Daria Vodopianova Become the Go-to Expert in Your Field – The Why, What and How of Scaling Your Thought Leadership
Why Thought Leadership Will Help Your Business Stand Out
Running a successful coaching business often means taking on the role of a thought leader. Being a thought leader allows you to share your knowledge, impact more people and find a new form of business stability that doesn't depend on having a large office or large expenses. Instead, you can make a living from your knowledge. But thought leadership isn’t just about expressing your thoughts, it's about standing out and connecting with your audience genuinely, so they value your expertise and don't compare you based on pricing.
Why Thought Leadership Matters?
The rise of solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and coaches is increasingly making it hard for professionals to stand out. If you don't elevate yourself as a thought leader, you may find yourself competing on pricing, which is never an ideal situation. Becoming a thought leader positions you as an expert in your field and an innovative collaborator rather than another competitor. In turn, you can charge premium prices and land more opportunities because you stand out and your peers know what you stand for.
What Makes a Thought Leader Stand Out?
Being a thought leader is more than just sharing your opinions or expertise. An effective thought leader needs to do the following:
- Structure their thoughts into a clear step-by-step process: By developing a framework for your unique approach, it becomes easier for your audience to follow your path and understand your ideas.
- Innovate: Thought leaders need to bring fresh ideas to the table and create new conversations around their topics of expertise.
- Develop communication skills: Whether it’s public speaking, writing emails, or selling, thought leaders need to have strong communication skills to share their ideas and engage with their audience effectively.
- Practice visionary thinking: The best thought leaders are visionaries who can see beyond the present and imagine future possibilities. They spend significant time each day thinking and developing their thoughts.
5 Strategies to Develop as a Thought Leader
Here are some steps to help you develop as a thought leader in your area of expertise:
- Monomaniac obsession: Choose a topic or scope of knowledge you want to be known for. Stay focussed on it for at least three years, discussing it at every opportunity.
- Learn to think: Spend at least 30% of your time each day refining your frameworks and thought processes. This focused time will lead to greater innovation and clarity in your message.
- Develop ways to share your ideas: Can you explain your primary thought or idea in 10 minutes or stretch it over a year-long program? Learning to adapt and extend your core knowledge gives you more opportunities to share.
- Adapt your ideas for your audience: Whether your audience is beginners or advanced in your field, you need to be able to tailor your message to be most effective and engaging for them.
- Enrol people into your vision: Become effective at bringing people onboard with your ideas. This means developing skills in selling, marketing, and communication.
Becoming a thought leader is a journey, but it's one that can lead to significant rewards, not just for you, but for your audience and clients too. It gives you a chance to stand out and make a genuine impact in your field. Remember, we all have something to share, so take the leap, become a thought leader, and let your message be heard.
Video Transcription
All right, we have 20 minutes to go. So it's a quite short session and I will try to really sum up the most important. So just read a short about me, I run the thought leadership academy, my partner.And what I do is I take people who have a knowledge from making a living with coaching, into becoming the expert and becoming thought leader. And the reason why I'm doing this because I really think that we all have something to share. We all have a message to share. So it's so important that you have a message that you can share with your audience in any way that you can, in any way that you want. And why I do this is because I had this language center for many years ago and training center. And I didn't know how to scale. And thought leadership was really the, the way for me to find a new way to make a business and not having to always uh worry about, you know, having a big office or having big over uh spending. It's more about how can I live from my knowledge, how can I live from my my message and how can I impact more people. So let me know that resume. Just say yes, it's a good for you. And I'm a speaker full time.
I speak at TED X, I speak at European Innovation Academy, Remax Annual Convention, Women in Tech. I love speaking. I'm very excited to share this message with you today. So let's just write jump right in. We are going to talk about why you should care about that leadership, what this is really about and how you can take the first steps and why I'm gonna keep it very, very short. The why is basically if you are speaking today, if you're a facilitated, if you're a coach, if you're a trainer, if you are doing some type of engagement with an audience where you are sharing your message, what's really important to understand is that there are so many other people doing the same today.
More than ever. We have solo Preneurs, we have freelancers, we have speakers, facilitators coach, just Google on. If you Google business coach or if you Google coach or speaker, you will be overwhelmed with things that comes up online. So if you don't start to learn how to become a thought leader, how to develop your expertise, how to be known as the person in your field. What happens? Well, what happens is that you will have to compete about pricing. Imagine yourself if you're going online and you have someone searching even on linkedin about for a business coach, what they will find is that they will find thousands of people doing business coaching or they find thousands of people doing live coaching or thousands of people doing the same thing because they all have the same title.
