Redefining Thought Leadership: What it Truly Takes With Ashley Faus (Atlassian)

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and I am joined by a friend of the show, Ashley Faus. Welcome.

Ashley Faus: Hello. Good to be back. I was like getting very excited and started dancing in the intro video. And then I was like, Oh no, this is serious time with Michelle.

We're having, you know, we're talking thought leadership, so we gotta be serious time here.

Michelle J Raymond: Is thought leadership serious? Does it need to be?

Ashley Faus: I'm wearing a purple dress. You've got like a purple pink background situation going on. I think we can have a touch of the whimsy in this conversation.

Michelle J Raymond: I think we can, because there's one thing that we can agree on is that I don't think people agree what thought leadership is. There's a word that gets overused on LinkedIn and thrown around like it's anyone's business. Does that press some of your buttons?

Ashley Faus: Oh, it's all the button pressing. I have been a bit sassy over the last week.

I find I've just been coming in. I've been like, I disagree with this. So yes, we can be sassy as well. It definitely irks me. I think the biggest thing that irks me is that so many people [00:01:00] denigrate it and they don't actually know what it is.

They're using it to mean all of these different things, or they're using it as a buzzword. And so they're like, Oh, Ahhh, I'm allergic. And I'm just like, okay. What are you actually allergic to? Which specific ingredient are you allergic to in this recipe?

Michelle J Raymond: Now speaking of this, and that kind of reminds me of my friend Michelle Griffin with personal branding in 2021. Pretty much that was the overarching term that everyone used for everything.

Feel like thought leadership's having a dose of that in 2023. Okay, here's your chance.

Michelle J Raymond: Tell us what is and isn't thought leadership according to Ashley Faus.

Ashley Faus: Sure. So I will start with what it isn't. It isn't quality content. It isn't executive content. It isn't how or why we made this product or service. It is not any of those three things.

What it is, is content that builds trust. It's content that helps [00:02:00] you change people's minds and inform a new direction and push them to innovate and to act and actually helps them do that. So there's a couple things in there, right? If we go back to the basic definition of each of the words.

Thought and leadership, have thoughts, be a leader. And obviously there's some things in there where it's like, okay if we're going to have thoughts, what are those thoughts? Which gets at one of my pillars which we'll talk about in a little bit, but the depth of ideas pillars and be a leader implies that you have to have followers.

And so if you're just sitting in your own silo thinking you're smart thoughts all by yourself, you might have thoughts, but you're not a leader. If you're just famous. You just have a lot of followers, but you're not saying anything useful, you don't have any thoughts. You're just being a leader. So you have to have both of those elements.

And again, we'll talk about the inputs to those elements, but at its core have thoughts. Be a leader.

Michelle J Raymond: That sounds easy because for me, what I've seen is thought [00:03:00] leadership on LinkedIn specifically seems to be if I post regularly and do lots of commenting even, so I don't think it's even just posts, but if I'm active on LinkedIn, that automatically qualifies the person as a thought leader.

What would you say to that?

Ashley Faus: Incorrect again, what is the nature of those comments or posts? And this, fortunately this nonsense is getting called out. It's getting called out from like a pod perspective where people just come in and they're like, well said. Good job. I agree. And you're like, okay, so you can leave a hundred two word comments. You've written 200 whole words and you've said absolutely nothing. If you do that, right?

Unfortunately, now we've got a lot of people who are automating comments with AI. And so it's even worse there again, they're not having any actual thoughts. And I would argue when you post nonsense or you engage in a shallow way.

You also don't have leadership. You're not building a [00:04:00] following. You're not building reputation. You're not enticing people to quote you. You're not in any way being a leader either. You're just there.

Now, there are plenty of people, and I've heard this as well, right? What's the difference between being a subject matter expert or a teacher, right? Teachers help people do things. And it's like, right, but it's not new. It's not innovative in most cases. So you can be curating a lot on LinkedIn and leaving quality comments. But if you're not saying anything new, you're missing the have thoughts piece of this.

You may even be able to build a big following, but you're missing that new changing minds, introducing something new or novel for the have thought piece of it.

Michelle J Raymond: I think a lot of people on LinkedIn would be more entertaining than thought leaders, but because the numbers are big, then people look to them and say, you're a [00:05:00] thought leader as opposed to the last podcast episode that we did together, which I'll share in the show notes.

