The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 230: Dorie Clark - How To Monetize Your Expertise & Create Multiple Income Streams

Episode Date: November 6, 2017

Episode 230: Dorie Clark - How To Monetize Your Expertise & Create Multiple Income Streams Commonalities of leaders who sustain excellence: They do what they say they're going to do -- Have integrity They have a great ability to focus.  They don't get distracted. They have patience Principles: Create multiple streams of income -- However, don't try to create them all at once.  Patience. 1 or 2 at a time. A steady progression.  Add 1 or 2 per year. Dorie has 8 income streams. "If you're relying on one paycheck, from one employer,  you may be courting disaster." Dorie was laid off on September 10, 2001 -- She received a 4 day severance package... A highly stressful time. "Never be reliant on just one employer" "Side hustles make you a better employee, it liberates you." -- "You can speak truth to power" Dorie's 8 Streams of Revenue: Consulting Executive Coaching Writing Books Teaching at Duke Keynote Speeches Online Courses Affiliate Marketing Mastermind Groups Dorie's online course "Become A Recognized Expert" Create the content Social Proof -- Credibility Strong network -- To be recognize, need to be an expert and have others share the message We discussed the goals Dorie set from her first time on the show (2 years ago): Double email list Have a best selling book Get a girlfriend The importance of joint ventures Why Dorie wants to become an Italian citizen "The thing that gives you courage is the market rate" -- "No one is a competitor" "When someone asks you your fee, find the number that makes you scared and then add 10%" Doing TEDx Switzerland How to build online courses: Surveyed audience -- 1,200 responses Pilot course at discounted rate ($500) Final course ($2,000) -- Premium content, premium price Total cost -- $1,200 (had 150 students paid in full) Video module type courses are lower cost and not as much engagement The $2,000 course has regular follow up and conversations with Dorie in addition to the video work.  Interaction with others in a Facebook group chat as well. -- It has 40+ hours of content created for it... And webinars Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. Recognized as a "branding expert" by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Entrepreneurial You (Harvard Business Review Press,), Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine and one of the Top 10 Business Books of the Year by Forbes. It was also a Washington Post bestseller. Clark, whom the New York Times described as an "expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives," consults and speaks for a diverse range of clients, including Google, the World Bank, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Yale University.  At age 14, Clark entered Mary Baldwin College's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted. At 18, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College, and two years later received a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.

The truth is, if we're going to be successful in business, we have to understand that no one is our competitor. No one is our competitor. Almost always what your real competitor is, is just people doing nothing or, you know, people delaying action or not hiring anyone or they decide to do it in-house. It's so rare that you'd be competing against anyone, and we can't look at them that way. Instead, if you can create a collaborative community around you of people who are doing similar things, that is going to be an invaluable source so that you can be able to kind of price. yourself in the right ballpark and know what is a rational thing to be asking, that can empower you to do a lot. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday, and we're going to try something new. I know most of you are on your phones.

It's much easier to text than it is to go to a website. So you can text learners to 4-4-222. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world discuss the latest trends and topics in the space of leading and serving others. Text learners to 4-4-2-2. Now on tonight's featured leaders with the great Dory Clark. She's back for round two. She was initially on episode number five more than two and a half years ago. It's great to have her back.

She's a best-selling author written multiple books. Her latest one is titled Entrepreneurial. you, monetize your expertise, create multiple income streams, and thrive. I love the book. I love talking with her. She speaks all over the world, teaches at Duke, writes for Harvard Business for You. She's all over the place and does an incredible job. I know you'll like her. A few of the topics we got into. How to create multiple streams of income and why it's so important for you to do so. Then how to become known as a recognized expert. This doesn't mean just for entrepreneurs. This is for people who have regular nine to five jobs as well. And then online courses,

how to do it, why to do it. And the large sums of money Dory has made by creating and launching online courses. You'll love the depth and breadth of Dory's message. I know I did. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Dory, Clark. All right, Dory. It's so cool to have you back here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Ryan, it's so glad to be back. I didn't, I didn't even realize that I was like, your guinea pig the first time around with episode number five, and now you are like this, this seasoned podcast veteran. So congratulations. It's crazy. So it was April 21st, 2015, episode five. And there's some cool things you shared that I'll bring up at some point here in this conversation, specifically some of your goals, which I don't know if you even

remember saying to me, but I wrote him down to see how you did now. I think there were six-month goals. I don't even know. What did I want to be when I grew up? I have no idea. We'll get to it a little later. I want to I I you, you and your team sent me your, your newest book, Entrepreneurial You and I told you this before we recorded, but it really spoke to me and I, and I'm a grateful that you did.

So I think it, it's already helped me and I know it could help so many others. So for the people listening, I have not read it yet. I really encourage them. So we'll dive into parts of the book. But I was listening to our first talk earlier today, actually. And I noticed I didn't ask you a question.