And what's the, why is that the problem? Because when you don't have something that people understand that? Ok, I understand what you're doing and your, your potential client is not understanding that what happens is that they get into analysis paralysis. They don't know who to choose.
So they don't know how to choose the person they're going to work with or they who they are going to hire for speaking engagement or something else because there's just too much information, our brain cannot take that in. And secondly, if they don't know how to choose, they start to compete over pricing and pricing is really never the good, good idea to, to really talk about. So there is a question of how can I give value, really work with people who value myself, really work with people who are, you know, understanding what my message is, what my voice is. So I don't have to compete over pricing. So I don't have to compete with other people in my industry. Instead I become a collaborator. Instead I can charge premium prices. Instead I can really stand out and get more opportunities. Because if you are not standing out as the expert, the go to person, you're in a very competitive industry and we, you don't want to compete with our peers, you wanna work together. So here's why we really have to work on thought leadership development. So you become an expert in very specific space where you are the one the go to person and then you don't have to compete over all this pricing.
And you get much more opportunities, you get much more, you know, premium pricing and and collaborations with peers because they know what you stand for. So let me know if you, you, you understand what that means and why don't we do that already? Why is it that so many people struggle still to stand out. So many people struggle to be the speaker on the stage. They, they struggle to have, you know, pricing um being really in in their field, why do they struggle because we never learned to do this when we study in school, when we study in university, no matter what you have studied. And in the new school that you've gone to, we never learned how to do this. We never learn how to become the expert in the field. And therefore we are all in the industry today where the coaching industry is one of the fastest growing industry in the world. There are so many solo preneurs, so many freelancers and we are no one knows how to do this. So this is my mission and this is really what, what I care about because I think we need to learn how, how to stand out. We need to learn how to be the expert because we can grow together. It's co elevation, it's not competition. We are working together on being the experts and finding a way to innovate. All right. So this is the why?
So I want you to think it's a very short session today. Usually I have 45 minutes. But I want you to think how can you find your why for why you should care about this? Because when you're going to work on your thought leadership, you want to always come back and say, OK, this is why I am doing this. This is why it matters to me. To me, this matters because I really want to impact more people and I don't want to compete over pricing and I want to compete with my peers. I wanna have this as a real innovation, real collaboration. This is super important to me. So this is why I am doing it. I want you to find your own way and wow, so many people joining today, 137 people very, very grateful for having all you with me here today. All right, I'm going to jump right into. There were four things I thought leader does differently. So the why was really for you to understand that it's not the question anymore. We have to learn to do this, to make sure that the business that we, the business structure that we develop, the business environment that we develop is becoming better for everybody. It's really about that. Now, what does authority do differently from someone who is not authority?
Let's talk about this. I'm gonna give you four things that you can do and you can think about those four things and say, am I already during this, am I already taking action in these parts in my own life? No matter if you're a speaker, a facilitator, maybe you're a manager or mid-level or senior manager, maybe you are a facility uh coach or consultant, no matter what you are think about. Am I doing those four things? So if you want to become a thought leader, those are the four things to think about to do differently in your everyday life. Number one, are you ready for it? Number one, structure your thoughts and frameworks into a clear step by step process. So here's the thing. Someone who is a consultant who is someone who's a coach, someone who's a speaker, someone who is even working with a team. If they have a knowledge in their mind, they have all these skills and all this expertise, but they might not understand the step by step process that took them to become the expert. So if they don't understand that, how can they then teach someone else? And the thought leader is someone who thinks and teaches other people how they can do the same thing. So the first thing we wanna do, if you wanna do things differently is that we want to develop a framework and we want to develop a step by step process.
So other people can follow the path that we are doing. This is really important because if you learn how to really structure your thought process and say, oh this is what I'm doing. This is what I, how I'm creating this, you know, success path, then you can give that success path to someone as a coaching package, as a keynote, as a book, as a training in house or outhouse, you can do so much with that knowledge, you can liberate it from your brain and give it to other people.
That's the first thing you wanna do. You want to make sure that you learn how to create frameworks and step by step processes. The second thing you wanna do is that you want to innovate. So a thought leader is someone who is not just thinking like everybody else. A thought leader is someone who's really thinking. OK, how can I create new conversations around this topic? So if you're a business coach or if you're a consultant or if you're a speaker, you wanna bring something to the table and of course, you don't have to re invent the wheel. You already have, you know, shoulders that you can stand on the giant shoulder that you can stand on. However you want to make sure that you add something to the conversation. So thought leader does not just repeat what other people are saying because they create their framework because they understand how they're thinking. They're starting to say, oh, this is how we can innovate in the industry. This is very important. So they are thinking, how can I add something?
