Do you know someone with a memorable story or online brand? That person could be a thought leader.
A thought leader is a topic or industry expert who shares his or her knowledge, wisdom, and inspiration with an audience hungry for information. These experts innovate. They find fresh ways and new mediums to share old ideas and stories. They create new frameworks for learning. They have researched history and know today’s trends, but spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about where society is going. You could even say thought leaders are the 21st-century philosophers.
How do these thought leaders amass an audience? They share their content. Twenty years ago, that sharing happened almost exclusively through books, TV, and stages. You could build your own network by calling people or sending them a postcard, but for the most part, budding thought leaders had to get past a gatekeeper to reach those platforms.
Think of the non-fiction author who had to satisfy an editor and a publisher before the message got printed and distributed.
Experts had to slowly climb the ranks of local news TV spots, build a respectable media reel, and network their butts off to find a show producer who could get them a two minute spot on The Today Show.
And to get on stage with a thousand attendees? Good luck.
We’re in a thought leader’s dream environment for message proliferation. Gatekeepers have been all but obliterated.
Thankfully, technology has flipped the script. We’re in a thought leader’s dream environment for message proliferation. Gatekeepers have been all but obliterated. You have a story to tell? Push a red dot on your smart phone, press share, and POW-BANG-BOOM: you’ve just made your content available to most of the planet.
As in: Your content is just as available as the trillion gigabytes of cat videos, prestige-TV recaps, and cute little Frozen snowball critters served up from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Substack, Spotify, Twitch, Amazon, Netflix, Portland Trailblazers (Rip City), and… your name goes here?
Key word: available.
So, uh, how does a positive thought leader with a great message stand out?
Well, let’s do some good news / bad news…
If you’re just getting your message and expertise out there online, the good news is you’re not the last to join the party. You know the bad news, yeah? Yep, the Internet marketing Mayflower left back when this was on the big screen:
But you have a secret weapon, one any Fortune 500 CMO would greet with “well, duh.” Madison Ave serves it up to your brain 24/7/365 with the fervor of a weirdly compact mustache.
One word: BRANDING.
Guess what… most Internet marketing gurus will tell you that “you don’t need that expensive shit, just go slap some pages up on the web and make sure they use this color of headline and this color of call-to-action button and whammo you’re RICH dude!”
Bullshit. (If you’ve tried that approach, you’re probably nodding, wishing you hadn’t spent so much money on that “wisdom”, right?)
As Seth Godin put it in his interview with Gary Vee, your currency today is two things: Attention & Trust. That’s it. Attention & Trust.
Now back to that list of attention Wilburs. You know, the Netflix binge-athon, the Blazers winning the championship (Rip City), the … Prince shooting J’s over Lake Minnetonka (shoot it!). Yeah, that list, where your name needs to be.
See what you’re competing against there? Not whom. It ain’t Joe Schmo expert offering the same advice you want to give. (Well, technically it is partly whom, because somewhere down the line your prospective customer will choose between the two hundred versions of you and Joe Schmo.) You’re competing against people’s attention spans. If and when they finally find you online, you better give them a blast of “Wow, I know/like/trust this cat” feel good sauce on their brain’s caudate before their 3 seconds (if you’re lucky) of attention wanes.
That decision (your new visitor’s choice to stay longer, enjoy your useful content and poke around your provocative website) is the direct result of Branding. Branding is how you make your people feel at home when they’re “with you” online (and offline, too).
Brand building isn’t easy, and it usually costs a fortune. (Remember the fortunes you’re up against.) That’s why we’re dedicating this article to 11 Positive Thought Leaders who are beating the odds, rapidly gaining audience, and hustling every day to share something beautiful, lift people up, and make a real impact in people’s lives.
Some of these folks are our clients (marked with an *), but most are not. We want to acknowledge people who are incredibly intentional about their online personas, design innovations, and branding. This is NOT an exhaustive list, just 11 brands we admire right now. More to come soon!
