Diego Pineda - The Solo Thought Leader: From Solopreneur to Go-To Expert in 7 Steps

The Solo Thought Leader

From Solopreneur to Go-To Expert in 7 Steps

Diego Pineda

Vision & Leadership Books

Copyright 2022 Diego Pineda

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
First Edition
Editing by Kelly Lydick
Cover designed using resources from Freepik.com
ISBN: 978-0-9937876-3-8
Vision & Leadership Books
Kelowna, BC, Canada

For Diana my best student, the love of my life.

Contents

Contents

What is Solo Thought Leadership?

Why you should bet on this.

Become an expert in your niche.

Develop an innovative angle for your message.

Find your unique voice.

Educate your audience and dominate social media.

Gather social proof and media attention

Create scalable systems and processes.

Write a book or create an IP with your own system.

About the Author

Is this book for you?

What? Another book about thought leadership?

Hum, yeah. Well, add it to the pile.

Here s the thing though: I ve read the other ones and they have some good stuff, but it feels like they were written for lofty C-executives who hang out with angel investors and attend luxurious charity galas.

The truth is that, as a solopreneur, I could not relate to any of them. So, I decided to write the book I wanted to read. A book for the brave little guy and gal running their own businesses; those without big budgets or friends in high places. A book for the rest of us.

This is it. Hope you like it.

If you do, let s connect on LinkedIn, just send me a note. You can find me here . And if you don t find the book useful, we can connect as well. I promise I won t hold it against you.

Cheers!

Diego Pineda

Solo, But Not Alone

How would it feel to be called the father or mother of a new industry?

Or even a sub-niche in your industry?

Amazing, wouldn't it?

We've all heard about Ogilvy, the father of advertising, or Edward Bernays, the father of Public Relations.

They were legends. Geniuses. How can we compare? Is it even possible?

I think it is.

Look at Seth Godin. He is known as the father of permission marketing, a close cousin to inbound marketing.

In the 1980s, Godin was in the advertising industry, where companies were blindly spending money on TV and print ads with no idea if their messages were effective or not.

In his own words, he was a witness to "a huge bonfire of money spent with no return on traditional advertising."

Godin became a student of how companies used advertising and tested his own ideas to make it better.

In 1990, Prodigy hired his company to build a promotion for their online service. Instead of old fashion ads, they created Guts, "one of the very first online promotions." Basically, an email newsletter with coupons for subscribers.

The promotions worked so well that he was hired to do the same for AOL, Delphi, Apple, Microsoft, and CompuServe.

"I realized that my journey was a metaphor for what millions of marketers at millions of companies were doing, or were about to do," he said of that time. "I d gone from spending oodles of money in traditional advertising to building something completely different, vastly more efficient, and measurably more effective. We d honed the idea of Permission Marketing.

What is common sense to marketers today, that it's better to attract the attention of prospects through education instead of interrupting them with advertising, was his breakthrough idea.

He would later publish a book called Permission Marketing and his company was later acquired by Yahoo! for $30 million.

Not bad, eh?

But that was just the beginning. Godin went on to write many more books, have the most read blog in the world, and be inducted in the Marketing Hall of Fame.

Seth Godin is a business thought leader because he chose the right path to thought leadership.

This is how he started:

He studied his field until he was an advertising expert, realizing what worked and what didn't.

He practiced and tested advertising and marketing ideas until he found new ways of doing things.

He invented a new marketing category, built a business around it, and showed results.

So far so good: a successful business owner, but not a thought leader yet. But then he took the next steps:

He began educating and inspiring others through his books, his blog, videos, online courses and talks, creating raving fans around the world.

And as a result, his business and income have grown exponentially.

He has published 19 best-selling books, translated into 35 languages.

More than 60,000 people have taken his online courses.

He's in the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame, the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame, and the Marketing Hall of Fame.

A daily blog for over a decade with 7,500+ posts and more than a million readers.

He can sell high-ticket items, like the altMBA, an online workshop that sells for $4,450 (5,000 people have graduated from the altMBA by the end of 2021).

So, what is a thought leader? And what is a solo thought leader?

A thought leader is an expert who educates his or her audience to improve their businesses or their industry, and makes a lasting impact.

Some people mistakenly use the word influencer to refer to them, but being an influencer is not the same as being a thought leader. The Kardashians are influencers, but they re not thought leaders.

You don t follow them for their life-changing ideas.

B2C brands use influencers to get people to buy their products, but thought leaders use their influence to add value and produce lasting change.

In the B2B world, thought leader is a title reserved for someone with the power to persuade others and the status and authority to change the direction of a company or even an industry. Some examples include Gary Hamel, an American management consultant and the late Minoru Makihara, who was the chairman and CEO of the Mitsubishi Corporation.

In the academic world, a thought leader is usually a professor at a prestigious business school who does research and writes about a particular topic, such as the late Clay Christensen on innovation, or Michael Porter on strategy.

Until now, thought leaders have been those with important credentials and impressive resumes, like C-executives, famous consultants, or Ph.D.s from Harvard or Wharton.

But there is a new breed of thought leaders who are using digital media and virtual networks to spread new ideas and transform their fields. I call them Solo Thought Leaders.

Solo thought leadership is about:

Results, not degrees.

Passion, not trajectory.

Innovation, not formulas.

Experience, not credentials.

Educating others, not hoarding knowledge.

And overall, it is about execution.

It all starts in your own industry, learning the ropes, mastering the foundations. Then you can branch out into innovative ideas.

The Pathway to Innovation

Aspiring solo thought leaders can learn the pathway to innovation from jazz legend Clark Terry, who summed up the art of improvising in jazz into three steps: imitation, assimilation, and innovation.

1. Imitation

Just like jazz students choose a model to follow and imitate while learning the craft, you can start by imitating a successful innovator in your industry.

Ask yourself: Do I know all the details there are to know about my industry? Who are the innovators and experts from whom I can learn?