Episode Overview

I asked Dorie Clarke about her thoughts for choosing what you want to be known for. Her answer still has me reeling.  If you’ve ever struggled with niching, why the successful loner is a myth or placing small bets in business can see you winning big then you will love this week’s podcast interview.

About Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark helps individuals and companies get their best ideas heard in a crowded, noisy world. She has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. She was honored as the #1 Communication Coach by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards and one of the Top 5 Communication Professionals in the World by Global Gurus. She is a keynote speaker and teaches for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School. 

She is the author of The Long GameEntrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of the Year by Inc. magazine. 

A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, Clark has been described by the New York Times as an “expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.” She is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and consults and speaks for clients such as Google, Yale University, and the World Bank. Forbes has declared that “her insights connect marketing, social media, communications, learning technologies, and personal discovery to give us a blueprint for success in the future economy.” 

She is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, a producer of a multiple Grammy-winning jazz album, and a Broadway investor. You can download her free Long Game Strategic Thinking Self-Assessment at dorieclark.com/thelonggame

Automatic Audio Transcription

Please note : This is an automatically generated transcription.  There are typos and the system may pick words or whole phrases up incorrectly.  

Welcome to amplify the personal brand entrepreneur show today on the show. Bob is speaking with Dorie Clark. I think for most people we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find the perfect thing, the right thing. It is a heck of a lot easier to, to, to be able to put on our critical hat and say, okay, why is this wrong for me?

Why is this not going to work? And that information is just as valuable, if not more valuable. Hi there. And welcome back to amplify the personal brand entrepreneur podcast. I book gentle. And every Monday I'm joined by amazing people who share what makes their business work. If you're new to take a second to subscribe through your player app, and while you're there.

Join our Facebook community, just visit amplify me.fm forward slash insiders, and you'll be taken right there. Hi there. And welcome back to amplify the personal brand entrepreneur show. My name is Bob gentle and every week I'm joined by amazing people who share what makes their business work. So this week I am thrilled to welcome Dorie Clark to the show.

Dorie is somebody I, and lots of my friends admire and. More than delighted to have you on the show. Dorie. Welcome to the show, Bob. Thank you so much, really glad to be talking with you. Those people who don't know who you are, why don't you start as I often ask everybody to just tell us a little bit about who you are, where you are and the kind of work you do.

I live in New York city. Now I write business and career books. My upcoming one is called the long game. How to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. And I teach for duke university in Columbia university in the U S and big picture. What I try to do through my books and my executive coaching and my work.

Is to help individuals and companies get their message heard in a really noisy and crowded environment and find a way to break through. So for the listener, You have written a ton of books and haven't gone to also have to say you have more content on audible than I could actually count. But book titles like standout, reinventing you, entrepreneurially entrepreneurial EUC.

God, that's a hard word. Shouldn't be a hard word for me. Should it. And the most recent title, the long game, which we're going to talk about a lot, but it's almost like you wrote those. For my audience specifically, and we're going to kind of touch on some of the themes, particularly in the new book, the long game, or as the title suggests the long game.

And also stand out for me, I think is a super important question. But before we get to that, whenever I hear of anybody living in Manhattan, I have an automatic picture that this they're parched high up and they can see for miles, how high up in Manhattan. Yeah, I'm uh, on the ninth floor. So yeah, for, for Manhattan, it's, it's kind of average.

I'd have to say I strove to get something high up enough that it would be interesting to my cats, but, uh, but not so high that it would be scary for them. So the teaching at duke university and, uh, I know the other one, I remember it. Columbia, Columbia. Yes. What is it you actually teach there? What are you working with?

People. Well, appropriately enough at Columbia. What I actually teach is personal brand. Uh, and at duke I teach, uh, for gosh, the past seven, eight years, I've taught a regular program called communication for leaders that is about different, different forms, different ways that leaders can communicate effectively.

So it's kind of a combination. Effective presentations, crisis communication and social media. So where I would like to start, I think there's this question, and it's a question that I returned to again and again and again, which. If you want to stand out for something, you need to put a marker in the ground and say, this is me.

This is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I want to be known for. And a lot of people struggle with that question. They're multitalented they they're good at lots of different things. They have lots of interests, lots of passions, but if you want to be known for something, it needs to be a clearly defined thing.

And because people really struggle with that choice to analysis paralysis. They fail to execute on everything that should come after that, which is where the success is due. Do you have a process and looking at the book titles, I'm guessing the answer's yes. But in simple terms, how would you advise somebody that you met for coffee to work through that?

Well, I had to work through the problem myself for sure, because it felt, I mean, intellectually, I think most people would, yeah. Oh, okay. If you want to, if you want to be referrable, if you want people to recommend you, you need to make it easy for them to understand what you do otherwise, they're just going to say, well, Dory's nice.

