Most "thought leadership" is paraphrased experience

People dress up one anecdote as a universal principle.

Don't be one of them.

The pattern is familiar: someone has a single experience. They extract a lesson from it. They publish the lesson as if it were a general truth. They build a brand around the lesson. They sell courses on the lesson.

The lesson might be true. It might be true only in the specific context they experienced. It might be true only for them. There's no way to tell, because the publishing is shaped by their own self-interest in the lesson being universal.

This is the engine of most "thought leadership." It's anecdote inflation.

The serious thinker is the opposite. They are slower to generalize. They will say "this happened to me, here's what I think it means, but it might only apply in this specific shape of situation." They limit the claim to the evidence.

Three filters I run on advice:

How much of this is the speaker's experience versus generalized claim? The more it's their experience, the more useful and the less sweeping it is.

Has the speaker tested the claim across contexts? Or is it one company, one product, one industry? The narrower the test, the narrower the claim should be.

Does the speaker have skin in the lesson being true? If they're selling a course on it, they need it to be true for them to make money. That's a bias to factor in.

Most published advice is anecdote dressed as principle. Treat it as anecdote. Discount accordingly.

The honest writer says small things specifically.

The thought leader says big things generally.

The honest one is more useful.