Episode 139. The 3 Stages of Thought Leadership in Your Business

Today, we are going to have a conversation around the different stages of thought leadership.

This conversation is actually a precursor to the work we do inside our brand-new program, The Thought Leader Club. This is a four-month weekly 1:1 coaching and weekly group coaching program where you will learn how to:

Become known for your unique thought leadership and build your career as a thought leader.
Build a body of work that showcases the depth of your thinking and the caliber of your skills, compelling best-fit clients to want to work with you and you specifically.
Proudly become known for something, attracting both clients and opportunities that you once felt were out of reach for “someone like you.” But because you now know how to build a body of work and become known for your unique thought leadership, you see that you’re completely capable of making these opportunities happen.

The next cohort will start on March 1, 2024. For the exact details of the program, you can visit cheryltheory.com/program. This is also where you can submit your application to join the next round of The Thought Leader Club and book a discovery call for us to discuss how this program can support your 2024 goals. We will also explore how building a body of work and becoming known for your thought leadership fits into your three-year vision and goals.

In This Episode:

I’ve observed 3 stages of thought leadership that my entrepreneur clients have walked through in order to get to become known for something
Stage 1: If you’re taking notes on other people’s content and marketing
Stage 2: When you question whether your story and opinions have “value”
Stage 3: Becoming known for something even if you don’t feel like an expert
When you naturally stop being a follower and you start emerging as a leader in your space

I’ve observed 3 stages of thought leadership that my entrepreneur clients have walked through in order to get to become known for something

Now, when it comes to the different stages of thought leadership, I’ve observed three stages that my entrepreneur clients have walked through. These stages have allowed them to become known for something, and to become recognized among their audience as the go-to for that specific thing.

Today, we’re going to discuss these levels of thought leadership. You’ll learn exactly how to level up from your current stage and what to consider as you approach the levels ahead.

I understand these levels of thought leadership because I’ve also experienced them in my own journey. I was once that person who took notes on other business coaches’ content because I was obsessed with “learning” and “doing research on the industry’s best practices”.

I was that coach who was getting clients coming to my sales calls saying “Thanks for the call, but I’m actually going to do more discovery calls with other coaches, I’ll let you know what I decide!”

And, going from that level of basically not being known as the go-to for anything, to now having clients come to me specifically because they want to work with me and learn the skill of thought leadership and building a body of work from me.

Right now, it doesn’t matter what level of thought leadership you’re at. All that matters is that you’re ready and committed to moving to the next level.

It also doesn’t matter how many hours you’re spending working on your business or how often you’re posting on social media every single week, if you’re not fully expressing your unique thought leadership. This is because your current level of thought leadership is a huge contributor to the results you’re seeing in your business.

So, without further ado, let’s talk about the first stage of thought leadership: taking notes on your colleagues’ content and mimicking that.

Stage 1: If you’re taking notes on other people’s content and marketing

For many of us, when we first start posting content on the Internet, whether it’s to start a new business or grow our brands, we spend quite a bit of time observing the industry before we make our first move.

Maybe you spend days soaking up post after post from the coaches you just discovered for the first time. Or perhaps you spend months shadowing your favorite content creators and speakers, watching all of their interviews and taking notes on how they explain certain concepts.

Whatever your intention is for wanting to start posting content online, what often happens is that you look around at what others are doing and how they’re doing it, before you make your move.

For some, you don’t stay in this stage too long.

Maybe, as soon as you hit the ground running, you start tapping into your creativity and continue trying out different styles of posts to find your own voice and build your confidence in showing up online.

But, for many, including myself, we stay in this stage for too long. In our heads, we come up with all sorts of reasons why observing others and even going as far as taking notes on people’s content is a smart thing to do for our own business or brand.

For instance, maybe you’re telling yourself that you’re doing market research to understand what your audience wants to see and hear from you. Or perhaps you’re thinking this will help you understand the best practices in content and marketing. Sounds logical, right?

Well, I’d like to offer an opposing argument. The longer you stay in this stage of taking notes on everyone else’s content, the harder it is to discern your own voice from the collective voices of literally everyone you’re taking in.

When you’re not able to hear your own voice, you won’t be able to speak from your own voice. And when you don’t speak from your own voice, your audience can’t distinguish you from everyone else.

If you’re convincing yourself that spending time to look at what successful people in your industry are doing and you’re trying to mimic that, you’re operating out of all these unconscious boxes and rules about who you think you’re supposed to be to be successful.

You’re doing a lot of things that make you feel like you’re being productive, and these tasks can take up hours. Yes, you might even be outputting things for your audience, meaning, you’re probably still posting frequently. But it’s not actually content that’s demonstrating your thought leadership.