You know, that's, that's great, but, uh, it's not really a compelling reason for someone to give me money, for instance. So you, you have to tighten that up. And yet simultaneously for me, and I think for a lot of. There's a real feeling, like just feels like you're cutting off your arm to kind of artificially say, oh, well, you know, I, blah, blah, blah.

You know, I, I do personal brand consulting for M and a professionals or, oh, well I do leadership development for nonprofit. Exactly. Cheetos, you know, whatever the case may be. And it's, it just feels very artificial. And so actually the way that I solved my. And I actually think that it is not a bad strategy for other people as well is ultimately to let the market decide.

And what I mean by that is our job. As I conceive of it is to place a lot of little bets to create content, share your ideas. Somehow, put a lot of things, right. And then basically just monitor, see what resonates, see, you know, blogging. See what gets the most hits. If you are giving talks, see what gets people to come up to you afterwards or where you're getting a lot of questions wherever you're getting traction go more in that direction.

Because then at that point, it's not going to feel artificial. It's not going to feel like you're making some arbitrary decision. It actually will just feel like what it is, which is that you're moving towards something that's successful. And over time the market will help you figure out what people are interested in getting from you.

That was something that I did, and it was enormously helpful. In my case, I was trying in 2009, I decided this is the year that I'm going to get a book contract. That was my, my great ambition in life. And I wrote up three different book proposals, none of which. And it, it was so enormously frustrating. And then, you know, meanwhile, and they didn't sell was that publishers were basically like rabbi, you don't have a platform which translates to, you're not famous.

And I was so mad, you know, but I, but I had to just kind of go back to square one. And so I stopped blogging and ultimately I had this one article about professional re-entry. Which became popular and got momentum. And I eventually ended up with literary agents coming to me, asking if I had a thought about turning yeah.

Into a book. And I was like, my God, this is what it feels like when you're wanted. And so I was not feeling bad about going more in that direction. I was feeling like, oh, okay, good. If people want a thing, I'm glad to give them a thing. But professional reinvention was not necessarily. In any way, something that I thought of is, oh, I'm going to make a definitive and deliberate strategic choice to go more in this direction, the market voted.

And then I, I said, okay, mark. It let's do it. Oh, the picture I had in my mind there, as you were talking, what was really quite interesting and it's a way I haven't looked at it before. And you're your sort of analogy of placing small bets or speculating was I sort of visualize like a strange. Probing different areas to see what reaction it was going to get.

And really what, what it all rolls back to is you need to be a creator first that it's through your creativity and your expression that you'll create a reaction and their reactions are what will tell you what people respond to, what they want because businesses essentially a value exchange. And if you don't express your value, You will never meet those, those people that want to exchange with you.

You put it much more articulate, articulately than I am managing to respond to it? No, I think, I think that's great, Bob. I love your formulation. When we come to content again, there's this whole thing of on the one hand, if you want to be known for something, you need to be consistent. But on the other hand, we have lots of interests.

So when you're trying lots of different kinds of content, you're sending out lots of different signals to see what resonates. How intentional are strategic. Are you being about to our, where are you being about to, it's easy to sort of look back in retrospect when you're probably playing in the dark at the time, but how, how strategic was the experimentation and where did you draw the edges in terms of, okay.

This far on no further, this is the boundaries of what I want to be known for. Well, I think for me personally, in the early days, I. I, I think that, that oftentimes we actually do a disservice to people. We kind of scare them off by, um, implying that, that oh, you know, there was a, there was a great St you know, strategic clarity.

And so therefore, you know, we, we knew how everything was going to unfold. I had some strategic clarity, but in many ways it was just, it was, it was the reactive, strategic clarity. Okay. You know, these goddamn people are telling me I have to blog. That was, that was my, my take on it because my, my goal was to write a book that was really what I wanted to do.

And so I thought, all right, I will do the things that are necessary in order to be able to get a book contract. And so I. Was not really caring so much about the particular topics now with the executive coaching clients I have now, of course, I advise them to be a little more strategic than that. And what I, what I tell them is, and I think this is pretty good.

Advice is ultimately what you want to try to be optimizing for is, you know, and, and this of course, rarely, rarely happens, but in the ideal world, you want to be writing about the problems that your clients. Experiencing or the solutions that you want to be providing such that if you're a Gil client happened to pick up the magazine or go to the website where you published your thing, what the reaction that we want is for them to read it and say it, oh, this is it.

This is exactly what I need need. And then they will reach out and call you. Um, that's at least what we want to be optimizing for. Even if that doesn't usually happen in, in. I guess I did a little bit of that, but, but really I just had this almost monomaniacal focus of like, okay, I got to build a platform.

