The most useful thought leadership tips come down to picking one area you are uniquely qualified to talk about and showing up in front of the right audience on a predictable schedule, and Kelly Schuknecht, founder of Two Mile High Marketing, treats the early, unpolished version of a founder’s brand as the price of admission rather than a problem to solve before getting started. Kelly walked through all of this on the DissedMedia podcast with host Ben Olmos, and the conversation covered what a legitimate marketing partner actually looks like alongside how long it may genuinely take before a stage invitation turns into a paycheck.
Who Is Kelly Schuknecht?
Kelly Schuknecht spent a decade working inside a publishing company, where she helped authors figure out what to do once a manuscript finally became a book, since most writers assume the sales will follow automatically and few of them have a marketing plan in hand. She then moved into an accounting firm as its marketing director and helped grow the business from four million dollars in revenue to twelve million over seven years, a stretch she describes as exciting right up until the firm was acquired by a larger company and she began quietly preparing for what might come next. That preparation turned into Two Mile High Marketing, the agency she launched the moment her position was eliminated, and it centers upon a narrow, specific service rather than general marketing help of the kind a fractional CMO might offer.
The Thought Leadership Tips Kelly Schuknecht Teaches Her Clients
Kelly’s core thought leadership tips start with a concept she calls the Authority X Factor, the specific mix of experience and skill that makes one person more qualified than a competitor to help a given audience, and she built her entire business around teaching people to find and use that mix rather than positioning herself as a generalist. She had spent years helping her former bosses land speaking events, podcast interviews, and a visible presence online, and once she started doing the same work under her own name, former colleagues began describing her as the personal branding person before she had even finished building a website. Consistency, she says, is one of the three pillars behind that kind of recognition, since showing up on a predictable schedule is what makes people remember a name when they finally need the service that name represents.
How to Spot a Legitimate Marketing Partner
One of the more practical thought leadership tips Kelly offers has nothing to do with getting booked and everything to do with what happens once the microphone turns off. Before she settled on her service model, Kelly talked to dozens of people in her network and heard the same complaint again and again: business owners had paid a fractional CMO or a marketing agency ten thousand dollars a month and never received a single qualified lead in return. That pattern shaped how she built Two Mile High Marketing, since she wanted the deliverables to be specific and countable rather than vague promises about visibility. She now coaches clients to build a lead capture moment into every stage appearance and every podcast interview, because naming a website, an email, and a LinkedIn profile all in the same breath causes an audience to remember none of them. A single, clear next step, however, tends to actually get followed.
For readers researching public speaking mechanics on their own, Ben has covered that ground before with speaker and author Debbie Fay, whose episode digs into what happens once you’re actually on stage.
Why a Tangible Product Matters Before You Chase the Stage
Ben raised a moment from his own path that Kelly’s clients run into constantly. About a year into building DissedMedia, a conference acquaintance named Brandon Birkmaier asked him a simple question in a hallway: what are you actually trying to sell? Ben had no answer, since he had spent that year on the platform itself rather than on anything a listener could walk away with. Kelly sees the same gap in founders who want speaking opportunities purely for the ego of being on a stage, and while she believes there is nothing wrong with that motivation on its own, she pushes clients who want the appearance to translate into revenue to have a book, a guide, or some other tangible offer ready before the invitations start arriving.
The Messy Middle of the Founder Journey
The phrase Kelly returns to often is the messy middle, the stretch of a founder’s timeline where the website still looks unfinished, the logo was made in Canva by someone with no design background, and the whole operation seemingly matters less to potential clients than founders assume it does. Kelly ran her business for seven months on a self-made logo before completing a formal brand exercise, and she says revenue, not polish, was always the actual priority in that window. Clients were still signing contracts with her during those months, which is the evidence she now points to whenever a new founder wants to delay launching until every visual element feels finished. Perfecting the logo before the first sale, in her experience, mostly just delays the sale.
Practicing in Public and Getting Better Over Time
Kelly has posted on TikTok for roughly six years, and she is candid that her earliest videos, recorded before she had any real comfort with a teleprompter, look rough by her current standards. One video from 2021 still generates shares and new followers on a near daily basis, and she has made peace with the fact that a piece of content she now finds embarrassing continues to deliver value for the people who find it. Ben connected this to a conversation he has had with his own daughter, an actress he keeps encouraging to post more of her own work, since her instinct is to hold back anything that does not feel polished or flattering. Both Kelly and Ben land on the same advice: the discomfort of publishing something imperfect is the actual training, and skipping that step only postpones the moment a person gets good at showing up.
