John Tyreman 0:00

Why should firms and experts invest in thought leadership? What's the return that they'll get? What happens when you succeed? What happens if you fail? We're gonna get into it on the podcast

Mark Wainwright 0:31

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Breaking BizDev. I'm Mark Wainwright, and I'm joined by John Tyreman today. John, how are you?

John Tyreman 0:42

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm fresh off, uh, another podcast conversation, so just kind of set up here in the studio for the afternoon.

Mark Wainwright 0:50

Nice. I love it. I love it. yep, John's a podcast professional and he, you know, does this podcast thing for a living, folks. So, you know, hit him up, Red Cedar Marketing.

John Tyreman 0:59

Thanks for the plug. Mark.

Mark Wainwright 1:00

So, uh, plugs aside, you posed a question in our opener there, and this episode is going to seek to answer the question: What is the true return on investment of thought leadership? And we're gonna come at it maybe from different directions. There might be some, there might be some overlap there, but you've come up with some sort of supporting content around that question, some answers to that question, as have I, and we've done that kind of independently. Uh, like I said, there's probably gonna be some overlap because, uh, John, we've been hanging out for a little while, so we probably know, how each other think. But, what made you think about this particular topic in the first place?

John Tyreman 1:43

marketing oftentimes is thought about and measured in terms of leads, in terms of revenue. But I think that there are other forms of return that experts and firms can get out of investing in thought leadership that fly under the radar a little bit. And so I wanted to come at this, like you mentioned, from a couple different angles of, you know, when evaluating an investment in thought leadership, what are the outcomes that you could expect outside of leads and revenue and things like that?

Mark Wainwright 2:16

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Good. So, so you've, you've run across some s- some, some examples I'm assuming that are in your head, and I, I think I have as well. Uh, I think that you and I are, um, believers of investing in thought leadership, that we will see a return on that investment over time. And that's, I guess that's kind of the, the, the definition, right? It's, it's, you know, it's publishing and getting your perspective, your point of view out there about

John Tyreman 2:59

Let's break that apart real quick. Thought leader. Leader, you're leading thoughts. You're coming up with original point of view, right? And I think that's like the big distinction that I wanna make here is being a thought leader isn't going to ChatGPT or Gemini and saying, "Hey, what are the topics we should talk about?" Or, "What are the topics that I should write about?" And, "Help me write a blog post." That's not thought leadership. That's just regurgitating existing information, right? And so what we're talking about is taking the time to intentionally think through what's your original point of view, how can you lead f- lead the thoughts of your target audience or whoever you're trying to go after.

Mark Wainwright 3:40

And, to kind of pile on that, it's, it's sometimes you're gonna be spot on, but sometimes you're gonna swing and miss, that's part, I think, of what sits in individuals' minds when they think about developing and then, putting a point of view out there into the world, is that sometimes it's gonna be a hit, sometimes it's gonna be a miss. But I think that's all part of it, and I think the over time, the redefinition, the clarification, the refinement, of those ideas that you have, um, can change over time. But more and more you see people coming to those ideas and, supporting them, aligning with you, being of sort of one mind with those ideas that you put out there. So

John Tyreman 4:22

So let's, I know that this is a little bit of a different structure for us, Mark, but, we, we both went out and did independent thinking to answer this big question, what's the true ROI of thought leadership? So we'll ping pong back and forth a little bit. What, I'm curious, Mark, I'd love for you to lead us off. what, what was the first thing that came to mind when you tried to answer this question? What's the true ROI of thought leadership

Mark Wainwright 4:45

one of the things I thought about initially, and I speak to the individuals and clients that I work with, about thought leadership, and I constantly encourage the individuals that I work with, to develop and then publish, their thought leadership, articles, whatever else. I mean, thought leadership's often a, fancy term for just like, get the stuff out of your head and get it out there in the world, point is, is that I often talk to the individuals I work with at organizations and, and I say, "You need to become a visible expert," you, as in you the individual, because ultimately your clients are going to buy you, not necessarily your firm. In some situations, one can see that a firm has a certain reputation, uh, you know, and they have a, a good body of work, and there will be people out there in the, in, in the world that will find your organization or your firm, your firm to, to work with you. More often than not, however, your clients are seeking experts, and if you develop some visible expertise in a particular area, they will buy you, Your clients are going to buy you, not necessarily your firm. They're buying, trust in you. They're buying your specific expertise. They're buying your focus. They're buying your reputation. They're, they're investing in, building a trusting relationship, with you.