I like to ask a lot of people. And I'm very curious to get your thoughts on this because I spoke to you so long ago, my questions have kind of evolved and I hope to have gotten better. But really, it's around Dory. You have spent a good portion of your life around other high performers, people who have sustained excellence, really impressive leaders. I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the common themes or characteristics you found in those people? The characteristics that I would find in high performers, I mean, I think that in a lot of

ways, it's nothing really magical, but it's just people at a very basic level who say, who do what they say they're going to do. And I know a lot of people, I mean, I think we probably all can think of folks like this who have great ideas. They are very smart. They have a lot to offer. But they get distracted so easily. And like every time you see them, like every three months or whatever, they've got this new thing. And it's cool. Like each new thing is very cool. But you're, kind of like, well, wait a minute. I wanted to see that last cool thing. And the book never gets written or the, you know, the play never gets produced or whatever it is. And so if you're, if you're just ideating all the time and you're not really putting anything out into the world,

that's not building your brand. That's not building your following. That's not really making much of a contribution because it's just hanging out there in your desk. And so I think having the patience to just do the thing before you move on to the other thing is really what enables success. So it felt like to me you're talking about integrity, doing what you say you're going to do, and then focus, right? Focusing on the specific task at hand that you have deemed to be most important to you, to your business, to potentially your brand.

I know you talk a lot about that. So for you, what are the few things that you focus on to open up these multiple streams of revenue that we'll talk about here that you wrote about in your book? And then I'm curious to learn more about. Well, one of the principles that I have in terms of developing multiple streams of income, which I talk about in entrepreneurial value, is that you definitely shouldn't try to open up too many new ones all at once. Like, I would never advise somebody like, oh, next year, make 10 revenues. streams. It's kind of crazy. What we need to be doing is understanding that it's a steady progression. And so if you pick one or two per year, I think that is a reasonable pace. And the good news is that over the course of three or five years, by that point, you've got a lot of revenue streams operating.

I mean, time's going to pass anyway. You might as well have it pass with six or seven new income streams. I now have worked my way up to eight income streams. But that's something. that I consciously strove to do over the last, let's say, five years. So I think the key would be to at first just pick, just pick like one and really go deep on that. And then once you feel comfortable and once you feel like the wheels are turning, it's not like a, you know, a constant learning process. But you kind of got it under control. That's when you can go and expand into a new area. So there's probably a lot of people listening to where you that have one stream of income right now.

And they're thinking, eight, what is she talking about? She's crazy. They haven't read your book yet. And they're, they're like, Dorie's crazy. What's she talking about? How could I have eight? I have one set employer and it's a safe, guaranteed salary. And I took this note from your book exactly that you said if you're relying on one paycheck from one employer, you may be courting disaster.

And I love for you to dive in because I think the natural question is what, what are those eight? And then why to the person that is having that has one. source of income, one employer, why they may be courting disaster. So kind of a two-part question and thoughts there. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that it is a cultural myth. I mean, a long-lasting and persistent one, but it is a cultural myth that having a steady job is a safe choice. I think if we have learned nothing else in the new economy, the sort of post-millennial economy, I don't mean millennial like the cohort, I mean post-millennial economy, there's just no such thing as safe. Part of the reason why I'm so obsessive about this is that very early on this got hammered into

me in a really dramatic way. I talk in Entrepreneurial U about the sort of starting point for me, which is that my first job after graduating from my graduate program was being a political reporter. And I had been doing that for about a year. and I got just summarily laid off. September 10th, 2001, right? September 10th, 2001. Yeah, you know, this was before newspaper layoffs had become wide and spread.

I mean, this was shocking. This was, you know, this, nowadays, if you're a reporter, it's like you're surprised you're not laid off any day you go to work. But, you know, we go 15-ish years ago. It was crazy to be laid off. And I was really, really not expecting it. And then, you know, the next day this national tragedy happens and no one is hiring. And I just thought, oh, no.

You know, and it's not even like in many cases they give you this posh package. Sometimes you hear about people, oh, well, they gave me a year's severance. I mean, God bless you. They gave me four days severance. I had less than a week to find new income for myself in the midst of this national disaster. And so it was highly stressful, and it really made me realize the importance of hedging your bets, diversifying, never being reliant on some employer that could just turn on a dime. And so even if you have a day job that you love, that you feel is secure, that you want to stay in,

great, do all of that, but don't make yourself vulnerable. Don't put yourself in a position where if something changes for whatever reason, your company gets bought, or there's an earthquake or whatever, whatever, that you are at the victim of other people. If you create just one side income stream, maybe it's coaching your buddies on the side with some, you know, I don't know, you're a great Xbox player and you coach people on that. Or you know how to do something well and you're the biggest fan person for, you know, comic books or a TV show or whatever, and you start an online community and you offer some paid offering with fan fiction. I mean, whatever it is, if you're creating something that's a side bet, A, you can make a

little bit of extra money. Maybe in some cases, if you do it well, a lot of extra money, but you know, you can make a little extra money. You can create something that hedges your risk just a little bit, and you're learning new skills that you can then apply in your day job. And one of the stories that I tell an entrepreneurial you that really hammers at home for me is a guy, you know, folks who are into podcasts may know of him. His name is Pat Flynn. He has a podcast called Smart Passive Income. And he got his start because he worked in architecture and he got laid off in the midst of the 2008 recession. And the only thing that made it okay for him was it literally the month before he had started selling an e-book. There was a compilation of his blog posts about how to pass this green

building exam. And it had become so successful, this e-book, because over time, he had built up a blog following around writing about how to pass this test, that the first month, he was actually able to make double what he made at the architecture firm from selling the e-book. And he realized, oh, my gosh, this could be something. And so he transitioned into it and never looked back. But if he hadn't had that, getting laid off could have been devastating for him. Yeah, it also gives you a little bit of leverage. And I mean that in the way of saying a lot of emails, you probably get a ton of these too, I would imagine, from people that I receive now after a few years. They're from people who aren't, they don't hate their job, but they're not that happy.

