The business of influence

Idea entrepreneurs, whose enterprises grow very large and generate millions of dollars in revenue, have to be mindful of how they behave in relation to money

Revenue can also present some difficulties for the idea entrepreneur. The most important is that there can seem to be a conflict of motives when too much money is involved. Is this person pursuing an idea with the goal of making a difference, starting a movement, changing the world in some way that is life-affirming and meant to lead to a larger social good? Or is the guy really just trying to make money for himself?

Idea entrepreneurs whose enterprises grow very large and bring in millions, even tens of millions of dollars, have to be mindful of how they earn their revenue, how they spend it, and how they behave in relation to money. Thoreau and Emerson did not have this problem; both struggled with money throughout their lives. Mireille Guiliano and Edward Tufte have made millions, but they're still personally engaged and have not tried to leverage their resources to overinflate their efforts. The endeavors of Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Stephen Covey, and others, by contrast, have grown into large organizations that bring in so much money their leaders start to look more like impresarios - or worse, like hucksters - and less like idea entrepreneurs.

Cadence
The need to bring in revenue to cover the expenses of operating an enterprise can put pressure on the idea entrepreneur to create new expressions that will generate further revenue. This can have an effect on the cadence of production, by which I mean when and how often new elements are introduced to the platform and how they animate one another. Every idea entrepreneur has a different cadence, with different effects on respiration.

While some, like Edward Tufte, have maintained a rather measured and deliberate cadence (four major books, a "textbooklet," and an essay, since 1989), the pressure of the ideaplex and the opportunities for more and more activity tend to result more often in an ever-accelerating cadence. Deepak Chopra, for example, has created a cadence of activity that is remarkable in its extent and duration, although it started relatively slowly.

When Chopra published his first book, Creating Health, in 1987, it did not produce the kind of response that French Women Don't

Get Fat or Power of Now did, but did create some respiration and provided an opportunity for Chopra to start building a platform. It was not until 1994 that Chopra came out with the book that has become his sacred expression, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams. It became a best­seller, generated respiration far and wide, enabled Chopra to break out, fueled his speaking engagements, and filled up his special-event calendar.

Since then, Chopra has produced an astonishing flow of books, sometimes releasing as many as four new titles a year. In all, he has published some sixty-five books in the twenty-five years since Creating Health appeared. In these books he has sought to extend his ideas to a wide variety of audiences - teens, seniors, parents - and cover every possible endeavor, from weight loss to personal finance, to the point that you know he cannot possibly be writing all these books himself (many do have a coauthor), and you wonder if he can even keep track of them all. Some of them seem to reach the point of self-satire -with such titles as The Seven Spiritual Laws of the Superheroes, Golf for Enlightenment, and Perfect Digestion.

Along with, and largely because of, this cadence, Chopra has successfully maintained a current presence. New profiles of him appear regularly, in The Nation, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He seems never to turn down a request to talk (although he probably actually does turn down hundreds, if not thousands), has been interviewed on NPR and ABC News Radio, and at various times, for various purposes, has appeared on television shows ranging from The Rosie O'Donnell Show to Larry King Live. He also has his own radio show, Wellness Radio, on Sirius. He writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle, frequently contributes to Oprah.com, and sometimes to the Huffington Post and the Washington Post.

This kind of rapid and dense cadence, while creating a good deal of respiration, also has its downsides. The most obvious one is the danger that the material may wear thin. It seems impossible for Chopra to have accumulated enough material himself, with care, to fill up all those books, which means the content no longer connects so directly to his original fascination and personal narrative, and begins to feel less genuine. Chopra now seems more like a "personality" of the ideaplex than an idea entrepreneur.

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Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Copyright 2013 John Butman. All rights reserved.

 
BREAKING OUT: HOW TO BUILD INFLUENCE IN A WORLD OF COMPETING IDEAS
AUTHOR: John Butman
PUBLISHER: Harvard Business Review Press
Price: Rs 1,250

Generate 'respiration' around your idea: John Butman
Interview with Principal, Idea Platforms Inc

Idea entrepreneurs have to get the idea to breathe, so it takes on a life of its own, John Butman tells Ankita Rai

While platforms like TED, Twitter and YouTube has made it easier to share ideas, the process of gaining influence has become difficult. How should one create an idea platform that can influence people?

I will summarise the key elements of gaining influence as following.

• Gather a large accumulation of material that supports and offers proof of your idea, including data, references,and cases
• Link your personal narrative with the idea so that the two become closely associated. Gandhi did this extremely effectively, especially with his story of being thrown out of a first-class train carriage in South Africa.
• Create several different expressions of the idea - in written, spoken, and visual forms.
• Develop practices that enable people to put the idea into everyday use. When you're talking about any abstract idea (such as 'sustainability' or 'leaning in' or the 'quantified self') you need to give people specific ways to apply it. Without those, they will not adapt to the thinking.
• Generate 'respiration' around your idea. This simply means that you have to get the idea to breathe, so it takes on a life of its own. You need to engage in two-way conversations, so you can answer questions, add detail, customise the idea for specific situations. You need to model the practices so that people can see how you live the idea every day. You need to maintain a 'current presence' by which I mean that you have to update your ideas to respond to new events and trends. You also have to accommodate backlash and intense reaction to your ideas. You are not going to gain influence with everyone.
• Connect your ideas to those of others. No idea is completely original. People need to understand how your idea fits with those who have come before and who are addressing the same topic now. Cesar Millan, for example, cites Gandhi as an inspiration for his idea of 'calm assertiveness,' which is similar to Gandhi's satyagraha, or truth firmness. The most influential idea entrepreneurs do not try to 'own' their ideas. They share them and improve them through refinement with others.

John Butman
Principal, Idea Platforms Inc