We talked about the difference between subject matter experts, influencers, and thought leaders. So we won't have enough time to go over that today, but I will point people back in the direction of that conversation. But one of the things that I think came up last time, which I'm gonna throw this one in.

If I say Ashley Faus, you're a thought leader. Like I define you as a thought leader. Does that make you a thought leader of someone from your community or audience or in your mind, do you say, no, Michelle, I'm not a thought leader cause I don't tick the boxes in my framework, which we'll go over in a short moment.

Ashley Faus: I would say I'm not a thought leader according to my own framework. I think that it is a step in the right direction for other people to say, I am a thought leader or for other people to call someone else a thought leader. It's kind of like fight club. The 1st rule of thought leadership is that we don't call ourselves a thought leader.

People who walk around saying [00:06:00] as a thought leader, that's just real weird. It's a thing you don't really call yourself. While it is kind and I appreciate when other people say I'm a thought, it's funny, some people are like, you're a thought leader on thought leadership. And I'm like, I've gone wrong.

I've messed up, you know, with the personal branding. I'm like, no, I've messed up somehow, but I would say that I am not a thought leader according to my own framework.

Michelle J Raymond: Can anyone be a thought leader or is it reserved for the chosen few? Is it a nature versus nurture? Like how does this work in your mind?

Ashley Faus: In my mind, anyone can be a thought leader. It's hard. And I think that as we'll talk about with the pillars, that depth of ideas piece, that is hard. It is hard to come up with new and novel things, and I know that there are a number of different traditions and writings that would say there's nothing new under the sun, and I tend to agree with that, right?

There's an element of it where it's like, all right, guys, most people are not doing truly [00:07:00] visionary, new, groundbreaking stuff. But you do have to have that depth of ideas in terms of helping people think differently. Having people say, huh, I haven't really heard that before, that's interesting.

That sense of, I have to chew on that a little bit. Okay. Perfect. We've got something right and so I think that anyone can be a thought leader. I think that it takes a lot of work and a lot of that work is in researching and experimenting and then codifying that information. There are a lot of people who are really good at their jobs. They're making a ton of money for themselves, for their companies, but they're not taking the time to codify how they're doing that so that other people can use it.

And so when you're doing all of this experimentation, like that's the first piece is making time for that, but then making time to codify it in a way that other people can take it, learn, build on it.

Again, from a teaching perspective,[00:08:00] I think about this with math or English, right? There's certain rules that you gotta follow. Music composition. The truly groundbreaking people know all the rules so well and they can break them effectively. So if you're just teaching rote memorisation or knowledge that is well known, even if that's new to somebody else, it's unlikely to make them go, I'm an expert in this space and you've now changed my perspective.

Michelle J Raymond: Say you're scrolling the LinkedIn feed, a hundred posts go past. How many times a day or a week would you quantify that you see posts that you genuinely think tick that box that the things that make you go, Hmm.

Ashley Faus: That's a hard question. I have a pretty quality LinkedIn feed and I saw like Kerry-Ann, I think you flashed up one of her comments. I think that she's doing really interesting work. Like your posts make me think Michelle even if a lot of what you're saying is very like tactical, stuff that you've executed, it does make me think.

In terms of people who make me question, like [00:09:00] the foundation of how I practice marketing, I think that's quite rare. I think it is hard to truly be a thought leader and to really push people, especially experts beyond tactical execution and really into thinking differently. Especially if they're an expert, right? It's not fair if there's a non marketer and they see my stuff, they're like, this is freaking brilliant. I'm like, okay, it's just because you're not a marketer. You just are an expert in a different area, right.

But when my peers who have that deep expertise, say something like that to me or when I have other peers where I'm like, man, okay, I'm an expert, you're an expert and you just exploded my brain right now.

That's when you're starting to tick into that territory. So I would say it's quite rare.

Michelle J Raymond: I would tend to agree with that. And I think that's the difference between learning and making me reflect on my own thoughts and potentially change what I see is the truth or real or grow or expand. And I think there's an element of that. How do you help me grow and expand [00:10:00] by these new ways of thinking, these new thoughts that are coming along.

Now, we've spoken a lot about maybe what thought leadership isn't, but let's go to your framework,

Michelle J Raymond: the four pillar framework that you have for thought leadership to explain to people how you define thought leadership, what components make it up and why are they important?

Ashley Faus: Sure. So the four things and all of these work together in tandem. I also get this question. I'm like, what if I just do one? I'm like, then you're not a thought leader. Next question. They have to go together.