John Tyreman 6:09

Interesting. So how would you quantify that? I'm curious.

Mark Wainwright 6:12

the amount of thought leadership content that you put out in the marketplace, the, the reception of that content, uh, the support of that content through whatever means, right? Likes, shares, you know, what- whatever sort of digital sort of indicators of, success and support there are out there. But also, you're starting to, you entertain opportunities to come and share your expertise at events and conferences and things like that.

John Tyreman 6:35

that's what I had on my list, was invitations for, I call them collaborations, whether they're podcast interviews, guest articles, speaking engagements. to the point of people wanna work with other people they know, like, and trust, the number of sales opportunities who mention that they consume your insights. That was the, unit of measurement that I came up with as w- the first one on my list. you mentioned it earlier, it doesn't matter what the channel is. Could be a blog, could be a newsletter, could be a podcast, et cetera. podcasting is what's familiar to me, and so how this would-- this typically comes up for my clients and s- from some of the other podcasters I've talked to is, "Hey, I've been listening to your podcast for years. I didn't have a situation that warranted me reaching out until now, and so you're the first person I'm reaching out to." That's typically kinda how it goes. now what's really interesting is recently I interviewed Bob Borson, uh, who is a co-host of "Life of an Architect", and he, he mentioned that his, uh, blog page, lifeofanarchitect.com, gets like 350,000 clicks a month.

Bob Borson 7:40

I don't know, I don't know the right way to put this other than I'm an architect first and second, and I do this just 'cause it was a creative outlet, and then I realized it was providing a value to all architects everywhere. Because the amount of-- Like at the peak, I was getting 350,000 people a month through the website. Like it was big. And, um, the number of parents and children and college, I, I mean, the, I, I don't think I can go to a, if I go to like a ground zero architectural event, like a conference or a, you know, like if I go to the AIA National Convention, 100% I-- someone will walk up to me and say I'm the reason that they became an architect. And, and, and I don't mean that like I'll sprain myself, pat myself on the back, but, but the, the reality is I didn't quit because I felt like it had turned into something that was bigger than me, and I felt like I had an obligation to the, to the industry, to the profession to keep doing this. I never monetized the, the website, and I, I did that purposely.

John Tyreman 8:46

purpose.

Bob Borson 8:48

it actually drove a lot of business to the companies where I worked. Uh, and at one point I, I went through the ROI and I found out that I generated more money as a blogger than I did as an architect, right? Like if I just exist as an architect, I would just be doing the work. But as a business development tool, the blog site drove millions of dollars of fees to to the companies,

John Tyreman 9:12

Now, that podcast is his IP. It doesn't belong to any of the stops that he was at, I just thought that that was a great illustration of how something-- and he'd been working on it for, he, he, he started in 2010, and it's 2026 now, so it's been 16 years of him doing that. So, but I think that's the, like the, the two, the, the, the two examples that I mentioned, you know, "I've been listening to your podcast for years," and then Bob doing this for 16 years, that's the timescale that we're talking about here. This isn't something that where you invest in a couple months and say, "Oh, there's no ROI." This is something that has to be repeated over a long timescale.

Mark Wainwright 9:48

my first one was Clients buy the people, not the firm, right? So, and we tied that to some sort of eventual return, and Bob Borsten's a, you know, great example of that that kind of stands out. You talked about more leads, right? Easily quantifiable. so the next one that I had on my list was thought leadership can shorten the sales cycle dramatically, so that's a, that's another one as well. That's another sort of sales, sales metric. So we're thinking thought leadership marketing stuff. Oh, yeah. So yeah, it actually, you know, significantly impacts the sales cycle, right? So, we talk about sort of prospecting cold outreach and, you know, whether it's cold or whether it's warm, whatever else, right? I think some people feel like that has mixed results. it takes patience, and, there's some hit or miss there for sure. Thought leadership I think is different. thought leadership is an opportunity to plant a bug, in your listener's brain that is just, right? It's just there and they kind of, it knocks around for a while, right? They're just, they got this idea and they hear something from you and it just, you know, and it, and it, and it sort of resonates and starts to grow. Um, so like you said, then they'll reach out, they'll have a conversation, and hopefully things accelerate quickly, right? Because you've started to, you've been in their brain for a long time. You've already established some familiarity. Because as we've discussed, the sales cycle, part of the sales cycle, part of the process is to be, you know, consistently and kind of deliberately building familiarity and trust,