The Real Timeline for Landing Paid Speaking Gigs
Founders chasing a paid speaking career tend to underestimate the runway involved, and Kelly is upfront with clients from the first conversation that nine to eighteen months may pass before a booking becomes a paycheck, longer still for someone who is not currently speaking anywhere at all. Submitting to a single event, she points out, can take three months just to hear back, which means the process has to become a routine habit rather than an occasional task squeezed in during a slow week. She echoes a line one of Ben’s early board members, Matt Saincome, gave him when DissedMedia was still new: audiences take time. Consistency over months, not a single strong pitch, is what actually moves a founder from unknown to booked.
Building a Content Strategy Around Core Topics
Two Mile High Marketing writes and posts on behalf of its clients two to three times a week, mixing video, podcast clips, carousels, and infographics so the same message never repeats in the same format twice in a row. Kelly’s advice for founders managing their own accounts centers upon defining a short list of core topics ahead of time, since a documented list makes it easier to sit down and immediately know what to write about rather than staring at a blank post composer. Referrals have come to her agency specifically because a prospect noticed how consistently polished a client’s feed looked and asked who was managing it, which she treats as proof that the strategy works even when nobody involved is actively selling anything. Harvard Business Review has made a similar case in its own research on personal branding, describing it as a deliberate, ongoing practice rather than a one-time exercise, a framing that closely mirrors Kelly’s own coaching. Readers can find that research at Harvard Business Review.
The Authority X Factor Book and Kelly’s Podcasts
Kelly wrote Unlocking Your Authority X Factor after noticing a pattern among the people who approached her following a keynote: they loved what she taught, but many of them were solopreneurs without the budget for full agency service. The book walks through the same framework she teaches paying clients, adapted for someone who needs to do the identification and positioning work themselves before they can afford outside help. She also hosts two podcasts. Beyond the Bestseller, now approaching one hundred episodes, features women who have written nonfiction books, built around the idea that most authors publish to spread a message rather than chase a bestseller list. The newer Authority X Factor podcast launched alongside the book and features thought leaders more broadly, without the same gender-specific focus as her first show.
For a related conversation on turning personal conviction into a visible platform, DissedMedia also spoke with leadership expert Dr. Andy Neillie about the principles behind lasting influence.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best thought leadership tips for someone just starting out?
The best thought leadership tips for a founder just getting started center upon narrowing to one specific area of expertise rather than presenting as a generalist, then showing up on a predictable schedule so an audience has repeated chances to notice the work. Kelly Schuknecht recommends picking a handful of core topics in advance so content decisions become quick rather than a fresh creative struggle every time a post is due.
How long does it take to become a recognized thought leader?
There is no fixed timeline, though Kelly Schuknecht tells clients pursuing paid speaking to expect nine to eighteen months before a booking turns into a paycheck, and longer if someone is not currently speaking anywhere at all. Submitting to a single event can take three months just to hear back, so the process has to become an ongoing habit rather than a single strong pitch.
What is the Authority X Factor?
The Authority X Factor is Kelly Schuknecht’s term for the specific mix of experience and skill that makes one person uniquely qualified to serve an audience in a way competitors cannot easily copy. She wrote a book of the same name, Unlocking Your Authority X Factor, that walks readers through identifying and using their own version of it.
How do I know if a marketing agency is legitimate?
A legitimate marketing partner should offer specific, countable deliverables rather than vague promises about visibility, and Kelly Schuknecht suggests asking exactly what you will receive each month before signing anything. She has heard from founders who paid ten thousand dollars a month to an agency or a fractional CMO and never received a single qualified lead in return, a pattern any new client should ask pointed questions about before committing.
More From Kelly Schuknecht
Kelly Schuknecht offers a free thought leader scorecard at twomilehighmarketing.com, a short quiz that scores where a founder currently stands and what to work on next. Her book, Unlocking Your Authority X Factor, is available on Amazon and at authorityxfactor.com. She hosts two podcasts, Beyond the Bestseller and the Authority X Factor podcast, both featuring conversations with thought leaders building a platform around their own expertise.
