thought leaders

What has changed the most since you’ve been marketing online? What’s coming up next in online marketing that entrepreneurs need to know about to stay ahead?

I get asked these two questions a lot in interviews. People are curious to hear my answers because I’ve been creating and marketing brands on the Internet since 2003. I’m going to answer both of those questions for you now.

This brings me back to the idea of The Long Tail of Influence from my last post, How Thought Leaders Rise to the Top of the Market

Let’s dig into that diagram now.

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Have you ever discounted or tucked away an idea even though it kept showing up in your mind?

You tell yourself that it’s not important, but really the idea fascinates and inspires you, and you’re just worried that others won’t find it as interesting as you? Because of this you may keep hiding it away or telling yourself a story about how you’re “still working on it.”

Have you ever done that?

There is a particular idea that I had for two years before I decided to share it with anyone. I’d brought it up in a handful of conversations, but I never ventured (or dared) to put it out in public and develop it further with the feedback of an audience. Then one day, I picked up a book on a friend’s recommendation.

As I read the jacket copy and flipped through the pages, I was stunned to realize what the premise of the book was very similar to my idea! Not only that, but the author won a Thinkers50 Future Thinker Award for the idea! If you’re not familiar, the Thinkers50 is basically the Oscars or Grammy awards of business thought leadership.

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“I want to double my reach and revenue this year.”

I was sitting in my favorite hotel lobby chatting with a client about her goals for her business. “I’d love for you to show me how to think, make decisions and use my time in a way that will make that goal inevitable. Her answer delighted and surprised me!

It delighted me because she was focused on exactly the right things. It surprised me because so often the first thing clients want help with is something like:

• Improving their messaging
• Automating their sales with a funnel
• Creating new offers
• Growing their list
• Launching a new content strategy
• Optimizing their launch

These are all great, but it’s not where you start when planning and building the next level of business growth. This kind of continuous tactical and low-level strategic focus leads to a common problem I call “Frankenstein businesses” that struggle to break through growth ceilings.

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We need to talk about alchemy.

Yep, alchemy.

Here’s a quick story to explain why this is so important to your success. The day after my daughter was born, I remember hungrily rummaging through the kitchen for something to eat (groggy from a long night of waking up every 45 minutes to see if the baby was still breathing).

I opened the fridge…nothin’

Looked in the pantry…meh

Checked all the cupboards…yawn

Somehow we’d forgotten to stock up on groceries! That’s when my mom (who had flown in to help out) walked into the kitchen and told me she’d handle lunch. Thirty minutes later, she’d magically turned bits of leftover rotisserie chicken, a handful of vegetables, and a few things from the pantry into a delicious vegetable soup. My mom has always been a sort of alchemist with food.

In 8th century Europe, alchemists believed they could make a common metal, such as lead, more valuable by turning it into gold. Much like these alchemists, my mom could take common resources (food items that seemed uninteresting and useless to me) and turn them into something of elevated value — a yummy meal that solved our hunger.

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