HOW TO BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER
RAINTODAY.COM INTERVIEWS JOHN DOERR

RainToday: What do you consider the single most important elements of becoming the esteemed professional and thought leader you are today?

John Doerr: You have to be passionate. You have to really like what you’re doing. It cannot be a task. It cannot be a chore. It has to be something that you really care about doing. Because it’s ongoing, because it’s something you’ll always be doing, if you feel like it’s a task or a chore, eventually you’ll get burned out and tired of doing it. So I would say, without really caring about it, it’s not going to happen.

I would also say there has to be a certain intellectual curiosity about whatever you’re writing about or doing. You have to want to understand what’s going on, learn how something works, what makes a difference and then put it all together… because you can’t fake this.

Another big thing is being willing to take a risk. Starting a business was a risk. With any of these things, you’re putting yourself out there. You write an article, you put it out there, and people write back to you. As I said before, the worst thing is if nothing comes back to you. I’d rather get bad feedback than none at all. At times, my writing style is a little irreverent… but you have to be willing to take that step, not just say what everyone else is saying.

RainToday: Can you identify certain decisions, opportunities, or experiences that turned out to be important milestones in your progress toward being known as a thought leader?

John Doerr: The first big milestone was when I started thinking, “Okay. Let’s constantly write about this.” And it starts with articles. I know that sounds very basic, and for those who want to become thought leaders it is a very basic step. But you have to have a point of view. You have to think on things, look at them differently, see what’s going on. In writing those articles, the thing that I always pick as a topic is, what’s going on? What do my clients say? What am I seeing? What does my research show? What is against conventional wisdom? What is different, and pushing the envelope?

I think the first step was writing our online newsletter, and realizing that we could reach a number of people. Very quickly, it resonated with the audience we were targeting. I would travel around to speak, and people would have already heard of me. That was nice, and it felt like a big turning point. It was sort of this crystallization that, “I am reaching out… I am getting people to think about what they’re doing,” and that’s what you want to do.

I’ve always said, though, it’s okay to get negative reactions. It’s great to get positive reactions! But the worst thing in the world is to get no reaction. So, you really have to push and argue against conventional wisdom, and find new ways to do things. 

At this point I’m not complacent or waiting for people to call… but at the same time, I’d say 75% of my speaking engagements now are people coming to us, rather than us going to them.

RainToday: If we call these turning points the “causes”, what did you notice as the “effects” in each case?

John Doerr: First of all, it doesn’t happen overnight. You just have to take it one step at a time, and keep on doing it.

I talk to a lot of people (some of them our clients), and say, “Well, you really should write some articles and do this,” and they say, “Ugh, I’ve done it before, and it has no effect.” We’re not talking writing an article one time. We’re talking about writing constantly.

If you look back in the 4 years that Wellesley Hills Group has been in business, we have upwards of 100 articles or more that have been published and written about, and the number of speeches grows each year. So, did any individual one do it all for us? No, it’s a cumulative effect.

I felt a difference when our articles started being picked up by publications other than our own: when an Indian professional association sent us a copy of something they’d published of ours; when we got calls from trade magazines who wanted an interview. Speaking under someone else’s banner, publishing under someone else’s banner. Everyone has their own newsletters. So having others publish your work makes a difference. Of course, everything is geared toward the fact you have to be thoughtful, and intelligent in what you have to say.

It’s also about recognition. About a year ago, I did a talk for an organization in Connecticut. I was speaking to fifty or sixty turnaround management consultants, all of whom have heard a lot, and done a lot in their profession. I went in thinking that our firm didn’t have a specific presence in Connecticut, per se, though nationally, people get our stuff.

Before the program, in the cocktail hour, I  met with the president of the organization. Someone approached us, and she said she really wanted to meet me. She had heard about me from someplace. I thought, “Okay, this is one person.” But as I went through these groups of people, others kept giving me great feedback about what our firm’s doing. “Here’s my card… Put me on your newsletter…” This happened from group to group. It was like people had planted them there! I felt a difference then… it’s when people who you don’t know, know you.

Also, in the beginning, our client profile was naturally local to the New England area. Most were referral-based, and people we had known in the past. I knocked on their doors. But that’s changed in some important ways since those early days.

Case in point: I got a call from London Business School about a year ago. They wanted me to come over and do some work on selling professional services. So, like any good marketing person, I said, “Well, where did you hear about us?” They’d read an article online, and then they went to our website and read more articles, and they started to say, “Wow, this person knows about the things that we want talked about in our school.”

You could ask, “Aren’t there people in the UK and Europe who could do this?” And there are… but for them, I was the thought leader in this particular area. So, the effect has been that our business attracts more high-profile clients, and the fees are easier to get, because we have a cachet.

Now, people call from London, Singapore, California, and Canada. I don’t even know how they’ve heard about me sometimes. When I ask, “How did you hear about us?”, the answer is, “I heard you speak,” or “I read something you wrote.” We’re working with bigger firms, with smoother access to higher levels within organizations. It’s all about credibility. But again, it’s been something that’s happened over time… and you have to have something important to say, and to offer.