How NOT To Be A Thought Leader

The Amplified Impact Podcast
January 2nd, 2023

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Today, Anthony explores the concept of thought leadership and how individuals posture themselves on social media as entrepreneurs, investors, or thought leaders… all while lacking the experience and original ideas to back up their claims.

Dialing in on the dangers of presenting and posturing a false image on social media, he explains why it’s important to develop genuine expertise and original ideas in order to establish a thought leadership platform.

Anthony examines the issue of individuals outsourcing their thought leadership by paying for pre-made websites and blog posts, and how these lack authenticity and substance.

Tune in for a provocative discussion on the true meaning of thought leadership.

 

TWEETABLE QUOTE:

“Thinking, creating your own thoughts, generating them in a way that you can share with the world that can affect change, that can bring the people into your tribe that you actually want to have into your tribe.” – Anthony Vicino

 

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Episode Transcript:

05_How Not To Be A Thought Leader

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey, what’s up guys? Welcome to another episode of Amplified Impact Today, it’s going to be a pretty quick hitter. I want to talk about a post that I made about a year ago and how it’s still pretty damn relevant today. The post, the, the, the meat of it was something to the effect of, there seems to be an awful lot of entrepreneurs out there who have never actually built a business, and a whole lot of investors who have never actually.

Anthony: and a whole lot of thought leaders who do not have an original thought. And the impetus behind this post was the fact that in social media, it’s so easy to posture and say like, put it in your byline. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a, an investor. I am a thought leader. Like you see this all the time, but what does it really mean?

Anthony: When you get, start getting behind the curtain and looking underneath the hood of the machine of like, okay, what kind of businesses have you actually built? What have you actually invested in? What thoughts have you actually had? And this is, this is frustrating because I see [00:01:00] a lot of new, entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders that, you know, one day they have a lot of originality and thoughts inside them, but they’re trying to find the shortcut to building an audience and.

Anthony: This comes up a lot for us as guests reach out to come onto our podcast, multi-family investing made simple. And a lot of times it’s so easy to posture in front and like present this beautiful website and this nice one sheet. And then, you go and you look at their social media and like, oh yeah, this looks legit.

Anthony: But then when you start peeling back, the covers a little bit, you start to see like, oh, there’s no substance underneath of. In case in point, a guy reached out earlier this week to come onto the podcast and I did a little bit of digging cause I didn’t know who he was. And I don’t want to take that as a, a sign that, like, that guy’s not anything.

Anthony: Like, he could just be a really badass dude that I’ve never heard of. And so I was doing some digging and I, I went to his blogs and his website, it was like beautiful. But it was the blogs that like set off a, an alarm bell because I was looking, I was like, man, this guy’s written a lot of [00:02:00] blogs. Like there’s like 50 blog posts in here.

Anthony: And I was going through, I’m like, these are great titles. These are fantastic. , I realized what it was. See, I know this. There’s other groups, this education community, what they do is they help new real estate investors, build a thought leadership platform. They build a beautiful website for them, and then they give them 50 pre-made blog posts.

Anthony: And I know this because I’ve seen these blog posts in on multiple people’s sites now, and that really trusts me because yeah, on the one hand, what you’re trying to do is accelerate your SEO presence, right? The more words that you have on your website, and the more targeted those words are, the more likely that people, when they’re Googling what’s a REIT versus a syndication that’s going to pop up on Google.

Anthony: Right? And that’s what they’re trying to gain. They’re gaming that system and trying to present, that they’re a thought leader in the space. And it just rubs me wrong because. All you’ve really done. If you’re paying somebody else to create the thought leadership platform for you, which is effectively what you’re doing, then you’re just a commodity.

Anthony: [00:03:00] There’s nothing unique about you. And for me, thought leadership at its core, and I think regardless of what business that you’re in, you want to establish a thought leadership platform. Whether that’s for you individually as like the face of the company or for the company itself. Like the company is a thought leader in the.

Anthony: You can’t do that by just regurgitating or having somebody else write the thing for you can’t outsource thought leadership. See, thought leadership requires originality of thought and originality is an act of creation. You can’t just buy it. And if you can buy it, then you’re a commodity. Now, here’s the thing I want to encourage everybody that’s listening to this is that you have a unique perspective to you and to the world, and if we could just find a way to get your voice and amplify it and get it out of you and, and share it with the world, I’m sure that you have what it takes, the originality, the creativity, the insight, the perspective to be a thought leader in whatever space that you’re in.

