The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 005: Dorie Clark: How To Reinvent Yourself And Stand Out

Starting point is 00:00:00 But Tim Ferriss, he created a category for himself. He, you know, very deliberately. He said he wanted to own the category of lifestyle design that, you know, that being a business author is pretty commoditized. But if you can be the maestro of lifestyle design, A, it gives you more freedom to operate and to write about all the different things you want to. But B, it means that in that niche, you can own that niche. Are leaders born or are they made?

Starting point is 00:00:28 Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, welcome to The Learning Leader Show. It's Ryan Hawk. Our guest tonight is Dory Clark. Dory is such an interesting person. I loved speaking with her. She's a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker. Also writes, for Inc. Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur. Also has written two great books, one called Reinventing You, the other one called Stand Out. On today's talk, we had a number of different areas we went. One of them was about a hairdresser

Starting point is 00:01:23 who went on to become a world-renowned public speaker. We also talked a little bit about how to become more like Tim Ferriss and why he's been successful, and also the art and the science of combining ideas and disciplines like a Stanford graduate would. Guys, it's very exciting for me to introduce you to Dory Clark. And welcome to the learning show. Our guest tonight is Dory Clark.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Dory, obviously, like I said in the intro, a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, World Economic Blog, just does a lot. Our brand is pretty much everywhere now. If you're following on social media, I hope you are. But Dory, welcome to the show. Ryan, thanks so much. great to be talking with you. I really appreciate you coming on. I like just to get us started here

Starting point is 00:02:21 for you to give your 30 to 60 second Dory Clark commercial so we can get the gist of what you're doing now and what you're all about. Yeah, thanks. Absolutely. So I spend a lot of my time writing. My first book came out in 2013 called Reinventing You. And that's a book about personal branding and professional reinvention. And I have a new book that is imminently on the cusp of release, which is called Stand Out, which is about how to become a recognized expert in your field, how to make sure that in this ever noisier world, your contributions can really get noticed. So when I'm not doing that, I teach for Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, give a lot of talks, and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to talk with you and your listeners today.

Starting point is 00:03:08 Well, thank you so much. I appreciate having you on. And like I said, the more I dug into everything that you're about, I just became really, really impressed with everything you've accomplished from from really start to finish. Could you take us back a little bit about where you were prior to being a published author who's probably receiving handsome rewards here for your books that you're writing? I'd like to learn a little bit about where this all comes from. I actually started out my career and this was kind of the genesis of my first book, reinventing you, because it took me a while to find my stride and to figure out what I was going to be

Starting point is 00:03:44 doing professionally. I knew there were things that I was interested in. I was interested in politics. I was interested in media. I was interested in marketing and psychology, but I wasn't sure how those things would fit together. And so originally, after college, I went to graduate school and got a master's degree in theology. And I actually thought I would be an academic. But after I, you know, got the master's degree. I was rather saddened and stunned when I got turned down by every doctoral program I applied to. So I really quickly had to recalibrate and find a new plan for myself. And I managed to find a pretty good one, which is that I got a job as a newspaper reporter covering politics in Boston. And that was great, a really fun and interesting job.

Starting point is 00:04:34 But unfortunately, I got in just at about the time that the Internet was starting to erode. the journalism and newspaper business. So I lasted about a year and then I got laid off. And then I went into politics and became a spokesperson on a gubernatorial campaign, a spokesperson on a presidential campaign. And my candidates kept losing. So I was trying to figure out where to land. I ran a nonprofit for a couple of years after that and eventually decided to start my own business doing marketing strategy consulting because that pulled in peace. of all of the elements that I had done before, communications and, you know, really finding ways to break through with your messages.

Starting point is 00:05:17 And from that experience, it really made me realize that more and more everyone is transitioning these days. I mean, it's really rare for people to have one career their whole lives. A lot of people are embracing the idea of being Renaissance people and wanting to have disparate interests. And so I ended up writing this book, which came out from Harvard Business Review Press, about that process about how people can reinvent themselves better and more efficiently. And I interviewed dozens of professionals who had done it so that hopefully we could give people a kind of guidebook

Starting point is 00:05:50 so that they could do it better and faster than I muddled my way through. You know, people can dive into the things that they're really passionate about. So that was how I got started in writing and having my own consulting business. And now with Stand Out, I'm trying to take that for readers to the next level, that once you've found the place where you really want to make an impact, how do you get recognized so that you're playing on the big stage? Absolutely. And the thing I'm interested in is the people that you interviewed and talked to for, I'm sure, for both books. And I'm curious as to how you went about making the decision to the people that you wanted to interview and focus on for the books.