And so almost like whatever it took to get published, I mean, I would write about anything. The goal, the goal was just like, what can I. What can I possibly comment on, uh, what will the editors want? So I wrote, and, and frankly, I still do, uh, about a really wide swath of things. Some of it was leadership, some of it was personal brand.

Some of it was networking. Some of it was, uh, you know, time management there there's a whole raft of different things. Uh, but it was really just like, okay, I've got to, I've got to write some, some articles. Let's, let's see what I can do. I'm going to. Attempted to turn on a dime here, because I think this is very, very relevant.

When you look back, one of the books you wrote was about reinventing yourself. And I think a lot of people, when they first come to personal branding or content marketing, it's because something's triggered the desire for a change. There there's a dissatisfaction for the way they've been doing things.

They want to do things differently. And often that brings in an element of re-invent. And maybe the desire to not necessarily be known, known for all the things that you have always been known for. So assuming that, for example, the executive coaching clients who were talking about a moment ago, there are people who they were, they were happy with what they were doing, what they wanted to be known for it.

They just wanted to do a bigger, whereas somebody that's just made a change, they're starting from zero. One of the problems. I've experienced myself is you put together a big grand plan for what you think you want to do, and you can spend a long time making this plan. But the problem is it's a little bit like when you're in a car at night, you can, the headlights can only see 25 meters down the road.

So you make all your plans based on what you can see for 25 meters. But the moment the car starts moving, the landscape's completely changed. And that was what I loved about the content or the yeah. Deciding what you want to be known for as a, as a process of discovery rather than a decision. If you see what I mean.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I love that. Thank you. That's a, that's a, a good way of putting it, but I guess my question is that strategy works. If you know where you want to go, but the reinvention piece, I said it was turning on a dime, but it's a slow turn. How would you advise people to approach that reinvention and that sort of rediscovery of who they want to be known as, and then push out from there in that process?

That sort of gradual probing. Yeah. So when people are reinventing themselves, you're exactly right. I mean, if, if someone has a clear picture, okay, I want to leave my job and become a full-time photographer or something. That gives you a north star that you can then operationalize against. You can come up with your action plan and figure out, oh, okay, I need to do this and this and this.

And it will over time get me there. But it is a much harder challenge for people because there are a lot of professionals out there that perhaps know they want to make some kind of a change, but they're not quite sure what they, they're not quite sure, you know, in what direction or where they want to go.

And sometimes that can feel a little bit paralyzing to people. They feel like, you know, and this is not irrational. Oh. But if I don't know where I'm going, then I guess I just need to sit still because I don't want to waste time or effort and moving in the wrong direction, let's say. And so what I would suggest, and I, and, um, in my book reinventing you, of course, I go into great detail about this.

One of my favorite strategies is actually to kind of flip the problem on it. Because if you don't specifically know the, the one thing, you know, the direction that you specifically want to go in, I'm actually a fan of using the process of elimination to figure out where you don't want to go. So for instance, which is frankly a lot easier.

So in the book I profile a woman named Elizabeth and me. Who was looking to make a career transition. And she had a fairly blurry vision. Shall we say of where she wanted to go? She had, you know, five or six different fields that were interesting to her. And I think even, yeah, even for someone who's unsure of where they want to go, you can provide probably limited down to something like that.

It's probably not, you know, there's 25 fields I might want to explore, you know, you get, you can probably get it down to five or six. So for Elizabeth, it might. You know, venture capital or real estate development or, or, you know, things like that. And so what she decided to do, which I thought was so great is she had a very methodical process where for each profession she decided she would try to get what she called 10 data points about it.

And a data point could be an informational interview. It could be, you know, some, some con maybe it's reading a book, maybe it's doing a kind of job shadow. Or something like that, but some kind of additional knowledge to help her understand more about what it actually was. And her goal was not necessarily to find what her soulmate career was.

Her goal was actually much more about ruling out certain careers. And so she was always asking the hard questions about, you know, well, what do you, what do you dislike about this? What's the worst part of your job? And she was trying to find the things that would make it incompatible with her and her goals in her life.

So that she ultimately could narrow it down and find that one or two paths that she wanted to optimize toward that is a really, really smart way of approaching it. I had never considered that. It's so obvious when you describe it that way. Um, it's just a very, very simple process. Just spend a bit of time being in fantasy mode, make a big list and then work through them, looking for all the impractical and practicalities and what's left.

It's probably your dream. That's a really, really neat way of doing it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think for most people we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find the perfect thing, the right thing. It is a heck of a lot easier to, to, to be able to put on our critical hat and say, okay, why is this wrong for me?

Why is this not going to work? And that information is just as valuable if not more valuable. So I think I would like to talk about the long game. We live in a world that just goes ridiculously fast. It's so fast that most people can't keep up. Most people's social media feed moves faster than anybody can really come close to finding useful.

