Business Lesson: How To Quickly Become A Thought Leader Without Traditional Credentials

The Amazing Story Of How One Guy Became A Qualified Coronavirus Expert, Seemingly Overnight

Some titles are self-proclaimed, most of the important ones are earned. 

Lots of professional industries are full of people who prematurely attach a label of success to themselves for the purposes of status or credibility. 

Yesterday, I came across a really interesting article penned in the daily newsletter from Fortune, that highlighted someone who has truly earned the label of an expert, albeit through an uncommon path. 

As you’ll read below, the big takeaway from this is that credibility and authentic thought-leadership status can come from non-traditional means, and can happen seemingly overnight.

The focus of the Fortune piece is on a Tomas Pueyo, a man in his late thirties who has become a well-respected expert on coronavirus, a complex topic, to say the least.

He has no formal medical training and doesn’t work in healthcare, but he’s managed to turn a strong curiosity into a massive following that includes members of the medical profession and media.

Pueyo works at an educational technology company in San Francisco and gained notoriety related to coronavirus expertise after publishing an article back in March, just as the pandemic became more widespread. 

That article, along with subsequent pieces, received massive acclaim that has been read by over 40 million people and has endorsements or re-shares by over numerous experts and notable thinkers. Since then, he’s been featured on CNN, The New York Times, among others. 

So how can someone with no formal training gain the respect of medical professionals and experts?

The answer is clear: by rejecting classical definitions of expert labels and simply achieving domain expertise through research and knowledge sharing.

More directly, it’s by using depth and distribution, as in creating depth of content with data-supported facts and by leveraging effective distribution channels and promotional avenues to get your content out to people who care about it.

“Credentialism is not as strong as it used to be.” - Tomas Pueyo

Publishing on sites like Medium and Twitter takes advantage of built-in network effects, social sharing, and virality. 

More than anything, he’s spent countless hours (or more) over the last many months digging into research papers and history books. He engages in thoughtful conversations on social media to a large audience, who then gives him new insights and considerations that help refine his perspectives.

Finally, you become a well-respected thought leader by simplifying content in a way that’s easily discoverable and consumable. Other sources on the topic of coronavirus, such as traditional news outlets, require you to scour multiple pieces to gather a comprehensive understanding of what’s going on. Pueyo makes it easy to dig into.

Collectively, all of these components create a recipe for success for anyone to quickly become a well-respected expert, without having formal credentials like so many others in the field.