And it's usually because of people, maybe they work with or work for. and what a side hustle or a podcast, a blog, writing, whatever, you mentioned some of those options. What it does is it could potentially give you options, potentially. And I think that could make your days much better than instead of saying, well, I just got to suck it up for the next 20 years because this is the way it is. And I have a family and I have bills and I have a mortgage and cars. right and so in a way it could create so much more happiness and leverage for you by doing it and you're probably going to do it with something that you love more than anything right outside of people right dory i think that's what the part of it that i find to be most rewarding for me

personally in doing this and having doing it now for three years is that it it gives me this thing i look for i've been looking forward this conversation with you for a long time like the second one with you and it gives me a lot of joy the prep process the actual conversation the learning, all of that. And I feel like it creates leverage for me and happiness for me. I think so many others could do the same. I think that's absolutely true. And I'm even going to take it one step further, Ryan, which is that I will argue it makes you a better employee. It's not just that it gives you options, which it does. It's also when you stop feeling like, oh my gosh, I really have to cling to this because this is my only thing. It liberates you. And it makes you feel freer to speak your mind

and speak up and be honest and not take, you know, BS from other people. And all of a sudden, whoa, wait a minute, you're not a yes man anymore. You're the person who's able to speak truth power. And everybody say, wait a minute, you know, where did this come from? You know, this person is actually making themselves really valuable because there are a hundred yes men in organizations. If you can be the person who is the truth teller, smart leaders, really smart leaders, see that, they see that power, they see that potential, and they say that is another leader. I recognize that, and it enables you to rise faster. Yeah, exactly right. That's a great point. So you mentioned the eight streams of revenue. What are the eight streams? And was there a sequential order that you

thought about ahead of time, or they just kind of naturally came up? There, so I'll list the eight first and then kind of go into the progression of them. So the first one, this was basically all I did for the first few years of my business, was consulting work. I had a business, I had and have, a business doing marketing strategy consulting. So number two is executive coaching. I also write book. Yeah, one-on-one executive coaching.

I write books, of course, like entrepreneurial you. And so I get some money for that. I do some business school teaching primarily for the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. So that's a piece of it. I do paid speaking, keynote speaking. I have an online course that I run and I do affiliate promotions. And then I also have started doing live events and kind of mastermind events. So that is the eight.

Wow. And so consulting, executive coaching books, business school, teaching at Duke, keynote speeches, which I know your rate is probably dramatically increased in over the last couple of years because of the success and the value you bring to stage and the people in the audience. The affiliate marketing is interesting. I know Pat Flynn, he kills it there. And then the mastermind groups, you said? Yeah, like live events.

And at this point, I don't have ongoing mastermind groups, but I have like mastermind retreats. Yeah. Are there parts of those that are your favorites or they just all kind of came together based on one led to the other? You know, if I, like pound for pound, probably the speaking is my favorite just because you're reaching so many people all at once. but I really do like all of them.

And what is best for me about them, and this is what I would encourage people to think about, is if you are having eight different income streams that are just in wildly different fields, like, you know, you're a lawyer and you're an appliance reviewer and you're a dog breeder, you know, it's like that those are such drastically different tasks and such drastically different audiences that one is not going to help the other. but if you can put together a constellation of activities that become a flywheel, that they're all helping each other, that becomes really powerful. So for instance, you can absolutely see a scenario, and this happens a lot, where let's say I book a speech. And so I'm getting paid for the speech.

As part of the speech, sometimes the conference organizers will buy books for the people in attendance. Let's say someone at the speech gets my book, reads it. They say, oh, this is amazing. I need this. So then they might hire me for executive coaching. So we start working together. Oh, I announce there's a workshop. They say, this is great. I want to learn more about this. So they pay to go to the workshop.

And then, you know, the process just accelerates because you're serving the same people just in different ways. So that's what we really need to be looking for. Wow. So it sounds like you've got a ton going on, Dory. Yeah. You know, it is a ton of things. But if the great thing about all roads kind of leading to one destination,

nation is that if you do one thing, it helps all of it. So, for instance, in writing my newest book and writing entrepreneurial U, I knew that anything that I did to promote the book, obviously that helps promote the book, but it also helps promote everything else I do it. That is going to generate speaking engagements. That's going to generate coaching inquiries. So for the person who's listening who, we talked a little bit about this, about how it will make them a better employee if they do create some sort of side hustle.

They create additional streams of revenue. Big, big believer in this. And I've since since the last time we talked and we brought up this up a little bit then, but much more here, have opened up other doors when it comes to paid speaking, a little bit of consulting one-on-one stuff, which is really fun. I mean, it doesn't feel like, certainly doesn't feel like a job. I mean, it's work. It's work because you do need to work out. You got to prep. You got to be ready to go.

But it doesn't feel like a job, which is really neat to me. So when it comes to how you decide what to focus on or write about or maybe create an online course, I know you've written about and talked about the fact that you like to test your audience to ask them what they need. Is that the primary manner in which you decide what project or what direction to go in next? Or you follow some things that you feel like I'm a trusted source. I'm an expert. Or maybe it's a combination of both. I'm curious.

