Why We Can't "Turn" Someone Into a Thought Leader

RANT: No one can position you as a thought leader if you aren’t one already.

Here’s why:

If you are a junior marketing manager who is still learning the craft, creating content won’t make you a thought leader in the field of marketing.

You must put out content to share what you’re learning and document your journey, and that’ll help advance your career goals.

But unless you’ve been a CMO or VP of marketing at a big company or built your own organization from zero to 100, your thoughts won’t cut through the noise.

I feel like 50% of the time, Linkedin agencies use “We will turn you into a thought leader” as their pitch.

I realized, while that’s a nice pitch, that’s not how it works.

You become a thought leader by developing deep expertise and having “thought-leading thoughts.”

So when we onboard new founders as clients, I want to see if they’ve been in the industry for a while and build a sustainable business for a couple of years.

Only if they’re thought leaders already, we can create content to effectively distribute their thoughts and insights to the world.

But you can’t “turn” someone into a thought leader.