It's just way too fast. And everything that you see in social media in particular is kind of demanding. You need to be making six figures yesterday or at least seven figures by next week, it has to happen. If you're not doing that, you're probably failing. We're all being fed. These strategies that are going to fix things by next Monday, it's seven figures in seven weeks, that kind of thing.

It does fuel a lot of hype around and the online business world. You need to be able to move. But the truth is amazing. Things happen slowly. And a lot of people get very frustrated about what they can achieve in the short term, but they forget what they can achieve in the long-term. And that was why I love the theme of your book, because you really put some wrappers around that in some, some logic, but I guess you wrote the book.

So there's no point me talking about it. Tell me about the long game book, because I really want to spend a bit of time talking about that. Yeah, thank you, Bob. I appreciate it. So you're exactly right. I wrote the long game and was interested in this question because it's so often in our society. Um, not necessarily because of social media, because I think in many ways it's a function of human nature, but social media does not help.

Let's be clear. We are. Push to a kind of short-term thinking where it's just comparison all the time we're looking around at other people seems, seems like other people have it figured out. It seems like other people are getting their facts. And, you know, simultaneously, everyone knows everyone is willing to spout the mantra.

Oh yes. You know, success takes time. Nothing happens overnight. But the big problem is like, well, what does not overnight mean? We know it's not one night, but is it two? Yeah, probably it's two. That must be it. Of course it's not. And we get frustrated. We get discouraged. We often quit and give up way too early.

Because nobody ever tells you if it's two nights or a hundred or 10,000. And I wanted in writing the long game to be able to provide hopefully a framework for people and encouragement for people who are working on long-term meaningful projects, the kind that often do take longer than we want it to, to be able to really think through that process and hopefully gain.

The courage from it to be able to persevere, even when you're in those dark days, when the results are not showing yet. And you're not even entirely sure if it's going to happen. That is what you have to get through in order to get to the other side and get the success that you want and that you deserve, as you might know, this show is supported by our sponsor.

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Go to amplify mi.agency forward slash Agorapulse to score two months for free on me. Now, all you have to do is figure out how you want to spend those spare five hours. I'd love that. I think that there's often this cliche that I hear again and again. Of the, this phrase, the 15 year overnight success, you see somebody that seems to suddenly make it, but you don't see the decade of work that went into getting to that point where things just suddenly happened.

And there isn't an awful lot of, I guess, anecdotal content around that. And there's certainly not much in terms of structure, but I'm curious. When you are looking at the long game, a lot of people struggle with motivation around sort of, okay, it's going to take me potentially 10 years. To just lay the foundations for what I know could potentially be a success, but what happens if it's not the truth is nothing that's worth having is fast.

That's just a fact you can get lucky, lucky people are outliers. The rest of us need a plan. We need to work that plan and gradually incrementally sort of aggregate success upon success over time. What have you learned about how to. Maintain the momentum around the motivation on that journey. Yeah, there's really a couple of key pack factors here, Bob, when it comes to maintaining motivation, the first, which I think is really important.

And it's something that a lot of people fail to do upfront to their detriment is it is really important to the best extent possible to scope out what it actually would take. And to have a well-formed hypothesis before embarking on whatever your journey is. And what I mean by that is a lot of people just plunge into something and it's really a blind spot.

They don't know that they don't know it, but they assume, oh, well, I should be able to do X in, you know, whatever amount of time. And sometimes that's accurate. And sometimes it is wildly inaccurate. Uh, Jeff Bezos tells a story in one of his Amazon shareholder. About a handstand coach and the handstand coach revealed that the average person takes, uh, thinks that it's going to take about two weeks in order to be able to master a handstand.

And it turns out that is not correct. It takes six months of daily practice. Now this is just sort of a random example, but it is a 12 X difference. And if you can imagine how that plays out in our own lives, our own businesses, our own careers. That we are walking around with assumptions that we feel like are perfectly sensible, perf you know, perfectly well put together.

And they're off by a factor of 12. No wonder the average person would give up after two months of trying to do a handstand, they feel like, oh, this is ridiculous. This is taking me, you know, so much longer than it should. Well, guess what if you're giving up after two months, you're, you're not even a third of that.

There. So in most cases, not everything, but in most cases for whatever path you're trying to go on, there are some role models. There are some people who have done roughly what you're trying to do before now, might you do better and go faster? You might absolutely, but it is really useful to know what an average might be so that you can calibrate against it.

Get disheartened too soon because your expectations were off that's number one. And then number two, what really becomes crucial here is having a trusted group of friends around you. And specifically these are not just be cheerleaders. They should also be people who are informed about your industry or your field, so that they actually can give you meaningful feedback about what you're doing about your rate of progress, about how things are moving forward.

Because in the moment for all of us, we actually have a hard time being rational. Sometimes we might continue to persist too long because we have this kind of sunk cost fallacy that we're operating on. And sometimes we might get too depressed because we feel like, oh, it's not working. You know, you're in the pit of despair.