John Tyreman 11:28

Right

Mark Wainwright 11:29

So if you're able to es- to, to establish familiarity and start building trust well before, they come knocking on the front door, you've already got that foundational sort of familiarity there. You know, we've talked about that in the past, I think, where people, people that you've never met will, speak to you like, "Oh yeah, Mark, you've talking in my ear on my dog walks through your podcast for years now," right? That kind of thing. so it shifts the whole dynamic from the first couple meetings are just sort of getting to know, building familiarity, getting to the point where you can start to trust someone to where you're, you've already accelerated past that. now you're being evaluated as a, you know, a trusted advisor and not necessarily somebody who's just a, you know, like a vendor, right? So you're the, thought leader, you're the expert. So that's gonna shorten that, moment that you reach sufficient familiarity and trust,

John Tyreman 12:18

And that can be measured with, um, a metric that I like to use called pipeline velocity. So how, how long are they in your sales pipeline from, you know, first point of contact to close, So that's a way that you can measure it.

Mark Wainwright 12:33

Mm-hmm.

John Tyreman 12:33

All right, so the next one on my list, Mark, is, is not really a return, but it's kind of an opportunity cost. So what's the cost of inaction? I talked to Robert Hannah, who is the host of the "Legally Speaking" podcast. And I asked him, you know, "What, what have you gotten out of this?" And he said, "Well, it's, it's not about the return on the podcast, it's about what, what would happen if I didn't do this,"

Rob Hanna 12:58

So many people don't take action because they want to know the immediate ROI. I don't think that's an entrepreneurial lens. I think that's an accounting lens. I think that's in a finance lens. I think that's a very closed lens of looking at it. Business is, you know, it's not about getting lucky. Business is about The more risk you take, the more luck you get. you know, you said, "Why did you start a podcast?" No one else was doing it. People weren't really paying attention to it, and so those blue ocean opportunities. So, um, the ROI, yes, if we were to track it in terms of sponsorship alone, is probably 200% plus. In terms of being out there, we're always, you know, each week I'm producing shows, content, legal careers focused on my target law firm partners. My candidates are reaching out to me. We've made placements off that. We've had referrals off that. You know, average deal sizes are, are quite chunky in the UK. They're tens of thousands. Um, but the real thing is, it's the cost of inaction. you know, I've been able to collaborate with the likes of Gary Vee and go on stages and podcast the likes of Steven Bartlett, you know, the sort of "Dragons' Den," "Diary of a CEO," one of the most popular podcasts in the world. All of these opportunities wouldn't have had to me if I hadn't leaned into the COI principle. So if you're sat here with an idea or thinking of a podcast or what else, stop looking at the ROI. Think, "What is the cost of inaction? What could this cost me if I don't take action now?" And I think if you switch that mindset, you'll suddenly start seeing actually there's a world of opportunity for you out there.

John Tyreman 14:12

what if you don't become an expert in your specific niche? What if you aren't visible when buyers have a need, right? What if you don't take the time to use your thought leadership to develop key relationships? You know, how would all of that hinder your ability to grow? And so that's kind of like an interesting, like spin on what's the ROI, like, well, what's the cost of not doing it?

Mark Wainwright 14:38

Yeah. Well, you've, I mean, Opportunity cost is always a tough one to measure. you can, but it's also a little bit speculative, and I'm not calling you out on that. I'm just saying like it's a, you picked a tough one to measure A great point. Challenging to measure You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 14:54

