Lead Your Practice

I've been thinking a lot lately about something Phil Stutz calls our Life Force. If you've seen Jonah Hill's documentary Stutz , you'll know the idea. He describes it as the energy that animates us, the vitality that allows us to engage fully with our lives and our work. When that force is strong, we feel present and available. We are more curious, more generous and somehow more ourselves. When it...

We can no longer assume our clients are interested, or that we're interesting. What used to be a differentiator is now just the cost of showing up. What have you done about it?

Right now, a very helpful belief, a grand positive delusion if you like, is this: the work you do as a commercially smart thought leader is a tonic for exactly the times we find ourselves in.

There's a phrase I keep coming back to this week: jump before you're pushed. It's not a new idea but it's landed differently lately, watching what's unfolding in real time.

If people struggle to stay off their phones at the beach, what does it take to keep them present in your workshop, or engaged in your writing? We are at a tipping point for attention. The simplest and most powerful move we can make is to shift from telling people things to helping them experience something that matters.

Let’s talk about the power of permission. One of the most limiting frames of reference in running a practice is hidden in the idea of permission.

One of the most interesting things about building a thought leaders practice is that it is full of contradictions. There are natural contradictions in the work and you get better at managing them as your practice grows. The work asks you to sit in the middle…between commerce and contribution…identity and service…creativity and consistency. Learn more at thoughtleaders.com.au

The cluster strategy is how we, as subject-matter experts, take our ideas to the world. You could think of it as a strategy, but that both overstates/understates it at the same time. If you would like our curriculum handbook for creating commercially viable clusters, simply email me (matt@thoughtleaders.com.au) a little bit about what you're offering to the world, where you live and what drives yo...

A belief that appears often in our community is this: all the good ideas are already taken. It sounds true, but it is not.

Shifting perspective is more than just a mental process, it’s a foundational leadership move, for those of us in the business of thinking clearly and serving powerfully. 

A big part of becoming a commercially successful thought leader is the ability to create new stories. The journey often involves exploring and evolving the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we know, and what’s possible.

People are overwhelmed. We're carrying a lot, and when people are overloaded, they reach for shortcuts, quick fixes, and certainty. This is what psychologists call a need for cognitive closure, and it's connected to the global rise of authoritarianism. As documentarian David Marples said, "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." When our capacity for nuance shrinks, we open the door for more...

I think now is the time to step up to the work of being a thought leader because AI is taking out so many ways that expertise shows up. Your job is to be more than just ideas or information. Be an inspirer, a light-bringer, a space holder who helps others see light when they feel they're in the dark.

The scale of our modern lives is beyond human scale. The world is asking things of us that are bigger than we are. This made me ask: what is this moment asking of me, and am I right-sized for it? I've landed on three principles: intimacy is an advantage, there's nothing to prove, and get good at holding bigger space for yourself and others.

In a commercial thought leader's practice, it's easy to confuse activity with progress. You're publishing, delivering, pitching, replying, invoicing, iterating, but all this busyness doesn't always mean we're doing the right work. At the heart of it, there's a pattern we need to name: heavy work often is accompanied by lazy thinking. Our industry culture celebrates effort, but when heavy work is p...

This idea of hierarchies of value sits quietly at the heart of the thought leader's game. It's one of the tensions we don't always name but we all feel. Are we all equal in worth? Yes. Do we all contribute in the same way or create the same impact? Not always, and that's okay. An inability to accept value asymmetry leads to fear around pricing, guilt around success, and an unconscious need to stay...

If you're a thought leader, you're not in the content business or the ideas business. You're in the experience business. People come to us not just for what we know, but for how we deliver it: the way you show up in a room, hold space for others, and help people make sense of things. Right now, value is moving from what you offer to how you offer it, and ultimately into the richness of the experie...