Anthony: But it’s hard and it’s not easy. It’s not quick. [00:04:00] It’s going to take a lot of time and effort and diligence because thinking is one of those skills that unfortunately we weren’t really taught how to do it in school. We were taught how to memorize and regurgitate, but not necessarily how to think original thoughts.

Anthony: Now I want to share for me the, the most impactful activity I’ve ever undertaken to help me become a better, more clear. Is journaling and active writing. The active writing, and you guys have probably heard me say this a million times before, but I’ll keep saying it. Writing is thought made, physical and funneling your thoughts through the pen, through your fingers, and through the keyboard.

Anthony: Whatever it is, forces you to coalesce like the chaotic jumble of thoughts going through your brain and get any given moment and wrestle them into something hopefully cohesive and comprehend. Because a lot of times we don’t really know what we think on a topic until we’ve actually really grinded it out and put that thought onto paper.

Anthony: So all that’s to say is [00:05:00] I this, this, this podcast episode is getting a little weird and a little bit out there, and I’m not really sure how to pull it all back in. But for me, recognize that if you are going to become a commodity and outsource the building of your thought leadership platform, you’re only fooling the people that you do not want to be fool.

Anthony: Right. Like you’re not fooling the other actual thought leaders in the space, because they’re going to look at what you’re saying. They’re going to look at it and they’re just going to say, Nope. And that’s what happened to this poor gentleman who reached out to come onto our podcast. Maybe if he had come at it more authentically and actually had built his own thoughts and I could see it and, and say like, this guy brings a unique perspective.

Anthony: I want to dive deeper into that. But he didn’t have a unique perspective. I, or maybe he does, but I don’t know what it is because he outsourced it and he paid for somebody else to pre to present. So the veneer of this person’s brand isn’t authentic to who they are, it’s just something that somebody else created for them.

Anthony: It’s a cape, it’s a, it’s a costume that they’re wearing. [00:06:00] The most effective thought leadership that you can build comes from you taking off that cape, taking off the costume or the uniform, and showing the world you and your vulnerable self and your naked unbridled thoughts. Whether that’s right or that’s wrong, because a lot of times we make the mistake of thinking that we need to water down our thoughts, our perspectives, our insights on, on our industry, on our business, on the world, at.

Anthony: Because we’re afraid that’s going to alienate people when in fact, when we’re tried to be everything to everybody, we are in fact nothing to everybody. So you have to stand for something. You have to alienate some people in order to get to the people who will love you, and those are the people that you want to be doing business with anyway.

Anthony: So all that has to say, don’t be outsourcing the most critical task of all, which. Thinking, creating your own thoughts, generating them in a way that you can share with the world that can affect change, that can bring the people into your tribe that you actually want to have into your tribe. And that’s the end of [00:07:00] my rant.

Anthony: I hope that this maybe, hopefully, I don’t know. Put something into perspective for you if you’ve been wrestling with a similar concept of like, man, I want to be further along in building up my audience, my thought leadership, my whatever, my social media accounts, but paying for that, like paying for followers, paying for likes, paying for blog posts.

Anthony: Like it doesn’t work. It does not work it. And these are just numbers. They’re just vanity metrics anyway. Like 2000 followers versus there’s 20,000. Neither matter if you have zero engagement, if you have 200 followers, but you get tons of engagement, bam, that’s winning. Right? So let’s just end it there. I hope that you got some value out of this, guys.

Anthony: I know it’s a little bit rant-y. Thank you. I appreciate you bearing with me. If you think that you know somebody in your life who could get some value out of this episode, maybe they’re paying for some thought leadership, they’re paying for some followers, and you’re like, Hey, cut that out. Knock it. Go send them this episode.

Anthony: Hopefully they’ll get a little bit of value [00:08:00] out of it. If you don’t know anybody, you don’t have a friend, you don’t have a brother, you don’t have, you know, anybody, any coworkers that you think would get some benefit out of this, then go leave a review on iTunes and that’s going to do it for me guys.

Anthony: I’ll see you tomorrow. Peace.

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