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright 15:08

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman 15:18

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright 15:24

and now back to the show. Thought leadership, yes, it serves the firm, and clearly it serves the individual, but there's sort of a compounding effect to all of that thought leadership, right? So once you start investing in it and continue, the investment will grow in a compounding way in that you'll get more and more people into your audience, you'll start to build a following. you'll start to maybe have, you'll be able to engage in different types of online groups or offline groups or what- whatever it is. So I think the opportunities to publish, and to get that message out there start to increase, almost exponentially, but it's definitely a compounding thing. So we touched on this earlier, right? Speaking in invitations and engagements, right? People start to show up at the door and say, "Hey, we need you to come and talk to us," Your reputation, your individual reputation will precede you, right? They use that term, right? even before you walk in the room, people will have built familiarity and they will have certain sort of expectations about, you and your expertise and everything. So it's, very few relationships that you establish, people that you meet will be cold, right? Because you've got, that reputation that's, that's out there making introductions for your thought leadership is making introductions for you, right? So, so and those are two. And the last little, part of this sort of, compounding capital that you're building with your thought leadership and, this is both for you and for the firm, and these are all a little bit related is pricing power, right? It's, I think that this is super powerful. maybe hard to measure, maybe not. but it's premium pricing, right? It's if you are the established visible expert in a particular area in the world, you can command, a premium, premium price. You are not, having to duke it out with, you know, other, air quotes vendors, for the low priced bid. You are the expert that people are seeking out, and they wanna work with you, so you command a premium price. Premium pricing never means that we're out there to gouge our clients. It just means that, we're in a position where we understand our value, and that, we can command that premium pricing. So there you go.

John Tyreman 17:57

100%. And that, um, I have the, uh, your ability to charge premium rates as one of the, one of the ones that was on my list. And I think, like, to take that just a step further, um, thought leadership unlocks that ability for firms, for experts to charge those premium rates if the thought leadership backs up your positioning, if the thought leadership reaches the intended audience,

Mark Wainwright 18:26

Hmm. Yeah, good

John Tyreman 18:27

then if the thought leadership is packaged in a way that the intended audience wants to consume.

Mark Wainwright 18:34

Mm-hmm.

John Tyreman 18:35

So just the, the, I just wanted to put a little bit of a, a fine point on if that is your objective, then it needs to hit those three boxes. So there was one that, uh, I wanted to touch on. in the world that I live in, in the podcasting world, there are comparable metrics, performance metrics that we look at akin to, like, paid media performance. I like to take a look at the, like the CPM, the cost per milli, and then apply those advertising rates to organic content performance. For example, if you were to go on LinkedIn, um, would need to pay anywhere from $20 to $50 to reach 1,000, uh, u- users that fit your audience profile, right? Your ICP. So if that's what it takes, if that's what it costs to reach 1,000 users that fit your audience profile, then apply that same methodology to your organic content performance. So if your podcast, if a video clip from your podcast reaches 1,000 people, then that's between $20 and $50 equivalent of media value. Um, so that would be just kind of another way. I know that that's probably not what business owners want to hear, but it is a way for marketers to be able to communicate the value of organic marketing and thought leadership efforts to the CFO, to this, the, um, the CEO.

Mark Wainwright 20:14

Yeah, no, I think that's, that's really important because hopefully there are listeners out there who are either participating in and through training, you know, content development, thought leadership, or there are organizational leaders who, you know, want to do it, see the value in it, but can't put a, a number on it. from my perspective, and we mentioned this earlier, is that we talked about a number of things here. The ROI on thought leadership is in a lot of cases, a lot of stuff we mentioned here, is a longer-term view. It takes persistence, it takes time, and you're not going to immediately see those returns tomorrow. I know there's a, there's a sufficient amount of, impatience out there in the world to turn, maybes into contracts overnight. but, I think it's a longer play, and it takes time. And, you know, like you said, Bob Borson's been able to quantify that, and he's been at it. How long has his podcast been around? And his blog?

John Tyreman 21:18

launched his podcast in 2018, but he started the blog in 2010

Mark Wainwright 21:23

Yeah, there you go.

John Tyreman 21:25

So 16

Mark Wainwright 21:26

yeah, we're here in 2026, right? That's, that's time. That takes a ton of time, and he's now able to confidently sort of state that, you know, the work that he has done has a certain amount of value, and it has shown to maintain that value likely over time, you know, year in, year out, so it's, it's a long-term investment and there are measurable performance gains, you know, measurable return on that initial investment for sure.

