In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I had a great chat with thought leader Sara Connell. We talked about what it really means to be a thought leader these days, and how being authentic and thinking outside the box are key. Sara busts the myth that everything’s already been said, and encourages people to lead with their own voice and ideas. We also got into why being visible matters now more than ever, touching on things like the “trust recession” and Google’s “zero moment of truth.” She shared super practical tips on how to stand out—even in crowded spaces—and make sure your audience is actually paying attention. Plus, we talked about writing books, and Sara gave some smart frameworks to make the process less overwhelming. If you’re a coach, course creator, or membership owner wanting to boost your influence, this episode is full of helpful insights.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Your voice is still needed—even in a crowded space. Sara debunks the idea that everything’s already been said. She encourages you to lead with your own thoughts and trust that your unique perspective can make an impact.

• Visibility builds trust—if done right –We explored how being seen isn’t just about showing up, but about showing up with intention. Concepts like the “trust recession” and Google’s “zero moment of truth” show why strategic visibility matters more than ever.

• Writing a book doesn’t have to be overwhelming – Sara shares simple frameworks to help you structure and write a book efficiently, turning what feels like a massive project into a doable, powerful tool for influence.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Sara on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Who gets to decide that you are a thought leader? Is it an industry gatekeeper, social media, algorithms, or something much closer to home? In today's episode, I am sitting down with Sara Connell to discuss all things thought leadership. We'll be challenging the myth that everything has been said before, and even when there is no original content, how you can still become a thought leader in those spaces. But here's the reality check. You can't be a thought leader if no one's listening. So we also look at visibility, head on exploring concepts like the trust recession and Google's fascinating zero moment of truth that changes everything about how audience find and connect with you. As an online business owner, becoming a thought leader is going to accelerate you and your business. So this is a must listen for all of you course creators, membership owners, and coaches. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing today? I hope you are good. I am very excited about today's episode. I get excited about all the episodes to be fair, and if I didn't, I wouldn't be putting the episodes out. That is a true thing. But today I am interviewing someone who was new to my world and I didn't [00:02:00] know her name is Sara Connell and she, sometimes I get agency or not. Sometimes I get agencies pitching me a lot and lots of the times. Well, I get a ton of pitching, if I'm honest. We probably get two to three people pitch a day to come on the podcast. So it's actually really unusual for me to have someone on that I don't know or haven't had some connection with. But you know when you meet someone and you are instantly like, oh my goodness, I love you. You are amazing. She was awesome. We got on so well. The conversation was brilliant. It's a little bit longer than the normal. It's not ridiculously long, but it's like 40 something minutes that I'm actually interviewing her, but it was because she was so brilliant and I loved it. And you know, the wild thing, I've just come to read her bio to do this intro. There's stuff on here that I'm like, damn, I wish I'd spoken to her about that, because we didn't even, like, there was so much we could have talked about and so much we could have gone into, and actually we didn't even talk about some of this stuff. So basically she's a [00:03:00] five time bestselling author and the founder of Thought Leader Academy, where she helps coaches, experts, entrepreneurs, scale, impact, and create six and seven figures by becoming a bestselling author and an in demand TEDx speaker. She is obsessed with personal growth, peak performance, and transformation. Some of the things I saw in her bio, well first off, she's been featured in Oprah, New York Times. Good Morning America today. Forbes entrepreneur, TEDx, and she's had books nominated for National Book Awards and L Magazine book of the year. She's done. She's a championship rower, completed five marathons and practiced yoga and meditation for 20 years, and she's an avid traveler and LED retreats in lots of different countries. She's also a mom of a 13-year-old and. Like, there's just so much on here that I could have like talked about. She's had, she's recovered from sexual assault and addiction, and again, we didn't get into any of that because we just, I just like started talking about the subject that we're talking about and it just went on and it was brilliant. [00:04:00] So what we talked about, which kind of makes sense given that she is a, helps people become thought leaders is we talked about being a thought leader. And really, you know, that was the right thing we talked about because that's what she does. But we talked all about who decides you're a thought leader. Like it's always really perplexed me of like, I'm a thought leader. Well, who said, do I get to say I'm a thought leader? Or does someone else have to say I'm a thought leader? So she talks about how we decide or how. We can decide that we're a thought leader. She also talks about how it's connected