If you have friends around you that you trust. They can be the mirrors that help you understand what actually is rational as compared to the distortion lens that we all sometimes get when the issue is, is our issue and not someone else's. I think one of the things you mentioned there was essentially traveling companions in terms of the people around you who are on a similar journey.

And that's something that I've found particularly powerful. I think we're all accustomed to, again, particularly in social media, but also in the wider media of seeing very successful business owners as the source. Successful loner. When in reality, that's almost guaranteed to not be the case. I'm often surprised when I shouldn't be, when I meet very successful business owners and I asked them, what's, what's in the toolbox for you.

And often one of the most important tools in the toolbox for them is their mastermind peer group. And that's kind of what you were describing there. I sense. Yeah. That's, that's absolutely right. Bob and mastermind is an interesting. Concept. I mean, I th there's all different levels of formality of masterminds.

Some are groups that, that literally do meet on a regular basis, you know, Hey, here's, here's the mastermind, you know, every third, Monday, or whatever it is. Um, sometimes there are paid masterminds that, uh, that people, uh, have assemble. I, in fact, run. Um, which is helpful for convening groups of people. If you yourself don't necessarily, um, know the right people that you want to be connecting with.

And so you can be part of a paid group where the, those folks are curated for you. And also it could be as informal as you know, let's put it in air quotes, master. Uh, it's not necessarily a group of people that are meeting regularly. They may not even know each other, but they are the people that you have become close to that you are sort of treating as your kitchen cabinet and, you know, oh, if I ever have a situation about XYZ, I'll go to Bob.

And if I ever have a situation about ABC, I'll go to Sarah and. It's just the people in your corner. And so it could be as formal or as informal as you'd like, but the key is really to think clearly about your network and not treated as an afterthought. Yeah. And I think also a lot of people underestimate how open people are to actually being approached as again, air quotes, mentors, advisors.

Peers just to have these off the record, open conversations, because there's one thing I know to be true about most business owners and probably the truth. The same is true of executives is that they are kind of, uh, they're accustomed to walking alone. And when somebody actually wants to stretch out the hand of friendship in that way, it's often welcomed.

It's rarely, rarely slapped away. Yeah. That's that's absolutely. I did a piece a while back for the Harvard business review called build a network, even when you don't think you need one. And it was really inspired because I had an executive coaching client who kind of self identified as a lone Wolf. And, you know, you can get pretty far like that.

It's not, it's not, you know, something that is, uh, I mean, w what makes it insidious in some ways is it's not a disqualifier upfront. If you're smart, if you're talented, Um, you can succeed pretty well and get along with the attitude for years of, I don't need people. I just, I just do it myself and, you know, great.

That works for a long time, but the problem is it works until it doesn't because eventually you're hitting this limit where you might have a good reputation. You might be very. But the problem is you only have a reputation with like the three people who are right around you and have worked with you.

Nobody else knows you because you don't have a broader network of people who have been exposed to you. And you don't have a network of people who are amplifying, uh, your message and talking about you when you were not in the room. And it becomes a limiting factor, especially when people are at that critical point where they're trying to.

Reach to a higher level in, in being an executive or being a leader. And, um, all of a sudden you realize, oh, wow, I guess I do need this. And like, anything else, it's very hard to build that overnight. Even if you're, even if you're passionate about it, relationships are not a thing. You can snap your fingers and manifest.

No, absolutely. They do take time and they need to be nurtured and that nurturing is important. They need to give as well as take, I would like to talk about your content journey a little bit, because obviously you've written a whole bucket of books. You also have a busy YouTube channel. You do speaking, and I'm curious to know, okay.

Jump back in a time machine before any of that was real. What was that journey like? And. What, what were the sort of points at which you thought, Hey, this is working well, I would say there's, there's a couple of places where we can begin this story. One was that I actually started my career as a journalist, a printer.

And it, it had a rather ill fated end because I did that for about a year, actually a little less than a year. And I was laid off from my job. Um, right. They did. Yes. Very, very upsetting. Uh, what was even more upsetting was they laid me off the day before nine 11. It was, it was September 10th, 2001. And so it was a very in-office specious time for me to be looking for a new job.

So anyway, I, but I'm grateful for that year that I spent, because essentially what it trained me to do was to write quickly more, more than anything else. I mean, the good thing about training as a journalist and I recommend this for anyone is the concept of writer's block is off the table. You know, the, you know, the answer to, to, um, writers.

It is, you know, in journalism is like you're fired. So there's just not that, that room. And I think it's, it's very healthy because you learn to treat writing, not as this kind of precious thing where you have to be an artist, but as just, okay, this is, this is the thing that I need to do. I need to do it well, but it's not emotionally fraught the way that some people make it.

