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AI Can Create Content. It Can’t Create Thought Leadership

AI Can Create Content. It Can’t Create Thought Leadership written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Overview

What if the ideas you already have are worth more than any marketing campaign you could run? That’s the question at the center of this conversation with Peter Winick, founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and co-author of The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas and How You Can Too.

Winick breaks down the 5 thought leader avatars from his book, why activity isn’t the same as productivity, and how personal and systemic velocity work together to move ideas beyond 1 person’s reach. The conversation also covers where AI genuinely helps thought leaders, including how Winick’s team mined 650 podcast transcripts to write their book, and closes with the impact equation: simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience. This episode is for consultants, authors, speakers, and business owners who want their ideas to travel further without depending entirely on their own bandwidth to carry them.

Guest Bio

Peter Winick is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, a firm that helps experts and executives turn their ideas into a business. He co-hosts the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast and has spent nearly 2 decades working with authors, speakers, and executives, including 3½ years building out training, development, and speaking business for Keith Ferrazzi following the launch of Never Eat Alone. Winick is the co-author of The Thought Leadership Handbook.

Key Takeaways

  • Most thought leaders are strong at their craft but rank marketing far down their list of natural strengths, which is exactly why a system for spreading ideas matters more than talent alone.
  • Activity is not productivity. Working harder or filling more hours does not automatically translate to more impact or revenue.
  • Ideas need both personal velocity, what you do yourself to spread them, and systemic velocity, the channels that carry your ideas without requiring your direct involvement.
  • Holding back your best frameworks to protect future client work tends to backfire. Sharing complete thinking builds trust and often leads to higher-value engagements, not fewer of them.
  • The impact equation, simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience, offers a practical filter for deciding what ideas are worth pursuing and who they are for.

Great Moments

  • [00:01] – Jantsch opens with the core question of the episode: are your existing ideas worth more than any campaign you could run?
  • [02:20] – Winick unpacks the “thought leader on the run” avatar, the most common of his 5 archetypes.
  • [04:13] – Discussion of why ideas can’t speak for themselves, and the difference between personal and systemic velocity.
  • [13:09] – Winick describes mining 650 podcast transcripts, 2.3 million words, to identify patterns for the book.
  • [16:18] – Introduction of the impact equation: simplicity, relevance, velocity, and share of audience.

Memorable Quotes

  • “Activity is not productivity.” — Peter Winick
  • “You’re irrelevant to 99.99% of the people on this planet. And that’s an amazing thing.” — Peter Winick
  • “The best thing you can get is a fast no. A maybe is the worst thing in the world.” — John Jantsch
  • “It’s the most cost-effective net new client acquisition tool I’ve seen.” — Peter Winick, on thought leadership

Resources

John Jantsch (00:01.368)

So, what if the ideas you already have are worth more than any marketing campaign you could run? And what if the only reason they aren’t spreading is that you’ve never built a system to move them past your own reach? Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Peter Winnick.

He is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, co-host the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast. And we’re gonna talk about his new book that he co-authored, The Thought Leadership Handbook, How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas and How You Can Too. So Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter Winick (00:40.674)

Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.

John Jantsch (00:42.504)

So I had Keith Farazzi on this show. Believe it or not, I’ve been doing this show since two thousand and five. I had Keith on when Never Eat Alone came out, and I know you have a bit of history with him. may maybe let’s start there.

Peter Winick (00:55.48)

Yes.

Peter Winick (00:59.18)

Yeah. So I started working with Keith in two thousand five actually when we launched Never Eat Alone and I worked exclusively for Keith for three and a half years. So I was brought in to build out the training and development business and I took over the speaking business. and this is in the Stone Ages, you know, before so many so many things, but it was an amazing, amazing experience. He’s still a dear friend. And it it it really gave me the

John Jantsch (01:17.514)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (01:27.618)

the the the spark to say, you know what? why be monogamous? Right. Like there’s lots of other thought leaders out there that could use help because Keith, as you know, is an amazing, amazing marketer. Most thought leaders, when you put on a list of paper what they’re really great at, great at, marketing doesn’t come up in the top 100.

John Jantsch (01:32.62)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:39.117)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (01:45.761)

Yeah, I I can’t tell you how many people have have come to me with and and thought leaders have written a book and they’re like, What do I do to start marketing? And it’s like, Well, that was about a year ago. So you’re you’re absolutely right. So in the handbook, you you actually introduce five avatars. There’s one that’s probably the one that that I thought was most intriguing, thought leaders on the run. so unpack that one for us. That’s that’s kind of the

Peter Winick (01:54.957)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. Exactly.

Peter Winick (02:04.3)

Yes.

John Jantsch (02:14.998)

The person that’s too busy doing the work to even consider themselves a thought leader, maybe, huh?

Peter Winick (02:20.28)

Well, the thought leader on the run, when when you break it down by the percentages over the five avatar, is the one that shows up the most. Why? Because it’s it’s i it it it’s how they operate, right? So what does that mean? It means, you know, and and it’s not that it’s good or bad, it just is, right? That in order for them to get the idea out, primarily they need to be in the room or in the zoom. So they tend to live a lot in airports, right? They’re going from event to gig to gig to gig, and they put on the

John Jantsch (02:27.085)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:45.28)

Mm.

Yeah.

Peter Winick (02:49.698)

thought leader hat or the author hat or the keynote speaker hat more than they do the CEO hat. Right. So typically when they come to us, the issue is, hey, I love my life. I’m blessed. This is amazing. I get paid the big bucks to go to be in Miami on one day and, you know, Arizona on another day. But I’m a little tired, you know, I’d like to sleep in my own bed. And from an impact standpoint, how do I get these ideas out to more people in more ways? And how do I balance my portfolio?

So it so the revenue generated is not a function of how busy was I last week, last month, last quarter.