to our own internal thoughts. And I have to say, I didn't think about this at all. Like if you'd said to me, we're gonna be talking about thought leader, what do you think is gonna come up? Internal thoughts and what we think ourselves actually didn't feel like. It would come up, but it did, it was great. We also talk about how do you become a thought leader in a world where nothing is new. There is no original topic, like everything has been talked about a thousand times and she gives an, uh, an example. But another [00:05:00] example that I was thinking about as I was writing this intro was Ali Abdoul. Now, I'm, uh, I, especially a big fan of his, but that sounded a little bit like. I'm a big fan. No, I just enjoy watching his content. He does stuff on YouTube and his main stuff is around productivity. It's actually now about lots of different things, but really productivity was a thing he got really well known for. And obviously there are hundreds, if not thousands of books, blogs, podcasts. Videos about productivity and how to be productive, and yet he was able to bring out a book on productivity and be very successful and have a YouTube channel about productivity and be very successful. So much so you would say he's a thought leader in the space, but that subject has been talked about so many times, and one of the things that she talked about is how we can become a thought leader in a very noisy space by focusing on a particular aspect. That's exactly what Ali did. He had a book that's called Feel Good Productivity, and his is very much about productivity [00:06:00] associated with being happy and finding things fun and that sort of stuff. She also covers things like why we need white space or thinking time and we need to make space for it. And then the crucial bit, how do we become a thought leader if no one is actually listening? Surely a thought leader is someone that people listen to, so if you don't have an audience. Are you even a thought leader? And we come back to that same subject that we always come back to because it is so important. Visibility. How do we get visible and how do we grow that audience? And she talked about the fact that there's a trust recession going on at the moment. And I think that's really fair to say in the online space that we have been in a world where. People in the online space have been selling and saying there's certain things and people don't believe it, and I think they right to be a little bit more shrewd with their time and money and opinions. But she talks about " z m o" the Zero moment of truth, which I had heard about, but I didn't know that's what it [00:07:00] was called. So that was really interesting and why that's so important. And then finally, almost right at the end, we talk about having a book, how we come up with a book, how we do it in a way that is easy and doesn't feel hard. 'cause the very first thing I said to her is honestly the thought of writing a book, literally. Fills me with dread. I can't even think. But yeah, I can't even imagine writing a book. It was such a good conversation. She's so lovely and I really, really enjoyed talking to her, and I know you are just going to love her. So without further ado, here is the lovely. Sara. Sara, welcome to the podcast. Sara: So thrilled to be here. Teresa: Well, we have just been chatting already, which is awesome. That always says it's a good sign of a good podcast when we had to go. Okay, let's record. So I am gonna jump straight in because we are talking about thought leadership and one of the things that always comes to mind is. Who decides that you're a thought leader and can you just decide yourself?[00:08:00] It's like, where's the tick list that I can go? Does that make me a thought leader? Like, so how would you describe it and how does someone know if that is what they are? Sara: I love this question because it has gotten to a point in the zeitgeist, right? We hear like influencer thought leader. Mm-hmm. And we wonder does it have meaning and what does it mean? So I'll just share what it means to me and, and our, you know, members that we coach and thought Leader Academy, where we're, we're developing, you know, and helping people develop their thought leadership. We're not developing them. They're already, you know, thought leaders, but yeah. Do. I'm gonna start. I'm a brain science girl, so I'm gonna start with the inner piece because I believe thought leadership starts with leading our own thoughts. If we are not powerfully and in an empowered way, leading our own thoughts, meaning that we are, you know, committed internally to bringing forth something new and original, tapping into our genius, knowing our own worth, right? If, if we wanna lead others. Are we, are we leading ourselves, you know, in a, in a powerful [00:09:00] place. So we do a lot of work with our clients around, you know, our internal thought leadership, right? Because a lot of times, and I'm absolutely one of these people, sometimes my internal thought leadership is really rubbish, right? It's like, it's very not, not building my, so I think, I think if we wanna imagine being known as a thought leader in our space, it is worth looking inside and seeing like, am I leading my own thoughts in a way that is worth following? Am I committed to mastery? Am I committed to creative thinking? Am I committed to innovation? Like that's a, that's a, that's an appropriate inventory, I think to take, right? In terms of, does someone else get to say we're a thought leader, right? We help people in their thought leadership, right? Bestselling books, for example. Well, the bestselling book is a thing. You have to hit a list of some kind, whether that's Amazon, the Guardian, New