Where business ideas learn to travel.
Leveraging Thought Leadership is a practical interview show about turning expertise into public value. Its conversations follow authors, speakers, executives, coaches, publishers, and advisors through the messy work behind visible authority.
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Leveraging Thought Leadership is a business interview show about how ideas become assets. It is interested in the work behind authority: the book that has to serve a business, the framework that has to become clearer than its first draft, the keynote platform that has to create value beyond applause, and the coaching or sales model that has to hold up in a client conversation. The show has a plainspoken, practitioner-to-practitioner feel. Guests are usually people who have built something from expertise, including authors, publishers, executives, speakers, coaches, and community builders. Recent conversations look closely at business books, hybrid publishing, ghostwriting, leadership reinvention, aviation and perseverance, sales performance, executive coaching, and problem reframing inside companies. The questions tend to circle origin, process, stakes, and usefulness. That rhythm gives guests room to tell longer stories, but it also keeps pulling the conversation back to impact. A publishing episode may become a discussion of distribution, gatekeepers, and why old labels around self-publishing were often unfair. A sales episode may move from stakeholder resistance to what success looks like after the book is in the world. A leadership episode may start with a nonlinear career and end up asking how a public platform gets built from lived experience. The show is not especially glossy. It is warmer than a boardroom briefing and more grounded than a promotional author tour. There is humor, correction, occasional bluntness, and a steady skepticism toward tidy claims. The best moments come when a guest explains what was harder than expected or when a familiar business idea gets tested against implementation. For people building around expertise, it offers useful texture: not just what thought leadership looks like from the outside, but how it gets shaped, sold, sharpened, and carried into the market.
Made for: For authors, speakers, executives, coaches, publishers, advisors, and entrepreneurs building a business around expertise. It also fits business listeners who want practical stories behind public authority.
What sets it apart: The show focuses on the operating system behind thought leadership rather than only the finished book, keynote, or brand. It keeps asking how ideas create value, reach people, and survive the real work of execution.
Hear from the people whose ideas shape the business world. Learn what their public stories leave out. Our beat: the business of thought leadership and the people who takeideas to scale. Fortune 500 CEOs. New York Times bestselling authors. Thinkers50 honorees. NSA Hall of Fame speakers. Top business school professors. First-time authors. Emerging keynote speakers. Their support: publishers, speaking coaches, PR experts. We ask thought leaders to share generously. And they don't hold back. How did they get here? What nearly stopped them? What did they learn? And what keeps themgoing? Your co-hosts, Peter Winick and Bill Sherman of Thought Leadership Leverage, bring two decades of experience w…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bill Sherman and Peter Winick reveal how expertise becomes a durable business through coaching, speaking, publishing, and disciplined attention to audience value.
Leveraging Thought Leadership follows the working life of an idea, from the experience that produced it to the business built around it. Bill Sherman and Peter Winick ask guests how their thinking became coaching, speaking, leadership work, or a book.
One host swore he'd never write a book; you get to hear how that worked out.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded sales conversation on managing resistance, building champions, and judging impact through reader response.
Elite sales performance is framed as the disciplined work of managing resistance as much as cultivating champions. The central idea is a useful one: sellers cannot only gather support from people already inclined to help; they also have to neutralize likely opposition so a deal…
A book conversation that keeps returning to the harder part: making ideas useful after the manuscript is done.
Bill Sherman and Naren Ariel spend the episode on the hard middle of writing a book, where years of thought leadership have to become something other people can actually use.
A steady look at how trust, fit, and lived experience shape modern coaching.
Kendra Dahlstrom's arc is about how coaching changes shape over time: first as a way to become a better employee and colleague, then as the person others rely on in high-stakes moments, and later as someone helping senior leaders at Fortune 50 companies work through complexity,…
A practical case for judging a sale by whether the customer actually uses the product and gets value from it.
Art Fromm gives this business conversation a clear point of pressure: a closed deal is not the finish line if the customer never uses the product or sees value from it.
A humane, practical conversation about turning self-awareness and heart into everyday leadership habits.
Claude Silver's case for leading from the heart sits between the pace of a growing workplace and the people asked to do meaningful work inside it.
A candid look at how public failure, reflection, and responsibility can shape thought leadership.
Thought leadership often sounds confident after the fact, but this episode stays with the messier question of what happens when public work is shaped by failure.
A candid look at how a high-stakes aviation career becomes grounded, credible leadership speaking.
A career built around aviation firsts becomes a quieter study of what remains after the uniform comes off. Retired Colonel Meryl Tengisdahl, identified as the first and only African-American woman to pilot the U-2 Dragon Lady, traces the move from Navy commissioned officer and…
Leadership balance before burnout takes over.
A midweek reset for school leaders.
Retired Colonel Meryl Tengesdal, the first and only African-American woman to pilot the U-2 Dragon Lady, shares her journey from a Star Trek-obsessed child in the Bronx to a military aviator and keynote speaker.
Bill Sherman interviews Nina Sossamon-Pogue about building thought leadership through resilience after public failure.
This episode features an interview with Noel Massie, former UPS VP, discussing his journey from executive to author and his new book aimed at preparing first-time leaders for success.
This episode features an interview with Ken Lizotte, an author and consultant who helps clients publish books and articles to establish thought leadership.
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Lucy McCarraher discusses how publishing has evolved over the last 20 years, focusing on technology's role in changing gatekeeping and distribution for business books.
Peter Winnick interviews Greg Larkin about his journey from predicting the subprime crisis to founding Punks and Pinstripes, exploring reinvention, leadership, and empowering entrepreneurs.
This episode features retired Colonel Merryl Tengesdal discussing her journey as the first and only African-American woman to pilot the U-2 Dragon Lady aircraft and her transition to thought leadership.
Kevin Anderson discusses his holistic approach to helping authors at any stage of their journey achieve their publishing goals through services like ghostwriting, book coaching, and agenting, while remaining agnostic about traditional vs.
Peter Winnick interviews Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, an expert on reframing and problem solving, about his journey from academic research to publishing books on innovation and how real-world company experiences shaped his work.
Elite selling gets messy fast.
They wrote a book.
Bill Sherman talks with Kendra Dahlstrom about how being coached first led her into coaching others.
Art Fromm opens with a career detour.
Peter Winnick hosts Claude Silver on Leveraging Thought Leadership, framing the conversation around her book Be Yourself at Work and her role as VaynerX's first chief heart officer.
Peter Winnick interviews Keith Ferrazzi about how thought leaders maintain relevance by balancing timeless principles with adapting to current trends like AI in business.
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