John Jantsch (03:25.761)

S so one of the things that you another phrase that stuck with me, ideas can’t speak for themselves. you know, I

I wrote a book on referrals. my second book was called The Referral Engine. And in a lot of ways, that that was the premise of that. It’s like a lot of I think a lot of thought leaders, a lot of business leaders think, hey, I do good work, people will talk about me. You know, they’ll talk about the great results, you know, as opposed to doing anything intentionally, you know, around sort of amplifying the fact that they are referral. So

How do you actually get people to start thinking in terms of like that that that ties to that ideas can’t speak for themselves? How do you get people to actually start spreading that idea that intentionally that that they are worth referring?

Peter Winick (04:13.41)

Yeah, so I think there’s two questions there. Let me let me I hear that as two different or or two slightly different things. Yeah, right, right. so the the one is there are the ideas piece is how do we get the ideas out to the most people, the most relevant people most often. So to me, that’s typically a function of format and and and all that, right? So, you know, a book is great, people don’t read. I mean that’s a general statement, but like a book is not

John Jantsch (04:18.114)

There’s pr usually there’s six questions, but that’s that just to

Peter Winick (04:43.234)

Today is not what a book was. Video is awesome, but if you’re reluctant to get on video, you’re missing opportunity. There’s short form, there’s long form, whatever. So I so one is where do your ideas live and how does that align to where the folks that you’re trying to reach and connect with consume that information? That’s the first piece. The other piece, in terms of the ideas not speaking for themselves, is what I would think about as velocity, right? So there’s personal velocity.

John Jantsch (04:45.241)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (05:10.252)

You and I are talking right now, so I can’t be talking to someone else right now. Or if I if I was, that would be pretty rude or whatever, right? So there’s a limit to that. So my personal velocity is how I choose to spend my time to get the word out and get the message out. Now, this is more velocity than you and I just having a conversation. Although we’ve done that, and that’s great. We’re recording this, it’s gonna on your podcast. You know, lots of people hear it. That’s pretty cool. The system velocity.

John Jantsch (05:16.972)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (05:36.312)

Really thinks so personal velocity is pretty straightforward. What is it I, the thought leader, can do to get my ideas out on a on a consistent basis? The system velocity of what are the other ways it could go out that’s not dependent on me? Right. Me as the human, right? Me as the person. So there’s lots of other ways ideas get out in the universe. And are you in you know, are you choosing to participate in the right ones to meet your business objectives, which is your strategy?

John Jantsch (06:03.862)

Yeah, and and y you know, one of the challenges is there’s so many things we can do, so many things we’re told we should do. and so, you know, the I think one of the greatest skills possible is is developing focus and discipline, you know, to stay f just what you said, to stay focused on the few things maybe that you should do.

Peter Winick (06:09.465)

Yes.

Peter Winick (06:24.643)

Well, I would say yes end, right? So the yes end is the focus and discipline is great as long as you’re focused and disciplined on the right things in the right sequence to get the outcomes, which which is strategy, right? So that that to me, my clients and and you you know this better than I do, thought leaders that that we all know, they’re not lazy, right? They’re working really hard, they’re passionate, they’re evangelical in terms of what it is they’re doing. But you know, activity is not productivity.

And I think that’s a that’s a trap that a lot of thought leaders fall into. I’ll just get up, you know, I’ll I’ll work harder, do it faster, I’ll get twenty five hours in a twenty four hours day. And it’s like, Well, if you have ninety eight plates spinning in the air, you know, is that really good? You know, as opposed to like, you know, your point on the fewer, but it’s the right fewer. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:09.548)

Well sure. Right. Yeah. That that was hopefully that was implied. so one of the things, one one common thing that I’ve heard over the years

whether they’re a thought leader or just a business owner, even, you know, that it’s like, I don’t want to tell how to do my secret thing that I do. but you know, but then they won’t need me. and, you know, I’ve I I know you take the opposite view of that and so do I. I mean, I’ve always felt like they don’t want to know how to do it. They want to know that I know how to do it. and so

Peter Winick (07:39.342)

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, there’s one word for that, and quite frankly, it’s stupid, right? So it it it it you know, like w when Stephen R. Covey wrote the seven habits, it wasn’t well, we’ll just publish five of them and you want the other two, you gotta send us some money. That’s just, you know, stupid, right? And I think the way it works is we put twenty years of models and methods and frameworks into the book. And exactly the argument you just made, but if you put it out there, why do they need you? More people will need us at a higher price point as a result of that.

John Jantsch (07:44.268)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:53.474)

Right.

John Jantsch (08:01.76)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Winick (08:08.675)

The subset of people that buy the book and read the book and do it yourself, that’s awesome. I love that. Like if we can help those folks, I never could have helped them. you know, they just can’t be clients right now. Now that might change down the road. And I think that’s really the the the piece. And you know, if you think about it from a keynoter standpoint, you and I have both seen fifty, hundred thousand dollar keynoters and you get their stuff on YouTube. So you’d say, well, why would I anybody pay to bring them in the room? Well, there’s a difference of of that’s a totally different experience than watching a YouTube video.

John Jantsch (08:18.86)

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:40.02)

You you mentioned the thought leader on the run was maybe the most prevalent. Who who who do you think has the most unreal realized potential now? Is that the same group? Or is there is that a different avatar?

Peter Winick (08:53.507)

You know, that’s an interesting piece. I mean, I would say they all have potential because of the different things that we have available to us today. Right. whether that’s, you know, the technology, the AI, the learning, you as as a thought leader today, you know, 20 years ago we’re talking about this to, you know, two old dudes sitting here talking about 20 years ago. The typical model for a successful thought leader was to publish a book every 18 months.

John Jantsch (09:20.652)

Yeah. War it was it was it was very effective, as a matter of fact. Yeah. Yep, yep.

Peter Winick (09:20.813)

Right. That was the your publisher put the gun to your head eighteen months, eighteen month now.