So the first is credibility. This is really around, do people believe what you say? Some proof points in this vein are how often are you asked to cite your sources versus how often you are cited as the source. So as you grow in this pillar, you'll start to see that flip from Ashley Faus says that according to the Edelman trust barometer, blah, blah, blah, versus, blah, blah, blah. Ashley Faus says, and that's it. So that's the first piece, that credibility.

[00:11:00] Second is profile. This is around how many people know you. This is around the prestige of your outlets. This is around the number of followers that you have. This is around the number of inbound requests for prestigious podcasts or the number of pitch acceptance, if you pitch for a conference. This is what a lot of people think of, when they think of influencers and mistakenly think of when they think of thought leaders, you're like, they have a big following. They're everywhere. So that's just one pillar.

The next pillar is being prolific. So how often are you writing, speaking? Are you sharing on social media? Again, this one is really hard for a lot of people, especially executives. Like they actually have pretty good credibility because they, run the business. They've been doing it for a while, but they don't make time to share. And they're not in a lot of places. This can also be something, I know you'll share it in the show notes, but where influencers, like if you're only an Instagram influencer, you're only a LinkedIn influencer, or you only do one thing that means you're not very [00:12:00] prolific.

And then the last pillar is the depth of ideas piece. And this is the one where people struggle, right? This is the actual new novel ideas. This is codifying it. It's the research. This is the piece where it actually gives you something to share and be prolific about to help you, build that profile.

So you're known for something, but obviously you have to have that credibility piece. It goes hand in hand. There are a number of topics that I know absolutely nothing about. I'm an actor. I can probably stand up and BS those things confidently, but if you are truly an expert and you truly have that credibility you would easily suss out that I'm just a good actor, right? So that depth of ideas piece is key. You have to actually have thoughts and you have to actually know your space.

Michelle J Raymond: Have you ever been able to quantify numbers of followers? Is there a magical number in all of your research that you've done to put together this framework that you would say this ticks the box for a thought leader or does it adjust depending [00:13:00] what you're being a thought leader in potentially? Cause I know people like to quantify these things.

Have I made it according to Ashley's four pillar framework? What number do I need to be at or does it matter if it's just a small niche that I'm playing in that little sandbox or how does that work?

Ashley Faus: My thinking has evolved on this since I actually first started putting together the framework. So I actually asked this question on LinkedIn a while back, I was like, what is the minimum number of followers? I had originally quantified it and this was coming from software as a service like B2B lens.

And I built this framework at this point, it's been several years. And so I quantified the lowest level of at least a thousand followers, the middle level of at least 5,000 followers. And then the highest level as over 10,000 followers. And at the time, a lot of the asks were around like what do we need to get our executives to? And I'm like, okay we can build a following for an executive that's different than making them a thought leader, but sure we got to have some benchmarks.

So my thinking has evolved [00:14:00] on that as the creator economy has expanded, as the definition of an influencer has expanded and that profile piece in terms of audience size and ability to influence.

And prestige, like actually Davos and the World Economic Forum are some of the most prestigious stages conferences you can attend and they're small audiences intentionally. So I'm evolving my thinking on that to say it does depend on the topic and kind of the niche and then the market and your goal.

So I still think you should probably be in at least the four figures of followers to start to crack this because again, you got to have an audience and an audience of two or an audience of a hundred total, it's quite small. But I don't think that the numbers that I have outlined in the literature I put out on my framework are correct anymore.

Michelle J Raymond: And I love that your framework's evolved. That's the one thing that you taught me back in the previous conversation, that you're [00:15:00] always testing these things, throwing it out to the audience, getting feedback, having a think about it, coming back and saying it could be this, it could be that.

And I think it's important, when we talk about these numbers, we are not saying, go back to the first point that you made, you can't just take one box and say, I'm a thought leader. So if I'm sitting on plus 10,000, I don't qualify as a thought leader, it's just one of the many boxes.

The only thing I would say to those numbers, which is probably more important. It takes time and energy to build those numbers for most people, unless you work for a big company with a big brand behind you, and there's some other form of support for most mere mortals, like most of us, we have to spend time, energy to build that community up. It doesn't happen overnight.

And I know that there are people probably sitting there going, how do you even do that? I can't get past 2000. It's like the glass ceiling that they've got to break through, but I think it's important to whilst, yes, you've put some numbers to it, we still have to look at [00:16:00] these other three parts of the pillars and make sure that we're doing all of those things.

