when you, when you find that, it's

Chris McNeil: 00:39:35

almost like, how did everyone miss that?

Chris McNeil: 00:39:38

Because they're looking through tunnel vision, you know, of

Chris McNeil: 00:39:41

technology entrance by technology, because sometimes technology brings

Chris McNeil: 00:39:46

benefits, but sometimes it doesn't or has benefits, but has drawbacks.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:51

And if you can recognize a drawback and solve it, hey, you've got

Chris McNeil: 00:39:53

an innovation that's gonna work.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:55

If you can convey it the right way.

Chris McNeil: 00:39:57

Now, this is a beautiful model because it got the PR teams, the email

Chris McNeil: 00:40:04

campaigns, the social media campaigns, the PR campaigns of these nonprofits

Chris McNeil: 00:40:10

saying thank you to the teams.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:11

Raising awareness of the campaigns made it easier for the kids to ask for money.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:16

'cause now it's not just help me buy my, my football suit, it's,

Chris McNeil: 00:40:20

oh, we're also raising money.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:23

For this nonprofit that helps, um, treat kids' cancer or looking

Chris McNeil: 00:40:28

for a cure for this disease, that there's no cure for that.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:32

We have somebody locally who's very prominent, who has that, I mean,

Chris McNeil: 00:40:34

really powerful, you know, messages that, that bring people together.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:40

It's about contribution and making a difference for those in need.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:44

Uh, and so there's an example of a simple thought leadership position.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:48

It's not about the convenience.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:50

Ours is convenient too.

Chris McNeil: 00:40:52

It's about the growth for the kids

Chris McNeil: 00:40:55

and talking points in support of that campaign became the basis of

Chris McNeil: 00:41:00

the marketing that took a startup and gave them prominence and a foothold

Chris McNeil: 00:41:06

in a marketplace that had been very difficult competing head on with

Chris McNeil: 00:41:10

large national competitors like that.

Chris McNeil: 00:41:13

So there's a for instance story of how powerful that can be.

Chris McNeil: 00:41:16

I.

Anthony: 00:41:16

Such a, such a great example and very powerful.

Anthony: 00:41:19

Um, we could talk for many hours still on all of this topic, but I did want

Anthony: 00:41:25

to ask you a couple of other questions.

Anthony: 00:41:27

Mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:41:28

Um, one of them is just briefly because you and I spoke, uh, prior

Anthony: 00:41:33

to the podcast and I wanted to give this across to the audience.

Anthony: 00:41:37

Just give me very quickly your backstory on how you came to be in this space.

Chris McNeil: 00:41:45

Well, I was doing strategic thought leadership

Chris McNeil: 00:41:49

without having that name for it or knowing to call it anything.

Chris McNeil: 00:41:54

Um, by being a contrarian in the fitness business for a long time

Chris McNeil: 00:41:58

where I was 20 years old, I was managing several big box large health

Chris McNeil: 00:42:03

clubs, which I love the fitness part.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:06

You know, it's helping people, but I hated the business model.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:11

It was, sign up as many people as you can and hope half of 'em don't show up.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:14

So we can sell more memberships that they have to pay, whether they show up or not.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:20

So I developed a model based around solving that problem and solving the

Chris McNeil: 00:42:25

problem of yo-yo dieting with a lifestyle management approach in structured

Chris McNeil: 00:42:29

exercise with a trainer in small studios.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:32

So it's more expensive than a traditional health club.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:35

It's pretty reasonable 'cause we could organize the studios for

Chris McNeil: 00:42:38

effective 30 minute workouts.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:39

It's 30 minutes of the trainer's time.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:42

Also made it easier to stick with the workout because you're not.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:44

Working hard for an hour at a time, and that grew to a chain of

Chris McNeil: 00:42:49

one-on-one fitness training studios.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:51

I sold some years back and then I won some innovation awards for

Chris McNeil: 00:42:54

software I wrote to support all that.

Chris McNeil: 00:42:56

It turned it into a, a game of tracking progress visually and competing

Chris McNeil: 00:43:02

with others with a point system, uh, called Fit Point, um, that led to.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:09

Doing software for a very large food service company for

Chris McNeil: 00:43:13

wellness, for their employees.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:15

At would point, I sold the studios because I'm a musician, I want time to play music.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:19

That kind of business didn't give it to me.

Anthony: 00:43:20

Mm-hmm.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:21

Um, but the software I wrote morphed into marketing software, like

Chris McNeil: 00:43:27

full panel integration of search engine optimization, website management, and

Chris McNeil: 00:43:31

email marketing and all the things we do.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:34

Um, and I wrote custom software for that.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:36

And found a, a niche in five to 50 million a year companies, and

Chris McNeil: 00:43:41

that's where I discovered the need for strategic thought leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:44

So as I mentioned, certain companies would actually have breakthroughs and they

Chris McNeil: 00:43:50

would grow by, in one case, over a hundred percent a year, several years in a row.