It is a little bit of a combination of both, right? certainly I am a big fan of surveying your audience because, you know, they know far better what they're interested in than you can just like blindly guess. So doing some simple surveys is very useful. And so in entrepreneurial you, I interview Ryan Levack, who has written a book about that called Ask and has some really great strategies of it, how you can do that effectively. So definitely that's one piece of it. Another piece is, of course, just what you're most interested in. You know, where would you like to be spending your time and effort? And if you're drawn to certain areas, I mean, don't do it if no one's interested. But if you have at least some people that are interested in and you feel a real passionate around it, then, you know, great. Do do that. The other thing, too, is that it is useful to ask yourself, of course, you know, this is sort of the famous, you know, Venn diagram of the, you know, what do people want and what will they pay for and what are you good at? But you do you do. You do. You do. You do. want to think about the market and what opportunities are out there. So for instance, when my first

book, Reinventing You came out, it would have been very, very easy for me if I had wanted to to start to do a coaching practice around helping people reinvent themselves. I was not actually that interested in doing it, though, because what I really wanted to avoid, I mean, some people reinvent themselves, of course, coming from like a high level place and they want to reinvent themselves in an exciting new way. That's cool. But what I really didn't want was like a lot of unemployed people being like, fix my life. You know, that seemed, that seemed really like not the best circumstance to be in where you've got people who are very vulnerable and are expecting like a result tomorrow. Like, find me a job. And it's like, I can't find you a job. Like people have to find

themselves jobs. That's how it goes. And I just did not want to set myself up for that. So it wasn't until I shifted into the mode of my second book, Stand Out, which is about how to become a thought leader in your field, that I actually at that point started really embracing executive coaching because I realized there was a role for me to do it. There was a way that I could do executive coaching, but I needed to choose the audience carefully. And so if I was working with an audience of already successful people that wanted to become more successful, that wanted to go from being very good at what they do to also being really well known for that thing, that's, that's, that's, that's, great. And so that's where I really started to focus my executive coaching around is like, how do we turn people into thought leaders? Gotcha. And you said you have to first, when you're building your brand, your personal brand, you have to first become a trusted source. What are some of the ways, let's say it's a, this is a regular Joe or Jane listening who hasn't published a thing online, hasn't written, podcasted, hasn't done anything. They're good at their job. They like it. They're not unhappy. But they listen and they're kind of, they're kind of, they're kind of, they're kind of, they're kind of, they're kind of, they're of inspired. Maybe they read your book or they, this could be a wake-up call to say, I need to get my act together because I have one stream of income and I need to have multiple. What are some of the first ways or piece of advice you'd give to that person to become a trusted

source and building their brand and getting it out there so that people could be known as whether you want to say a thought leader or just better well known? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So let me start with the why first and then go into the half. Perfect. So I developed a methodology as part of my work around writing standout and then developing my online course recognized expert, which is, you know, helping people learn to become recognized experts. That fundamentally, in order to really become known as a leading, a leading figure in your field, there's three pieces you need to have. Content creation, social proof, and a strong network. And the reason that these things fit together organically and are so essential, content creation. which we're talking about here, you have to find a way. Whatever it is, it could be podcasts,

it could be videos, it could be speaking, it could be blogs, but, you know, we're channel agnostic here, but you have to find some way to share your ideas publicly. And this is mandatory. People kind of resist sometimes, but you have to do it. And the reason it's very, very basic, if you do not share your ideas, no one will know what your ideas are and no one will know if your ideas are any good. you have to get them out there as a precondition for building any kind of following. So that's number one. Social proof is the second. That's essentially your credibility, right?

Like, why should people listen to you? Why should they take you seriously? So do you have credentials that they would respect? It could be, there's a lot of ways to get them, too. It could be, are you blogging for publications people have heard of? Have you worked at an employer or have you had consulting clients that are kind of name brand companies that people have heard of. Those are useful. Are you a leader in a professional association? Any of these things can serve as credibility and give people a reason to want to listen to you. And then your network, of course,

is useful because, A, those people help sharpen your thinking. And B, they also serve as early ambassadors to help you spread the word about what you're doing. So content creation is really essential. I would consider it just kind of mandatory table stakes as you are trying to put yourself out there because you have to share those ideas. Now, in terms of how you go about doing it, there is a wide range of options. As we said, it doesn't really matter what vehicle. If you don't feel like you're a great writer, that's okay.

Audio and video are equally possible ways. Gary Vaynerchuk made his name in video, specifically because he was not a good writer. He thought about blogging. He rejected it because he said, you know what? I'm kind of a bad writer, not my thing, but I'm great at talking. So we can make those choices. and the other thing that I would say, something that holds a lot of people back early on is they say, well, I don't know if I'm an expert or I don't know what to talk about.

If that is the case, no problem. Early on, all you really need to do is identify what kind of general field or realm you want to be talking about and then just interview other people that you respect in that field. And that gives you a way to build connections, get known because you're putting yourself out there and you're high. highlighting somebody else who has great ideas. So it's kind of a win-win. I can speak from experience of how helpful that is over the last three years of you kind of scratch your own itch a little bit as far as what topic am I most interested in, what people are out there that are the known thought leaders, the people who are on the front line, so to speak, of learning, growing, speaking, writing, whatever may be, more well-known, the Dory Clarks and Dan Pink's and Kat Coles and Adam Grant's of the, world, interview them, learn from them. And then you notice, and my friends tell me this, that that language and the information and the wisdom that you pick up after all of those interviews, it can't help but just seep into your day-to-day conversations. And before you know it,

you sound like a different person 12 months from now, right? Because you're-seeps in, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, it really works. And it's an incredible verse as opposed to in your free time watching Netflix or something on TV. You know what I'm saying? So I think that's a big one. So I love the thought of how to, or why and how to become a trusted source, because anybody can do this if they're willing to put in the time and effort. I want to, I want to take a brief step back before we get back into your book story because we teased, I teased a little earlier about your goals. I think because I just want to, maybe it'll surprise you.