Starting point is 00:06:32 Well, for a lot of them, they're actually people that just over the course of my life, They're folks that I got to know and thought that they had fascinating stories. I think that's actually one of the really gratifying parts about writing books is that all the people that I've encountered where I've said, oh, you know, this person's so cool. That's so interesting. I actually get to help bring those stories to light. For instance, when I was running a nonprofit, it was actually a bicycle advocacy organization. And one of the people that I profiled in reinventing you was this guy who actually was our advisory board member

Starting point is 00:07:05 for Mass Bike, the organization. And for a long time, he was a staffer at an organization that advocated for rail trail conversion, where they take these abandoned rail lines and turn them into bicycle paths. And he was basically the New England expert, you know, the number one expert in the world on New England rail trail conversions, which is a fantastic thing to be. But it stopped being fantastic when his organization told him that they were going to close his field office. and he either had to move to another state or he was going to be out of a job. So the question is, you know, this was his dream job.

Starting point is 00:07:41 It was his passion. And no one else in the world is going to pay him to do it. So do you give up on your dream? And, you know, this is like a sort of central question, a central moment. And I was so impressed with the solution that he found for himself, which is that he and his wife had always wanted to open a bed and breakfast. And so they decided that this was the moment that they were going to do it. But instead of just picking any random location, they bought a place next to a rail trail,

Starting point is 00:08:08 and they used all of his contacts in the rail trail community to be his first customers. And they advertised it, you know, hey, come here. You can have a bicycling vacation at our inn. It was called the Sugar Maple Trailside Inn in western Massachusetts. And so from day one, it was packed. And, you know, he had all the customers they wanted. It was very profitable. And in fact, it was so successful, he actually got the idea and went ahead and has now

Starting point is 00:08:32 done this to get his real estate license so that he could specialize in the sale of properties near rail trails. So it's just brilliant entrepreneurial energy. You look at somebody like that and you say a lot of people when faced with a similar situation, you know, being laid off or some kind of adversity, they just crumple and say, well, I guess I have to do something different. But he found a way, a different way to pursue his dream. I love those stories. And I want to circle that back with your story as well. Because for most people listening, starting their own business is scary. It's something that people, I think a lot of people say, I really would like to do that. I have an idea. I have a passion. People said that I'm really good at this, whatever this is,

Starting point is 00:09:16 but then they have a fear of going out and actually doing this. This is something I've talked about with other guests, so people who are regular listeners will understand me saying this. I'm curious about both learning from the people that you studied, as well as learning from your own story, how do you overcome or handle or deal with those fears of, hey, I have responsibilities in my life? I mean, a lot of the listeners, I think, probably, you know, whether they have families, they have bills, they have mortgages, things like that. How do you handle that fear of not being able to take care of those responsibilities with the risk of starting your own business, especially if you're going to break away from a job or do something? something like that, where the income is not going to be coming in, so to speak, for some time. Yeah, it's an important question. So I have a few thoughts about it.

Starting point is 00:10:02 I mean, the first one is that I know when I started my business, I was very intent, both before launching it and then, you know, once I had launched it on stockpiling cash. I think that's really important. Very, yeah. You know, you shouldn't dive in if you don't have, let's say, at least six months cash reserves, because it takes a while to find your first clients and to be able to really gear up. You can't expect to replace your income immediately. And so having that cushion is really important because if you only have a month or two savings,

Starting point is 00:10:37 you're going to get desperate really quickly. And that becomes a very negative cycle because people can sense that desperation and it'll either turn them off completely or it will encourage the more rapacious of them to do things to take advantage of you. So making sure that you never have to come from a position of desperation when you're launching a business is really important. I think another thing, which has proved useful for me, is the question of reframing. Because a lot of people view the choices as, oh, it's a stable, steady job or a really risky up and down entrepreneurial venture. And the truth is, I mean, when you think about it, the stable, steady job is essentially an illusion because they can