So I did learn to write really fast cause I need. And then later on, as I started creating content, we talked a little bit about this. I was not, I was not especially interested in becoming a blogger or, you know, writing articles per se. What I wanted to write was a book, but I came to learn that I needed to engage in platform building activities.

And I figured that for me, since I had been a print journalist that the lowest hanging fruit was. Write blogs and write articles. So that was what I started in on. And I just committed myself to doing it assiduously because I realized it was the path forward toward what I needed to do. And then sort of moving beyond that from the books through speaking and then into the YouTube, which seems to be pretty busy.

Now, how, how did that transition go from? Okay. You've, you've wrote a book. To actually there's a business here. Yeah. So I wrote my, so my, so the timeline here is I started my business in my consulting business in 2006. And actually my first book didn't come out until 2013. So there was seven years before then of business building.

Where through the very traditional means, which, you know, most small business owners will recognize of, uh, referrals and, you know, just sort of pounding the pavement. I was landing business and, uh, making my business work, but it is true that once I started creating content on a kind of quote, unquote broader stage, my business was able to change because instead of the, uh, the smaller projects, you know, like, uh, Coming up with a marketing strategy or a social media strategy for a local nonprofit or something like that, which is what I often did in the early days of my business.

I began to get sought out because when, when you create content, this is, uh, I've spent a lot of time over the past decade, really trying to understand the process of how one becomes a recognized expert in one's field. And I, um, wrote about it in my book, stand out, which I know. You've read. And I, um, created an online course in community called recognized expert based on this, but one of the key pillars is content creation.

And I realized that then this is kinda the, the linchpin in so many ways, because the truth is, if you do not share your ideas, People shockingly will not know what your ideas are and so you need to do it, but once you do, and then this, this happened for me, uh, in publishing the book, I began to have people seek me out.

So first of all, it was much easier to get consulting work, but also I began to have opportunities with things like giving speeches that I did not really have before paid speakers. Roll onto YouTube because YouTube really kind of brings us back full circle to networking. And I'm curious to know, I had to look through your YouTube channel earlier on, you're not doing YouTube and the traditional style where you make a video.

You talk about a thing. It seems to be a little bit richer than that. So maybe just explain to me, obviously, Dorie Clark is strategic. What do you what's what's your YouTube? Yeah, absolutely. And, and to be clear, uh, I think it's so interesting. It's always fascinating to sort of see how people interpret things, but I don't really think of it as a YouTube play.

So I'm interested that that's, uh, that that's how it's coming across, which is kind of cool. Um, so specifically I think largely what you're referring to is for the past year, since August of 2020, I have hosted a weekly interview show for Newsweek, which is. Uh, weekly news magazine in the United States.

And so, as a result of that, I do interviews typically with authors, uh, not, not a hundred percent, but typically with authors about, you know, the, the theme of the show is called better. So it's, it's generally like business advice or life advice, uh, about how do you optimize things, uh, in terms of your, your performance, your happiness, your enjoyment, your wealth, whatever.

And so as a result of that, um, just kind of defacto, uh, I've been creating a lot of content which lives on YouTube, but I really thought of it in many ways. So I, I'm a big fan of trying to kill multiple birds with one stone. So the other pillars of my recognized expert, you know, three part framework besides content creation, it's social proof, uh, essentially your credibility in the marketplace and your network.

And so. I pursued the Newsweek opportunity and was glad that I had the opportunity to do that because it really kills three birds with one stone. Certainly it is content. Um, also it is social proof because I'm doing this interview for a publication that people, at least in the U S have heard of and it's networking because it's all interview-based.

So I'm able to connect with people. Some of whom are folks I already know. And some of whom are folks that I want to. And so as, as part of that, it's a really effective way of getting, getting to connect with people, affiliating my brand with a respected brand and having essentially a forcing function to create new content and getting paid to do it.

So this is a program part of the reason I don't necessarily think of it as a YouTube. Is that it's run, uh, as a, essentially a LinkedIn live, but it cross streams to other platforms. So it runs on Newsweek's LinkedIn channel. Uh, but it also cross streams to both Newsweek and my personal Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts.

So it's putting content out in all of those places and then it gets archived, uh, on, on a more permanent basis so people can access it on YouTube. So there's a lot of great opportunity to be able to, um, just, you know, continue to win the SEO battle and, uh, have a lot of content created. Yeah, and I did some super efficient and elegant re-purposing.

I love that. So this is the personal brand entrepreneurs show. And one of the things that you touch on in entrepreneurial you, I managed to say the word that time is revenue streams in particular, multiple revenue streams. And we could dig into that in a kind of. Arbitrary sort of listicle type way, or we could actually be specific and talk about your revenue streams.