And yeah, and it worked until it didn’t? No, it worked until it didn’t. Now the reality is it takes the average author two, two and a half years to write a book. How can you get one out in 18 months? There’s a negative math problem there. So new was a relative term, right? You know, so I think now there are more options, more choices, more ways to get your stuff out. I do think that there are a lot more impact and legacy executives, right? So these are folks that are have had

John Jantsch (09:37.43)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Winick (09:55.438)

Great success, typically commercially, whether they’re C-suite in a Fortune 1000 or they built up a business and sold the business, and they’re they’re at a stage in life where they’re like, you know, I’ve I’ve done the money thing, you know, checked all the boxes there. That’s all good. But what I’m really passionate now at this stage of life is X, whatever X is. And I want to do that. And I want to spend more time doing that. And I want to understand what that is. And the way I measure my success might not be, you know, dollars generated or number of keynotes, a number of books or whatever.

But how many people are starting think about my ideas? Are they being introduced as as as as part of the vernacular in in the business community or whatever communities I serve? There’s a lot of that going on now. Cause guess what? You know, the old days of retire sixty-two and be dead at sixty five, you didn’t have a lot of runway, right? Played shuffleboard for a couple of years and then good, you know, goodnight Charlie. Right now you got twenty, thirty years to figure out what you want to do.

John Jantsch (10:41.017)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:45.473)

Yeah. Yeah. And and it’s gonna be really painful twenty, thirty years if you don’t, right? I I think I think a lot of a lot of people are coming to that realization. Talk a I mean, I can’t like we’ve gone eleven minutes, this might be a record, and I haven’t mentioned AI yet. and talk about how I mean AI is just flooding the f flooding the thought leadership, you know, category, if you will. how does somebody actually

Peter Winick (10:50.927)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:12.225)

So so so to me, a thought leader, you know, originally was you had a framework, you had a couple of original ideas, you could put sixty seven thousand words, you know, into a document. But today anybody could do that in about in about half a day, right? So so what separates real thought leadership from just, I don’t know, semi smart sounding people?

Peter Winick (11:21.155)

Yeah. Hmm?

Peter Winick (11:33.069)

Yeah, I think, you know, you could fool some of the people. So I’ll tell you bad ways or or things that are not helpful to you, your brand, your growth as a thought leader to use AI and things that I’ve seen that are cool, creative, interesting, whatever. So bad ways are, you know, you could pick up a tool and say, Give me 40,000 word book on this, this, this, and this in the style of that, this and the other thing. And it’ll spit something out. Now, anybody, you know, y you know, with any

John Jantsch (11:37.229)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:44.141)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (11:57.143)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Winick (12:01.934)

sort of IQ that’s in the three digits, we’ll look at that and go, There’s no there there. Right? Like there’s like there’s no there there. Right. There’s like, okay, that’s a lot of words on a page and

John Jantsch (12:10.327)

Yeah. Yeah, that that could have been a seven hundred word blog post.

Peter Winick (12:14.944)

Yeah, or or a podcast or or or or or a you know, whatever. So I think, you know, just because you can create a lot of stuff, now I think actually where you can create it, and you know this better than I as a marketer, content marketing, I think AI can do some really good stuff. From thought leadership, I think you have to say, okay, what is it good at and what is it not good at? So good at examples. I’ve seen lots of keynoters say, you know, I never spoke to this type of group before.

John Jantsch (12:31.566)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (12:40.75)

You know, newly minted IT professionals. Let me push my stuff through there and say, give me a few examples that would resonate most with this audience at this company today. So that’s research, right? I think for us, we did something that I think was kind of cool, but I’ll let you weigh in on that, right? The genesis of the book for us was a couple of years ago, I started playing around with with AI and chat and all that. Why? Because everybody else is doing. I’m like, I gotta play with this thing, right? And

John Jantsch (12:41.397)

Right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (12:47.107)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (13:09.934)

What I knew was we had a bunch of models and methods and frameworks. And I knew that that would never be a book, right? That would be an IKEA manual that nobody would read. Models, methods, frameworks. Like maybe there’s a subset of the universe that loves that stuff, my my dear friends, the engineers, but like that would not be something I would read, right? But I knew that we had this podcast. And at the time we had 650 episodes and we had transcripts. So I said, hmm, let me take 30 transcripts, and they were all categorized to a similar theme.

John Jantsch (13:17.633)

Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Winick (13:37.071)

And I threw it into chat and I played with it for hours and hours and hours over a weekend. And what it taught me was one, my memory is terrible. Because if somebody asked me what were your favorite, most memorable things from the podcast you’ve done, I would answer a few. But if you asked me the same question a week later, I might answer differently, you know. but it gave me themes and it gave me patterns and it gave me things to look, look deeper on. So what I did was what every sort of ADD CEO does on a Monday morning, they call their much smarter.

process oriented analytical COO. And I said, Bill, Bill Sherman, hey, I got this idea. You know, we’ve like talked about writing a book. We don’t want to write a book, but like I played with Chad over the week and I I think we can knock this thing out in like, I don’t know, a month, maybe two, you know, and here’s why. And he did the hmm, mm-hmm, you know, almost like somewhere between a therapist and somebody knows you’ve gone off the deep end. And he said, well, maybe, which is the non-committal, let let’s go check it out. Well, fast forward, 650 episodes at the time was 2.3 million words.

John Jantsch (14:34.231)

Yeah. Right.

Peter Winick (14:34.52)

Right. So if the average business is 50,000, that’s a lot of books. And Bill was able to come up with some real tools to be able to pull those patterns. And then we always went back to the tapes, right? many times we go back to the thought leader and say, You might not remember this conversation. And actually, we sort of took it a little out of context, but I want to talk to you about this vignette here. You know, this little story that you told. Can we talk about that? Because we’re writing a book. That gave us brilliance. And and to answer your AI question,

John Jantsch (14:38.295)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (15:00.036)

That would have taken us years and and six grad level interns and they like pizza and beer and to get paid every Friday. So that to me was a a smart use of AI in terms for for us to get to the book where we wanted it to be. So it is a a a good book for those that we we wrote it for.

