We’re going to mention the words Thought Leader or Thought Leadership a lot in this book. It’s a good time to set the base and define what is Thought Leadership.
Thought Leadership is a form of content marketing. It’s also a form of branding, more specifically personal branding with business intent.
Often gurus get confused it with becoming an authority or an influencer. Becoming an authority or an influencer is not the same as a thought leader.
In business terms, authority is someone qualified to have a say on a specific matter. An influencer is anyone who can influence the buying (or social) behaviour of an audience.
You can’t be an influencer without an audience. But you can be an authority without an audience.
Authority does not need to have original ideas. It’s more like compliance. Conformity of established ideas. But the core of thought leadership is originality.
An example, a lawyer can be an authority and prove their knowledge in legal matters.
That does not make them a Thought Leader by itself.
A thought leader is someone who influences people on an intellectual level. With their authoritative thoughts that challenge the norms and established dogma.
This originality comes from disruptive inventions and disruptive innovations. Thought leaders are people who move the frame of reference people have.
Thought leaders have their proprietary thoughts to get certain results. These thoughts are contagious. And often form the system or core philosophy on which you do everything.
This philosophy can be in the form of a unique set of belief systems, methodologies, frameworks, tools, formulas or blueprints.
In short, you give the world a way to look around as see things the way that you see. This originality may come from your unique findings.
These could be an invention (something that didn’t exist before) or innovation (mix and match of existing things to make something new).
And… Thought Leadership is disruptive by nature. It almost always challenges the common practice or assumptions.
Books are the cornerstones of thought leadership since the beginning of books. Thought leaders can be found in any niche but we are going to limit our discussion to business context.
Let me give you some examples of Thought Leaders in today’s times:
- Strengthfinder 2.0 by Tom Roth
- Blue Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Shift by W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
- Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
- Building Your StoryBrand by Donald Miller
- Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson
- Money: Master The Game by Tony Robbins
- Objectivism by Ayn Rand
It’s not uncommon to see a cult-like following building up around the ideas of thought leaders.
The challenge is to get enough reach. Get the ideas in right hands that will follow you and be willing to do business with you. This is where we use business and marketing systems.
More specifically, we are going to discuss building your THOUGHT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM with your book.
Before we jump right into it, let me introduce myself.
Who am I and why you should listen to me?
I am Ed Evan Rich and I live in a small town in the UK called, Dursley, with my wife Olga and a polite but thunderbolt kid, Isaac.
Dursley is a historic market town located in the most beautiful area of England called Cotswolds.
People in this town don’t usually like J.K.Rowling.
Why?
When she was writing her first Harry Potter book, she was living in a place called Yate (which is just 13 min away by a local train).
Do you remember the foster parents of Harry Potter?
Those were boring, predictable and more Hobbit-like in their attitude towards adventure.
And she named them Dursley family. That’s why.
I really love this place, it’s a natural beauty.
I am an entrepreneur and thought leadership brand strategist. I help coaches, consultants, business authors and thought leaders with building cult-like following.
I do it using videos, paid social ads, marketing funnels and marketing automation.
I am also a co-founder of Thought Leadership Mastery. It’s powered by my digital agency called, Booksmind.
I host interviews with experts through my podcasts, WebTV shows and online virtual summits.
In the past 5 years, I have provided white label digital marketing services to some of the well known digital marketing agencies.
My speciality is in working with Thought Leaders and Celebrity Entrepreneurs on getting clients from their personal brand.
I have also served as the Head of Digital Marketing for various online publishing companies. One such company is Oikosofy.
At Oikosofy, I built book funnels for the agile coaching industry. I helped authors profitably sell their courses, consulting services and get invited to speak at conferences.
All that at the back of selling (or giving away profitably) their book through their own distribution system.
My campaigns have generated multiple six and seven figures per year per campaign.
In some instances, I got up to 84% conversion rates on opt-in pages and $130K per month in revenues within one hour of a launch from scratch.
Even before we optimised the campaign.
I have also created a course called, “Blog Post That Builds Authority” with 2700+ students.
I work from a home office which doubles as my online summits recording studio.
My Big Promise to You
I promise you that by the time you finish this book you’ll feel confident and capable of getting clients predictably as a result of applying the system I teach in this book.
Heck, you’ll even be able to go and build this system by yourself.
If you don’t have time and would rather someone else build this system for you then just apply to be on a call with me.
This is the only book in the world that covers so many book funnels all in one place.
How to use this book?
No book is perfect. This is not an exception. This is an evolving book and I will keep updating it based on the feedback I get.
I’ve written this book with execution in mind. You won’t find the following pages filled with stories. Instead, you’ll find theory and maps that will show you exactly how to apply this knowledge.
This is a reference book for business authors, coaches, consultants and high ticket service providers. People who are actively building their thought leadership brand and have a book in the mix.
I’d recommend you to give it a full read the first time. Once you understand the concepts then use it as a reference.
If you want to jump to particular Funnel Maps, use these links:
- Crowdsourced Book Funnel
- Pre-Sell Book Funnel
- Book Purchase Funnel
- Free Book Funnel
- Free Chapter Book Funnel
- Free Plus Shipping Funnel
- Book Bribe Offer Funnel
Take a printout of this book if you like and use it with whiteboard while explaining the concepts to your teams.
Also, feel free to buy additional copies of this book for each of your team members (if you have an in-house team to implement this stuff).
If you don’t have an in-house team and don’t have time to do this stuff yourself, give me a shout.
We’ll come on a call and custom map this stuff. And if you like, even implement it all.