Starting point is 00:11:22 pull the plug at any time. You know, in the vast majority of states, you can just be fired. When I lost my first job, when I was laid off for the first time at the newspaper, it was a Monday afternoon that they laid me off. And they called me in to the HR office at, you know, 4, 430. And they said, okay so we're letting you go and you can go pack your desk now and don't come back the severance they gave me was four days pay they paid me for that week and you know oh nice wow that's crazy yeah yeah i mean you know i mean admittedly i hadn't worked there that long i worked there for a year but it was uh it was completely unceremonious and uh you know i now look back this was uh this alternative weekly newspaper in Boston. And prior to working there, I really enjoyed reading it. It was,

Starting point is 00:12:18 you know, it was, it was this great newspaper, this great cultural institution. But now, you know, like a lot of newspapers, they've gone under and no longer exist. But, you know, when when the bell finally told a few years ago, everyone was, you know, bemoaning, oh, it's so sad, this passing of a legacy. And I just thought, yeah, and they treated their people like crap. But, you know, I mean, that's the kind of loyalty that in a lot of places you get. You know, when you work on a political campaign, I mean, admittedly those are set up very specifically to self-destruct at a certain point. But if you lose, which a lot of mine did, okay, the day after the election, you pack up your desk then and you don't have a job and you have to go figure something else out. So thinking that there's

Starting point is 00:13:02 security in some kind of an ongoing promise from a job is a little bit illusory. And you actually do, if you understand it and reframe it, have a lot more security if you are self-employed, because I now get my income from probably 10 to 15 different sources. If we think about, you know, different clients for my consulting work or, you know, from sources like speaking versus writing versus coaching versus consulting. And it's in that diversification, just like a financial advisor would say to do that with your portfolio. It's not a bad idea to do that with your work portfolio.

Starting point is 00:13:39 What do you think about people who have what they term a side hustle, something that they do have a 95, maybe they really enjoy it. They like the company they work for. I would probably fall into this category. I would fall in this category where you work with great people at a great company and it's enjoyable for you. However, you do have other passions that you need to fulfill and you're willing to go out there and spend your nights and weekends, so to speak, on that side hustle. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that side gigs, side hustles are a great idea. I encourage people definitely to cultivate them for a couple of reasons. I mean, one is that it is a way to cultivate new skills in a very low-risk environment. So if there's something you're interested in exploring or learning more about or getting better at, it's hard to do that in the confines of your job, because at your job you are paid for, if not perfection, at least close to perfection. They usually don't want to pay you to suck at something to begin with. So it's in your free time that you can

Starting point is 00:14:41 really begin to build those skills, whether it's in podcasting or video editing or web design or crafts or whatever it is. So that's pretty cool. It's also useful because it is an insurance policy for yourself. I mean, God forbid if the company lays people off or the company collapses or something like that, you've been cultivating something all along that may well be able. to be turned into a full-time venture if you want or need that to be the case. It's also good because, you know, it's always good to have a little extra money if it brings in money or to have a little extra approbation or, you know, to use the term de jour to, you know, to have an extra platform that you've built because that's always useful. In fact, in my book, my first book,

Starting point is 00:15:33 reinventing you, I profile this woman named Patricia Fripp. And she, for many years, for 20, 30 years, has been a full-time professional speaker and has built up a fair amount of renown in that profession. But I was interested in how she got started. And it was actually as a side hustle. Her first job was she was a hairdresser. She was a hairdresser in downtown San Francisco. And she developed this clientele of a lot of the local executives from big companies like Wells Fargo or Levi's. She was very business savvy. And so a lot of hairdressers would just, you know, talk about the weather or something. And she would ask them these very probing and insightful questions about their business. I love it. Yeah. And when she told them, you know, they were sort of talking

Starting point is 00:16:20 about their lives, that she did public speaking because it started out that she was doing public speaking around hair products, you know, like selling different kinds of things and doing demos. They knew that she was so smart and so gifted, they said to her, why don't you come in and give a talk about sales or about, you know, relationship building to our company? And so she started out just doing that on the side. And of course, you know, they're not going to pay you either at all or very much right in the beginning. But she did this for a number of years. And all the while, she was building up her business. And she said she finally closed down her hairdressing business when she was fully able to replace her income just with speaking.