The Unofficial List: 11 Trendsetting Thought Leader Brands
Brendon Burchard *
#1 NY Times Bestselling Author, Founder of Experts Academy, High Performance Academy, World’s Greatest Speaker Training
Brendon is a masterful storyteller, high performance trainer, and marketing guru. With multiple bestselling books on all the major lists (sometimes for months at a time), he’s also shown a critical yet sometimes overlooked knack for creative writing.
If you create incredible value and information for others that can change their lives, and you always stay focused on that service, the financial success will follow.
Brendon Burchard
Brendon is wildly successful with his online business (when we first published this list in 2016, he had already passed four million Facebook fans), but what we admire most is his ability and willingness to be a student of the craft. Respected for launching a multi-million dollar empire on his own, he learned to code, write, design, and launch products without any assistance. Sure, there were struggles, but his mission has always been bigger than the obstacles.
Brendon’s basically your favorite next door neighbor, and he has the #1 rated YouTube channel for personal development. He’s created a cohesive design across all his YouTube images, and you can’t help but feel ready to live your best life after binging his inspirational videos.
Danielle LaPorte
Creator of The Fire Starter Sessions, The Desire Map, #Truthbombs
Danielle isn’t afraid to stand out and stir up some thought leader controversy. This passionate diva is full of poetry, curse words, #Truthbombs, and conversation starters that lead women (and men) to follow their desires.
The essence of all of my work can be distilled into… Encouraging someone to be…courageous. Which usually just means being themselves, which ironically is the hardest thing ever.
Danielle LaPorte
Along with the next woman on our list, Danielle is one of the queens of personal name branding. What sets her apart in the thought leadership space? Extreme intimacy. Do a Danielle LaPorte photo search and you’ll find some relatively racy, but professional photography.
Take a 10 second tour of her amazing, custom website and you’ll quickly recognize her “up close and personal, here I am as I am” approach to everything. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, but that’s not the point of branding anyway. Her tribe is loyal because she’s fearlessly loyal to being authentic.
Her website’s script typography appears to be Danielle’s own handwriting, including headlines, the brand logo, and her Truth Bomb quote cards. We especially love her approach to the ubiquitous and (often) annoying pop-up call-to-action:
We didn’t create Danielle’s brand, but our creative director Rae Senarighi would do backflips and somersaults down every grassy hill in Portland if we got the chance to work with Ms. LaPorte.
Chris Guillebeau
Prolific Blogger, Producer of World Domination Summit, and Author of Bestselling Books “The Art of Non-Conformity” and “The $100 Startup”
Chris is the prince of travel hacking, long-term goal setting, and inspiring millions of millennials to live unconventional lives in a conventional world. Want to start a business with only $100 or see every country in the world within 10 years? Chris will show you how.
I wasn’t super strategic. I did work with heart and with passion.
Chris Guillebeau
Chris is an incredible writer and speaker who’s taken his New York Time s Best Selling books across the United States and crowd sourced stories from “everyday”, inspirational people. When you meet him at one of his events, he is as accessible, authentic, and friendly as he is successful, a testament to his inner-work and personal development.
Chris segments his blog into 5 categories: Life, Work, Travel, Profiles, and Et Cetera. Through savvy design and intention, he provides easy, quick navigation to core areas of the website. Check it out here:
Thinking of writing a book yourself? Start blogging. That’s what Chris did. Then you’ll have an audience ready to buy it.
Already have a book? Check out Chris’s super-clean, well-designed quiz landing page for his most recent book, Born For This:
Having met Chris in person and seen his non-conformity in action, we can assure you the world could use more Thought Leaders like him. Humble, introverted, yet strong, ambitious, and passionate. Go Chris go!
Marie Forleo
Host of Marie TV, Creator of B-School, Hip Hop Mogul In The Making
Marie Forleo will show you how to build a business and life you love. This New Jersey native is downright real, humble, and honest. She’s wildly successful with her flagship course, B-School, and also dedicated to promoting change in the world through high-quality (and FREE!) coaching on MarieTV and a remarkable commitment to giving back to causes that matter to her and her team:
Never start a business just to ‘make money’. Start a business to make a difference.