So if you’re feeling like you’re currently stuck in a cycle where you’re consuming and struggling to feel confident in your own voice, creativity, and the value of your content, here is a practical action item I want to invite you to start practicing:

Start by paying attention to things happening around you. Then, keep a log of those things that interest you, as well as your immediate responses or reactions to those things. The goal here is to start building up the habit of documenting your thoughts and reflections regularly.

For example, I was recently browsing through some hair salons in Singapore and was specifically looking for options within a certain geographical area of Singapore. I used Google Maps to locate the salons in that area, then went to check out each salon’s Instagram. I noticed that one salon in particular had a very different Instagram feed compared to the others.

First, it had fewer photos of customers’ hair, which is usually what most salons showcase on their social media. This salon had a handful of customer photos, but there were more posts showing positive client testimonials and reviews, as well as several photos of the salon owner’s cats!

Normally, when choosing a hair service, I, the customer, care a lot about seeing examples of the person’s work, but I found myself being intrigued by who the hair salon owner is. This is one example of my observation of my immediate responses to something I came across, and for this exercise, I would write this observation down.

As you can see, this exercise is not just limited to “business” things, such as what your audience is asking you or observations of the “common mistakes your audience is making”.

Sure, keep track of your ongoing thoughts, opinions, and perspectives on these too. But, I want you to log your responses and thoughts to everything and anything.

Again, the purpose here is to create evidence for yourself that you are capable of developing your own perspectives and opinions on things happening around you, both within and beyond your industry or niche.

And when you start to realize that you are capable of formulating your own perspectives, opinions, and ideas, you start to rely less on looking around at what others are doing to guide your next move.

This is when you transition to the next stage of your thought leadership, which is where you start to build your confidence in sharing your own story and opinions and believe that your story and opinions have value and are worth sharing.

Stage 2: When you question whether your story and opinions have “value”

For many entrepreneurs and content creators at this stage, they intellectually know that it is “important” to share their story and opinions because that’s what all marketers and business coaches teach and preach, right?

But let’s be honest. It takes courage to share your own story and perspectives on the internet. You constantly wonder if you’re being too self-focused. You question whether you should even be sharing your personal experiences or viewpoints, because your brain vehemently tells you that it’s not “valuable”.

This is why, if you’re at this stage, it’s more important than ever to find reasons and evidence that your story, perspectives, and opinions are indeed worth sharing and that they ARE of value to your audience.

The first thing I want to invite you to do is exactly that. Literally come up with your own reasons why your own story and opinions are valuable. But, I want you to come up with not just 1, not just 5, but 20 reasons.

For example, one of my favorite reasons is “I believe that my story and opinions have helped me, and I believe they can help someone else”.

And hey, after you come up with your 20 reasons, please feel free to share them with me. You can either email me at he***@ch**********.com or send me a DM on either Instagram or LinkedIn. I’d love to see what your 20 reasons are.

Now, a second action item I want to offer here is to identify your top 5 personal experiences and top 5 personal opinions that you feel are most relevant to your business, brand or your audience. Because even though I personally believe that most of your personal experiences and opinions can translate into content, and that a lot of that can be presented in a way that is highly helpful or thought-provoking for your audience.

Right now, if you’re still a bit shaky in your confidence that your story or opinions are “even worth and valuable” to other people, we don’t have to go from 0-100 right now. Meaning, we don’t have to share anything and everything. Rather, just pick a handful of personal stories or experiences and a couple of your perspectives or opinions that you feel are relevant to your audience, and start creating content there first.

Later, as you start to build your confidence that you have the skill of communicating any piece of story or perspective into something that is engaging and thought-provoking, then awesome! But that doesn’t have to be your goal right now. Start with what feels doable and manageable for your confidence.

And once you start feeling more at ease with sharing these handful of personal stories and opinions, then I would suggest your next focus is to be thinking about how you can go even deeper and share these selected stories and opinions from another lens. For example, how could you demonstrate even more self-awareness when sharing the exact same story next time you decide to reference this story again? Or, how can you demonstrate even more critical thinking the next time you decide to share a particular opinion or idea or perspective again?

Because one of the common concerns I hear from my audience is that they are worried they’re being too ‘surface level’ in their content. While I personally think that if your story or opinion has helped you in some way, then that in itself is already enough to share through a piece of content with your audience.

That said, I also do feel that showcasing depth and caliber in your content is a skill, and skills can be honed. This is why I would suggest continuing to think about “Okay, next time I want to share this particular story or opinion again, how would I tell this story in a way that showcases my thought leadership even further? How can I talk about the same thing but with more depth and caliber this time around?”

And when you start to build your muscle for sharing your own story and opinions, what will also start to happen concurrently is that clients start to book discovery calls with you and become more and more interested in you and your work.