And you're right. When I think about the effort that it would take to tick all four, there is a reason that there is very few people that would qualify as a true thought leader as per your framework.

If you're starting out. I have a question. So we're beginning, we want to be a thought leader. So that's my goal in two years, five years. I want to be a thought leader.

Michelle J Raymond: Credibility, profile, prolific depth of ideas. Can I prioritise one in the beginning or should I do a little bit of everything and just build on that over time?

Ashley Faus: I would start by being prolific and I know that sounds counterintuitive. Instead of starting with depth of ideas, what I'll say is that depth of ideas is freaking hard. Coming up with smart stuff is hard.

And so if you sit down and again, this is like classic writer's block, right? Where the blank page mocks [00:17:00] you, you're like, I will now write.

What are you going to write? For me, I find that if I sit down and I'm like, I shall be smart today. It is inevitably everything I come up with is just nonsense. It doesn't work. So if you're prolific, that means that you're starting to train yourself to look for the patterns to go beyond your normal box.

To actually write, speak, think, to articulate these things. And I find that it's also a way to, to discover and get more inputs. So anytime I come on podcasts like this and people ask me questions or my content playground framework, and people are like, what about this thing? And I'm like, that's a good point. Let's play this out. And then I'm like, I've now discovered a whole analogy within my framework that I can use.

So I would say, start by being prolific because sitting in an ivory tower, trying to think all the thinks, is just a recipe for disaster. I would couple that very closely, though, with depth of ideas. Don't just start spitting out nonsense. Start with problems [00:18:00] that you're solving today, and then ask people, have you tried to solve this problem? How are you solving it? Have you used this solution? Are you seeing any issues with this solution? For me, I get a lot of questions around like, how do you find your angle?

And I'm like, I don't, I just think about the problems that I've had to solve. And if I've done that effectively, here's why. If I've not been effective doing that okay, why? And what should I have done differently? And so I find that it's really helpful to just be prolific and try a lot of different things and ways of sharing. And then that helps me back into or codify the depth of ideas.

Michelle J Raymond: If anyone wants a reason for why you have to be prolific, go to my LinkedIn profile, go to the activity section and scroll over to either images or posts, probably images or even videos, scroll all the way down and see what I was creating two, three, four, five years ago. You can see it all now, thanks to the new activity layout.

And even when I look at [00:19:00] it, I look at it and I go, wow, how far have I come? Now this whole podcast, traces back to doing LinkedIn lives, traces back to, I wouldn't even do a video, traces back to, I didn't even know how to look at the lens and the camera.

So it didn't look like I had those kinds of crazy eyes. I didn't know how to not do 50 million filler words every video. My advice was always quite tactical and almost reflected the LinkedIn help book which was fine.

Again, it's the evolution over time that comes with practice. This thing doesn't happen by magic. This happens by hours and hours over years of trying things, seeing what works, watching what's going on the platform, choosing the parts that work for me and what don't.

I have a question. Where do you see in thought leadership, the role of being a contrarian? Do you need to be contrarian to be original?

Or how do you think that this plays out? Cause I've seen some literature that comes out of the B2B Institute with LinkedIn, and [00:20:00] they're all pretty hard on of go contrarian. You go left, they go right. That's how you stand out. Does that fit into your framework anywhere?

Ashley Faus: I would say that being contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian does not make you a thought leader. New ideas and disruptive ideas tend to make people uncomfortable. And so it, it tends to feel contrarian, but it's not just, you, Michelle have now said that you had to practice and spend five years getting to where you are. If I just come out and say, no, never practice, just wing it.

I've been contrarian. I have contradicted you. I've said the opposite of what you said, but I have added no value. I have not actually changed anyone's thinking. And what I've said is actually not novel. So that's a hook, right? If I say, everyone says you have to practice 10,000 hours, I can do it in five, right? Tim Ferriss's whole shtick is the four hour work week.

So I would say that being contrarian tends to be an output of having strong depth of ideas and [00:21:00] sharing new and innovative and disruptive things. I don't think that just saying the opposite of whatever the current best practice is automatically makes you a thought leader.

I would also say the way that you do it matters. And so what a lot of people try to do, and this becomes like a brand thing where they're like, I do the opposite punch you in the face. And you're just like, I don't want to listen to you. I think you're wrong.

If you come at me and you're just trying to come out of the corner swinging that I'm, I'm stupid. My tactics are dead. All best practices are wrong. It's just go away. Versus if I come out and say, I've been trying to solve this problem, here's the traditional solutions that I've tried. And honestly, they're not working for me.