Maybe it won't. I mean, they're not, they're not crazy. But you said three specific goals. This was two and a half years ago. It released the episode number five on. April 21st, 2015. You set three six-month goals. You want me to tell you what they were?

Yeah, hit me, hit me. Okay. Number one, make your book stand out a bestseller. Ha-ha. Okay. All right. Number two was to double the size of your email list. This is all within six months.

Yep. And number three, which is a little bit different, was to get a girlfriend, a personal goal that you threw in with there. So how did you do on those three goals from April, 21st, of 2015. Nice. Well, I think I did I did pretty well. I give myself an A for effort, for sure. So the email list, I have

definitely well over doubled. Yeah, you probably quadruple that by now. Yeah. Throughout 2015, I started 2015 with about 9,500 people on my email list. By the end of the year, I'd gotten it up to 25,000. Wow. So that was a great progression. I mean, really, it was just

aggressive list building. It's about 40,000 now. It actually got up to 47,000, and then I just did a culling, you know, so scrubbed the list. So it went down for a little bit, but it's about, it's about 40,000 right now and climbing back up with the launch of the new book. So that has done really well. Stand out, actually, it didn't become a New York Times bestseller, which is the, you know, the most prestigious lauding in the industry. But it did. become a Wall Street Journal, or sorry, no, I apologize. No, it was a Washington Post bestseller. Okay. And additionally, it got a couple of laurels that I'm proud of. It was named the number one leadership

book of 2015 by Inc. Magazine. And it was named one of the top 10 leadership books of the year by Forbes. So those were pretty cool. Wow. Okay. So I would imagine that dramatically raised your stakes as a thought leader. Yeah, those were those were great you know, it was a great feeling to have it recognized in that way. And then for a girlfriend, I did actually manage to get a girlfriend and then, and then lose a girlfriend. And so, you know, it's been a little up and down with that. But hopefully we'll find a situation that sticks before too long. I love it.

I love it. No, I think it's always important that we look back at our goal. So when I was listening, I thought, there's no way I can I can have this conversation. with you and not bring up goals because we talk a lot about goal setting and the importance of how you that they're measurable goals you can say yes I accomplished it or no I didn't and in the fact that they're set time frames now do you have updated new goals or is this a different type of goal setting process now that some time is past that are part of your life that you're looking to accomplish I still I still actually holds to the principle of having just a just a very few six month

goals and reviewing them every six months. I think that that's really important. And in fact, I created an online course, a sort of short online course called Be More Productive, that centers around this goal setting methodology. And so basically for the fall, for 2017, you know, which is we're speaking here in 2017, I had very all-encompassing goals. And so instead of having two, I actually chose to have just one for each, two business goals. I chose to have one for each six month period because I knew it was really the only thing I could focus on in a big way. So for the first half of the year, my goal was to have a successful joint venture launch for my recognized expert course. And so this is actually something I have a whole chapter in

Entrepreneurial U about affiliate partnerships and joint ventures. But it was my first time doing a so-called JV launch. And so I wanted to manage that process well. So I did that in March. And then, you know, there was so leading up to it, of course, there's lots of prep. And then there's the launch itself. And then once you do it, you need to then run the course and have the cohort. So I figured the course would just be what I was able to do in the first six months. And then the latter six months has been preparing for the launch of Entrepreneurial You. So that is that is the big sort of focus for that. The other thing that I am planning to do, which I have been negligent about because of the launch, I pushed it off just because I, you know, the launch is something that is so

time-limited. You just have to put everything you can into it to make it go well. But before the end of the year, I really want to get serious about this. I have the ability. I qualify for Italian citizenship. And I, but it's, as you can, as you can imagine, God bless Italy, it is a bureaucratic nightmare to actually get it. There are many, many steps with paperwork and correcting old documents, you know, where they sort of, if they muff a certain detail, you've got to get it fixed and all that. So it's just a paperwork process that I have not really had the time or mental bandwidth to subject myself to, but I want to do it.

And so that is something that I'm going to focus on before the end of the year. Be it become an Italian citizen? Correct. Why? Because America scares me right now, Ryan. Scary place. Would you want to go and actually live there full time? I'm happy for now to live in America and I love the country.

But let me tell you, this goes back to mitigating risk and it goes back to optionality. It's like Peter Thiel and his little hacienda in New Zealand. I think it is not a bad idea if Kim Jong-il gets persnickety. to just, you know, have a little Tuscan countryside retreat if you can. So since I qualify, I figure I might as well, I might as well try to get citizenship. Some of the beauty around the work that you do is that you can do most things online and the other part of your job or your work is that you probably need to be near an airport. That's it, right? Yeah, yeah.

So you could do it. That's right. I mean, you could do it anywhere. It probably helps being in New York with the network and the people that are there, but you could technically do the bulk of your work anywhere in the world. That is exactly right. Much as I have consciously striven to create multiple income streams in my business, I have also very consciously worked to cultivate a location independent business.