Starting point is 00:17:03 I found, you know, doing something like just as something as simple as a podcast, although it's not very simple because there's a lot that goes into it, especially making a quality one. I've already learned quickly that having to do the preparation and then the actual action of, you know, asking the questions and trying to come up with insightful feedback and follow-ups has already helped improve at least my skill in public speaking and interviewing people at, you know, any place of work as far as trying to hire. It's amazing, and that's why I've already been trying to encourage other people

Starting point is 00:17:34 who have thought about doing something, whether it's writing, podcasting, anything online, really encourage people to do those things, even though it does take a lot of hard work nights and weekends if you do have a day job, because you'll notice your skills in important areas like public speaking, like interviewing, like writing, really, really improve quickly by doing something like this because it's probably a little bit different than what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. Absolutely. That's such a great observation.

Starting point is 00:18:05 It's, uh, and it's been, it's made it a lot more fun too because it's like, there's all these really great interesting people like, like Dory Clark who are willing to, to come on here and talk. And I'm just so appreciative because I, like I said, I've learned so much so quickly. It makes you want to, you know, help others or encourage other people to do things, whatever it is their passion. It might not be, you know, interviewing people on podcasts, but it, it could be, uh, other lines of work where they think they could be good at. It's like, go do it. You know,

Starting point is 00:18:30 why not at least make an attempt to make something happen instead of just going about your day as is currently, you know? Yeah, definitely. I wanted to transition a little bit into some of the, some of the things you've written, both articles as well as your books. And one of the things that I've already picked up, like I said, through these podcasting conversations are influencers. There's actually a guy, I don't know, you might know him by the name of John. Levy who runs a group in New York City called the influencers and I've talked to John on here and He's he's friends with some other people that I've become acquaintances of where his his his what he does is he he has these dinners every two weeks where he invite he tries to invite people who are influencers in whatever field of work they're in whether they're musicians

Starting point is 00:19:17 Athletes CEOs best-selling authors like that and he's really really connected with now roughly 400 Influencers across the world that he's had dinner with. And I'm curious as far as your point of view on connecting with people who are influencers in their field of work. I think that it is a terrific thing to do. And in fact, I actually do something similar to that. Every month I organize, I live in New York as well, and I organize a dinner for business authors. And in fact, we're having one tonight. So it's proved really useful both to me in terms of just meeting and connecting with interesting folks. And also, I think, to the guests, because I cap them at 10 people. And so it's really an opportunity over the course of two or

Starting point is 00:20:04 three hours for people to be able to get to know each other in a casual way, whereas, you know, you might be aware of someone or have heard their name for a long time. But unless you are speaking at the same conference or have some sort of organic opportunity to meet them, you know, in our society, it's fairly rare to just email someone out of the blue and say, you know, hey, even if they're sort of a peer of yours, to say, hey, I've heard about you. Do you want to have coffee? You know, usually there has to be some kind of a connection or an introduction or something like that. And so having this nice, ready-made opportunity to connect with eight or ten people who are doing

Starting point is 00:20:45 something similar seems to be desirable for a lot of folks. So I think it's a great idea. And in fact, having dinners is a strategy that I like a lot personally because I'm an introvert. And so, you know, I've thought a lot about what kind of networking situations I like versus don't like because I want to play to my strengths. And I don't like ones where it's just this big zoo, you know, where there's people everywhere and, you know, it's loud and noisy and you can't talk to people. I mean, I don't care if it's being at a bar or being at a big chamber of commerce, breakfast, sort of the bigger stuff at South by Southwest. It's just too much.

Starting point is 00:21:32 So I like more intimate settings where it's a little calmer, it's a little more controlled, and you can actually get to know people in a more substantive way. That's really cool. I'm going to have to introduce you to John. Maybe you guys can hook up for one of either of your dinners. Exactly. I'll invite him to mind for sure. Yeah, and maybe vice versa.