John Jantsch (15:18.743)

Yeah, I you know, I’ve never done that with my podcast. I’ve done, you know, about twenty two hundred episodes now. I probably sh I mean, I I probably should do do that. I mean, I’ve had guests on three and four times, you know, and and or more, you know. I think Seth’s been on five times, probably. And I’m you know, I’m sure there’s something in there that that would be really interesting. And I that’s my favorite use, frankly, of AI is is analysis. you know, I just it it

Peter Winick (15:25.37)

There might be a vignette in there or two.

Peter Winick (15:31.706)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:48.611)

It’s just so much richer than I would ever come up with, even if I spent, you know, a hundred hours on it. talk to me a little bit about one of the things that I know that that I mean, this was part of Keith’s you know framework. And I’m I’m sure you’ve built it into yours too, this idea of impact equation, you know, like getting getting into rooms that you know you maybe don’t know how you’re gonna get into. so talk a little bit about how that idea influences some of the thought leaders you work with.

Peter Winick (15:51.418)

Total.

Peter Winick (16:06.897)

Mm.

Peter Winick (16:18.991)

Yeah, so I think every thought leader wants their work to have impact. Right? They just do. Like what we’re not writing this for ourselves, although sometimes we are at a moment in time. But the impact equation it was a way for us to say, how do you do this? Like, cause Keith’s secret sauce is the power of developing relationships. That’s his secret sauce, right? And Never Italy and a lot of his other books were sort of what that looked like, and then he’s evolved into sort of some different thinking today. So we looked at the impact equation because equations are cool, right? Like

John Jantsch (16:22.895)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (16:48.869)

They just are. And said it here’s how it what it looks like. Number one idea is simplicity. You got to get it down to its molecular. Now that sounds obvious and easy, but ask an academic that spent 25 years as the top of their game or world class at whatever, tell me the gist of your work in two or three sentences. Most can’t do it because it’s been beaten out of them. It’s not how they’re trained. It’s not whatever. And if you can’t make it like simple, then it’s not accessible. So there’s no point there.

John Jantsch (16:49.496)

Mm-hmm.

Peter Winick (17:17.317)

The next is the relevance to the audience, right? So you might have something that’s really, really simple. But if you gave me the the the simplest way to knit a blanket, it has no relevance to me. I’m not someone that knits. Now, somebody else that might be, my God, that’s that’s a hack that I’ll use every day. But like what’s the relevance to me? And then the next is this the velocity. We talked about velocity before. What are you doing to get it out there? And then what is the share of audience? And I think the share of audience piece is interesting. You know, if this was a startup, we’d be talking about total addressable market.

John Jantsch (17:27.801)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Peter Winick (17:46.662)

But one of the most freeing things for me and that I try to share with my clients is guess what, John? You’re irrelevant to 99.99% of the people on this planet. And that’s an amazing thing, right? Because all you need to do now is say, what can I do to be as relevant as possible to that point one percent that matters most? And maybe it’s 95% or whatever. But like for the most part, you know, you’re irrelevant, right? I’m irrelevant. And the the beauty of that is I don’t have to spend my time chasing my tail.

Right. Like I know that I wanna talk to people like you. I don’t wanna be on a podcast for you know, I don’t know, stay at home moms in Iowa. Bless their little hearts. But like those aren’t my peeps.

John Jantsch (18:23.46)

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s one of my favorite lines from Sandler. I had David on the show a couple of times, you know, over the years, was just he’s you know, the mo the best thing you can get is fast knows. you know, the idea of of the people are like the worst thing in the world is a maybe because now you gotta like worry about it for the the next six months and send eighty seven, you know, follow up emails and

Peter Winick (18:50.064)

Yeah, exactly.

John Jantsch (18:50.998)

you know, but for somebody to go, no, you’re not for me, you know, and obviously that’s in a sales environment, but but as a thought leader, clearly understanding who’s for you, who’s not for you, and communicating that. So people sort of self select whether or not they want to be in your universe, right? I mean, that’s part of the equation, isn’t it?

Peter Winick (19:07.355)

Yeah.

Yeah, and and you don’t want to be in the conversion business, right? If you have to spend a lot of your energy and effort, you know, it’s a great business model for the Mormons to work for them, but like it’s really expensive to try to convince someone that your way is a better way, that your way of thinking might help them. You could do a little bit of that, but if I gotta spend, like you said, you know, 10 phone calls trying to show you that my way is better than yours, why wouldn’t I talk to someone that’s already sort of absorbed some of my thinking and said, you know, I kind of dig what you say, and I think you could help me.

John Jantsch (19:12.558)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (19:17.834)

Yeah.

Peter Winick (19:38.021)

That’s just a better place for both of us to be.

John Jantsch (19:40.206)

Yeah, hundred percent. one of the I’ll I’ll ask you directly and and I think we’re be gonna be on the same page on this. what’s the biggest benefit of being seen as a thought leader? You know, even if it’s in a tiny pond, you know, of of your city of your city?

Peter Winick (19:56.464)

Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll tie this back to marketing because it’s what I believe, right? So we every one of us, I don’t care what business you’re in, whether it’s it’s it’s product, whether it’s services, professional services, selling consumer package, because we’re all being commoditized. That’s not a good thing, right? So if you’re being commoditized, what does that mean? Downward pricing pressure, lack of distinction between you and somebody else, this, that, and the other thing. So I believe, not for everyone, but

John Jantsch (20:11.694)

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Peter Winick (20:23.983)

Definitely high-tech, financial services, professional services, and and and many, many more, that thought leadership is the most cost-effective way to stand up from the competition, to show the world what you’re about, to put it out there. You can’t, you know, if I was going to come out with a new beverage, I could never outspend Coca-Cola. Just not going to happen. But you see these new beverages coming out now, for example, that are, you know, protein enriched or whatever, or probiotic or whatever. It’s like, okay, so if you’re going to put out a probiotic beverage, the first question I would have is.