So here's what I'm doing instead. That's what resonates with people. And it's the same thing with this framework. People frequently try to nail me down about the rules of thought leadership. And I'm like, that's not what this is called. This is called a framework. It means there's some guidelines. Even you asking me, what are the numbers?

And I'm like, my thinking is evolved. And I don't actually think that the thresholds that I set [00:22:00] originally are applicable in my own space anymore. Or that they are applicable for every space. So if you're just coming at it and hard lining on a set of rules that are the opposite of whatever the current rules are, that's being contrarian, but that is not being a thought leader.

Michelle J Raymond: Curiosity question. Do you see someone like, and I'm just going to say it, Gary Vee as a thought leader, where do you fit him into these? Now, I'm saying it because most people know it. And it's an example where he ticks your box with numbers, ticks the box with prolific. What doesn't he tick the boxes?

And why don't you think he's a thought leader judging by the look on your face that maybe some of the listeners won't see?

Ashley Faus: Yeah. The listeners won't see the smirk. From my perspective I actually think he falls into that contrarian bucket in terms of depth of ideas where he's saying the opposite of what is the case or what is the best practice or what a lot of businesses are currently doing.

And so I think that's the biggest [00:23:00] thing for me is the depth of ideas piece. I would also say that as he has gotten bigger and as he has gotten more contrarian, I would say his credibility has started to take a hit over the last few years. The fact that you bring him up as the example and the fact that anytime his name comes up, there's this like a little bit of an eye roll to me would suggest that his credibility is not as high as it was when he was actually in the business doing the work when he was starting out and really starting to do some new and innovative things.

I think he's swung a little bit into just man, contrarian guy with a big voice. And you're just like, okay, dude. Like.... that's enough of that.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, and I use it as an example because most people know him and it is quite divisive, which team people sit on and what you can take and what you can't.

But for me personally, I don't know it depends on the day, which way I would sit when it comes to him. But is there an element that when you start to be so prolific, that you just end up having so much out there that [00:24:00] the depth of ideas slips and it becomes a volume game. Is that what the danger is?

Ashley Faus: I think so. And, I think there's been some interesting conversations happening on LinkedIn. I want to say Dan Sanchez has talked about this a bit with audience growth and engagement to say that as you start to grow and you see those big numbers, you end up watering down your content to appeal to the masses and your audience growth stagnates because it's hard to come up with new ideas.

And so for a while you could repurpose and recycle because you were getting so many new people, but once you hit a certain size, they've seen it all. And so in order for you to keep producing and keep trying to grow, You now have to appeal to the masses. And I'll say I faced this some with my own content, right?

Like it's hard to be that smart and be smarter than all the other experts in the space all the time. Like I wrestled with this thought leadership problem for [00:25:00] years before I came up with this framework that I actually feel like I can stand by.

I don't know that I have another framework at this depth like in me that often, I just I've been talking about this for a couple of years now. I'm hoping I can keep talking about it. Cause I think it's useful. And obviously there's a lot of evolution, but in terms of the number of frameworks or, new ideas, like I wrestled with this problem for the better part of a decade to come up with this.

So if I only get one framework, once every decade, that's going to be really hard. And so I think people underestimate the amount of time it takes from a depth of ideas perspective, and I think about like scientists and those types of people based on their whole life, trying to cure 1 disease or to make a breakthrough in 1 area of science.

And obviously, we're not doing brain surgery here with thought leadership frameworks, but I just think about how many inputs and how much time I had to spend wrestling with problems to come up with the work that I've come up with. And if I were to think about doing that, like there's just no way I could come up with such smart stuff at that [00:26:00] volume.

Michelle J Raymond: It's interesting because to me, when we talk about this as a real life example that I can think about in my mind, it's almost like you can go from subject matter expert to potentially maybe influencer or thought leader. And then depending which way you go, you could switch back again and go from thought leader back to influencer.

And I think evolution happens as creators. Like for me creating a framework, I'm not there yet. Like I have so much going on that I'm building in my business that I will get to that and I would love to do it. And it's something you encourage me to do. And I'm still thinking about those things, but for me, it has definitely been something that it would be great to be known for that something. It would be great to be able to talk about it and I will get there, but I'm not there yet.

As much as other people may see that I've come so far, I help them get further, which is what I love doing most. I love helping other people reach their potential rather than focus on me quite so much, but I'm going to ask a bit of a sticky question of you.