Chris McNeil: 00:43:55

Another case going from, uh, also ran 10 20% market share to over 50% market share

Chris McNeil: 00:44:01

in a, in a very competitive category, becoming the, the strong leader in it.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:06

Others, not so much.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:08

So I started using this, um, modeling methods from N LP or neurolinguistic

Chris McNeil: 00:44:13

programming, which is a way of modeling excellence to discover the difference.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:18

And the difference was the companies that had breakthroughs,

Chris McNeil: 00:44:21

the leadership saw themselves.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:23

Is leading marketplace thinking, is teaching their marketplace

Chris McNeil: 00:44:26

how to perceive their category.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:30

And so that taught me two things.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:32

That's the way to do it.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:33

Lead the marketplace to how to perceive your category.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:36

Otherwise, you're gonna be a commodity and just able to compete on price.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:40

But if you can set the game.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:42

If you can not just be a player in the game, but the game designer

Chris McNeil: 00:44:45

and create the game rules for the benefit of the customer, you can

Chris McNeil: 00:44:49

be the leader in market share in terms of sales, as well as thinking.

Chris McNeil: 00:44:54

Um, the other thing it taught me was that I. The consulting and coaching

Chris McNeil: 00:44:59

role is necessary to do that because you have to have a relationship of equals

Chris McNeil: 00:45:04

with the leadership of the company.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:06

Because my role became working with them, help them extract that thinking and to

Chris McNeil: 00:45:11

study marketplace thinking and to work through models of here's the marketplace

Chris McNeil: 00:45:15

thinking, here's our innovative ideas.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:17

How do we create a path?

Chris McNeil: 00:45:19

How do we turn our ideas into a model that is.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:24

Meaningful to our customer and can help them get more value or make smarter

Chris McNeil: 00:45:28

decisions or upgrade the use of what we sell to a whole other set of values.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:33

Uh, and that coach consulting, relationship communication flows the.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:42

Other type of relationship, more the agency relationship in,

Chris McNeil: 00:45:45

in many cases, not every case.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:47

'cause obviously you're companies that work really well with, but in many

Chris McNeil: 00:45:50

cases you would just see it as something to delegate down a hierarchy to.

Chris McNeil: 00:45:55

And the problem with hierarchical business relationships is that

Chris McNeil: 00:45:57

communication doesn't flow up and down a hierarchy very well.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:01

You know, it's like, oh, we know what we're doing, just

Chris McNeil: 00:46:03

go sell the stuff, you know?

Chris McNeil: 00:46:05

But I'm like, well, it's your thinking that's gonna lead the marketplace.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:08

We need to help organize it.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:11

This role is perfect for that because I work directly with leadership,

Chris McNeil: 00:46:14

um, and, you know, have designers and um, web people, writers.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:20

Uh, we can draw upon whatever resources are needed, but in a lot of cases

Chris McNeil: 00:46:24

I like to not have those as part of my organization, but really strong

Chris McNeil: 00:46:29

talent that I've cultivated I can draw upon because in a lot of cases, the

Chris McNeil: 00:46:32

organization will have the resources in their company that can do these things.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:36

They just haven't organized around that.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:38

And say you got people in your company that can do these things.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:42

And I think a lot of executives now are realizing that customers are expecting

Chris McNeil: 00:46:47

company leadership to be visible.

Chris McNeil: 00:46:51

And uh, there's a guy named Carl Feldman who I met who was on my

Chris McNeil: 00:46:54

Thought Leadership Studio podcast promoting a book he co-authored

Chris McNeil: 00:46:57

called The Visible Expert Revolution.

Chris McNeil: 00:47:00

I thought that said it well.

Chris McNeil: 00:47:02

And another guest said, um.

Chris McNeil: 00:47:05

Not doing that can be called hiding behind the logo.

Chris McNeil: 00:47:11

So they expect us to be out there for, for business leaders, you know,

Chris McNeil: 00:47:14

and communicating directly with our audience about why we're in business,

Chris McNeil: 00:47:18

what we wanna do for them, what our vision for them is, our vision for the

Chris McNeil: 00:47:21

marketplace, and having a relationship with them as a result of that, you know?

Chris McNeil: 00:47:26

So that I think has been a convergence of factors that has made this the

Chris McNeil: 00:47:30

time for strategic thought leadership.

Anthony: 00:47:34

You, you're spot on there.

Anthony: 00:47:35

Uh, it is absolutely the time.

Anthony: 00:47:37

In fact, I think it, I personally, I think that whilst many people are

Anthony: 00:47:43

talking about the AI revolution, I actually think the real revolution is

Anthony: 00:47:47

around thought leadership and mm-hmm.

Anthony: 00:47:51

Um, the, the creative thinking and the opportunities that will present itself

Anthony: 00:47:55

because the standard tasks can be done by.

Anthony: 00:48:02

Automation and overseeing that automation and those things that will

Anthony: 00:48:06

will exist there, but where we've got a real opportunity to really take

Anthony: 00:48:11

the world to new and exciting places.

Anthony: 00:48:14

Excuse me, is by encouraging creative thought leadership and, um,

Chris McNeil: 00:48:20

absolutely.