What the hell is a probiotic beverage? That’s great leadership. Here’s what it is and why it might be beneficial to you, whatever. So I think take a step back and say, what could you put out there in the world to sh to punch above your weight, outshine your competition, and and you know, lead with your thinking. Because everything else that you do, if I’m an accountant, there’s a million other people that can do my taxes, right? If I’m a lawyer, plus or minus, you know, they’re all kind of the same. Consultant, like it’s just an agency. They’re all the same.

John Jantsch (20:52.643)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:03.15)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:11.642)

Yeah, hundred percent, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (21:18.882)

Yeah. Well and and they they might not be, but that’s the perception. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will tell you, I I actually took it into the home services business. I had a remodeling contractor that I convinced to do this in two thousand early two thousands to be a thought leader. And now they char they’re they’re the largest in their in their community and they charge a premium. that’s that was really the answer. I I mean you said it in a number of ways, but

Peter Winick (21:24.101)

That’s which is more important, right. Yeah. And I think

John Jantsch (21:48.814)

Being the seen as the thought leader, you can charge a premium. People expect to pay a premium, you know, for you. So

Peter Winick (21:53.541)

Well, and it’s a it’s you know, at the end of the day, it’s just math. It’s it’s the most my experience, it’s the most cost effective net new client acquisition tool I’ve seen. Right. So I’ll give I’ll give you another example that was, you know, you gotta be smart. I think it was ten years ago, my math could be wrong, when Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage. Okay, that’s cool. So what does that mean? Well, there was a divorce lawyer that happened to be gay, and he said, geez, here’s what’s gonna happen in the next six, eighteen, twenty-four months. I could put a stake in that ground.

John Jantsch (22:10.649)

Mm.

Peter Winick (22:21.455)

And put out some thought leadership on the nuance of gay marriage because I’m gay, I’m a divorce attorney, so I’m I’ve got an advantage. Let me start putting this stuff out there because as they’re walking back down the aisle is probably not the time to handle my card. This will take some time. And and it did. Like you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out, you know, more people that weren’t able to get married got married. Yeah, it’s definitely a new category, right? And and when that time came.

John Jantsch (22:21.752)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:27.672)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (22:39.448)

Yeah, yeah. It’s a new c a n a new category of business, so to speak. Yeah, that’s that’s funny.

Peter Winick (22:48.015)

He was already putting articles out there and things out there or whatever that that market came to him as opposed to spending big bucks putting out, you know, billboards or whatever the divorce attorneys might do.

John Jantsch (22:52.59)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (22:58.33)

So so Peter, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the the show. Is there some place you’d invite people to find out about your work and obviously the pick up a copy of the Thought Leadership Handbook?

Peter Winick (23:11.599)

Well, the Thought Leadership Handbook is, as they say, available wherever books are sold. So you can find them in the usual places. You could find me at our site, which is thoughtleadershipleverage dot com, and on, you know, all the typical socials.

John Jantsch (23:24.312)

Yeah, awesome. Well again, great catching up with you and I appreciate it and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Peter Winick (23:30.938)

I will. Thank you. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

Why Leaders Need Better Perspective, Not More Data

Why Leaders Need Better Perspective, Not More Data written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch The Full Episode 

Overview

Most leaders believe they see the whole picture. The trouble is, we all have blind spots. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch talks with international leadership expert Cornelia Choe, co-author with Marshall Goldsmith of The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently. Choe unpacks what she calls perspective blindness.

The conversation covers how AI has made data cheap but judgment scarce, why more than half of employees using AI never verify what it gives them, and the reasons senior teams often disagree on how ready their own companies are for change.

Choe introduces her GEM framework (Get up close, Establish meaningful bonds, Map your evolving perspective) to help leaders close these gaps before they cause damage. She also shares her personal history of moving from Minnesota to Seoul at age 10, and how that experience has shaped her thinking with regard to mental maps and blind spots.

This episode is for small business owners, agency leaders, and consultants managing teams through constant change. If you’ve ever assumed your customers, employees, or leadership team see the business the way you do, this conversation will challenge that assumption and give you a framework to address it.

Guest Bio

Choe is an international leadership expert, global keynote speaker, and Thinkers50 Radar honoree. She is the founder of The Leaders Alliance and has advised leaders at organizations including the United Nations and the White House. She is the co-author, with Marshall Goldsmith, of The Panoramic Leader: How Great Leaders See Differently. Choe grew up across eleven different places on three continents by age eighteen, an experience that informs her work on mental maps, cultural blind spots, and perspective in leadership.

Key Takeaways

  • AI made information easy to access, but it has not made judgment easier. More than half of employees using AI do not verify what AI gives them, and have made mistakes because of it.
  • Perspective blindness is the belief that you see the whole picture when you only see a piece of it. No single leader can track every change happening across a company or market at once.
  • Choe’s GEM framework offers three steps: get up close to people who think differently, establish a trusted relationship with them over time, and map how your view of the situation changes as a result.
  • Microtranslations matter. Two leaders can look at the same data and walk away with completely different conclusions if they never explain their reasoning to each other.
  • Outside perspective is one of the fastest ways to spot a blind spot, since an outsider will question “this is how we’ve always done it” in ways insiders rarely do.

Great Moments

  • [00:02] – John opens with the question driving the episode: what if the thing limiting growth is not what you’re doing, but what you can’t see.
  • [01:41] – Choe explains how AI has commoditized data and why that is dulling judgment, backed by survey data on employee mistakes and unverified AI use.
  • [03:53] – Choe defines perspective blindness and explains why no leader can track every change happening around them.
  • [05:00] – John and Choe discuss why there is no lasting “new normal,” just a series of short-lived ones.
  • [07:06] – Does perspective blindness apply to an eight-person business with no board? Choe says it matters even more for small teams.
  • [08:56] – Choe shares her personal story of moving from Minnesota to Seoul at age 10 and having to rebuild her entire mental map of who she was.
  • [12:06] – Choe introduces the GEM framework: get up close, establish meaningful bonds, map your evolving perspective.
  • [16:01] – A case study of a new CEO who nearly quit after conflict with a departed founder, resolved through a facilitated conversation with another former founder.
  • [17:25] – Choe unpacks microtranslations and how a 39 percent versus 7 percent readiness gap between CIOs and COOs shows up inside companies.
  • [19:15] – John and Choe discuss why outside perspective is one of the fastest ways to expose a blind spot no one inside the company can see.