Where do I agree? Where do I not agree in this conversation? And how can I add something to this conversation? So they're starting to really reflect about that. Number three is when the thought leader has thought about innovation and created a framework, they're starting to also develop skills to share their framework, they develop skills to share their framework, to develop their skills, to share their, you know, innovation. It's not only for themselves, they are going to share it with other people and how do they do that? They develop skills of communication, speaking. If you're going to be a thought leader, you have to develop communication skills for speaking, right? We are writing so much online emails, newsletters, post publications, books, all these things that we are writing, you need to develop the copywriting skills, you want to develop selling skills. Because if you want to make sure that you have the time to work on this full time, you wanna make sure that you actually have the time you're not working on the side with something else, you can focus your full energy on developing your thought leadership. So you wanna be able to sell your knowledge in the way that you can invite people into what you're doing. And the last thing is you wanna practice your visionary thinking every day.
So if you think about some people, if you can think about visionaries, there mean even the Anna and the team who created women tech network, they are visionaries. They had this idea of how can I do something different, Elon Musk or you know, Michelle Obama, there's Oprah, anyone that you can think about, there's so many visionaries out there and of course, they are not spending the whole day just doing administration and you know, taking out trash like garbage or they're not just, you know, looking into what is the best flight to this and that they're having a team or they may be outsourcing, they're spending most of their time in their visionary thinking.
They're thinking, how can I think better? How can I create more um support for what I'm doing? My framework, my methods. How can I create structure? How can I share my knowledge? They're developing their communication skills, they're developing ways of delivering their message they're spending in every day, they spend at least 30% of their time working with their knowledge. So this is very important that you think about for yourself. If you're a consultant or speaker keynoter or somehow you're, you want to develop your thought leadership? Are you a visionary in your life? Are you administrator? Are you working for yourself? And you know, in, in a part where you're mostly spending time on your website or are you out sharing your message? Are you thinking, how can I develop my framework? How can I become a better communicator? How can I find an audience? All those questions will involve you having a bigger impact? So just to kind of re re go back a bit a couple of seconds and think about those four things that I mentioned, I thought leader, what do they do differently? Number one, they structure their thoughts into frameworks.
Number two, they innovate. Number three, they develop communication skills. There is sales or keen copywriting or it might be even speaking on stage and number every single day. So I want you to write that right now. Which one do you want to work more on if you think about yourself? Like, oh actually, I have to work more on this part. Is it framework? Is it innovation? Is it communication skills or is it visionary thinking? Just write out that word? So we also know what, what the accountability that comes with. You also having to think about it right now, communication skills, Alina saying, communication, visionary amazing innovation, visionary thinking structure, communication, communication. OK. Oh Wow, wonderful, wonderful. So it's very different. Lots of people say communication skills.
So communication skill is something that you can really train yourself in. All these things is not impossible for you. It's just that you have to take that decision and say I want to do this. I want to really work on this. Ok. Good. Let's go to the next part. I know I'm going very fast. We have seven more minutes and I have a, a very important part. I want to talk to you about how to get started. So I'm gonna give you five steps that you can do right now to develop your thinking. So this is something we spoke about more and how you can do things different in your day. But I also wanna do and more step by step process for you right now. So five things that you can have in mind when you want to develop your thought. Number one, I want you to become monomaniac. So what I mean by that is that I want you to think talk, sell enroll people into one single thing that you want to be known for. So for me, it's thought leadership. I'm obsessed with authorship. I speak about that day and night. 33, like every morning and every night, every talk, I do every podcast. I do every conversation I have is about how can you raise your thought leader. So it's about you finding that word. Think about it right now.
What is that word that you can be obsessed about for three years? At least three years because sometimes people tell me, well, I, I'm not really sure, but I want you to think right now, three years you'd only have one word you can talk about and you need to speak about it. In every book, you write every conversation you have every, you know, Facebook group, you run every talk, you do every podcast, you do. What is that one word that can sum up your idea? Uh limitless. Now, can you think about, is it mindset that you're thinking about? Is it something that is more about? What is that word that can be uh helping? Yes. Amazing mindset. So it can be mindset. It can be um linkedin. It can be business development for, for women in, in, in tech. What is that word? Productivity. Amazing. So that is your word. It's your obsession, put it on your wall, put it with a post it and think about it every day. Think about that word because that's gonna be your guiding word for the upcoming three years. OK. So that's the first thing. Number two, you need to learn to fake. We all know how to think, but I want you to remember one thing in the day, you should spend at least 30% of your time thinking and developing your processes.