So I absolutely could do the work from anywhere at this point. I love it. One of the first parts you talk about in entrepreneur or you that I think people struggle with, and I think I did probably a little bit more than a year ago, was having courage to monetize the work, whether it's speeches. I remember the first time I got asked to go speak. It was actually to a bunch of college athletes. And I got just an inbound request on my website, learning leader.com. And they said, could you come speak? This is probably about two years ago now, a little bit after we talked, maybe a few months. And the assistant athletic director, she said,

Well, what do you charge? And I had absolutely no idea what to say. Now it's a much different conversation. We usually just pick up the phone and we talk it out as opposed to responding to the email when it comes to something like money. But talk to me about how you can help encourage people to have the courage to monetize where you have a passion or you're an expert or you're a thought leader. Yeah. It is such a scary moment for many people. as they're getting started in the entrepreneurial journey, because we're used to, you know, like if you work at a company,

they're just like, well, we will pay you this much. Here you go. And then you're either like, okay, great, or you're like, no, you know, I'll walk away. But it's not like, you know, you have to on this continual basis be navigating pricing. And so it, you're kind of vacillating between these two terrified poles, which is you don't want anyone to take advantage of you and you don't want to undercharge. But you also don't want to scare them away and lose the opportunity. So how do you find that balance? So I very deliberately called the chapter, the courage to monetize because it is so challenging for many people. I think that probably the most important ingredient here, which I think people don't talk about enough when it comes to pricing and charging. Ironically, is your network because the thing that gives you confidence is understanding what the market rates are. That, you know, that at a very basic level is the thing that can empower you.

Knowledge can empower you. And sometimes people just starting out, they might say, well, why would, you know, why should I make friends with competitors and why would competitors tell you about their rates and, you know, that kind of thing? But I feel like that is a misguided approach because the truth is, if we're going to be successful in business, we have to understand that no one is our competitor. No one is our competitor. almost always what your real competitor is is just people doing nothing or, you know, people

delaying action or not, you know, not hiring anyone or they decide to do it in-house. It's so rare that you'd be competing against anyone and we can't look at them that way. Instead, if you can create a collaborative community around you of people who are doing similar things, that is going to be an invaluable source so that you can be able to kind of price yourself in the right ballpark and know what is a rational thing to be asking. That can empower you to do a lot. The other story that I tell an entrepreneurial you that I really love is from a guy named Michael Bungay Stanier, who is a businessman in Toronto.

And he tells the story about when he was first getting started as an entrepreneur, he had a friend tell him, which is a great line, that when you're asking for money, you should charge fear plus 10%. And I think it's like so perfect because we always would have a tendency to undercharge. So if it scares you just a little bit to ask for it, ask for that and then push even a little bit further. He's coming on on the podcast here in about three weeks. I have. I'm looking forward to talking to him. I love that quote, though. It makes a lot of sense. Was that tough for you at the beginning stages of this entrepreneurial journey? Oh, so hard. Yeah. And I didn't know pretty much anyone who was doing this kind of thing. I did not have a good network. I felt like I was having to make up so much. as I went along. And so I definitely made mistakes. I remember the first time I actually had a conversation

with a potential client and they asked me, so what do you charge? And like, I had been doing so well in the conversation up until then. And then I just had this moment of panic because literally I don't know why. It had never occurred to me that they would ask that question. And I was just like, shocked. I was dumbfounded. And, you know, of course, that's terrible. Like we all need to be prepared for that at a very basic level. We need to learn how to have the conversation. We need to learn how to value ourselves. And so one of my hopes for entrepreneurial OU is that it'll give people better tools and better ammunition to know how to do that. What does it sound like when somebody says, hey, Dory, I want you to come give a speech to, I'm at this branding conference X

in Los Angeles. And so you've got to fly cross country. And we want you to do. You want you to be the closing keynote. There'll be some other keynotes there, but we want you to be the closing keynote. We love your books. We've watched your videos online. Your courses are helpful that we know some people that are coming to our event that they've said that they really like them.

What do you charge? What do you say? Yeah. So for, so through the end of 2017, my rate is $15,000 plus travel. And usually I do it as a stipend, like maybe $1,500 or so.

you know, obviously less if it's someplace really close. But I'll do the travel stipend starting in 2018 and I've notified clients of this. The speaking rate goes up to 20K. Nice. Yeah, I was doing that in a way, role play to hear exactly what it sounds like for somebody maybe who hasn't gone through it or is going through it. Are you that direct or do you have more of a kind of rapport building before or you just say, look, this is it.

Like I know my value. I understand it. How does that work? Yeah. I, you know, some people are of the school that they're like, you know, like you were mentioning, right? Like, like call them up, have a conversation. Yeah. I kind of feel like this is just my own bias and perhaps I lose business because of it, but like I'm okay with it.

I just, I don't want to waste my time. And I don't want to waste other people's time. Interesting. Like if they, if it turns out that they have like a thousand dollars, like, I don't even want to have a phone call. Yeah. That's just, you know, it's just never going to happen. And so what I will do, I mean, you know, so I'll, if they send like a vague request, like, hey, we're interested in a speaking engagement, blah, blah, blah. So the first thing, of course, is I'll write back to ask what the date is to just make sure I'm available.

I want to know more about the event, you know, what is the deal, where is it, et cetera. So I have the parameters. And then you can often make a guess, right? Because if they're like, we'd like you to speak to a lunch and learn to our intern. for 10 minutes. You know, okay, they're not going to pay you $20,000. And so you can probably guess. But, you know, sometimes you're just not sure, right?

But either way, I will just write, I'll write back. Like, I actually do it all on email. Interesting. And I'll say, look, you know, I am free on that day. Your event sounds great. Here's my rate. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please let me know. And I'd love to set up a call.