Marie Forleo
From day one, this online popstar knew how to stand out in a crowded marketplace. She’s let her many passions (dance, choreography, marketing, spirituality, design, finance, entrepreneurship, fashion, etc) be a brand, look and style unlike anyone else’s online.
And her website? O M G. She has always set the bar highest for modern website design. Before we launched Brendon Burchard’s and Jeff Walker’s websites, 95% of the folks who filled out our project inquiry form asked “how do I get a Marie Forleo web design?” We imagine that trend will continue for years.
But one of the things we admire most about Marie? She hustled. Today you see a polished TV star with millions of raving fans and tens of thousands of customers, but back in 2010? Marie was doing the work, even if that meant plopping down on the couch with weird pillows, wearing a white ribbed tank top, and flipping on the laptop webcam to shoot her first episode of Marie TV.
See the video here: https://youtu.be/f7EmnIs2ySg
The takeaway? Do what you can with what you have. Who knows? Three or four years (of disciplined practice) later you too might get that knock on the door from Oprah.
Ramit Sethi
Founder of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Digital Educator, Bestselling Author
Ramit will teach you how to be rich. No joke, no scams, and no weirdos allowed. Seriously. This Stanford graduate started his blog, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, in his college dorm room more than 10 years ago. He uses his expertise in psychology, finance, and business to teach ambitious adults how to get out of credit card debt, make more money, and live a rich life, in his New York Times Bestselling book and online programs.
Ask people what they want. Don’t tell them what they need.
Ramit Sethi
Ramit is the king of Lead Generation Magnets (we call them “LGMs” here at Peaceful). Since his blog covers a wide variety of topics, he’s strategically placed unique LGMs across it to funnel readers into specific email marketing campaigns and courses. How many LGMs can you spot on the blog post below?
(And that’s just the real estate “above the fold.”)
Ramit’s also one of the most prolific course creators. The screenshot below only shows 1.5 of his 5 course category options:
Quantity rarely equates to quality. Anybody can slap a pile of crap in an online box and call it a “life changing course.” But Ramit’s courses are the real deal. Back when we first wrote this, I worked through his “Zero To Launch” course, followed the paint-by-numbers blueprint, and steadily built a list and even got online product sales out of it while teaching yoga and working at Peaceful Media. It was exhilarating. It worked!
Jeff Shore *
Bestselling Author of Be Bold, Win the Sale, Closing 2.0; Creator of the Annual Sales Leadership Summit
If you haven’t heard of Jeff, you aren’t in the real estate or new home sales world. 18 of the top 20 home builders in the US have received consulting and training from the Shore Consulting group. He is the de facto expert on sales and sales leadership, particularly in the high-dollar, emotionally charged buying experiences (like buying a home).
Your standards are not what you desire, they are what you accept.
Jeff Shore
What we love about Jeff’s approach to brand is that he feels like the antithesis of a sales trainer or sales guy. He brings humor, heart, and entertainment to all his presentations, whether it’s a Facebook Live or a keynote speech. He shows his audience that selling isn’t sleazy, scammy, or slimy. Done the right way, selling is transformative and positive for both the customer and the salesperson.
He’s not being tricky or strategic about that. His essence simply comes through. When you trust yourself, people trust you.
Between leading seminars worldwide and sharing his masterful tips and trade secrets in his exclusive Sales Leadership Roundtable mastermind, Jeff is a true family man and treats each of his readers like family. Don’t believe us? Sign up for one of his casual but insightful webinars and notice how comfortable he makes you feel. He’s not being tricky or strategic about that. His essence simply comes through. When you trust yourself, people trust you.
