Why "thought leadership" is overrated

I’ve never really understood the obsession with being called a thought leader.

It sounds nice. It looks good in a bio. It gives people a way to describe what you do when they don't know what else to say.

But the title itself doesn't create authority.

Teaching does.

I know that because I spent a big part of my life teaching martial arts. I owned a studio for about 10 years, and I didn't just teach students. I trained instructors who had to teach those students when I wasn't in the room.

That forced me to think about expertise differently.

Knowing something is not the same as being able to explain it. Being good at something is not the same as helping somebody else get better at it. And having an opinion is not the same as giving people a way to use that opinion.

The internet has made “thought leader” mean almost anything.

It can mean somebody who has a strong point of view. It can mean somebody with a large audience. It can mean somebody who posts every day, writes books, speaks on stages, or gets invited onto podcasts.

Those things can help. They are not the thing itself.

If someone reads your content and still doesn't understand what to do differently, you probably gave them an opinion instead of an education.

That’s the gap I see in a lot of B2B content. It sounds intelligent, but it doesn't leave the reader with a clearer decision, a better question, or a practical next step.

There’s a lot of “here are 5 trends shaping the future of business” content in the world. Then you get to the end and the advice is basically: stay agile, embrace innovation, and put the customer first.

Ah… cool. What am I supposed to do on Monday?

When you teach, your job is not to prove how much you know. Your job is to help another person understand something they couldn't see clearly before.

That changes how you create content.

You stop asking, “How do I sound smart?” and start asking, “Where is this person getting stuck?”

You stop trying to cover the entire category and choose one problem you can explain well. You stop hiding behind jargon and use the language people actually use when they describe the situation. You stop ending every post with a vague statement about the future and give people a way to apply the idea.

The best teachers make complex things feel approachable without pretending the complexity isn't there.

That’s a huge opportunity for B2B companies because your buyers are usually trying to explain difficult decisions to somebody else. They need to understand the problem, create internal agreement, compare options, justify a budget, and avoid making a decision that makes them look bad six months later.

If your content helps them do that, you become useful before you ever become a vendor.

When I first started teaching martial arts, the obvious answer was for me to teach every class.

That worked for a while. It also meant the business was limited by my time, energy, and availability. If I wasn't there, the experience changed.

So I started training other people to teach.

That process required more than saying, “Just do what I do.” I had to break the work down. I had to create a lesson structure, define what a beginner should learn first, show instructors how to explain the movements, and give them enough guardrails that they could make decisions without reinventing the entire class.

The goal was not to turn every instructor into a copy of me. The goal was to make the quality of the teaching repeatable.

That is the same problem your content should solve.

Your best content should not just make you look knowledgeable. It should help the reader make progress without needing you in the room for every step.

That’s how content becomes leverage.

If you want to move from “thought leadership” to actual teaching, I would use this framework.

Start with the situation the buyer can recognize immediately.

Not the category label. Not the internal department name. The thing that is actually creating friction.

“Demand generation is underperforming” might be accurate, but it’s not very human. “We are getting leads, but sales doesn't trust any of them” is a problem people can feel.

The more clearly you name the situation, the faster the right people know the content is for them.

When I was working with companies on marketing and growth, I didn't start by talking about every capability I had. I started by trying to understand what was breaking: the audience was wrong, the message was broad, the handoff was weak, or the team was measuring activity instead of movement.

Good teaching starts with recognition.

This is where your experience becomes useful.

People are usually already trying something. They’re running ads, publishing content, adding tools, changing headlines, hiring agencies, or asking sales to follow up harder.

If you can explain why the obvious solution is producing a weak result, you create real value.

That does not mean you need to insult the buyer or pretend they are incompetent. It means you show them the missing connection.

Cheap leads may not be valuable if the targeting is wrong. More content may not create demand if the message is not connected to a problem buyers care about. More automation may not make the process better if nobody has decided what should happen next.

This is also where you can share what you've learned from a real situation. The reader doesn't need a polished success story every time. They need to understand how you think through the problem.

“You need better alignment” is a conclusion.

“Here are the 3 questions I would ask sales, marketing, and customer success before changing the campaign” is teaching.

Show the steps you use. Explain what you look for. Tell people what you would do first, second, and third.

You don’t have to give away every internal document or turn your business into a free consulting service. But you should give enough away that someone can see the shape of the solution.

This is one of the reasons I have kept publishing podcasts, newsletters, and practical content. I’m not trying to hide the way I think until somebody pays me. I want the right people to see how I approach a problem before we ever have a conversation.

That makes the conversation better when it happens.

Proof isn’t just a logo or a revenue number.

The most useful proof explains what changed and why it changed. It shows the decision, the tradeoff, the sequence, or the lesson.

At CMI Mechanical, the important story wasn’t simply that we produced content. We chose a lane around commercial HVAC, built content around specific services and search intent, connected the pages, and reinforced the same story through outreach. A smaller company started competing above much larger brands for terms that mattered.

That story teaches a method: focus, depth, internal connection, and consistency.

At Wrapmate, the lesson from our campaigns was not “go viral.” It was that the configurator, landing page, social content, press outreach, email, and timing all worked together. The result was bigger because the pieces supported a narrative instead of operating as isolated tactics.

Your proof should make the reader smarter, not just more impressed.

The best teaching creates motion.

That next move can be small. Review the last 10 leads. Ask sales which problem keeps coming up. Rewrite the homepage around one entry point. Pull three customer questions into your next article. Build a simple checklist for the handoff.

The point is to help someone move from “that is interesting” to “I know what to look at next.”

This is where many thought-leadership posts fall apart. They create agreement but no action. People nod, like the post, and keep doing what they were doing.

Useful content should change the next conversation, decision, or experiment.

You don't need to invent a new framework every week. You probably already have teaching material sitting inside your business.

That is where your best content usually starts.

When I built my podcast, I wasn't trying to manufacture a personality from scratch. I was taking the things I was already thinking about, explaining them out loud, and creating a place where other people could learn from the process.

The same thing happens with this newsletter. I start with something I saw, a question somebody asked, a problem from a sales or marketing conversation, or a lesson from an old role. Then I try to make the lesson useful to somebody else.

That is a much better content engine than sitting in front of a blank calendar and asking what the company should post this week.

Teaching doesn’t always create an immediate payoff.

Somebody may read 3 newsletters before they reply. They may listen to a podcast and come back 6 months later. They may send your article to a colleague without ever telling you.

That does not mean the content failed.

When you teach consistently, people start building a mental model of how you think. They learn what you care about, what problems you notice, and what kind of advice you tend to give.

That familiarity matters when a problem becomes urgent.

It’s also why consistency matters more than trying to sound profound once a quarter. You’re not trying to win one post. You’re trying to become the person people think of when a specific problem shows up.

That’s authority. Not the title. The accumulated evidence that you can help.

You don't need to sound like the smartest person in the room. You need to make the room smarter.

If your content only communicates that you know more than the reader, it creates distance. If it gives the reader language, context, and a practical way forward, it creates trust.

That’s the difference between performing expertise and teaching.

So the next time you sit down to write a post, record a podcast, or plan a newsletter, don't start with “What is my big thought?” Start with:

That’s where the good stuff is.

You can call it thought leadership if you want. I’d rather call it teaching.

I hope this gives you an idea for something you should be teaching to your audience.

Javy

P.S. — Is there a topic or strategy that you’d like me to unpack? Drop me a line. Let me know what you’re thinking of. And, I’ll get it queued up for an upcoming newsletter.