I [00:27:00] left it till last because it ties back to the fact that this word gets thrown around so much. I've had the argument on LinkedIn that

Michelle J Raymond: if someone uses, I'm going to say ghost writer, you can use generative AI because ChatGPT is all the rage on the platform.

If I use those things, can I still be a thought leader or do you need to do it yourself? What's your thoughts? And then I'll let you know mine.

Ashley Faus: This is going to probably surprise you. I think you can be a thought leader, if you use a ghost writer or you use generative AI. The problem is that most people aren't using a ghost writer or using generative AI. They're trying to use a ghost thinker.

They have no actual ideas. They have no source material. They're not willing to get in a room and generate ideas or provide source material. In order to have a ghost, you have to have someone to ghost, right?

So you cannot outsource the thinking. You cannot outsource the problem solving. You can outsource the repurposing, you can outsource the distribution, you cannot outsource the [00:28:00] thinking. So that's where my issue comes in is that if you don't have that base of source material, if you aren't solving problems, if you don't have those ideas, if you haven't codified it at some point yourself in some fashion, that could be voice notes that can then be transcribed and turned into an article. That's fine.

But you have to have something to ghost. You have to have actual things to feed into the AI to reswizzle for you. If you don't have those, then that's the issue that makes you not a thought leader. It's not the tools that you're using. It's the lack of thinking.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah. And giving someone else three pillars and telling them that's what you want to talk about that for me is not thought leadership.

And I think as well, thought leadership isn't just what we post on LinkedIn. It could be like, as you said, getting onto a podcast like this, it could be speaking somewhere. You have to then go and articulate it elsewhere.

Now, what I've discovered using ChatGPT is it's only as good as the questions and prompts that you ask it. And if you have zero [00:29:00] knowledge on the topic, it is so hard. And you don't even know if you've got good answers that come out.

With my operation rebrand, I used Chat GPT a lot to try and come up with missions and value statements and all this kind of stuff. And I had to say to it, ask me what you need to know, because I didn't even know what to ask it.

I was like, can you please ask me five questions that you need to write this? And thankfully it did. And I answered each of them. But as it came out, I don't know how long they should be. I have to do a whole bunch more research. And so that was only just on something quite simple.

That was not thought leadership, not even anywhere near that end of the scale. But for me, most of that stuff comes out too generic and I've tried to write content on behalf of people back in the beginning and I hated it, Ashley, and I still do because I've never felt like I could capture their experiences, their nuances, their storytelling no matter how much they provided me.

Now, I'm sure that there are a skilled copywriters and [00:30:00] ghostwriters out there that do this full time. And I do not want to take away from the skills that they have. But for me personally, I was like, I can't pretend that I'm you. And so this is why I get a bit salty about this.

And I that there's an element, you have to do that heavy lifting yourself and then use these tools to support what you're doing. So I think we're probably on the same page. So that's turned out okay, we're still friends because that would have been bad.

It would have been really bad because you are my first LinkedIn person that I got to meet face to face from the other side of the world. To not have that continue, that would be bad.

So my very last thing, the floor is yours. One last tip or point that you'd like to make about thought leadership or maybe your framework that you think is an important thing for people to take away as they listen today.

Ashley Faus: I will say that you don't have to be a thought leader to have business impact. And I think that there are a lot of people who get very intimidated thinking that they have to reach the very top of every single pillar, otherwise they're not good at their job.

They [00:31:00] won't grow in their career. They won't attract leads, they won't attract opportunities. That is incorrect. And that's why at the very beginning I said thought leadership is not quality content or sales content or executive content. You can be effective without being a thought leader.

That said, let's not pretend that we're thought leaders just because we're trying to drive these other objectives, right?

So I do think that it is worth separating out the impact that you can drive by being a subject matter expert or an influencer, or just being really good at your job in your company. That's totally fine.

But if you're going to be a thought leader, you have to respect that you have to put in the time.

Michelle J Raymond: I think that is the best place that we can end this conversation.

As always, another brilliant conversation. Thank you, Ashley, for sharing your wonderful framework.

Thank you, everybody that's joined us recording this live and thank you to all the podcast listeners.

If you are listening to this, I would really love it, if you enjoyed this, if you could leave us a podcast review or drop some comments so that Ashley can reach out to you and [00:32:00] you can connect as well.

Thank you everyone until next time. Cheers.