So in your schedule, you wanna develop time to think more and think it means that how can you spend 30% of the time thinking in your schedule, 30% of your time selling your enrolling people into your vision. This is a way for me to enroll you into vision because I believe in this and I want you to believe in this as well. Um And 30% of the time I want you to think in delivery. So this is also a bit of delivery at the same time. So every day, I want you to think 30% of the time you're selling people into your vision, 30% of the time you're developing in your cave frameworks and thought processes and 30% of the time you are delivering your message, even if it's a Facebook live, no matter what you're doing, you wanna go live, you wanna share that message.
So this is for you. Number two, learn to think at least 30% of your time in a day. Look into your structure and see how much time are you really spending on thinking. OK. Number three, learn to share your one idea in 10 minutes or one year. So I share this in 10 minutes with today. I have a one year coaching program where I share this in the one year program. I have this in 90 days. I have it in three weeks. I have it in six weeks. I have the same monomaniac word that I told you about that you're gonna put on your wall and I talk about it over and over again because that word, that word, I can stretch it. I can stretch that idea. So people start to see that. I can do it in 10 seconds. I can, no, not 12th baby, but 10 minutes, I can do that in 20 minutes. I can do it in so many different ways. So people can tap into my knowledge and they can take as much as they want. They don't have to take it all. I don't, they all have to learn one year. But if they want to learn for one hour or if they want to read a book about it or if they want to do a course about it, if they want to do a group coaching about it, they have access to my knowledge and they can then really extend and go as much as they want.
So this is a really powerful way for you to think, learn to share your idea in 10 minutes to one year. At least it's the same idea that you stretch. OK. Number four, learn to adapt your ideas to your audience. It's never about you. It's always about them. So think who you're speaking to that. I that, that, that idea of extending your thoughts into 10 minutes to one year, you also have to know are the experience, are they beginners? How can you really make sure that you're speaking in that level that they are capable of receiving? It's about you also being very aware of how can I create different levels from beginner to advanced for my audience. So they can always tap into that. They can always say like, OK, I'm the beginner. I start here or I'm a very advanced level, I can go here and then that way they can really learn with you no matter how experienced they are and that is going to stretch you as well. Because when you work with very advanced people, like we have some VIP level group coaching. I mean, there are advanced, I have to teach myself to become, you know, at that level so I can actually serve them. So it's really good for you who's going to see how much you can stretch your capacities. Well, OK. Number five, we have two minutes to go. We are going to get to the end of this uh learn to enroll people into your vision.
You need to learn the skills of sales, you need to learn the skills of marketing, public speaking. You need to learn the skills of communication. I already mentioned that before. I want to insist on that. It's not only about having a knowledge. How can you enroll people into vision? How can you get people to say, oh my God, I want to be part of this. This is a super important skills that you wanna develop. OK, I'm gonna run it up in one second. Learn to become monomaniac, learn to think, learn to show your one idea in 10 minutes to one year, learn to adapt your ideas and learn to enroll people into your vision. Boom, we are done. Let me know what you thought about this. Let me know what you're taking away. This is my linkedin Ame do v.com and please share uh dav.com. So my name and just so one wonderful live presentation. Good to see you all. Add me on linkedin. I'm good. I would love to speak with you more. Ask me any question about this topic. This is all about you. Go out and share your message. We need to hear your voice, we need to hear what you have to say. You need to hear what you have to share with this world. Don't limit yourself. Just get started. And my linkedin profile is Daria Voc and just add me, let me know that you came from this session and I'll give you give, I'll give you some time to also answer any questions that you have today.
If you want, just add me and I will answer questions about that leadership in a chat with you in uh messages. OK? Wonderful. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Enjoy the other sessions. Have fun. Um If someone is asking if you're not good at selling your skills, learn the skills of selling, it's sales, something that you can learn. So it's all possible. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Enjoy the other sessions, add me on linkedin and we can continue the conversation. Um Dan book.com or dv.com, you are gonna get directly to my, my profile and just let me know that you were in the session. So I also know where you come from and thank you so much. What wonderful comments. Ok? I think it's going to log out and I'm going to stop this right now. Bye bye.