Peaceful Media worked with Jeff and his team on a daily/hourly basis (to the point where it felt like we were part of the family), and one of the things we loved most was their willingness to leap ahead of the curve with just about everything in their digital marketing and product offerings. Together we built a world-class enterprise-level, mobile-first learning management system (LMS) to serve both the corporate behemoth clientele and the “long tail” small business consumer who needs cutting edge sales education in the field, on the device already in their hands. It’s spendy to forge new paths in your industry, to be sure, but being able to serve people out on the far right of the curve is an incredibly powerful economic catalyst.
Mo Faul *
Career Coach, HayHouse Radio Show Host, Podcaster, Dynamite Human Being
Mo inspires people to find and elevate a career they’re passionate about. She brings kick-ass back into your career even when you think it’s doomed to a dead end. Mo can relate: she spent 20+ years in the healthcare industry, desperately trying to bring her passion for personal development and mindset training to a corporate environment that resisted (to put it nicely).
Courage first. Then confidence.
Mo Faul
When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she realized coaching and mentoring was her true calling. Since launching her own training company, Mo has helped thousands of people kick fear to the curb and resist the temptation to play it safe. She’s a prolific content creator and a downright joy to be around. Her success is no accident.
Remember Attention & Trust from the start of this article? Ask yourself what you’re doing to systematically, automatically collect testimonials that are pre-approved, sorted, and filed for use on your social media and website. Reputation is everything in the thought leader’s world.
Then start planting some nicely designed, crazy-positive testimonials on your website, like we did when we designed Mo’s inspiring, bright, and fun website & brand.
Jeff Walker *
Founder of Product Launch Formula; NY Times Bestselling Author of “Launch”
Jeff is the world’s preeminent leader in launching an online product. His famous formula has helped thought leaders generate over $500 million in product sales. Most of his students use the framework to sell online courses, from “How to Knit Slippers” to “High Performance Brain Training”. You’ve likely seen his influence in hundreds of launches from the world’s top online gurus, including Marie Forleo, Brendon Burchard, Frank Kern, and Tony Robbins.
The world has changed, and the only true security is your ability to create value and get paid for that value.
Jeff Walker
What makes Jeff unique is how humble and down to earth he is, especially compared to the generation of Internet marketers before him. Within seconds of meeting him or watching one of his free videos, you sense he’s the guy you could sit down with over a Corona to chat about sports, mountain biking adventures, and family.
We’re incredibly honored that Jeff came to Peaceful Media (by referral from Brendon) to rebrand and rebuild his website from the ground up. Tour the website and you’ll sense that you, too, can climb the most insurmountable mountain and claim your spot among the most successful online brands in the thought leadership world.
Gabrielle Bernstein
Spirit Junkie, NY Times Bestselling Author, Int’l Speaker, Spiritual Leader
“Gabby B” helps soulful women become the happiest person they know. This self-proclaimed spirit junkie knows a thing or two about meditation, yoga, self-help, and turning miracles into reality. Forbes noted her as one of the 20 Best-Branded Women. No surprise. Ask any woman looking online to reach the next level of self-actualization, and within minutes they’ll tell you about Gabby B, “this woman who ____________.”
I learned that real happiness doesn’t come from getting but from giving.
Gabrielle Bernstein
Gabby crushes online branding because she’s devoted to communicating truthfully and intimately across her blogs, YouTube videos, and online products. Most people run away when they hear the words “meditation” and “spirituality”, but she has a unique ability to invite newbies into this world without a flinch. She meets her audience wherever they are in their journey.
We’ve never met Gabby in person, but we admire what she’s done with unconventional, resonant photography and some stellar design / copywriting on landing pages like her Miracle Membership page.
Jean-Jacques Crèvecoeur *
Author, Speaker, Healer, Spiritual Leader, Quantum Physicist, Doer
Jean-Jacques hails from Quebec, Canada, and has reached audiences around the world with his world-class writing and thought leadership. Translate his French blog articles into whatever language suits you and get ready for an awakening. This crazy fun dude is the second coming of Carl Jung merged with Robin Williams, we swear.
