Speaker 1: 0:00

Global credibility expert. Mitchell Levy is a two-time TEDx speaker, an international bestselling author of over 60 books and an executive coach at Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches. As an executive coach, mitchell is a sounding board, a thinking partner and someone who can hold the mirror to generate insights for personal change. Mirror to generate insights for personal change. This impact has earned him a place among the world's top 200 leadership voices by LeadersUM and as the number one thought leader in ecosystems. He's an accomplished entrepreneur who has created 20 businesses in Silicon Valley, including four publishing companies that have published over 750 books. He's provided strategic consulting to hundreds of companies and has been gracious enough to share some of the magic that makes him so buzzworthy. Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. Welcome to the show, mitchell. How are you doing today? I'm doing great thanks. Thanks for having me, thanks for having us. You're a busy person. Holy smoky joes.

Speaker 1: 1:17

As I said in the intro, we were talking about 60 businesses. That is amazing. And in Silicon Valley nonetheless, which is an old stomping ground of mine. I am a diehard San Jose Sharks fan. Just so everybody knows, one day they will change the rules so we can win a Stanley Cup. Otherwise it is just another small market, which this is a crazy thing. Silicon Valley is not a small market anymore, but yet San Jose continues to treat it that way. Oakland did it to me too. My poor A's are now moving on to the Vegas. I don't know if I'm going to follow them to Nevada, but anyway. I don't know if you're into sports or not, but you are a publisher of sorts. Is the theme I got from this. How, I mean, out of all the businesses, it seemed like the publishing world is drawn to you. What is that about? Is there something that happened to you at some point in your life that just says I need to be a publishing mogul?

Speaker 2: 2:19

I don't know if mogul's the right word, but just to clarify, I've actually written over 60 books. I've started around 20 plus businesses, so you had said 60 businesses.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Yeah, I got it. I'm sure of that, yep.

Speaker 2: 2:36

At different points, serendipity Okay, some people would call it, you know, god, god enhanced or, and some people say serendipity and there are different words but has helped on every step of my way. At the moment, my business is 10% publishing, 10% executive coaching, 80% focus on clarity, gotcha. But in 2005, I was looking for something to do and I've always wanted to have this inkling of being a book publisher. And during the dot-com days I was that guy, that guy who would go around to companies and say, hey, you know, there's this new technology coming called the internet and it's going to change the way we do business. Michael, I was actually physically kicked out of the offices of two companies because the Internet was just a fad. But when the dot bust happened in the year 2000, you know, I ended up. I had a CEO networking group and kept moving that going forward. And then, and in 2005, I'm like you know, I'm ready. I've always wanted to be a publisher. Let's start. And I have. Subsequently, I have four book publishing companies. We have published over 750 books.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Okay.

Speaker 2: 3:57

And for a long time. It was a phenomenal business. It was a phenomenal business. So what does that mean? I created a business that I was looking for nonfiction authors who were interested in using the book as a way to do something else. So it's not about book sales. They're using the book to either get more clients, get more speaking, get more consulting, and what I would do is get 50% of the profit on the back end from book sales. So I'm looking for those authors who are doing lots of speaking and subsequently, when companies would buy books, we would go out of our way to make sure the books got to them on time. We did special engravings, special endorsements, all of that stuff, and up until COVID it was an absolutely amazing business. Time we did special engravings, special endorsements, all of that stuff, and up until COVID it was an absolutely amazing business. And then, as you can imagine, if a bulk share of the revenue came in from speakers who were physically speaking at events and they were all of a sudden, overnight not speaking at events, my business took a turn.

Speaker 2: 5:07

What's also happened and this is true for any business anyone's in is life changes and book publishing has become so democratized that at the moment, when you talk to somebody who calls themselves a book publisher, many times the business models that they choose I can't say it any politer the word stupid comes to mind. There are a bunch of stupid business models and it's really hard to compete with stupid. So the reason my business is now only 10% is the people who know me and they actually trust me. They know me, they like me, or trust, know, love, they'll do business with me because mark these words I have integrity, I say what I do and I do what I say. And so, for the people who want to do business with me, they go oh Mitchell, that's right, what's your current prices? Tell me what you're going to do, and then I deliver what I do, and they get very happy because they get exactly what they Right, I always like to deliver more, but anyhow, the business.

Speaker 2: 6:16

I'll leave one last thought. The business has been democratized Right, by the way, to be clear. So has thought leadership been democratized, by the way, to be clear, so has thought leadership. So, in 2023, once AI started becoming seen as real, thought leadership has now been democratized. We haven't seen all of the positive and negative ramifications of that, but life is changing.

Speaker 1: 6:43

So I mean I love that there are a lot of scams. I'm, I'm a, I was a self-published author for my first book, um, and it's funny cause I actually learned how to self-publish by buying a book from somebody who sold his book to try to get clients to self-publish Right, but unfortunately for him. Um, and I've actually met the guy. He's really a nice guy, but unfortunately for him. I learn a lot from reading books. I'm an executor and so I'm that 2% that will read the book and just do it right. And then you have the 2% that read the book and go I want somebody else to do it, and then you have the 96% who never read the book right.