Starting point is 00:21:49 So he's currently writing a book and he wants to come out with the next year. And so I was like, wow, I love the thought of. I just connected him with a friend of mine who's a professional magician. And he just performed at his house this past Saturday. And they're both, you know, it's a good feeling when both of them are sending you messages saying, whoa, thanks so much for introducing us because they both, you know, had fun and got a lot out of it. And so I'm like, oh, that'd be cool if you guys could maybe meet through this, the medium being this podcast. Yeah, that sounds great.

Starting point is 00:22:18 I love it too. Nice, nice. You're originally from North Carolina, though, right? It's true. I am from a little town in North Carolina. So how did you get to New York City? Last summer, I moved to New York City. So this has been kind of an adventure for me. I've been shaking things up. I figured, you know, living in Boston was great, but I felt like I sort of hit a plateau. I was kind of doing the same things. There was not a lot new for me to discover after having been there for so long. I decided I needed to sort of shake myself up and shake my surroundings up.

Starting point is 00:22:47 So I've really enjoyed the possibilities here. You get to meet a lot of people. There's always great stuff to do. So it's been fun. That reminds me of a comfort zone. And like you, I am an introvert as well. So the part of doing the show was to force me out of it and to force me to talk to really interesting people.

Starting point is 00:23:06 But when I think of comfort zone, it feels to me like you just took a big leap outside of that when you made that move. Is that accurate? Yeah, I think it is. I mean, I don't want to give myself too much credit. because it's not like, you know, moving to a foreign country or even, you know, there's some places in the U.S. where I, like, literally don't even know anyone. I had a lot of people that I knew in New York, you know, it was definitely a different city, a different way of life. But I

Starting point is 00:23:31 had a base of folks that I could call up if I had questions or needed something or, you know, wanted people to hang out with. But yeah, the goal, the goal really was to do something different. I, you know, I both feel intuitively and also know from the research that humans are, are at our happiest when we push ourselves, when we feel like we're making progress, when we're learning new things. And in fact, the reason researchers believe that time seems to speed up when we get older, you know, it's like, you know, when you're young, it's like, oh, time just seems to sort of the drag on. And, and, you know, you can, you can probably, if you think back to, like, you know, your high school days or summer camp or, you know, even your early days of college,

Starting point is 00:24:12 It's like you have all these really distinct memories, and it seems like, you know, college took 10 years or something. And then you think about your life today, and it's like you're whirring by. And that's not a function of just, oh, well, that's what happens to people's brains when they get older. What it's apparently a function of is that when you challenge your brain with novel circumstances, it takes more effort. And so it makes it seem like time is stretching out further. And you know, you actually get, you know, more kind of meaning and enjoyment from it if you're able to sort of linger in it rather than just having your days rush by in a blur because you're doing the same thing over and over again. And your brain essentially says, oh, it's not worth remembering this because it's just like what happened yesterday. Wow.

Starting point is 00:25:05 And so that's what I want to try to avoid. That's interesting. I like that you're aware of that. I think that could help a lot of people because you hear that phrase all the time. You're like, oh, it goes by so fast. It's so quick. And it's like, well, maybe we need to stretch a little bit to help avoid that some, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm curious about if you could give an example of when challenging established knowledge changed an industry, somebody who's a challenger, so to speak. So one of my favorite examples from my new book Stand Out is someone that I've admired for a long time, Robert Chaldini, the author of Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion. Yeah, I love that book. It's awesome. It's fantastic. I mean, you know, it's been out for decades now.

Starting point is 00:25:52 And I was just happening to look it up on Amazon yesterday. And I noticed it's number 423 overall in Amazon, you know, out of millions of books. And this is a book that is an old book. but people still keep buying it because it is such a classic. It's so valuable for anyone interested in marketing, psychology. You know, it's just a very different kind of book because it explains in a really comprehensive way how persuasion works. And so I was interested in finding out how Robert Chaldingy came to these ideas. You know, like a lot of psychology is just sort of experiments in a lab and things like that.