Memorable Quotes

  • “The higher you go in the hierarchy, the less you hear of what people actually think and you hear more of what people think you want to hear.” — Cornelia Choe
  • “What we’re really lacking and losing today is judgment.” — Cornelia Choe
  • “Perspective blindness is a state in which we believe that we see the whole picture.” — Cornelia Choe
  • “Things are changing so quickly that the disruptors are being disrupted.” — Cornelia Choe
  • “When you get closer, you see the situation much clearer. And you’re able to find a lot more, many more solutions.” — Cornelia Choe

Resources

John Jantsch (00:02.158)

So, what if the thing limiting your next stage of growth is not what you’re doing, but what you can’t see? Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Cornelia Cho. She’s an international leadership expert, global keynote speaker, and thinkers 50 radar honoree. She’s the founder of The Leaders Alliance and co-author with Marshall Goldsmith of a book we’re going to talk about today, The Panoramic.

leader, how great leaders see differently. So Cornelia, welcome to the show.

Cornelia Choe (00:35.545)

Thank you so much, John. It is such a pleasure to share this conversation to be on the show with you.

John Jantsch (00:41.984)

So I’m looking at you in the camera right now in the mirror is is that the San Francisco transit system behind you?

Cornelia Choe (00:50.57)

It is not. It is a a map of it is a map of stars in the sky above Hawaii. Because it’s it’s there to help us really pinpoint what’s out there and to keep our eyes open to what’s moving across the sky and to know that there are always indicators out there if we look, we turn left and right and see.

John Jantsch (00:51.042)

What is it? What is that map?

John Jantsch (00:57.784)

Huh. okay. All right.

John Jantsch (01:16.874)

that’s that sounds like that sounds like a very intentional tie into your book somehow. And here I thought it was just a a poster, a piece of art. So y you know, your book is coming out at a time when business owners are probably more buried in data than ever, right? I mean AI tools and dashboards and customer analytics. So what still are we not seeing?

Cornelia Choe (01:20.556)

What’s around it?

Cornelia Choe (01:33.452)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (01:41.684)

No, John, it’s really convenient to get a lot of data today. And AI has really commoditized data. And for so long we’ve looked to leaders to give us the right information and for them to be chosen because they’re smart and because they have the right experience. And today this knowledge is really accessible at our fingertips.

John Jantsch (01:42.158)

Ha ha ha.

John Jantsch (01:47.372)

Right, right.

Cornelia Choe (02:08.651)

But what we’re really lacking and losing today is judgment. And it comes both across the board with all employees using AI. And it really depends on how we use AI. We can take what we’re given for granted and move forward with that. But we have surveys showing that more than 50% of employees using AI have made mistakes in their work by using it.

That over 50% of employees don’t verify what they get from AI. And what that’s doing is really dulling our judgment. And just like after the Industrial Revolution, we’ve had to go to the gym because we’re not getting enough physical movement. We may have to then go to the mind gym to keep our senses sharp. And so this can happen across all employees in a company, but

Especially for the senior management team. What’s really tricky about AI and change, we’ve had so much change in the world today between economic and political upheaval, is that we’re not able to see how change affects all of our different team members. And they’re all changing in different ways, but we go forward thinking that everyone sees our company the way we see it. And we’re having a lot of

dysfunctions amongst teams. And there was another survey showing that CIOs and CTOs, 39% of them think their companies are ready. But in these same companies, COOs think only only 7% of CO COOs think that their companies are ready. So there is a massive disconnect there. So it’s

John Jantsch (03:53.336)

So you you actually have a term for this, I think, that you call perspective blindness. and so so let let’s define that. Tell me what it is. and then what does it look like when a business really has that without knowing it?

Cornelia Choe (03:58.156)

Yes, yes.

Cornelia Choe (04:08.673)

So perfect per perspective blindness is a state in which we believe that we see the whole picture. And today the problem is there’s so much change. There’s change happening all over to the left and to the right. And no leader can understand all of that change. We don’t know how it’s affecting all our different team members, and we don’t know everything that’s happening out there because there’s so much of it. And before change was really

Disruption of the status quo. We had the status quo, and then we had a beginning, a middle, and end of change, and then we had a new normal. The problem with today is that we don’t have a new normal. Before we can adjust to a change, another starts. We have tariffs, we have a war, we have supply chain disruptions, we have lack of access to materials that we need. And so the fact that we don’t

John Jantsch (05:00.76)

Well, so there is there is a there is a new normal, it just lasts two days, right?

Cornelia Choe (05:05.463)

There is a new normal the last two days, but it’s probably enough not enough time for us to feel comfortable and get used to it because we’re always looking for what’s changing next. And it’s it’s changing our state of mind. And so because so many things are changing, we’re not able to see everything. Everyone just sees a piece of the puzzle, which is why we need to bring together and understand different perspectives and kind of add those to our map, so to say, the way we see the world.

But when we think that what we see is the complete picture or that everyone else sees that way, we’re gonna make bad decisions. We’re going to we’re gonna assume that things are rosier than they are, that suppliers are gonna be able to deliver, that customers are always gonna be there. And let me share a story with you. I was talking to an exec an executive, and this executive was asked by senior management to hire someone.

Who was an expert at AI to improve their product and to work alongside them in a software as a service company. And this executive complied and hired this person, but then later got rid of them saying, Look, I’m the disruptor. And it’s it’s true that that person was the disruptor about a decade or more ago when software moved from CD-ROMs online.

And so that was a massive disruption. But today things are changing so quickly that the disruptors are being disrupted. And that’s really hard as a change in identity because where do we get our pride and our self-worth? It’s from what we believe we are: the entrepreneur, the founder, the disruptor. But things are changing so quickly that even disruptors need to constantly update their map to see.

to to stay with reality and what’s really changing around them.

