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Leveraging Thought Leadership

Straddling the Worlds of Front and Back of House | Curtis Bateman | 516

Duration
18m
Broadcast on
06 Sep 2023
Audio Format
other

There are few thought leaders who work behind the scenes to create, develop, and deploy programs while simultaneously being the face of the brand. What does it take to find success on both ends? Today we've invited internationally recognized presenter, content developer, business leader and coach Curtis Bateman! He is currently the Vice President of International Direct Offices at FranklinCovey, and was previously the President and CEO of Red Tree Leadership before orchestrated a buyout to FranklinCovey. With few thought leaders working both the back and front of the house, Curtis gives us some insights into what it takes to be successful doing both. He tells us about the passion and extra hours that are required to practice what you preach. However creating doesn't have to be a solo job, in fact, Curtis shares how having Brain Buddies can help sharpen your skills. Having a knowledgeable team around you to help research stories and ideas as well as draft or polish content creates a high quality end product. Curtis tells us how being in the market place every day while creating content creates a constant cycle of feedback as content goes out to the audience, gets live reactions, and can be revised based on that input. This system has been used to pressure test everything from their framework to his newest book Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity. Having had a boutique company that exited to FranklinCovey, Curtis fully understands what it takes to position yourself for acquisition. While each instance is different Curtis shares how having principle-based content that matched up with the prospective buyer, having a Fortune 50 client, and thought leaders with significant industry experience that were capable of making contributions inside the new organization all played a role in a successful acquisition. Three Key Takeaways: · Content creation doesn't have to be a single player game. By working with others you can polish your skills and elevate your content. · Taking ideas to your audience and revising based on feedback can give you real time advice on where the market agrees or disagrees with your content. · Exiting a boutique firm for a bigger company means you don't get to touch every aspect of the business anymore. You have to learn to trust others.

(upbeat music) - And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Curtis Bateman. He is currently Franklin Covey's VP of International Direct Offices. He's got over 25 years experience in the training industry. He's an internationally recognized presenter, content developer, change consultant, business leader and coach, his passion for enabling organizations at change, resulted in the co-creation of transformative industry leading solutions, including change element, leaders in change, managing millennials and millennials at work. So before we could talk more about his CV, let's just talk to Curtis, that would be more fun. So welcome, Curtis, how are you today? - I'm doing really well, Peter, it's nice to be with you. - So I wanna take this in a little bit of a different direction for a moment. So you're one of the few folks from a Thought Leadership business perspective that have been sort of on both sides of the house, what I call sort of back of the house in front of the house. So Steven Maher is one of the probably most well-knowns, but it's a no usual transition, right? Usually, and again, speaking in a general term, people are either back of the house, right? Where they are developing programs, selling programs, marketing programs, delivering programs, et cetera, or they're more the face of the brand, the creator of the Thought Leadership, et cetera. Tell me a little bit how you sort of straddle both worlds 'cause it's a rare thing. - Well, first of all, I love straddling both worlds, and I think it's important because it increases relevance, right? You actually get to practice what you preach, and then you get to talk about things that are working. So the way I balance it is I invest a lot of time and passion in it, and I've been working on it. Right, there's no hiding that. - Oh, there's that. - Yeah. - It takes a lot of time and effort to do it. You know, developing the training programs, writing the book is easily an extra 20 hours a week

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