Starting point is 00:26:32 And he was doing things that were really different. So I interviewed him about it for Standout and asked him about the genesis of it. And he said that basically, you know, he started his career the way everyone else did. He was running experiments in a lab. And his students, you know, as you might expect, probably everyone's students did this. But his students would raise their hands and say, well, you know, professor, this all sounds good. But these are experiments in a lab. How do you know that this would be born out in real life?

Starting point is 00:27:03 And he would just have to say, well, you know, human psychology is the same, whether you're in a lab or whether you're in the real world. And so we just have to trust it. But, you know, he wasn't really satisfied with that answer even as he was giving it. But a lot of people, you know, they weren't doing anything differently because it seemed so hard and so complicated, maybe even impossible, to do real world experiments. But he set himself the goal of trying to figure out, could he? Was there a way that you could do it? And so he set up his first experiment, which he actually describes in influence, where he got the United Way on board. And it was a very well-organized, scientifically controlled, double-blind experiment, etc., where one group of volunteers went out to houses knocking on doors and asked for money in the traditional way.

Starting point is 00:27:57 for United Way. And then the second group of volunteers were trained to basically give the exact same speech, but they added one phrase at the end, which was even a penny would help. Wow. That was it. That was the one difference. And they chose the houses, you know, based on their, you know, house numbers. It was completely randomized. There should be, you know, no reason other than the addition of this phrase that should impact what happened. And he said it took three times as long, to arrange for this experiment to be done as it would have any experiment in a lab, because they had to get the partner on board, the United Way. They had to get permission from the university because they were sending students out into the wild,

Starting point is 00:28:41 so to speak. They had to get permission from the local police because there might be complaints or, you know, who are these people asking us for money, all these things. And they had to recruit students that were willing to take the risk of angry people, at the door, attack dogs, you know, all these variables that you never have to think about if you're in a lab. And so they finally do this, and they run the experiment, and they discover that by saying even a penny would help, contributions dramatically increased to the United Way. And he realized, wow, this is incredibly significant, you know, because it turns out,

Starting point is 00:29:23 of course that if you say that, you know, that's basically telling people, you know, look, literally, you can give us a penny. And so people said, oh, you know, geez, I should do something. But as Chaldeenie said, nobody literally gives a penny to the United Way. You give an amount that's appropriate to the United Way. And so, you know, the contributions shot up and he realized you can get incredible data from doing these real world experiments, even though it's harder, it's far more meaningful, far more significant. And he was really the only person doing this. So he revolutionized the field by being willing to ask a different question and to make the effort,

Starting point is 00:30:01 even though it was harder, to get that data. There's so many gems in that book. It literally is a classic, you know, just from like the rule of reciprocity and on and on. He goes, I think I've read it probably three times now. And the first time I read it was quite some time ago. It was right when I graduated from college. I remember about, I don't know, 10 years ago. So it's just interesting that something that old, because there's new books being released every single day.

Starting point is 00:30:25 And so for something that so much time has passed to still be a classic is remarkable. It really is. So you mentioned the importance of combining ideas and other disciplines in a really unique way. It reminds me of what some of the students have started doing at Stanford years ago. And you could probably speak more about this since you're in the academic world. they were combining a computer science major with something like psychology. So that's a way to combine ideas and different disciplines to then create, some would say, maybe like the perfect CEO.

Starting point is 00:31:01 And I know a lot of Googlers started, even I believe that was the double major of Marissa Meyer, the CEO at Yahoo, who maybe you've worked with. But I believe that's what makes me think of combining two different areas to kind of create the perfect mix of understanding. the science and the art, so to speak, of whether it's leadership, management, all the things that go into that. Yes, yes, exactly. When you kind of create your own new field, it's a lot easier to stand out. I mean, in fact, one of the case studies that I talk about in reinventing you is that Tim Ferriss,

Starting point is 00:31:40 the famed author of Four Hour Workweek and other books. What I find interesting about his approach is that it would have been very easy. I mean, you know, the logical path for him as somebody who wrote a best-selling business book would be to write more best-selling business books. You know, that's what everyone wanted him to do. But he pushed back against that opportunity that people were throwing at him. And he made his second book, a fitness book, the four-hour body, which seems, you know, entirely random. You know, like, would you buy a fitness book by Clayton Christensen or by Michael Porter or, you know, by Malcolm Gladwell?

