Earlier this month I had the immense pleasure of not just introducing Scott Stratten on stage at Pubcon in front of 2000 people, but also interviewing him afterward for one of our Delightful Conversations.
Scott is President of UnMarketing, bestselling author of four books and all-round hilarious and good guy who certainly knows how to be authentic with his personal brand and marketing.
When we chatted to him I asked about his take on “authentic marketing” (as that’s one of the ideas he presented in his keynote), then I probed a little deeper around how we as marketers should think about unlearning many of the inauthentic ways we end up trying to communicate to consumers and our audience.
Finally, I asked him about Personal Branding and I think you’ll love his answer about when he thinks of “thought leaders”.
We get a lot of people coming to us for our personal branding services who want us to “magic” them into thought leaders. Many have little or no experience and they seem to want to bypass the real reason others might call them a thought leader.
In my mind, a thought leader is someone who has genuinely unique and intriguing perspectives and is able to back that up with a successful track record in whatever field they are competing in.
As Scott says, you certainly don’t want to get caught calling yourself a thought leader. That’s a label others should bestow on you based on your experience, track record and how you disseminate your wisdom to reach them.
Thanks so much to Scott for his time and to Brett Tabke and the Pubcon guys for having me MC their event, I had a blast!
Please do subscribe to more Delightful Conversations on YouTube (Interviews with Scott Monty and Robert Scoble are being edited as we speak) and follow Team Delightful on Twitter.
Cheers,
@MelCarson – Founder & Principal Strategist at Delightful Communications