Which Ideas Deserve Longevity?

Grow Your Business for Good Podcast, Season 11

Not every idea you are good at teaching deserves to become part of your long-term thought leadership. Some topics make sense because the market wants them. They generate sales. They fit neatly into an offer. You may even become very good at talking about them.

But eventually, you may realize you simply do not want to talk about that thing anymore.

The ideas with real staying power tend to come from somewhere deeper. Shannon talks with Jessica Rhodes, founder and CEO of Interview Connections, about how to tell the difference between an idea that has temporary commercial value and one you could continue developing for years. 

They also discuss using podcast conversations to test emerging ideas, why stories create a different kind of connection, and what becomes possible when people get to know more of the human behind the expertise.

Here are two takeaways from Season 11, Episode 9:

1. An idea can make money and still not deserve a permanent place in your body of work.

Jessica offers a useful distinction: Are you developing a thought leadership topic because you believe it will create more sales, or because it reflects something you genuinely care about and feel called to keep examining?

The best answer may be both. But when the commercial opportunity is doing all the work, the energy around the idea can disappear quickly.

Shannon shares her own experience of being encouraged to reinvent herself outside messaging and marketing. Her immediate response was no. With some distance, she recognized why: words and teaching are not simply things she knows how to do. They are part of how she wants to contribute.

Long-term thought leadership does not mean repeating the same idea forever. It means there is enough conviction, curiosity, and lived experience underneath the idea that you want to keep returning to it, questioning it, and developing it as you change.

2. Conversation can tell you things about an idea that sitting alone with it never will.

You can workshop an idea in a document, run it through AI, rewrite it repeatedly, and still not know whether it has legs.

Then someone asks you one good question and suddenly you know.

Jessica uses podcast interviews as a testing ground for her own thought leadership. Sometimes she begins talking about a topic she thought she wanted to be known for and realizes the conversation drains her. Other times, a question causes her to light up and say something she never would have written sitting alone at her desk.

That raw language matters. Shannon and Jessica both describe phrases, taglines, frameworks, and future content emerging from live conversations because another person asked a question, reflected something back, or gave the idea somewhere new to go.

And in a market full of information that can be generated instantly, the parts of your thinking that come from your story, your interests, your experiences, and what genuinely matters to you become increasingly difficult to imitate.

Resources from this episode:

  • Interview Connections: Learn more about Jessica Rhodes, podcast guesting, and the free masterclass available through Interview Connections.
    https://interviewconnections.com/

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