Starting point is 00:32:22 I mean, no, you really probably would not. But Tim Ferriss, he created a category for himself, you know, very deliberately. He said he wanted to own the category of lifestyle design that, you know, that being a business author is pretty commoditized. But if you can be the maestro of lifestyle design, A, it gives you more freedom to operate and to write about all. the different things you want to. But B, it means that in that niche, you can own that niche. Yeah, I love, I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan. I read everything he's written as his blog. Obviously, listen to his podcast. He asks great, great questions too and gets a phenomenal guest. You're just listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger of all people, which was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, he's one of my,

Starting point is 00:33:07 a mentor mind and he doesn't know it. But I'm sure there's a ton of people out there who can say that probably like a dream guest type of guy someday to talk to and just pick his brain a little bit. But obviously another one of those very busy guys, but I've learned so much from people like that. I'm curious about goals. I ask this a lot of people because I think goal setting to me personally is incredibly important, especially the written goals. What is your thought process around personal goals for you, Dory? I'm a big goal fan too, Ryan.

Starting point is 00:33:39 I mean, for me, I think the most important. thing is not to set too many because, you know, if you've got a million of them, it's, it's hard to keep track of them. It's hard, you know, I mean, inevitably some are going to fall off and then you kind of get discouraged. And so my favorite strategy that I've adopted is that I like to set, instead of annual goals now, I like to set six-month goals so that I can really hunker down and focus on them for, you know, halves of the year. And, and then sort of reevaluate in the summer. But I have just three goals that I made for myself for the first half of 2015.

Starting point is 00:34:21 And, you know, so I'm kind of going nuclear and trying to, trying to evaluate. I mean, three, I think is a good number because it gives you flexibility, but it enables you to look at what you're doing and saying, okay, does this activity advance one of the three goals? And so in my personal case, the three goals for the first half of this year, number one, is to try to make my book a bestseller, to try to make the launch of Standout be as successful as is humanly possible. The second is, and this actually is a year-long goal, but I plan to sort of look at it and tweak or whatever accordingly

Starting point is 00:34:57 at the half-year mark, I want to double the size of my email list this year because I'm a big believer in the importance of, you know, connecting to and with your audience directly through email. Absolutely. You know, I mean, social media is great, but it's a very fleeting and cursory connection. Whereas people who are on your email list, I mean, that's kind of your tribe. And then the third one is to get a girlfriend, so I'm working on it. Nice, nice.

Starting point is 00:35:26 I was going to say, what are the specific behaviors for those, I guess there's three different things, obviously. I think that the email and the bestseller could go hand-to-hand, or at least they could help one other. And actually, it could probably help with number three. You never know. Exactly. Exactly. It is all about inbound marketing. That's my mantra. Wow, that's cool. Hey, this has been really great. And this has flown by in a good way. But I have one more question that I like to ask, and that's in regards to mentors, both having

Starting point is 00:35:57 them as well as mentoring others. And I'm curious to who your mentors were and are, and also your thoughts on the value of mentorship. This is a great, a great tie in, Ryan, I'll say, because actually, number one, I've written a free ebook about mentorship. There you go. There you go. I did not. This was not planned. That's right.

Starting point is 00:36:19 It's called Mentorship 2.0 and how to find the mentor you need. And for anyone who signs up for my email list, which they can do at doryclerc.com, when you sign up, you'll actually, as part of the, you know, the kind of autoresponder sequence of messages, I think the second one that you get, maybe the second or a few. third one is a link where you can download this free ebook. So people can sign up and get it that way. They can also Google Dori Clark and Mentorship 2.0 if they cannot wait a minute to get it. My thought about this basically is, and I have thought about it a lot, there's a lot of misconceptions about mentors. You know, like everybody wants one, of course. Like it sounds like this great idea.

