Thought Leadership
A thought leader is someone who is recognized as an authority in his area of expertise. It could be someone who is an expert in a service area that is important to the financial elite. The expert may also be a source of valuable insights and best practices to certain influencers.

In a study of 1,526 professionals focusing on the very wealthy, less than 5% of respondents considered themselves thought leaders (Figure 1). That leaves plenty of open running room. With so few professionals capably positioned to be thought leaders, there are enormous business possibilities for those who seek to simultaneously brand themselves as leading experts to the financial elite and leading resources to influencers.

Of those who did not identify themselves as thought leaders, 80% said they would like to (Figure 2). That said, among the professionals who want to be thought leaders but aren't, only about 7% said they know the steps required to become a thought leader (Figure 3). So, in effect, financial professionals largely recognize the value derived from being a thought leader, but they simply don't know how to become one.

Becoming A Thought Leader
The process of becoming a thought leader starts with a set of ideas, concepts and possibilities. From here, you construct the framework-the intellectual capital. There are many ways to do this. Forward-thinking research-qualitative and quantitative-is an extremely effective approach. You then need to codify the intellectual capital into thought leadership content and distribute it. Finally, you need to evaluate your efforts and work on improving them.

There are three criteria you always need to focus on to achieve optimal results:

Concentrate on cutting-edge topics. Considering your audiences, your thought leadership content has to be state-of-the-art, solutions-based and actionable. It has to provide answers that benefit the financial elite and influencers.

Keep the content tightly structured. The logic behind the solutions you provide to clients and influencers must be as indisputable as possible. Your conclusions must follow systematically from defensible assumptions.

There needs to be a "call to action." As a thought leader, you will be providing clients and influencers with an education. But you're also looking to grow your practice with the financial elite. You need to think of your thought leadership content as highly sophisticated "advicertising."

Conclusion
Many professionals want the financial elite as clients. A powerful dual-impact brand can make a real difference to the success of your practice with this highly desirable and profitable clientele.

Building a powerful dual-impact brand is a major undertaking that can bring enormous rewards. But it's not easy and it's not necessarily quick. We recommend you vigilantly think about the value a well conceived and executed dual-impact brand can bring to your practice and ultimately to your income and net worth. If you're like most professionals and conclude that having a powerful dual-impact brand is the way to go, make sure you're looking at it as a long-term campaign.