Because when you are no longer bound by your beliefs about what you think you should be saying or who you should be in order to get clients to work with you and when you are also leading with your own story and opinions, people can feel your sincerity and thought leadership.

This is how you start to stand out from a sea of other business owners who are still struggling with finding their own voice or constantly second-guessing whether their content even has any value.

So at this point, things are starting to “work” in your business. So, the natural question is: What’s next? What’s stage 3 of thought leadership?

Stage 3: Becoming known for something even if you don’t feel like an expert

This stage of your thought leadership is about becoming known for your expertise, even if you don’t feel like an expert.

Here’s what I’ve seen time and time again: Whenever I have conversations with clients or industry colleagues about what thoughts come up when they think of thought leadership, a common theme that pops up is that many people feel that in order to be a thought leader, you need to be an expert on the subject you’re talking about, and that you need years of experience on that subject. You also need to have proven results related to that subject matter.

For most of us, even if we have the relevant skill set, credentials, and experience, we still find it really hard to call ourselves an expert, let alone a thought leader in the space.

Essentially, even the people who do have the “street cred” still feel like it’s not enough because they are comparing themselves to the top 1% of their industry peers.

As a result, they think that thought leadership is something they’ll need to earn later on, years later. Something that they can only be deemed qualified for if they’re the top 1%, perhaps.

Here’s what stage 3 is all about: Becoming known for your expertise even without identifying as an expert. This stage is where you identify as a thought leader and thus become a thought leader, even without feeling like you’re an expert or at the top 1% of the industry.

Truthfully, the reality of whether or not you’re an expert at the moment isn’t as important as having the belief and feeling of having expertise.

This is also why part of my job as the coach is to help my people see that particular part of themselves. To help them truly believe and lean into the fact that they do have expertise and value to add to the world, and that yes, even when compared to others, they are still an expert in a certain area or subject matter. My job is also to help them see that they can offer expertise.

Now the question is: What are the thoughts and feelings you need to anchor into when you aren’t feeling so confident in your thought leadership? For example, is it, “I know what the hell I’m talking about. I might not be the top 1% but I damn sure know more than 80% of other people when it comes to XYZ.”?

This is precisely the action item I want to offer to those of you who have moved past stage 2 and are now in this phase of your thought leadership journey.

Again, your homework here is to identify the specific thoughts and feelings you need to anchor into during the moments when you might feel a bit shaky in your confidence that you do have something to offer, that you are a thought leader.

Your job is to see yourself as an expert who holds expertise, even if there are hundreds and thousands of other incredible experts in your field. That’s also my job as the coach, to see my clients as experts in their field and remind them who they are.

And as a quick side note, sometimes, yes, there might actually be gaps in your expertise that you need to fill in. If there are gaps, you probably already know what they are and are actively taking steps to fill them in.

Ultimately, thought leadership is the continuous work of tethering back to your identity that you do have thought leadership to offer.

When you naturally stop being a follower and you start emerging as a leader in your space

At this point, it goes without saying that as you tether more to both your identity as a thought leader and the more you continue to build a body of work that highlights your unique thought leadership, you naturally stop being a follower and begin emerging as a leader in the space.

You cease looking and sounding like everyone else. People are drawn to you.

No matter what niche or industry you are in, there are all these unspoken and invisible, though very arbitrary and often self-constructed and self-inflicted, rules and norms and guidelines. These lead people to pretty much all look and sound the same.

But when you are anchored to your unique thought leadership and emanate that out, this is precisely how you become known for your unique thought leadership and build your career as a thought leader.

This is how you build a body of work that not only showcases the depth of your thinking and the caliber of your skills but also compels best-fit clients to want to work with you specifically.

This is how you proudly become known for something, which attracts both clients and opportunities that you once felt were out of reach for “someone like you”.

And you now see that you’re completely capable of making it happen.

This is exactly what we will make happen inside The Thought Leader Club. No matter which stage of thought leadership you’re currently at, the stage you’re in now has no bearing on what stage you’ll be in 3, 6, or 12 months from now. It only matters that you’re willing to level up to the next stage.

Inside The Thought Leader Club, you will learn to show up bigger and bolder, both online and offline, in order to make a name for yourself, confidently speak on topics that matter to you, and attract clients and opportunities from all over the world.

Our next cohort will start on Monday March 11, 2024. For the exact details of the program, you can hop on over to cheryltheory.com/program. This is also where you can submit your application to join the next round of The Thought Leader Club and book a discovery call for us to discuss how exactly this program can support your 2024 goals, as well as how building a body of work and becoming known for your thought leadership fits into your 3-year vision and goals.