Speaker 1: 7:19

But I want to go into the AI and thought leadership because I think that's a huge topic right now that people are. It's part of the topic. I should say. Ai is overwhelmingly the elephant in the room, but I don't think people are talking about some of the ramifications in things like thought leadership. So when you say that is democratized, are you saying that now everybody has access to the thought leadership that has been published up to this point because of AI, or is there something else I'm missing in that statement I'm going to say that and and and I'm going to I'm going to come back for that in a second.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Let me just say I did give a different number, having looked at your website and looked at you ahead of time. You're a DIYer, right. So people who would do it yourself, type people. All you have to do is feed you enough information and you can do it yourself. That's about 10% from what I've seen. Okay, right, and so for me, whatever I am there to service others, I'm a done with you type approach. So, looking at cause, I, I want to help people transform and while I'm doing that, I'm also going to put out the, the, the content for the DIYers, because I don't and and, by the way, many cases I'll do it for free or some really small price, because I want you to be a recommender, right. So that's I look at you anyhow. So it's I. Look at the world, tell people, I tell people.

Speaker 1: 8:49

It's like they go. Why did you write the book and give all your secrets away? It's like the secrets I know. Nobody's really creating anything completely novel for one, in my opinion. Um, we are curators of great information and being able to look at things in different ways to help people see things that they couldn't see before they read right. Anybody's going to do it themselves wasn't going to be a client anyway, so what does it matter?

Speaker 2: 9:12

Anyway, keep going. By the way, yes and yes, but most people don't think that way.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Oh, true, true Abundance, a mindset abundance. Come on Exactly.

Speaker 2: 9:21

So here's what's interesting. So what you said is true and let's do the and Okay. So what you said was hey, right now, if you want to learn, you can learn anything you want from any perspective you want, Right? By the way, the answer is yes. What I'm going to say is one of the things you need to teach yourself if you're listening to this is also learn how to be discerning. You can't accept the immediate answer you get. You have to be able to check multiple sources. That said, you get access to anything in the world written by anyone in any way. It is powerful, right?

Speaker 1: 9:59

So, if you want, to learn you've got.

Speaker 2: 10:03

It's kind of like sitting in the library with a cup of coffee and you could learn anything you want Now, sitting in the library with a cup of coffee and you could learn anything you want Right Now. The opposite is true. If you want to be an expert on any topic Now let's use the word expert really loosely Loose Okay, you want to be an expert on any topic where you write an article on a topic you know absolutely nothing about? Ok, all you have to do is be someone who could ask the right prompts, right, ok. That doesn't make you a thought leader when you're talking to somebody and they're actually asking questions. It does, however, potentially allow you to impersonate a thought leader on how you show up in the articles you write and the way you show things in written word. That level of thought leadership is now absolutely ubiquitous.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Yeah, I would say that the 101 thought leadership or the 101 master classes are probably going to be gone within the next, at least no more than 12 months, because I mean, if you want to get to the basics, definitely, but I don't me personally. I'm going to push back just a little bit here, not to say it's wrong, but I personally think that thought leadership is beyond the 101s, the how-tos. Right Like thought leadership is the experience of doing something multiple times that the EEAT, if you will like Google puts in there. Right, it's the expertise which you can fake, like you were talking about, but experience you can't right the case studies and all those things that you can pull individually right. There are things that you will be. I will never be able to match with you, even if I outlive you another 50 years. Right, because you've done so much in the time that you've had and I've had a different life experience, and so there's things that I'm and you've done a bunch of other things right, yeah exactly.

Speaker 1: 12:02

So you'll never be the type of expert that I am for what I do, right, and I think that that right there, that AI is actually helping us be able to get what's inside here and here out to the public better. And I think that with the, if you look at the generational gaps that we have right with technology the gen alphas and the gen Zs they're going back to the basics when it comes to like tactile Like. I was just interviewing somebody who is in the photography industry. There is a huge resurgence of film photography where they're taking old cameras, refurbishing them and getting a little bit too late for Kodak, but gotcha, yeah, right, right, fuji, the Fuji stuck around just long enough to take advantage of this. And it's not that they're making new developers and stuff like that, they're just using the old technology. So this is going to be ask of like.

Speaker 1: 12:55

I came from the music industry, so early days when I was adopting digital, people were touting the fact that they had reel to reel.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Still right Now, those people still exist, but they're a very minute part of the market, right and so. But as a generation sitting there saying, hey, we want to get back to the basics, I think that you're going to see a resurgence of the thought leaders of the early 19th 20th century that started thought leadership to begin with. Right, think and grow rich and all those types of things, everything that what we talk about today when it comes to leadership and some of these other things and self-improvement, it's just a culmination of what was written in the teens to 30s of the 19th century or the 20th century and then brought to the modern day. So I say all that to say I agree that there are certain levels of thought leadership that are going to completely disappear, because it'll take you longer to find somebody to tell you than it will to just ask an AI. Right, but for the experience and the authenticity and the insight and stuff like that, you really think that AI is going to replace that level of thought leadership.