And out of the reason, I think that's practical is because it, at the same time is very efficient and it will let people know all about all the ways that they can engage with you. So what does your business look like under the bonnet? That's my question. Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the ways that I earn revenue, it usually is toggling somewhere around.

Eight or nine or 10 different streams at a, at a different time. And which sounds like a lot, although one of the points that I make and entrepreneurial you is that over time, it's not that hard to keep a plate spinning. The part's hard is to get it started spinning. Uh, so what I like to suggest is that people focus on creating one new revenue stream per year and really get that clicking in and optimized.

And then you can move onto the next thing. So in terms of my own business, the way that I'm earning. Um, one, this is, this is a small, but of course it's writing books. So like the long game, for instance, a larger one is my executive coaching work. Uh, another larger one is the online courses that I do. And sometimes that's for an external platform like LinkedIn learning or you to me.

And sometimes that is, uh, courses that I've created and sell on my own platform, like recognized expert. I also, uh, A little bit of revenue from my teaching work at duke and at Columbia. Um, sometimes there's corporate sponsorships. So I might, um, do you like blog posts or social media or things like that?

Promotions for companies? I do. Um, I guess there's my, this sort of media type things. So I get revenue from my Newsweek show and I. Used to do a lot of corporate keynote speaking. Um, now I'm doing, uh, less, yeah. Doing less during COVID. Although some of it has switched to, uh, webinars and virtual. So that's a smaller piece right.

At the moment, although it is still a piece. And, um, oh, and I run masterminds as we were talking about earlier. So I do an annual mastermind, uh, like a year long master. Uh, for it's called a trajectory mastermind and that's for mid six-figure entrepreneurs that are looking at level up and very cool name.

Thank you. And, uh, yeah, just the last piece. Uh, I might be missing something, but I think that's pretty much the highlights, but the last piece would be, again, something that has. Um, tapered off temporarily, at least during COVID, but we'll come back. And that is in, in person, uh, sort of one-off workshops. So I have done, I've done one, one ones in the past, like couple of years ago, pre COVID.

I did one called land, your book deal. And so it was, uh, a one day workshop that people came to in New York where they get to meet literary agents and they learned all about how to get a book deal. Or I did one in Boston a couple of years before that, which I turned into later, uh, a online course called writing for high-profile publications.

And I had a couple of editors from the Harvard business review. They're talking about how they evaluate pieces and sort of talking through the strategy of how people can break. To high-profile publications, whether it's HBR or some of the other top ones in the industry. So those are the, the principle ways that I earn revenue.

And I'm, I'm grateful you went into such detail because I think it's important for people to understand the strength and the diversity of revenue streams that obviously we have covered right now. If speaking was your main revenue. You wouldn't be living in a ninth floor apartment in Manhattan anymore.

Um, but that diversity gives you the strength and it's like building a solid foundation. I spent a little bit of time training with a craftsman to build these. You probably, if you're in the U S you have no idea what a dry stone wall. But is the walls that you see all over the countryside in Scotland.

And they look like they're built from very big rocks, but actually inside these walls, there's lots and lots of little pebbles. And it's the little pebbles that give the whole wallet, strength and revenue streams are a lot like that. It's a lot of entrepreneurs will sniff at modest revenue streams thinking that's not worth it until it's totally right.

Yeah. That's, that's exactly right. My good friend, Jenny Blake talks about her time during COVID and she had, you know, similarly she, you know, she had a lot of revenue from speaking and things like that. And ironically, she had this kind of recurring membership community that wasn't even necessarily that large, it wasn't even necessarily this sort of huge.

But when everything got wiped out, it became this, um, this sort of financial lifeline for her business as she was pivoting and, uh, and reshaping because so much of what she had been doing had been keynote based. So I'm looking at the time Dory, we have really gone some places. As you mentioned a few times, you have some brilliant resources on your website, some of which are paid, but unusually, they look awesome.

Lots of people's courses and things, frankly, look a little bit garbage, but yours look great. Really tempting. So I would encourage everyone to go and have a look at that. But if people do want to engage with you, if they, if you want to, if, if people want to connect with you, how would you like them to do it?

Well, I appreciate it, Bob. Thank you. And one free resource that I hope folks will be interested in. And it sounds like, uh, you know, I know your readers, your listeners have an entrepreneurial mindset. Uh, I, when my book entrepreneurial you was released, which is fundamentally a book about how do you create multiple revenue streams in your.

I created a free resource, which was an 88 question entrepreneurial you self-assessment to help people think through in their own business, how they might create additional revenue streams. And so for folks who are interested in that and, you know, finding, finding new ways to tap into revenue and add to the bottom line, uh, they can get the self-assessment for free at Dorie clark.com/entourage.