Anthony: 00:48:21

And, and, uh, just finally, um, I should tell everyone that as

Anthony: 00:48:25

you've mentioned, you've got a podcast and we'll include the links to the

Anthony: 00:48:27

podcast, uh, there in the show notes.

Anthony: 00:48:31

But also you have a book coming out, uh, that's right.

Anthony: 00:48:34

Unthought Leadership for for Market, uh, for marketing.

Anthony: 00:48:37

Um, so just, uh, just give us quickly on what that is, uh, all about.

Chris McNeil: 00:48:43

The book is called Strategic Thought Leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:48:47

And if you're listening to this, um, it may or may not have come out by

Chris McNeil: 00:48:51

the time you're listening to this, but you can, if not, get a free

Chris McNeil: 00:48:54

preview@strategicthoughtleadership.com.

Chris McNeil: 00:48:58

And um, I have a free ebook that's a much condensed version

Chris McNeil: 00:49:03

of that called The Marketer Guide to Strategic Thought Leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:06

And if you just.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:07

Google Marketers guide strategic thought leadership.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:10

It'll take you to it, and that's a free ebook.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:13

Anyone can get instantly it.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:14

It'll show you the building blocks, you know, because we talk about creativity,

Chris McNeil: 00:49:19

but I think you have to anchor that creativity to what's real too.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:23

And so working with the system where you've got building blocks to help

Chris McNeil: 00:49:26

organize your creativity around market, influence it, it grounds it

Chris McNeil: 00:49:30

in reality in a way we can use it to get traction and make a difference.

Chris McNeil: 00:49:35

In achieving our business goals more effectively and with less work.

Anthony: 00:49:39

Fantastic.

Anthony: 00:49:40

And look, we, we will definitely include those, uh, links in the

Anthony: 00:49:42

show notes as well for everyone.

Anthony: 00:49:44

And just to wrap things up, a question I like to ask, or my guests is, what is

Anthony: 00:49:50

the at heart moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish

Anthony: 00:49:54

more people knew they were going to have?

Chris McNeil: 00:50:00

What are the aha moments people have when

Chris McNeil: 00:50:02

they come to work with me?

Chris McNeil: 00:50:04

That people would want more of?

Chris McNeil: 00:50:05

Is that the question?

Chris McNeil: 00:50:06

Am I understanding it right?

Anthony: 00:50:07

Yes.

Chris McNeil: 00:50:09

You know, the best aha moments to me that I see in clients

Chris McNeil: 00:50:14

are when they realize they are the creator of their experience and in large

Chris McNeil: 00:50:22

measure their creator of their category.

Chris McNeil: 00:50:25

Even if they see themselves as a small player, they're co-creating, you know?

Chris McNeil: 00:50:32

Um, Peter Drucker, great management writer and and theorist, said that

Chris McNeil: 00:50:38

a business is an organ of society and we're all connected to each

Chris McNeil: 00:50:43

other and through our economy in how we, we trade products and services.

Chris McNeil: 00:50:51

So never underestimate how much influence you have and revere that.

Chris McNeil: 00:50:57

And when I see people have that aha moment that.

Chris McNeil: 00:51:01

I am making a difference on this.

Chris McNeil: 00:51:05

It feels good to watch people waking up to more of their own potential.

Anthony: 00:51:10

I love that.

Anthony: 00:51:11

Well, let's hope we can.

Anthony: 00:51:12

I've unlocked some of that in, uh, in this episode of the podcast.

Anthony: 00:51:16

Uh, Chris, thank you so much for being an amazing guest.

Anthony: 00:51:19

We've delved deep into thought leadership and, and, uh, I would encourage

Anthony: 00:51:23

anyone that is, uh, listening in and enjoyed this conversation to not only.

Anthony: 00:51:29

Follow up on Krista's, various links that we'll include in the show notes,

Anthony: 00:51:33

but also to give us some feedback because I think thought leadership is what you

Anthony: 00:51:36

and I talk a lot about and, uh, why we have the things that we have out there.

Anthony: 00:51:42

Uh, we have different ways of encouraging people to, uh, to get

Anthony: 00:51:46

their thought leadership out there.

Anthony: 00:51:47

And, uh, I, I encourage people to be strong to follow, uh, the

Anthony: 00:51:53

opportunities that you have.

Anthony: 00:51:55

To think differently and to put it out there so you become a leader.

Anthony: 00:51:59

So Chris, thank you for being part of the program.

Chris McNeil: 00:52:02

Thank you so much, Anthony.

Chris McNeil: 00:52:03

I greatly appreciate you and your taking your time to interview me

Anthony: 00:52:08

and to everyone listening in.

Anthony: 00:52:09

Of course, don't forget to subscribe.

Anthony: 00:52:11

And, uh, stay tuned for the next episode of Biz Bytes for Thought Leaders.

Anthony: 00:52:16

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bytes.

Anthony: 00:52:18

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Anthony: 00:52:20

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Anthony: 00:52:23

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Anthony: 00:52:27

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Anthony: 00:52:32

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Anthony: 00:52:33

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Anthony: 00:52:38

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