OM DENNE EPISODE
She was skeptical about writing a book for years. Not because she lacked ideas — because she'd watched too many people write books for their ego rather than for their reader.
In this episode, Bill Sherman sits down with Lisa Bodell, CEO of futurethink and bestselling author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins, to talk about what actually happens between "I should write a book" and "I finally did." It's not the tidy origin story most authors tell.
Lisa walks through the real arc: the excitement of a new idea, the trough of doubt that follows ("Oh my God, this sucks. What am I doing?"), and the slow climb back out. It took a CEO telling her directly — get this into a book — before she finally said yes. Even then, she describes the process as "easy, hard, transformative," all at once.
The conversation turns into something bigger than book-writing advice. Bill and Lisa dig into what separates real thought leadership from the noise flooding LinkedIn and social feeds right now. Their shared conviction: an opinion isn't thought leadership. Only lived, tested experience earns you the right to speak — and if you have something of real value, staying silent isn't neutral. Someone else will fill that space, often with ideas that sound smart but have no practical foundation underneath them.
They also get honest about imposter syndrome — something Lisa says never fully goes away, even after decades on the world's biggest stages and inside the highest levels of government and Fortune 500 leadership. The fix isn't confidence. It's proof: doing the work long enough that you can defend it when someone pushes back.
If you're sitting on an idea you're not sure is "ready," or you're wondering whether the publishing world still rewards vulnerability over polish, this episode will change how you think about the whole process. It's a grounded, generous conversation about what it actually costs — and what it's worth — to put your ideas into the world.
Three Key Takeaways:
• An opinion is not thought leadership. Lisa draws a hard line: you earn the right to speak on something only after you've actually done the work and understand what people go through — not from reading about it or having a hot take.
• Imposter syndrome doesn't disappear with success — you work through it, not around it. Lisa describes years of testing and bulletproofing her ideas before publishing, until she realized the real question wasn't "am I ready?" but "how much more proof do I need before I take the leap?"
• Vulnerability has replaced pure authority as the credibility standard. Both Bill and Lisa note that today's most resonant business books admit what didn't work, not just what did — inviting readers in rather than lecturing from on high.
Bill knows firsthand what Lisa is describing in this episode — because he lived it. His own book, The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts Elevate Their Big Ideas—and How You Can Too, co-written with Peter Winick and Naren Aryal, grew out of the exact same doubt, discipline, and vulnerability Lisa unpacks here. Drawing on more than 700 conversations from this very podcast, the book turns those lived, tested stories into practical frameworks — including five "thought leadership avatars" — for anyone trying to move from having an idea to actually building influence with it. If Lisa's honesty about imposter syndrome and the messy middle of writing resonated with you, this handbook picks up right where that conversation leaves off, with the tools to get you through it.
Pick up The Thought Leadership Handbook published by Amplify Publishing Group, wherever books are sold — including Amazon and Bookshop.org.