And that way, I'm only having a conversation if they're actually seriously interested in me and I'm seriously interested in them. So Phil Jones gave me advice. He was on this podcast. I think you know Phil, right? Yeah, exactly what to say. He's really good. He's got a great accent too.

It helps. But he's the one who said, if you get a request that seems legitimate, try to call them that day. I said, wow. Okay. So I've instituted that. I see your side of it too. And this is why I love having different people on because I get different ideas of

ways to handle things. And this might be a little bit nichey for us. but I think there's others listening who probably have this happen to them. So I'm interested. How many speaking gigs do you do a year? You know, I'm not sure how many I've done for 2017. I haven't actually tallied that up yet. Yeah.

But I have tallied it for previous years. In 2014, I did 59. No, wait, sorry. 2013, I did 59. 2014, I did 61. 2015, I did 74. And in 2016, I cut it way down because I was like, oh, my God, 2015 was insane.

So I think I did 37 in 2016. So, yeah, this year I'm not yet sure of the numbers, but it's on the lower side, probably closer to what I did in 2016, just because I realized that doing 74 talks in a year. That's a ton. Well, I notice from following on social media, though, that you're on the road a lot. I mean,

you're traveling and going to places a lot, right? Is travel a big part of, is that something you obviously, I would hope, enjoy as part of your life, is getting out, seeing other countries, other places in America?

Is that a big part of why you do this? I do. I do like travel a lot. I mean, I obviously at a certain point, you know, when you're like on week three on the road or something,

you can be a little bit like, oh, but as a general premise, yes, I do, I do enjoy it. And you get to go to some cool places. I mean, this year, I've been, you know, four speaking engagements to Amsterdam, to Rome, to Switzerland.

You know, I'm going to Copenhagen next month. So it gets you to some cool places. What type of events are those overseas? It varies. In Switzerland, I did a TEDx talk. In Copenhagen, I'm speaking to a marketing society in Amsterdam and Rome. Those are both for pharmaceutical companies. Do most of them come because of your books?

Because of my books or because they've seen the published in Harvard Business Review usually. Interesting. Okay. So I didn't mean to go down on this, but I'm really interested. I'm fascinated by it because I just love the fact that you've built this for yourself. You get laid off from a job that you were probably really good at, I'm guessing, based on reading your work and the health thought for you about it. And you've then gone on to built this. But one of the things you also wrote about in the book,

that I took as a note is that the people you've studied and interviewed as well as yourself, none of them have done this through some get rich quick scheme. All of them it has taken years and years of dedicated work, improvement, mistakes, getting better, bouncing back. And I think that's what inspires me. I think it can inspire many people listening is the fact that Dory Clark didn't become this Dory Clark overnight. It took years and years and years and probably a lot of free speaking gigs to now charge $15,000, $20,000, right? I mean, I think that's an important part to talk about.

Yeah, I've spoken for years. Certainly, I started my business in 2006 and I didn't get paid for a talk. You know, when I say paid, I mean really paid. Like, I might have made like a couple hundred bucks as an honorarium or something, but I didn't get significantly paid for a talk until 2013, when my first book came out. Wow. So seven seven years of grinding and speaking for free to become this. So it's not like, I think that's just important for people to think about it because like Seth Godin would say, you know, you're going to hit a dip. If you go on this path, you'll hit some sort of dip. And it's how are you prepared for that dip and how are you going to respond when it happens? Absolutely. And I just love the fact that you've done that. One other one other topic I wanted to

cover real quick, online course creation, launch, building, all of it. This is something I'm currently working on. And so personal advice, but I think it could help a lot of people too when it comes to understanding what to make them about, how to create them, even if tactically where and what it's all about as well as then to build up to the launch and how yours have been. You've made hundreds of thousands of dollars through online courses and did have in quick time periods, but there's a lot of build up to it. So I'd love to learn your kind of high level process and even some of the tactical things you do to have to build and launch a successful online course. Sure. I'll just give a brief overview, I guess. And then if you have specific questions, Ryan, feel free to let me know. But broadly speaking, so it's something I'd been interested in for a while. I decided in December of 2015 to survey my audience to see what in, what in fact they were interested in. And so I put that out there, got a bunch of responses back, like 1,200 responses. And so spent time going through them, coding them, et cetera. So I discovered, you know, perhaps not surprised.

But it's always good to validate that people were very interested in the topic of my book Stand Out, which is how do you become a recognized expert in your field? So I decided to try to do something around that. So in April of 2016, I made an announcement that I was doing a pilot of an online course. And I think this is an important step because it enables you to kind of test demand before you go all in on something. So I did the pilot. It was limited to a certain number of people.

It was limited to 40 people, and it was for $500. So that was much less than the final product, which is a $2,000 course. And the tradeoff is, you know, hey guys, we're doing this thing. It's a pilot. So we're kind of going to be creating it together. It's much less extensive than the full course was going to be. And people who were part of it, you know, they were expected as kind of part, they're part of the bargain, to provide a lot of feedback and surveys about what parts they like.

and didn't like what they wanted to see more of, et cetera. So I did this pilot. I ran it through the summer of 2016. I spent a lot of time preparing to create the full course, you know, once it had been validated that people did like it. And so then in September 2016, I launched the course, ran that. It's about a two-month-long course. And then in March of 2017, did another launch, this one with joint venture partners. So at this point, about 150 people have been through, that course. And I also, essentially, it's kind of an experiment, you know, playing around, have launched a couple of other shorter online courses that I did. One is called Be More Productive, and it's like a two-hour masterclass. Another is called the Rapid Content Creation Masterclass,

which is a three-hour immersion on how to create typically blog content very quickly, which is sort of a specialty of mine. And yeah, it's been an amazing experience. I have, I have indeed made well over $200,000, I think probably $220 or something from these courses combined over the past 18 months. So it's been really fantastic. What was the cost for you, not counting your time, but the cost like literally out of pocket to create it? Oh, like, you know, not a couple hundred, but like if you include the hosting platform. Think I think, is that what it's called? I use Think If it, which is, I think, about $900,000 per year, essentially for the hosting platform.