Starting point is 00:37:02 Yeah, I want someone who's, you know, older and wiser and can give me useful advice. I mean, who wouldn't want that? But the problem is that there are two few. people who actually can serve that purpose. There's too few people just like you but are 15 years older and are willing to spend the time to help you. It's like a unicorn that you're just sort of sitting around waiting for. And so what I advise people to do is to kind of take matters into their own hands because otherwise you'd be waiting a really long time. And so instead, I suggest that people should form their own mentor board of directors, which should ideally be a cross-section of people that are not necessarily perfect replicas of like the thing that you

Starting point is 00:37:44 want to become one day, but that each person represents a different skill set or, you know, different experience or ability or whatever that you admire. And so that if you, you know, say, all right, I want to learn in my life, you know, in the next few years, I want to get better at networking and I want to get better at delegation and I want to get better at online marketing or something like that, that you have people in your life, and they could be peers, they could be people younger than you, they may be people older than you, but each person is really good at that thing, and you have a person that you can turn to for that skill set, and ideally you are able to similarly provide some kind of value to them in the areas that you excel in. I think that's the new

Starting point is 00:38:32 form of mentorship that I think will be most useful to people moving forward. I like that. And I read a lot about this and it seems that the best mentorships are those of the informal nature, meaning it's people who the mentor actually, you know, genuinely likes the mentee. They even can, they usually become friends when it's forced or its company mandated to say, hey, Joe, your mentor is going to be John because he has a job. Maybe you should have in 15 years or 10 years and he got promoted. So he's going to be your mentor. But maybe they don't really feel. like they have a lot in common or they don't just, they don't like each other, that mentorship literally is not going to work. It could have an opposite effect versus the people who genuinely

Starting point is 00:39:17 have a like for each other and a concern. The mentor actually gets just as much, if not more, out of the giving nature of it than the mentee. And it can be really, really powerful because I think people who are experienced do need to hear from people who maybe are generally a little bit different. They're younger. They're into other things. And they can help both people. And so I've studied a lot about it too. I'm obviously going to read, read mentorship 2.0. I'm very curious to get that. It's funny that this kind of tied together here to close us out, but, and it wasn't

Starting point is 00:39:48 planned, like I said, but I really appreciate your view on that because it's, it's helped me so much. I feel like every successful person I've spoken with has said the exact same thing. There was, and it wasn't just one usually. There was usually a number of different types of mentors out there to help people. Yeah, absolutely. I do think that mentorship is critical and is often misunderstood, so I'm glad that we're talking about it. Me too.

Starting point is 00:40:14 And so, Dori, I have to thank you again so much for taking the time to be here with me and for our listeners. What places, I think you mentioned at DoriClark.com, but where all can we find you? Yeah, thank you so much, Ryan. So I am on Twitter at Dory Clark, D-O-R-I-E-C-L-A-R-K. On my website, Dory-C-C-L-E-C-L-R-C-C-com, I have more than 400 free articles, which are available. So if folks want to dive into any of these topics about, you know, marketing or branding or personal branding or networking or mentorship, there's a lot of stuff there and people can sign up for my email list and get amazing free things.

Starting point is 00:40:49 Yes. A lot of great articles. I wrote like 20 of them down here. But anyway, go ahead. Oh, thank you. And then I have my two books, reinventing you and stand out, which are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and lots of other good places. Awesome. Cool. Well, don't worry. Again, thank you so much. I really appreciate talking to you. And let's definitely talk soon. I look forward to it. Thanks a lot, Ryan.

Starting point is 00:41:13 All right. Thanks, Dorie. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Learning Leader Show. I absolutely love doing this show, as I hope you can tell by the passion that I bring to it on a daily basis. If you enjoy this episode, I'd like to ask one thing of you. You could go to Ryanhawk.net. It will launch the show in iTunes. iTunes is the best way to grow.

Starting point is 00:41:40 show organically and a couple things that you need to do once you're in iTunes. It's to subscribe to it. Just simply click on the subscribe button. To rate the show, obviously five stars are the best. And to write a review. I promise I will read every single review. I will listen to your coaching and feedback and I will implement that into the show to make it even better. Thank you so much for being a friend of the Learning Leader show.

Starting point is 00:42:09 I greatly appreciate each and every one of you, and I cannot wait for the next one.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 005: Dorie Clark: How To Reinvent Yourself And Stand Out

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