The first step is to embrace authenticity. Thought leadership isn’t about trying to sound like an expert in everything, it’s about sharing your unique perspective, experiences, and lessons learned. Many founders hesitate because they feel they don’t have groundbreaking insights, but the reality is that people connect more with real stories and personal reflections than with overly polished corporate messaging.

A practical approach to finding your voice is to observe and emulate thought leaders you admire. This doesn’t mean copying their style verbatim but rather identifying what resonates with you and adapting it in a way that feels natural. Over time, this will evolve into your own distinctive tone and approach.

Another key aspect is storytelling. People remember stories far more than they remember generic business advice. Instead of just saying, “Founders should focus on team culture,” share a real-life example – perhaps a mistake you made in hiring, a challenge you faced in leadership, or a moment of growth in your startup journey. This makes your content relatable and engaging.

Lastly, have a clear purpose behind your thought leadership efforts by being clear on what the end game is. Are you looking to attract investors? Build a community? Drive sales for your product? Thought leadership isn’t just about visibility, it should tie back to your overall business goals. Once you define what you want to achieve, it becomes easier to craft content that serves that purpose. Just be consistent and thoughtful with it!

Thought leadership can be a powerful tool for generating business opportunities, attracting investors, and even creating new revenue streams if rather than directly selling, founders focus on creating value-driven content that naturally attracts their target readers.

I’ve had a lot of success in using webinars even before a product is fully developed. For example, in my previous startup, we ran a series of webinars where the founder spoke on key industry topics, and we found we got much better engagement from doing this than posting a whitepaper, for example. This built an engaged audience, which later converted into customers once the product launched because we’d created a lead magnet asset from his knowledge and used it to raise awareness.

The key to commercialising thought leadership is intentionality, going back to my point of having a clear end game! When done right, thought leadership creates a self-sustaining cycle: credibility attracts an audience → the audience turns into customers, partners, or investors → business growth reinforces credibility.