So you count that maybe $1,200. I mean, like, pretty much nothing. I actually, for people who are interested, because I'm such an evangelist about this, you do not need, like, expensive equipment for this. What I actually did because I got asked about it so much is I created a, like a resource one sheet with a list of all of the equipment that I use to film all the stuff for my course. Like everything I did to create it. I mean, you know, I used my smartphone, which is very easy to do. It's a, you know, high-deaf camera. And then, you know, I got like a tripod and a light and like, you know, just minor stuff, right?

It costs about 200 bucks. But it makes it look great. So if anyone's interested in the list of the exact stuff that I use, they can get it for free at doryclerc.com slash video tools. Dot com. I'm going to get it. Video tools. Got you. I'm writing down.

Okay. Wow. So then what is. What is the course makeup? Is it something that you create one time and then it just becomes passive after that or is it ongoing? I'm curious. I haven't taken it. I'm going to. But I'm just curious as to what it, you filmed a bunch of videos and you wrote content and you have a progression. Is that what it's like? Or it's there's some live things and there's some fallout. What is it like? Yeah. So there's kind of two different models, right? So for the lower priced courses, be more productive, sells for $100.00. Rapid content creation is for $200. Those are just video modules. And so it's. It's like, here you go, guys, you've got it. You know, there's handouts and stuff too. But it's kind of like a, you know, discrete package that you purchase once.

For the flagship course, the recognized expert course, which is $2,000, there is, A, a lot of content. There's more than 40 hours of recorded content for people, so it's a very substantive thing. But there is also a Facebook community, a very active Facebook community that people are part of. So there's kind of an ongoing dialogue and discussion. And then during the periods in the past where I've had launches, we do a regular series of webinars. Typically every other week we'll do a webinar as we go through the course. I'm actually going to be planning. I'm planning this very soon before the end of 2017, but I'm going to be shifting more over from a launch model to an evergreen model.

And so what I'm planning to do is, you know, people get a lifetime membership in the course. It's not like, you know, it's like you do it once and then it goes away. It's a lifetime membership. I really think of it more as like being a part of the recognizing. expert community. And so what I am planning to do is to have monthly webinars that current students and then also that alumni can participate in any time with Q&A and sort of a special spotlight focus on certain areas. So there is a live component with webinars. There is the Facebook community where lots of people are active, including me, weighing in and answering questions. And then

there's the material that people can consume on their own time and their own calendar. Wow, I love it, Dory. This is really helpful for me, hopefully for others too that are thinking about this, or maybe it's piqued their interest to one, want to be a part of one of your courses, and then maybe do one of their own as well. Sweet, yeah. I love it. One more thing I want to talk about before we go. In addition to entrepreneurial review, your book, there's a complimentary workbook. Can you talk me more about that?

Yeah, absolutely. For folks who are interested in figuring out how to apply these concepts about how to develop new income streams into their own business, maybe get a little bit more passive income. I created a resource guide. It is called the 88 question entrepreneurial use self-assessment. So it's a series of questions that really walks you step by step through how to apply the techniques to your own life and your own business. And anyone who's interested can get it for free at doryclar.com. It's d-O-R-I-E-C-L-A-R-K dot com slash entrepreneur. Perfect. All right. Dory, this is so great. Let's make it less than two years before we record again together.

I think it would be fun. I'd love to have you back on. I was pumped when your team sent me this book. And I was like, it's been too long because I talked to Dory. And I'd love to hopefully meet up at some point in person, maybe in Italy. I don't know. We'll see. That's right.

I like what you think. Yeah. But it's, hey, real quick, I know you teach a Duke. Are you still teaching at Duke or is it going to go in spurts? Yeah, it goes in spurts because I teach for the executive ed program. So it's a couple times a year I go down there for a little. Oh, okay. I have one coming up next month, actually.

Okay. So it's slightly different, but I just had a call actually today this morning with somebody at the University of Dayton for asking if I would be willing to teach or open to teaching at their, teach their MBA students some management and leadership stuff. So I was like, I hadn't really thought about doing that, but maybe it'd be something. Again, you never know what doors are going to open because of putting good content out in the world of really just collecting it. the collector and the interviewer and the experimenter. And so it was like I never would have imagined teaching an MBA class.

So I don't know. I might do it, but I know that you, I guess it's a little bit differently though teaching the executive ed class. But I thought, oh, that would be maybe I could learn something from the students. It's a fun experience. I recommend it. I mean, you know, even if you just try it once just to see if you like it, it's kind of a cool thing to have done.

So I think maybe a worthwhile adventure. Yeah. I love it. Well, Dory, thanks again. and let's definitely obviously continue the dialogue as we both continue to progress and let's talk a little bit more frequent moving forward.

Cool. I love it. Thanks, Ryan. All right. Awesome. Thanks, Tori. Thanks. Okay. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over,

but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to you. to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.