John Tyreman 21:59

Yeah, and, and I think it, it's also important to just rehash and highlight, underscore the fact that it needs to be your original thoughts, your perspective, your opinions, your personality shining through in this sh- in this thought leadership. Now, I-- that's not to discount consuming perspectives from other people. bear with me for a second on this one, Mark. So I'm, I'm thinking of like interview-based podcasts versus what we do, like this co-hosted commentary style, and there's, there's different values, marketing values that come out of that. So on the interview side of things, I think that's value. The relationships, yes, right? You know, those guests could become potential opportunities and open doors and referral sources. But I think beyond that, one of the, um, the returns you could say is seeing things from other people's perspective. And so when you have these conversations with other people who hold influence with your target market, have different perspectives on your industry or your line of work, it opens up your mind to new ways of thinking and new perspectives that you can then filter and apply to your own work and to your own perspective. So I think that, like that's part of it too, is not just constantly being cr- like creating, but also having some level of a consumption routine so that you can inform your perspective from diff- from other perspectives. I don't know. Did you follow me on that one?

Mark Wainwright 23:34

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I, that, that all, that all makes sense, One of the things that's in, wh- when I put my thoughts to paper here, I think one of the things that kind of stood out to me, and I'll summarize, every piece of thought leadership, that you create, is an agent or a salesperson, right? That's acting on your behalf like 24/7, right? It's just out there, you know, and it doesn't, when you close a deal, it doesn't come back and ask for a commission or whatever else. It's just like, you know, that's, you know, it doesn't a- doesn't ask for that. And it gets better and better with time, right? So these content pieces that are being really successful, this thought leadership you're putting out there in the marketplace builds, over time. It doesn't, fade. I mean, the good stuff builds and builds and gain- gains a, a stronger audience. So, you can hand out, business cards or send emails 9:00 to 5:00 all day long. Everybody can kind of do that. But, you know, this thought leadership stuff is working through, you know, 24/7/365, which is pretty powerful

John Tyreman 24:36

All right. Well, Mark, I think we've broken it down. Is there anything else that you had on your list?

Mark Wainwright 24:40

that's all. We had a little bit of overlap there. We had some diff- different ideas that moved in different directions. Uh, clearly we're, we're fans, of thought leadership. Did you, uh, did you wanna share any, any last little tidbits, John?

John Tyreman 24:53

the only story that I'll share is kind of moving beyond the invitations to speaking engagements and things like that is thought leadership can also free up your time. It doesn't have to be a, a time investment. You can actually take back some of your time, and I'll share a story. So one of my, one of my clients, he was traveling around doing speaking engagements at, um, like local associations all over the country. He spent a lot of his time traveling, um, and he wanted to stop doing that. He wanted a vehicle to where he could share his insights, share the research he was doing, have conversations, but not have to leave the comfort of his office and not have to travel around. and so we launched a podcast, and he was able to do that. So he was able to take his speaking engagements at these local associations, almost kind of eliminate them, and only speak at kind of the larger industry conferences. and then he was able to take back a lot of time, save a lot of money in travel expenses, and then still being able to achieve what he wanted to achieve, which was sharing his insights with now an even larger audience. So I know it's not, that's not for everybody. Not everyone wants to roll back the number of speaking engagements they do, but I just thought that was an, an interesting, unique story to share.

Mark Wainwright 26:10

No, it, it, it's good, and I think, what we've talked about, I think a little bit today, prior to your story was we think that, sharing content, whether in blogs or podcasts or, you know, whatever formats, can be a great, foundation, can lead to, more speaking engagements, more events, things like that. you'll need to obviously balance the two relative to, you know, your needs and your business and, that sort of thing. But I think when we were talking about it earlier, we were thinking, okay, all this stuff, this thought leadership is going to lead to the point where you're starting to be invited. he, it's like he almost like reverse engineered it, where he was like, "I'm just running around all over the place spending tons of time and energy doing all these speaking engagements." And he turned back and said, "I need a tool that helps me still get my, get my thoughts out there, get my point of view out there in the marketplace without having to lug myself, you know, to, to Wichita on Tuesday and to, you know, Charleston on Wednesday."

John Tyreman 27:04

Exactly

Mark Wainwright 27:05

Yeah. Good point. the return is there. in order to really, make sure that it's, it's doing its job, you need to measure it. So you need to set metrics around all of this and see where you are now, and then see where you end up in the future

John Tyreman 27:23

Exactly. And hopefully there's some doer sellers or some e- maybe even marketers listening to this and they want to champion the idea of thought leadership within their firms. I think this is a great resource for them. So Mark, this has been awesome. I think we've sufficiently broken it down. Until next time

Mark Wainwright 27:42

Until next time, John