John Jantsch (07:06.552)

Well, I I know from looking at your bio, you’ve worked with leaders at United Nations, White House, but does the same problem show up in your view w with that business that has maybe eight people, no board? I mean, does it look different?

Cornelia Choe (07:21.267)

Absolutely, John. I think it is even more relevant because when you’re working in a small company, you need to be extremely nimble. You need to pivot more. You need to keep your pulse on the market and on changes even more. And so I would say go and meet more of the customers, even if you find that you’re in a very stable niche, for example. There might be adjacent

Areas where you could expand your product or another customer segment that could be even more interested in your product. And things are changing all the time. So there are new opportunities being created, but you could also get disrupted very easily. So this matters even more to entrepreneurs. And I do work with a lot of founders. And and this is something that founders, I think, inherently do better, are better at at the beginning.

of their journey when they’re looking to find product market fit. But as we get more stable and we grow, then we need to continue to adapt both the company and of course our identities on what we contribute to our companies, which is which is hard.

John Jantsch (08:29.42)

Yeah. It it’s funny when you start out, everything’s a hypothesis, right? So you you know, you’re you’re willing to experiment and change, but yeah, you you get entrenched. In fact, one of the things you talk about, you mentioned the word map, and you talk a lot about this idea of mental maps that we operate from. So how how are these maps that that are ingrained, maybe from childhood or certainly from another point in your career, how do how are those creating blind spots, do you think?

Cornelia Choe (08:34.58)

Exactly.

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (08:42.103)

Mm-hmm.

Cornelia Choe (08:56.951)

So I’ll give you an example from my own life. I was raised in Minnesota until I was 10. And I had a pretty happy childhood out in nature, a lot of friends. And a lot of my friends were blonde. So I thought I was blonde growing up because when you’re small, you don’t think about it. You just think you are whatever you see. And then I moved to Korea, to South Korea, to Seoul when I was 10. And

John Jantsch (09:13.206)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (09:22.318)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (09:23.411)

I had the shock of my life. The first question I asked my mom at the airport was, where did they find so many people with black hair? And how do they get them all in the same room? I had never seen anything like that before. And I had to completely rewrite my map of who I was and how I was supposed to be. And I was promised a whole world of loving relatives who were waiting for me. That well, that wasn’t true. They were totally confused by who I was. They told me I looked Korean, but I wasn’t acting. And I

couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to act. And so we’re all, yeah, we’re definitely not enough and not not very well at all. And so we we all carry around inside an an operating system like an internal GPS guiding us on what works, what doesn’t, which we get from our successes and our failures that we’ve lived through.

John Jantsch (09:55.84)

I mean prob probably didn’t speak Korean, I imagine, at that time, at that point or in your life. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (10:12.013)

Mm-hmm.

Cornelia Choe (10:19.659)

And I we call this our internal map. And this is something we need to update. And for me, when I got to Korea, it it got really confusing until one time I saw an interview with an actress who was a single mother, and she was saying that she’s gone through a lot of moments of anger and sadness and joy. And it helps her become better at her craft and a better actress because she’s able to understand more of her characters. And I thought.

That’s my job. That’s what I need to do is to understand a lot of perspectives and the people around me and update my map. And it was only when I was willing to change my map and start to get to know people around me and how they think and how different it was and to absorb that myself, to be able to willing to, you know, to change how I see that I was able to make friends and really find a lot more success in.

John Jantsch (11:15.318)

Mm.

Cornelia Choe (11:17.801)

in every subsequent move. And I’ve lived in eleven different places around the world and three continents by the time I was eighteen. So I’ve had a lot of practice in this. But it it really helps when we adjust our map and our view to the world and the to the people around us, even if we don’t understand it at the beginning, which is true today.

John Jantsch (11:24.717)

Yes.

John Jantsch (11:37.246)

Yeah. Th that’s really interesting you talk about travel. I mean, that to me has always been one of the most eye opening experiences as you experience other cultures in other places and you you, you know, you don’t know about them. So part of your mental map is is ignorance of, you know, other cultures and things. And so to get that that opening I’ve always found that that that really opens your eye d your your mind to new ideas. So we’ve talked a little about poked a little bit of what the problem is. how do we solve it?

Cornelia Choe (11:53.227)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (12:03.969)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (12:06.134)

Like all good consultants, I think you have a framework that you know, of how to approach it. So you want to unpack that a little bit?

Cornelia Choe (12:09.174)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (12:13.185)

Sure, it’s a very intuitive framework. And we call it Gem. And it stands for get up close, establish meaningful bonds, and map your evolving perspective. So that basically boils down to step one, where we’re actually willing to get up close to people who think differently. And there’s no pressure, just talk to them, hear their point of view. And we use a lot of

Curiosity and courage at this point, just to approach them and say, hey, you know, do you want to meet for a coffee? If that’s not possible or if it’s dangerous for some reason, then we can potentially read about them or talk to someone we know in common and just to get an idea of what they’re thinking and try to put ourselves in their shoes. And the problem a lot of leaders have is that the the when you’re a founder or a CEO, and the higher you go in the hierarchy.

the less you hear of what people actually think and you hear more of what people think you want to hear. And so creating a relationship of trust, which is step number two to really deepen this relationship instead of a one-off encounter and say, look, I’m happy to meet from time to time and to update your map according to what they see. That’s extremely helpful because that’s when you really get an understanding of what your stakeholders or the people around you are really thinking. And

John Jantsch (13:12.632)

Sure.

John Jantsch (13:16.182)

Mm-hmm.

Cornelia Choe (13:39.308)

That’s what helps you update your map, which is step three. If you talk about a subject in common, then you’ll be able to say, okay, this is where that subject is on my map. They see it differently. I’m going to add on to it. I didn’t know that this was possible. And I get this comment a lot in the circles I lead of leaders who are are chosen to work together into small circles because.

