The Arcbound Way: Building THE Thought Leadership Ecosystem

What do you do when you want to make a greater impact??

Maybe you’re leading a company, exiting an organization, investing in others, or simply thinking about your next career move. You’ve got subject matter expertise, a depth of knowledge to share, and a vision to communicate.

So what do you do next?

You could stand up a website. You could start your own podcast. You could write and publish a book. You could hire a social media company to run content on Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn. You could develop a course.

Where do you start? What comes first? How do you know what steps to take? How do you make time to manage and coordinate all the vendors—and how do you know if there will be any ROI?

What if it didn’t have to be so complicated and time-consuming??

What if you could build out a cohesive brand—complete with all the services you need—all in one place, with a dedicated team that knows who you are, what you stand for, and where you want to go next? What if you could predict progress?and?ROI based on where you are today and what you put into your growth??

We’re building that future for you. We’re doing it?now, because you need those services?today. And whether or not you know it, you need a brand too—especially in a world where AI tools and ever-growing (and expiring) platforms will make keeping up and standing out a matter of quality and precision, not just quantity.

Our vision for your future began a while back (if you want the TL;DR—the?what?minus the?how?and the?why—skip to “Proving the Thesis”).

The Impetus

It started in the Fall of 2016. I’d been running content and community for Kairos, an investment fund putting money behind the world’s brightest young entrepreneurs, when I was offered a job.?

Allen Gannett, a successful young tech entrepreneur in his own right, asked me to run his book launch.?

I didn’t know what was next for me, but I thought working with Allen could help me figure it out.?

It was by far one of the best professional decisions of my life to date.?

Our first few sessions together were about strategy—how we were going to integrate his book’s message into his social content, grow his platform, drive PR, produce B2B sales on the book, and more. After a few months in the trenches with Allen, I realized we were doing far more than launching his book.?

Ultimately, I was taking on the task of launching a startup. It wasn’t the book itself. It wasn’t another tech company for Allen’s portfolio. It was something bigger—something that would connect and align all of his work: past, present, and future.?I was building his personal brand.?

In a handful of months as GM of the project, I managed most of the pieces that brought his vision to life: the website, A/V, paid ads, back-end community development, a newsletter, long-form articles, speaking engagements and events, PR outreach, and more.?

The deeper I got, the more I began thinking about business models—particularly when it came to personal brand-building. He was footing the bill for a host of vendors, each with their own system—not to mention my full-time salary.?

But even more than the ever-growing price tag, it was the disconnected pieces that proved to be the biggest burden.?I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of other leaders who didn’t have the bandwidth to manage all the pieces, coordinate all the messaging across platforms, and understand which ones provided the most ROI. Even if they could, they had to juggle multiple businesses with multiple models and markers of success to bring their vision to life, ultimately hindering their speed and progress. That seemed unnecessary.?

Not to mention the challenge of the industries in and of themselves. For example, few—if any—publishers offer real PR support, which is why Allen was in this pickle in the first place.

The onus was, and still is, on the author to do the work, even if they get an advance?(I’ve written about that?here ). In fact, publishing hasn’t changed much in all the years it’s been around (more on that?here ).

Allen was also open about where he’d be stuck without someone to put the pieces together. “If I went to a PR firm for article placements, I’d pay them a lot more than I’m paying you for a?fraction of the work ?and meager results,” he mentioned.?

I started looking into the PR industry at large and struggled with the pay-to-play model. I could see how it might be a small sliver of the overall strategy, maybe, but there was so much missing when thought leaders relied on pay-to-play alone.

Plus, as I was finding and placing Allen at different events and with different organizations, such as his “Engineering Creativity ” TEDx talk, I realized there were major opportunities in the speaking bureau space. The speaking industry is in the business of marketing names, not messaging—and ultimately, it was the message that mattered.?

My work with Allen helped make his book a major success. But that wasn’t the biggest outcome here, at least not for me—or for you. To put it simply,?I realized we could serve brilliant thinkers much, much better.?

We can do that by bringing multiple industries together to align on brand, messaging, and management, making the brand and content-building more efficient and effective across platforms—all with less time and pain for thought leaders.?It’s why I built Arcbound.

The Arcbound Way

Since its inception, Arcbound has been maniacally focused on building the infrastructure to create custom personal brand identities, strategy, cross-channel content—think websites, social media, podcasts, books—and community management. Those are the building blocks of brand, laying the foundation for the long haul.

With those pieces accounted for, our clients can own their voice, reach their audience, and adjust their approach to make an impact on any platform they choose.

And after some time, all those pieces begin to click into place.

Proving the Thesis

When we first started this business nearly five years ago, we were envisioning a company that could serve thousands of clients at once, not just for a 6-month sprint on a book launch, but for the duration of their careers—evolving alongside them. Now, that’s happening.

One of our first clients came to us for their book launch alone.?Our work together has contributed to tens of thousands of books sold.?Since then, we’ve also taken on every aspect of their brand, grown their audience by hundreds of thousands across social media channels, and helped drive speaking engagements and PR placements. Recently, we’ve taken on their A/V work. Now the client has come on board as an advisor and is helping us build technology to develop predictive paths for clients to drive clear, measurable ROI—and drawing on their client experience, among many others.

For another client,?we’ve scaled their platform by tens of thousands of subscribers and followers across platforms, which has led to high six-figure deals with Fortune 500 companies, five-figure speaking engagements, and more. Now, we’re writing and publishing their book. And because we know their brand and its elements inside and out, we’re managing their platform end to end, while driving PR placements for them.

An indirect—and perhaps invaluable—benefit of our work??The community we’ve built.?Clients have access to each other: top leaders and experts across a slew of different industries. Through digital roundtables, large-scale events, and intimate dinners, they learn from each other’s brand journey and provide incredible feedback, helping us deliver even better results.

The Future: Building THE Thought Leadership Ecosystem

We firmly believe the way we are serving our clients today is the way of the future. But what we’ve accomplished so far is part of a much bigger vision. That will include:?

• A?publishing division?that competes with top industry players and provides authors the opportunity and strategy to distribute their work and message across media channels.
• A?client speaking platform?that draws event managers due to our top-tier talent with built-in reach.?
• A?media distribution platform?that shares clients’ content—books, social posts, short-form videos, and more—with engaged audiences hungry for their content.?I also talk about this here. ?Imagine if a publishing platform had a media arm to actually promote their authors' work to millions of people.
• A?global community and events arm?featuring Arcbound clients—imagine a summit at sea, or TED Talk-style event sharing the work of thought leaders with fully baked brands. Here’s a sneak peek of the?first experience we pulled off in San Francisco , with many more events to come.?
• An?integrated PR platform?connecting top-tier creators, brands, and media outlets.?
• An?ROI platform valuation calculator?that predicts the ROI of our work and informs individual client pathways and organizational progress.?

Finally, when it comes to accessibility, this is just the beginning. By building and operationalizing this infrastructure, we’re not only helping the leaders of today build, launch, and manage their brands, we’re also developing the tools that will democratize brand-building to help the masses establish a meaningful platform—complete with a predictive brand journey, quality content, and a valuable community.?

It should be a fun, daunting, and impactful ride ahead.

If you’re curious about how we may be able to help you build your brand,?don’t hesitate to reach out .?We’re here to help you launch your arc—today, tomorrow, or ten years from now.