Speaker 2: 14:10

What we haven't done, michael, is we haven't actually defined what thought leadership is. Okay, let's do that. So, having been an expert and helped over 750 books get published and done a couple of TEDx's and sounded like a public firm, what I could say, the definition I currently use for thought leadership a thought leader is somebody. Are you ready? This is a very interesting one that has at least one or more people who are listening to their thoughts.

Speaker 1: 14:40

Well, I think everybody would be a thought leader then. I mean, everybody has at least one or two people listening.

Speaker 2: 14:44

So the answer is yes, everyone's a thought leader. So if you have a million followers on TikTok, you are, by definition, this is where the influencer is also known as a thought leader, even though those thoughts aren't necessarily valid thoughts. Okay, right, so what you're talking about is experiential thought leadership, okay, or experiential marketing. Now to me, when I think about thought leadership and where it's going, because anyone who wants any influencer a million followers can now use GPT and increase their game of what they say they can't when they're alive, because that's them acting right. So what's different is the concept of having communities, the concept of having clarity of who you are and how you show up, and having those people surrounding you that are interested in learning or growing on the path that you're on. That's where it's really powerful.

Speaker 2: 15:47

So, for me, my pure expertise, what I've learned by I tell you, I did a Napoleon Hill journey between 2019 and 2020. I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility. Okay, hill journey between 2019 and 2020, I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility and what I got out of that besides an updated definition and real, powerful understanding of what credibility is. But I got clarity, and that is the ability for me to talk to any company or any individual and help them articulate where they're executing on their purpose in less than 10 words. That level of clarity will allow any thought leader to be able to say, hey, in this community, who wants to hang around this type of community?

Speaker 2: 16:35

And we've been taught on a marketing perspective that the bigger the audience, the better. The wider we cast our net. But I'm sure you know the most important thing the more narrow we could focus, the better, and so that's what I focus on is helping those people get clarity in a way that their followers are just feeling more comfortable. They are the thought leaders in the space. But the space doesn't have to be super huge, and that's probably the, so we have to decouple some of the common themes of thought leadership. It doesn't have to be huge or broad. It has to be a community that you could be of service to.

Speaker 1: 17:19

I'm hearing the community and I think that that's something that I've been really grasping the last couple of years since COVID really because I think that we've seen how communities for better or for worse how powerful they are right In all aspects. I mean, you want to talk about people who don't know what they're talking about and they talk live. Talk to a politician, because they'll give you the script right.

Speaker 2: 17:43

Why did I know you were going to go there? Okay, but.

Speaker 1: 17:47

But. But I mean and that's just one concept, right. So when we're networking, you know for our company, you know, say you work for a company and you go out you only know what you've been taught by your company about your company and then you can sprinkle in your own experience, right. But communities are organic, right. And I think masterminds were kind of written off, I would probably say by mid-2000 teens. I think COVID has brought them back because community has become a huge piece.

Speaker 1: 18:18

I was talking to David Meltzer the other day and he was talking about the fact that the big stages he used to talk on for the last couple of years he's like no, we're going to the smaller and smaller and smaller stages so we can get deeper, like you were talking, not a wide net, a deep net, a deep line to get the few loyal followers, you know, because leadership's about followership, right, and I think that what you said there was really profound and I don't want that to be lost, and that community is maybe the new definition of what we used to consider thought leadership.

Speaker 2: 18:54

Well, what I'll do is I'll leave you with a concept and I'll even give you that. I'll give you the answer for the DIYer. I believe any company, any individual can articulate where they're executing on their purpose in less than 10 words. I call this a CPOP. It's your customer point of possibilities. And so if you are a credible human or you're running a credible company, the first thing you're going to do is you are of service to others. So I'm going to ask two questions, and those two questions, the answers, get combined into what your CPOP is. That is how you model your life going forward.

Speaker 2: 19:31

So, first question who do you serve? One, two or three words. Not like I serve these 12 different audiences One, two or three words. Not like I serve these 12 different audiences one, two or three words. Who do you serve? And the second is from their perspective, what is the pain point they want to overcome? What are the pleasure point they actually want to reach? And what's fascinating? If you want Michael, I could share mine or I could share one of the clients. What's fascinating is when somebody says who are you? What do you do? If you want Michael, I could share mine or I could share one of the clients. What's fascinating is when somebody says who are you? What do you do If you could answer in a couple seconds where the person who's listening goes oh wait a second. That's interesting. Tell me more, then. That next minute gives you so much credibility because of the clarity you were able to bring for the specificity of who you serve and where you're focusing your energy.