York Times, like you have to, you know, you have to hit a list. That's de determined by number of books sold, right? So that's a concrete thing. You either have that or you don't have that with a book. So thought leader like are we [00:10:00] allowed to just. Claim that, you know, for ourselves, right? I want, I hope everyone decides, and I hope they, they write in and write in, you know, to this podcast and see what, what you think. I, I think the next step to decide, if you, to me, a thought leader is someone who is bringing their own unique take on an interesting topic or, and bringing something new. And by way of a new way of thinking, a new paradigm, right? If we're saying thought leadership, you are leading the thoughts of ourselves, right? And then others. So. Kind of like the TED brand. If people have heard of TED Talks or TEDx talks, their mission is ideas worth spreading, right? That's like sort of the tagline of TED and and thought leadership is kind of like that. Like, are we really going deep enough to say something new? Now, I don't mean that we're ever gonna have an original topic because there's. Everyone's already, yeah. Talked about everything . but think about if people have heard of the book, James. James Clear's book Atomic Habits. Yeah. So I like that book a lot and I think it's a great thought leader book. And I think he [00:11:00] is a thought leader. And the reason I use him as an example is because, you know, there's a million books that habit change. Thousands and thousands of Ted Talks books and paradigms and coaching programs change your habits. But he took something surprising. Right. And it isn't even really original. Right. Other people talk about micro habit change. You know, it's not like he, he made it all up, but he brought it forth in a paradigm called Atomic Habits. That's interesting to us. It lets us think about things, you know, versus someone that would say Make incremental change. Like, but he packaged it in a way. So I think there's. Original thinking on a topic, a, a unique paradigm that people can. Get behind and maybe be different at the other side. So I'll, I'll stop there. 'cause I, you know, I could go on forever about it, but again, if I think of like the three criteria, it's first, are we leading our own thoughts from a standpoint of high quality leadership? And then are we being innovative and doing the deep thinking and the, and the exploration and the research to find [00:12:00] out. What hasn't been said, what hasn't been looked at in this particular way, and then they're giving people a way to engage like Malcolm Gladwell did also in the tipping point. Like he didn't make up the idea that you need 10,000 hours to master. He quoted an Erickson study that had been done, but no one was looking at it. Research study by an academic. If you're not in that world, but the masses, right. People say the tipping point now, right? And, and he brought us a way to think about, ooh, am I, am I doing my 10,000 hours? Am I doing my reps? Am I, so I, I think that's, to me, the exciting thing of, and the invitation of thought leadership. And if we're someone who's willing to lead ourselves in a powerful way to do the interesting deep thought, to bring something new and fresh, and then, and then give it to us in a way that people can't. Play with, create a transformation. Teresa: And I think it's so good to hear you say that. 'cause I think in this world where literally [00:13:00] everyone has talked about everything, it's so hard. I think, and if you are a conscious person, which I know anyone listening to this will be, they will be worried that they heard something somewhere and have taken it in their head and. Are they okay to share the concept and, and it's so funny, like I heard someone who's pretty big quote something the other day and said. My dad said this, and I dunno if he came up with it and it was, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Right. And I thought fairly confident your dad didn't come up Sara: 1000%. You could do a quick Google search and know that your dad did not come up with that one. Teresa: And I was watching on YouTube, I, you know, it's pretty huge. And I was like, that is hilarious that they just said that. But like, you know, it was obviously something their dad did say, but it was just amazing. Like, I don't think my dad came up with it and like. Nope. Fairly sure that is not the case. Sara: Don't think so either, buddy. Teresa: Yeah. But is that worry that like, what if I [00:14:00] say something and I am one of these people that. I love research, right? So I am such a geek, like, give me the brain science any day of the week, right? Like, and so because I do launching and because this is what I teach and because this is what I help people win. I am like in other people's launches, pulling it apart. And it was funny, I have a, a new strategy that I talk about called the open hang strategy. And I was talking to someone else about it and they were like, is this your strategy? And I was like. No, not really. I said, he said, well, how did you learn it? And I said, well, actually, someone else did it, but they didn't know what they were doing. Whereas when I went through it, I was like, oh, this is genius. And I pulled it all apart and I was like, oh, and this is why this bit works and this is why. But they didn't know what they were doing. But of course, I. Very cautious to go, this is my strategy 'cause it's not my strategy. And again, like anything I do, it's like, well, I've learned and yes, I have learned from lots of different people and I've taken lots of different things and I've packaged it [00:15:00] up in a different way and, but I think there is always that concern...