Making Impact on Your Business with a Book | Tamsen Webster | 406

Leveraging Thought Leadership

You've got big ideas that you know could help people. But it's hard to articulate that insight as an actionable plan for business partners, clients, and investors. So, how do you move forward? Today, we’re sitting down with Tamsen Webster, a TedX speaker and author of the new book Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible. In her insightful text, Tamsen codifies her method, and helps others find the throughline that connects an idea to the hearts and minds of the audience. Many new authors suffer from the "curse of the expert," unable to put their methodology and processes on the page in a way that's accessable to beginners. For Tamsen, that was the easy part. In fact, she struggled with letting go of the book, unsure that the process she had been successfully using for the previous five years was enough to warrant publishing. As with any good business book, Tamsen has found that hers has drawn multiple new clients — without the usual 2 degrees of separation. Now, people are finding the book and reaching out to her on their own, and that's growing her business exponentially. She's also dipped a toe into licensing her IP, and creating an accreditation program to help other businesses share her Red Thread method with their clients. Lastly, we discuss the hard part of creating and licensing a properly… protecting it. In order to maintain your trademark, you have to defend it. This can mean awkward conversations about how and where your method can be used. Unfortunately, many people who are interested in thought leadership content are unaware that they are violating copyrights, but there are ways to handle such issues amicably, and to the advantage of both parties. This interview is a great example of a thought leadership book propelling your ideas to scale! Three Key Takeaways: * When writing a thought leadership book, remember to clearly convey what you do best. * Construct your chapter outline by ensuring that instructions before theoretical examples. This way the most useful part comes first. * When writing a thought leadership book, consider creating an accreditation program to give organizations a legitimate way to institute your trademarked ideas.