I am just writing that down and I'll make sure that's in the show notes. Dory. I need to ask you my signature question. What is one thing you do now that you wish you'd started five years ago? Thank you, Bob. So my, my answer to that is actually I feel, uh, I, I feel fortunate because I started. Uh, not five years ago, but I started, I did in fact start it, uh, close to five years ago.

So, um, I'm gonna give this answer anyway, even though it's, uh, it's slightly close in time to your cutoff, but I, I was new, we're really into health and physical fitness, like, uh, enough, you know, I mean, I was not. Completely indolent. And I played sports when I was a kid, but I was not a big gym person, but I actually, a little over five years ago, I went to a conference and it was this like really terribly organized conference.

I was so bitter the whole time. I'm like, this is rubbish. And I was, I was just not meeting people because they had not set it up in a thoughtful way that you could meet people. It's, you know, Ridiculous. But anyway, this was one of these lake, uh, very, um, sort of broey yet new age kind of places. And so, uh, yeah, it was an interesting combination of amazing picture.

So, well, I was like riding by myself on like this conference bus there. I overheard these two. And they were talking and they were like, oh my God, have you visited? It's been, and I, and you know, my ears are perking up. I'm like, what are they talking about? And so apparently this place had like a, essentially like a resident psychic and they're like, oh, she's so incredible.

She's so amazing. And I was so bored and disgusted with the entire conference that I was like, all right, I'm going to go to the psychic lady. Cause it sounds like she's like the one good thing at this conference. And so basically I go, I get it. I managed to sneak in and get a half-hour point with a psychic lady.

And she says to me, um, you know, I walk in and she does her sort of. Magic psychic lady hands where she's, you know, like getting, getting the message like, oh, ha. And, and she, uh, and I, I loved, I loved what, what she said. I'm not necessarily a person that is like going to do exactly what the psychics are telling me, but I realized that she had a point in her point.

She said, she said, you, you have freed your mind. And do you, then she said, now it's time to free your body. And I really, what I, you know, my interpretation of that was, it was true that I had, uh, invested a lot of time and a lot of energy in my career, in my writing and my, you know, just building my professional life.

But I really had not invested in my health in the same way. And so shortly after I got back from that, I decided that I. Get more serious about it. So I started joining a class pass, which is this sort of app where you get to go to all these different gyms and try these different classes. And so I did that all the way through the pandemic and you know, you get stymied a little bit with a pandemic cause they closed the gyms and things like that.

Now, you know, that things are, are over. I have been going back and being much more focused. I, you know, I even worked out today, so I feel, I feel good about that. And I do wish that I had started it earlier, but, uh, but I got, I got on the bandwagon. I'm really wishing I hadn't asked this question because I feel so bad.

Well, I haven't been to the gym for a very long time. Well, you know, it's either start by going to the gym or start by going to the psychic Bob one or the other. So what's your favorite kind of exercise now? What's your favorite class? Ah, well, I haven't actually started going. Mostly to classes because in Manhattan, a lot of the gyms are still closed.

And so to me it doesn't make sense to, to join ClassPass because most, most of it is still virtual, which I find a little bit, blah. So, um, I've, I've been doing the slightly boring stuff, which is either the bike or the treadmill, but I listened to audio books while I do it. And so I can make it reasonably entertaining.

I also have a bike. Do you prefer a road bike, sort of static bike or mountain? Yeah, I, I, uh, I do, I do like biking, um, you know, out in the wild, but, um, but I do not currently possess a bike living. No, I guess, no, I just be dangerous. Yeah. It's it's, I mean, there's, there's paths and things like that, but, but honestly, anything extraneous that you can opt not to own when you live in Manhattan is a good idea.

Um, so, so no, I'm, I'm specifically talking about the, uh, the stationary bikes at the gym. All right. Dorie Clark. You have been an awesome guest. I am, again, if people want to find you, what's your website address and what's your favorite social media. Thank you, Bob. I appreciate it. Uh, the social media where I.

Over index or spend the most time is, uh, LinkedIn. Uh, unfortunately I've hit the number of hit the maximum number of connections, like who knew, who knew that was a thing, but people can follow me on LinkedIn and I have a LinkedIn newsletter. Uh, I even created a URL. Actually, if you go to Dorie clark.com/linkedin, you can, uh, you can follow me.

Uh, and in terms of people learning more about me getting free self-assessments and looking up articles and all the, all the things, uh, the hub is Dorie clark.com. Derek luck. You have been awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Bob. Thank you so much before I go. Just a quick reminder to subscribe and join our Facebook group.

You'll find a link in the show notes or visit amplify me.fm forward slash insider. Also connect with me wherever you hang out. You'll find me on all the social platforms at Bob gentle. If you enjoyed the show, then I would love a five-star review on apple podcast. It would make my day. And if you shared the show with a friend, you would literally make my golden list.

My name's Paul Chantelle. Thanks to you for listening and I'll see you next week.


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