His career started with self-healing. After witnessing the possibility miracle medically inexplicable reality that he could eliminate a gigantic brain tumor by adapting his thought processes, he felt he had no choice but to share his methodology with as many people as possible. So he left his doctorate in quantum physics (naturally) to pursue his dream of changing people’s lives. How’s that for a career change?
I didn’t make millions online by being strategic. I am successful only because I love my students deeply.
Jean-Jacques Crèvecoeur
Jean-Jacques is living proof of… well, many remarkable things. Besides that whole “healing myself of a giant brain tumor through meditation, research, and an unflinching commitment to psychotherapy” thing he:
- is a role model for “successfully following the path set forth by your mentors.” When Brendon Burchard taught him that giving is today’s selling and shared his product launch methodologies, Jean-Jacques publicly announced he’d return with a case study. Two years and three launches later, he had already generated over $3M in course sales.
- has proven that you can be wildly, nakedly YOU when you’re teaching an online course. You never know what props he’ll bring into the teaching, which wardrobe he’ll wear… or if he’ll be wearing wardrobe at all.
- and, best of all, he’s proven that LOVE sells.
Watch a few of Jean-Jacques’s video blogs and you’ll see he knows how to welcome his audience with a good laugh. He never takes himself too seriously, especially since he’s become one of the highest paid consultants in France.
- Jean-Jacques launched his website at our Elevate Your Brand Implementation Week where Brendon Burchard and Peaceful Media helped folks build and manage their own Thought Leader websites and sales funnels!
Kris Carr
Health & Wellness Expert, Speaker, Documentary Film Producer, Author of “Crazy Sexy” Book Series
Kris’s online brand splashed onto the Thought Leader scene with the zest and yumminess of a freshly squeezed green juice with lemon and lime.
It’s not about finding your voice, it’s about giving yourself permission to use your voice.
Kris Carr
Kris found her way into “Thought Leadership” and big public speaking stages through hardship of the most dramatic kind: stage 4 cancer and a diagnosis that she had only a few months to live. She documented her journey to detox her body/mind/spirit and heal naturally. That was the birth of her “Crazy Sexy Cool” book, documentary film, and beautifully designed website and blog.
We haven’t had the chance to work with Kris (yet), but her spirit and brand inspire us to consider how our life’s craziest, unsexiest battles can be 180’d into a platform that saves people’s lives all over the globe. Pretty crazy sexy cool [as long as we just keep it on the downlow], right?
How Can You Elevate Your Expert Brand Onto This List?
- It starts with intention and desire. Money doesn’t cut it. Nor does anything you’ve crammed into your head from a $2,000 course. Sorry. You’ve gotta be crazy hungry to make it.
- Mix in daily action. We hope the thought leaders, brands, and stories you’ve seen here inspire you to do what you can with what you have and launch your own Thought Leader brand platform, starting with whatever version you can afford to ship this month.
- Then be prepared to bring your “A” game in those ol’ school virtues of discipline and patience. Building an online business and brand doesn’t happen overnight. These 11 positive thought leaders you see crushing it online have spent years studying and honing their craft to create a brand that aligns with their mission and sustains itself financially.
- And always be a student AND practitioner. Study what the masters are doing, but remember that the best learning happens when you’re doing. Apply what you learn from these 11 gurus’ brand platforms to your business website, copy, photography, typography, and brand materials.
- Stay within your means and build a real business that adds value to your people. All brands start there. Little ol’ wise person hint: Please, please, please don’t start this brand building journey intending to match the Rome that the Brendons, Maries, Ramits, Gabbys, and others have built. You’ll burn out of cash, energy, and hope real quick, and that’d suck monkey bananas. The world needs ya, playa.
What’s your biggest takeaway from this post? What resonated most with you, and what will you implement in your brand?
If you’re ready to build the kind of brand platform these folks have, one that earns attention and trust instead of renting it, that’s the work we do. Come tell us what you’re building.