They think differently, not necessarily because they’re from a different background. You could be from the exact same town, but if you think differently and solve your problems together, then you you’re able to see so much more of so many more options and possibilities. And we we call this optimistic fear because it’s acknowledging that there is fear and there could be danger, but still using that fear to propel you forward to get close and

John Jantsch (14:13.74)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (14:25.942)

Mm.

Cornelia Choe (14:35.691)

To get more information to talk to people. And when you get closer, you see the situation much clearer. And you’re able to find a lot more, many more solutions. And to give you an example, I was working with a CEO who took over after the departure of a founder of a company. And we found out that this founder was still controlling some of the operations with through their relationship with employees that they’ve known for a very long time.

John Jantsch (15:02.539)

Mm-hmm.

Cornelia Choe (15:05.847)

And the the new CEO was extremely angry and was thinking of leaving. And they were really succumbing to fight, flight, or freeze and the fear of the unknown. What what’s gonna happen to this company? Because I’m not in control and who’s the real CEO. And so I paired them up with another founder who had just left their company, who had just sold their company. And

This CEO agreed to have a very open mind and just to be very curious during the meeting. And the CEO found that it’s so incredibly hard to leave a company. It this founder felt like they left a part of their body behind. And yeah. And were it was able to really patch things up with their own founder and bring the company to the next level of growth.

John Jantsch (15:51.032)

Well yeah.

John Jantsch (16:01.43)

So so when I heard you talking about the the framework and kind of week to week what that might look like for a business owner, I I I feel like we talked mostly about like people on your team, but that would really be true for customers too, right? I mean, so many of the conversations we have cuss with customers are we are providing a report, providing a service, checking in, it’s all transactional. But we’re not probably doing these things that could expand the map of how the customer actually views the world.

Cornelia Choe (16:05.495)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Cornelia Choe (16:13.803)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (16:24.471)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (16:30.976)

Or how or what they consider is value based on what we think we’re delivering value. Would you say that that that a business owner or an entrepreneur should probably include customers in those conversations, shouldn’t they?

Cornelia Choe (16:42.855)

Yeah, absolutely, John. I think we’re we’re looking at employees, but we’re actually looking at the realm of stakeholders in general because customers change and their needs change. And we may be able to fulfill a a different need and expand on our product, for example. And so this is a great thing to do in general, but all the more so because things are changing.

John Jantsch (16:50.849)

Right.

Cornelia Choe (17:08.159)

so much in the lives of the customers as well. So I would say get up close to your employees and your customers, but also f with your suppliers, your distributors, and even an influencer who you don’t know who’s far away, who’s bringing people to your products or not.

John Jantsch (17:08.227)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:25.726)

You you use the term microtranslations and and the idea that there could be some miscommunication there. And I’m thinking of like literal translations, right? In in when you’re trying to speak to somebody in another language, even like your intonation can mean something completely different. so I unpack that idea of microtranslations and how they show up in customer relationships, employee relationships.

Cornelia Choe (17:29.015)

Mm-hmm.

Cornelia Choe (17:41.835)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (17:50.398)

Give you an example of the survey where where it was found that 39% of CIOs believe the company’s ready, and only 7% of COOs believe that the company’s ready, they’re looking in completely different directions, and their plan of action is very different. So if we bring them together, then they’re really able to translate what they are thinking because.

John Jantsch (18:02.912)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (18:07.191)

Yeah.

Cornelia Choe (18:17.823)

If you bring them together, each one is gonna automatically assume that the other sees their perspective. And that’s when you really run into trouble. So starting from the basics where each person will explain how they see the the situation and explaining it in a way that the other person can understand. And that’s when you get the real magic, Jiang, because when you tr explain things in the perspective of another person so that they can understand and

So the COO will say, look, you know, I know you have a plan for your technology rollout, but we’re actually looking at these specific teams which are having a problem. How do they fit in your plan? And then to to translate what we’re saying in a way others can understand, that’s when we actually get the the co-creation and the and the communication. So it’s it’s it’s one added step, but it brings fantastic results.

John Jantsch (19:15.0)

What about outside perspectives? I know I get brought in quite often to organizations and you know there’s there’s leadership, there’s marketing, there’s sales, there’s customer service. And by the time I’ve talked to all of them, I realize that they’ve been they’ve been operating the way they operate, and it doesn’t make sense. and certainly there are disconnects. And it was so clear and easy for me to see when they were just like, Well, I don’t know, this is how we’ve always done it. Would would you say that bringing in outside perspective is a great way to to actually open some eyes to blind spots? Cause

Cornelia Choe (19:31.329)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (19:44.834)

I mean the problem with blind spots is we would fix them if we knew they were there. Half the time we just don’t know they’re there.

Cornelia Choe (19:49.387)

Mm-hmm.

Exactly. And a lot of people go on autopilot because it’s easier. And our brains are actually our most expensive organ because it takes up two percent of our body weight, but 20% of our energy and our oxygen. So people try to offload and autopilot everything they can because they don’t want to rethink it over. But in a time when we have constant disruption and our maps are changing constantly, then we have to question what we do and

John Jantsch (19:53.422)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:06.2)

Yeah, yeah.

Cornelia Choe (20:21.489)

it’s it it’s easier when we bring in curiosity and optimistic fear because then we’re willing to question and say, it’s not gonna be that big of a deal. Let’s just get a bit closer and see what we think. Let’s talk to these people, let’s call these people in for a meeting Monday morning, let’s make a list of people who aren’t at our table and to get to know what they’re thinking throughout the week.

John Jantsch (20:34.605)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:43.82)

Yeah, yeah. Well well, Cornel, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. Is there somebody that or somewhere that you would invite people to connect with you or find out more about the panoramic leader?

Cornelia Choe (20:54.889)

Absolutely. My website is at corneliacho.com, C-O-R-N-E-L-I-A-C-H-O-E dot com. I would love to hear from you. And our if you want to learn more, our book is on Amazon and it’s called The Panoramic Leader.

John Jantsch (21:12.46)

Awesome. Well again, take appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Cornelia Choe (21:18.078)

Absolutely, John. It has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation.