Our guest today: Dorie Clark 

Meet our unsung heroine, self-made artist, Dorie Clark (@dorieclark).

Dorie Clark is a lovely human being, who also happens to be a successful marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. I interviewed Dorie in 2015 and this is our second recording on Feisworld. 

She has now authored three best selling books – Reinventing You, Stand Out, and most recently in October 2017, she released Entrepreneurial You. 

This conversation and Dorie’s book – Entrepreneurial You, are very special additions to Feisworld. Not only was I interviewed by Dorie, she wrote about Feisworld and our business model in the book with key takeaways and exercises.

Since the release the book just months ago, many new opportunities opened up for me and for Feisworld Podcast. Dorie has always been supportive and genuine for my endeavors in the past two years. She is certainly in my tribe of mentors (stealing Tim Ferriss’ book title for a second here). 

This episode focuses on Dorie’s new book – both the content and creation process. How did she seek out these mentors she wanted to interview? How did she structure content? Why did she pick someone like me? I’m clearly still trying to find my voice, defining my brand. Feisworld is work in progress. 

To learn more about Dorie Clark, her books, upcoming events and training sessions, please visit: https://dorieclark.com/

Build the Career You Want.

Download your free 88 question Entrepreneurial You self-assessment.

Once you’ve heard this episode, I highly recommend you check out others podcasts where Dorie has been interviewed. One of my personal favorites is the one with Jordan Harbinger from the Art of Charm. 

Show Notes

• [06:00] How do you connect with people around you, entrepreneurs, etc? How do you stay in touch?
• [07:00] How do you organize your events, like the book launch event in Boston and New York?
• [10:00] How did you manage to structure of Entrepreneurial You, and how does the trilogy of books comes together?
• [14:00] When did you start with online course and how was your first experience?
• [17:00] Something I learned from you is that it’s never too late to start. What’s your take on this?
• [19:00] What are your 7-8 income streams, could you break them down?
• [22:00] How did you select the people in your book that you wanted to interview?
• [25:00] Small successes also take you into big journeys. What has been your experience with this?
• [30:00] How do you help people to steer away from fear and side-hassles, for example, ‘my boss won’t like what I’m doing as a side project?
• [35:00] Throughout your book, you’ve incorporated exercises after every story and section. How did you decide to come up with those? Have you heard any feedback on them?

Favorite Quotes

[11:00]  I had this idea where if I could just get a book contract, the book would help me become better known. And I realized, retrospectively, that was entirely backwards. Publishers are so cautious, they don’t want to take any risks. They will not give you a book contract unless you are reasonably well known and have a platform.

[12:00] I used the book as an excuse to interview really smart people, and reverse engineer why they are so successful, and what’s the formula behind them.

[13:00] Even if you get really well known, it doesn’t mean that you are making a lot of money. Or it could be that you are working yourself to the bone. The real question is how do you get the leverage that everyone talks about, how do you build more income streams, how do you create the type of business that everyone is talking about.  Entrepreneurial you is about figuring out how to do this.

[15] There was this gap in my business model, because people could interact with me, either by being a $20 book, or a $20,000 speech or consulting engagement. There was nothing in between, and there were a lot of people that wanted something in between so I decided to create more of those things.

[22:00] People want to be reading about aspirational figures and multimillionaires. IT’s always fun. But you can’t JUST give people a dose of that, because for most people the reaction would be ‘that’s amazing but that’s not me, that’s a special person with special abilities that I clearly don’t have’, which is really unfortunate. What creates a really dramatic tension in the book, is to not show just someone who has already made it, but somebody who is relatable, a bit ahead of where they are, where they can say ‘I could do that’…

[27:00] In order to be able to create more of the society that we’d like to have, we need to be conscious about trying to be helpful to as many people as you can. Specially if you see examples of women who are really rocking it, you should step up and celebrate, because it shows everyone what’s possible and it begins to change the pictures a little bit.

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Transcript

Fei Wu 0:02
Hey, hello, how are you? This is a show for everyone else. Instead of going after top one person in the world, we dedicate this podcast to celebrate the lives of the unsung heroes and self made artists.

Dorie Clark 0:34
thought of it really is an excuse to interview really well known smart people and try to reverse engineer what they had done, just kind of figure out their success secrets and share it.

Even if you get really well known for doing your thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making a lot of money. And the real question is, well, how do you how do you get the leverage that everybody talks about? How do you build more income streams? How do you build passive income? How do you create the kind of business that these days everyone is talking about?

What creates, I think a good dramatic tension in the book is to show people not just someone who has quote, unquote, already made it and is you know, raking in millions of dollars, you know, every year, but somebody who is relatable to them, where they can say, oh, like I could do that, if I can do that, and take those steps, then maybe that can get the ball rolling.

In order to be able to create more of the society that I think just about everyone would like to have, we need to just be conscious about trying to, to be helpful to as many people as we can, but especially if you’re either a man or a woman, and you can see examples of women who are really rocking it and doing cool things. I think that’s a great thing to hold up and celebrate because it shows everybody what’s possible. And it begins to change the picture a little bit.

Fei Wu 2:23
Hey, it’s your girl Fei Wu, and you’re listening to the face world podcast. Welcome. We’ve been running this podcast for over three years now. I thought I would solve a lot sooner than this. And I’m sure many others probably thought the same. But man, I’ve learned so much along the way and made many new friends, not by proximity by common interests and beliefs. I never looked back. You might be wondering what is new and face world in 2018. Now we’re approaching holiday seasons in 2017 end of the year. Well, I am very thrilled to tell you that I’ve started a podcast or group on face world called ELTE podcasters. That is a LTX podcasters and secretly running a small virtual hangout with like minded podcasters as well. So instead of only focusing on downloads sponsorships, we talk about growing a podcast in a more sustainable way, focusing on storytelling, and especially the stories that we want to share and the tribe we want to build. So learn more at face world.com For slash ult podcasters let me introduce you to today’s self made artist Dorie Clark has appeared on an earlier episode of face world in episode number 43. She is a lovely human being who also happens to be a successful marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. She has now authored three best selling books reinventing you stand out and most recently in October 2017. She released entrepreneurial you this is a very special edition to face rolled I must say. Not only was I interviewed by Dory, she actually wrote about face world in this book. Since then, many new opportunities open up for me and for face world. Look, I know this episode isn’t about me. But in the two years I’ve known Dori, I noticed something really different about her. She’s always there to help others elevate and excel, not just the famous people. This episode in particular focuses on door his new book, how she seeked out those mentors, the interview, and how she structured the content for the book, and exactly how or why she picked me out of so many, much more affluent people to interview. I got so excited interviewing her about her book on this very episode. But it’s obvious that Dorries life is so much more than that. I welcome you to listen to our conversation. But please also check out numerous There’s other podcasts, and podcasters, who interviewed her as well. One of my personal favorite is the one with Jordan Harbinger from The Art of Charm, I had to listen to that one twice. So if you don’t want to Google the link, all these tools and resources, show notes, favorite quotes are right on face world.com. So just go right over there, you’ll be able to find this episode and all this information embedded there. If you enjoy listening to the stories of unsung heroes and self made artists, please consider subscribing to face world, it means so much to us, and a really help us grow this very podcast. Without further ado, please welcome the one and only Dorie Clark to the face world podcast.

You’re really good at the art of noticing and connecting people around you meaning them to each other yourself through these entrepreneurs podcasters. And notice what they’re good at. So how do you stay in touch with these folks over the years? Because I know that you’re very charismatic? I mean, I noticed this through the

Dorie Clark 6:19
use case. Um, you know, I am not like necessarily that organized about it. Honestly, if I see something that reminds me of people, I’ll reach out to them, I think it’s a good idea to have, you know, like, every 30 days, every 90 days, whatever kind of system but but I don’t really it’s a little bit more ad hoc.

Fei Wu 6:39
So I sell the note the book sometimes or will be so now you have these message to say everybody who sign up for the event will definitely get a copy. Right there, it gets shipped. But you know, how do you typically you know, organize these events? And it’s really interesting kind of how you go about

Dorie Clark 6:57
this? Ah, yeah, I first of all, I set them up in places that I felt pretty confident that I could bring out a reasonable crowd, right. So the ones that I organized were New York, Boston and DC where I knew enough folks that would come out. And then I had I had other ones that are taking place in LA and London. And last time around. I had people just RSVP with like a, you know, a free Eventbrite thing. But what I came to realize is that there was, you know, some certain things kind of fell, fell through the cracks a little bit there. Because A, if it’s a free thing a lot of people just flake out and be, even if you tell the bookseller, like, oh, we have x number of RSVPs. They’ve kind of come to to believe like, oh, people don’t come anyway. So they’re just gonna bring the number of books that they bring. And so it’s just like, like, I hate inefficiencies. So I set it up this time of just like if you’re, you know, if you’re going to RSVP, like it comes with a book, and then that way, we know you will come and you will also get a book. So it’ll be like, you know, clean and simple. So that’s, that’s how I’ve structured

Fei Wu 8:10
it. Yeah, that’s, that’s true. I noticed that even just my with my own behaviors, but in general, I’m pretty serious about committing to events. I think I’m too much so. But I notice a lot of people even with luncheon bites and people will just bail. You’re like, yeah, how does that happen? super interesting. I want to be there. I know you’re going to be giving a speech, you know, sort of share some of your comments towards the end. I’d love this book. It gives me that moment of you know, I used to love Malcolm Gladwell and fell in love with all this series, but turns out was also the third book, I believe it was the outlier that I happen to love the most. I had the other two books of yours on the audiobooks. I love the fact that you read them. It was an interesting time in my life because I still have my full time job. When I read those books. I would listen to them. As I’m going to sleep. I told Krista Tippett, she thought I was saying that I that was like therapy for me. But in a way it is but I’m not really falling asleep to it but gives me something to look forward to. You know, the next day when I’m at my full time job thinking I’m going to be an entrepreneur one day and I know it and here’s how I go about do I

Dorie Clark 9:19
Am I dreaming about Dory every night?

Fei Wu 9:22
I that happen? You’re so happy. Yeah, when I think of you I think about all the you know possibilities and the way that you convey in this book in particular, I go back to my older episode with you and think about I’m going to ask a completely different set of questions or it’s interesting how you might answer some of the same questions differently. Who knows. But when you describe your experience in 2006, as in at that time, you’re already very successful at what you did but you notice there your incline meetings all day. And today and yesterday. I realize I’m working less generally speaking, making more money that I my previous lucrative job very happy going swimming every once in a while. But I’m kind of a little bit stuck in the same rut in terms of I’m tied to this chair, this computer and for client meetings all day long. I haven’t be 30 minute gap here and there. And, and then this book, I finished the sort of half of it, I’m so excited to get to that the courses part some sort of seeing my own transition into the entrepreneur you’re describing in this book. So, you know, how did you structure this, and then this the whole the idea of the trilogy, for you kind of launch into this three book series?

Dorie Clark 10:42
Well, I didn’t, I didn’t originally set out to write a trilogy per se, mostly when when my first book reinventing you came out. I was I was just happy to have written a book, I was happy to have gotten a book contract, because I had been trying fruitlessly for a number of years before that, and you know, as, as we’ve talked about, and I shared, in my book stand out, I kind of had this mistaken apprehension, that if I could just get a book contract, then, you know, the book would help me become better known. And I realized retrospectively that that was just entirely backwards. And that nowadays, publishers are so cautious. They you know, they don’t want to take any risks. And so they won’t even give you a book contract unless you already are reasonably well known unless you already have a so called platform. But so I wrote Rhian reinventing you, which stemmed from a Harvard business review blog posts that I had written and just kind of got expanded out. And then the thing that I was really interested in from there became my second book stand out, because I was like, Okay, I’ve written this book, I’ve got this toehold. But like how do you get known how, you know how do you actually get people to have heard of you and become respected in your field. And so I wanted to understand that and I wanted to kind of crack the code on it. So I wrote standout immediately afterwards, I was shopping the manuscript for for standout even before reinventing You was released. And I was excited, because I thought of it really is an excuse to interview really well known smart people and try to reverse engineer what they had done, just kind of figure out their success secrets and share it, learn it for myself, and then share it with other people. And so I learned a tremendous amount, which, you know, I continue to apply in writing stand out about how to become a recognized expert. But then, as I was doing that, I realized that there’s kind of this other final frontier, which is that even if you get really well known for doing your thing, you know, you’re respected by people, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making a lot of money. Or it might mean that you’re making a reasonable amount of money. But you could be just like working yourself to the bone, like you were saying, having, you know, meetings every half hour. And the real question is, well, how do you how do you get the leverage that everybody talks about? How do you build more income streams? How do you build passive income? How do you create the kind of business that these days everyone is talking about? And saying, like, look, it’s possible, it’s possible, I wanted to figure out how to crack the code on that. So in writing entrepreneurial you it really started for me as my wanting to try to understand what was going on there. And same thing interview really smart people who had built very robust 678 figure businesses, and try to try to see if I could do it for myself and let other people know how to do it for themselves. And that burst entrepreneurial you.

Fei Wu 13:40
I love that I recently was in a conversation with a friend of mine, Margo, I met through Seth Cohen’s, LT MBA I attended earlier this year, and there definitely a lot of parallels to what you’re teaching in this book, she and I talked about the idea of Instagram, your YouTube, popular, but life poor. You know, there’s so many people out there with millions of followers, surprisingly, but still not being able to really convert them into paying customers and in your book upfront, you know, to talk about not to be ashamed to work or to be critical of yourself or even offering a digital product or service. So, you know, this may be a while ago, but do you remember the first time you had a lead gen or your first course what did that look like? As an experience for you?

Dorie Clark 14:34
Will you know I something that did I kind of regret in my business and I think a lot of people do this is I waited a really long time before monetizing, you know, direct to consumer or you could say, my my business for years and years was was just, you know, kind of writing articles building brand recognition, building exposure and hoping that it would convert into companies reaching out to me about speaking engagements, or, you know, maybe people buying my books that was that was really about it is to there’s kind of this gaping chasm in my business model, because people could either interact with me by buying a $20 book, or by buying, you know, a 10, or 20, or $50,000 speech or consulting engagement or something like that, but there’s nothing in between. And that, that’s a problem, because there’s a lot of people that might want to buy something in between. And so eventually, I decided that I needed to create more of those things. So I started experimenting with online courses in 2014. And I launched one, not not myself, but I sort of provided the IP, the intellectual property for it through a company that was not very lucrative, honestly, you know, I mean, they take the lion’s share of it, but I learned a little bit more about the process. So I did that with them. The next year 2015, I did another online course with another company, and, you know, kind of learned their methodology. So I had these little exposures. Finally, in 2016, I decided I was ready now is when I launched my my first online course that I was launching to my own audience. And that was a huge learning experience. And one of the big goals for my business because I realized that online courses are just growing dramatically in popularity, so I figured it’d be a good way to be able to reach

Fei Wu 16:31
out. Some people think it’s too late to start, because there’s so many players in the game people with at least 20 50,000 followers on their email list. And you know, we’re starting out with much smaller population, why would anybody choose to buy but a few things I learned from you is that it’s never too late to start and build that list right away.

Dorie Clark 17:08
Yeah, I mean, you know, time is gonna pass no matter what, right? And so I started blogging really intensively in 2010. And you hear that now, as we’re having this conversation in 2017. It’s like, oh, wow, you got it so early, you got you know, what a great advantage. You know, there have been people who started blogging in like, the early 2000s. Like, by the time I started, it was already like, everyone’s like, all blogging jumped the shark, you know, nobody can get in because people, you know, people who have been blogging since 2001, how can we ever do that? I mean, it at any given point, there always is, is the feeling that, Oh, it must be as huge as it possibly can be. And, you know, then then we look back five years, you know, later, and we say, oh, gosh, you know, it only just started. So I think that for the vast majority of things, even if we feel it’s saturated, odds are, it’s probably not saturated.

Fei Wu 18:06
That’s yeah, that’s so fascinating to me. I read, you know, I typically, you know, a lot of people don’t read the prologue, but that really comes from bottom of your heart. And on top of that, I wish we all turned the mic and actually start interviewing you and have more of this book be about you. So I feel like I indulge more in the prologue because you shared a lot of your learning experience, excerpts from sort of the interviews themselves and some highlights from these guests. I noticed you wrote down you have seven unique revenue streams. And I love that and I start counting them, like I should know what those seven are. From Dorries. I wrote down speaking, consulting, teaching executive coaching, I wonder if you could maybe break it down, then they you share with some of those are?

Dorie Clark 18:58
Sure, absolutely. So yeah, the other ones? Well, there’s online courses, of course. And then we had Oh, writing books is, so that would be seven. And then actually, I’ve, I’ve kind of built in an eight since since I even wrote that which is doing like live workshops. Oh, wow.

Fei Wu 19:17
Tell me about live workshops.

Dorie Clark 19:19
Yeah. So I, this was something that I really started in many ways as an outgrowth of the online courses that I did, because online courses give you enough scale that your brains together, you know, pretty, pretty large group of people. And I kept hearing from them that many of them really were looking for opportunities to connect in person. And so the very first thing that I did, it was just a pilot. I did a one day mastermind last July at my apartment, my condo in New York City. And it was it was small. It was for 10 people they were all part of the recognized expert pilot group. And, you know, they loved it. It was it was actually amazing. I thought this was stunning. On their own, they are organizing a reunion in a couple of months. They’re having a reunion next February, like, have you ever heard of a one day event that 18 months later has a reunion. It’s like, holy crap. So there was a lot of bonding going on with this. And so subsequently, I’ve had, you know, another one that I that I did this summer, which I, you know, I’m experimenting with different formats, just to see kind of what works, what people like. And so this one was a more curriculum focused thing. It was also a one day session, it was called the business model intensive. And it was, in many ways previewing some of the content from entrepreneurial you helping people think about how to create new income streams in their business, and, and walking them through that process. So that was pretty cool. And, and then later, this year, I’m going to be doing a two day mastermind retreat. So those are some of the things swirling around.

Fei Wu 21:05
I’m sure people will like it. Because after that session, if there’s going to be a gathering a year and a half later, I can imagine the goals being set at that time, November, December is just perfect breakthrough for 2018. And these people will keep each other accountable for what will happen next. You know, it’s interesting, I think that that model works so well. Even for Elta NBA, the alumni network has really grown. Man, a lot of incredible people. It was so fascinating to me. And we’re still like, for example, this evening, we have a regroup. And it’s very true that in addition to online webinars and emails and more one way communications people really appreciate the the live forum that we’re all here face to face, you know, so as you were going through the book and kind of interviewing all these experts, and I’m so privileged and thrilled to be in this book, because right before my story was John Lee Dumas. And I was thinking, Oh, my God, how will people react when they flip the page from 100 million downloads to like 20,000 downloads back then how did you go about selecting these folks to be the people you want to interview? I mean, I’m such an oddball out of all this right?

Dorie Clark 22:23
Well, you’re actually perfect for it. Because one thing that I’ve learned in the course of writing these books, and you know, publishers will will really tell you this, is that people want to be reading about aspirational figures that are already, you know, multimillionaire, like super famous, whatever, like, it’s always fun. You know, that’s why magazines put Elon Musk on the cover, you know, it’s like, oh, wow, I want to learn how he thinks. But you can’t just give people a dose of that. Because if that’s the entire book, then for most people, the reaction is, wow, that’s so amazing. Too bad, I could never do it. But they’re like, Oh, that’s amazing. But that’s not me, that’s a special person with special abilities that I clearly don’t have. And, and it’s really unfortunate. And what creates, I think, a good dramatic tension in the book is to show people, not just someone who has, quote, unquote, already made it and is, you know, raking in millions of dollars, you know, every year, but somebody who is relatable to them, where they can, you know, it’s like just just a bit ahead of where they are, where they can say, oh, like, I could do that, you know, I don’t know how I could get 100 million downloads. But I bet if I really applied myself, I could get 20,000 downloads. And if I can, if I can do that, and take those steps, then maybe that can get the ball rolling. And so you need to be profiling people at different stages of the journey, so that people can find different aspects to plug into and places to see themselves. And so you I thought were great, because if the only story you’re going to tell about podcasts is okay. The only way to be successful at podcasts is to have you know, millions of downloads, then most people are going to find that really inaccessible. But if you say to people, you know what, you don’t actually have to have millions of downloads to be successful, you can actually kind of a doable number, but still make a living from it still be able to build a really good business as a result of your podcast, then I think it just kind of opens up possibilities for people

Fei Wu 24:31
you trigger that thought and then this whole storyline in me in unprecedented ways because throughout brief conversation of us sharing over coffee that oh, you know, I kind of find it unusual for me to generate revenue and become a freelancer as a result of a podcast most people have never heard of, and from their our second conversation that you said they create a lead gen today right now and I actually took the effort and just compiled that story. and say thanks to Dory for inspiring me to, to write this. And that in itself became a most popular article. So I said, Okay, that’s interesting, I’m looking at the traffic is like, wow, people actually want to know. So I actually converted that and did a content upgrade and now have that be the ebook that people can download, and was really phenomenal. And for me to kind of look back and to be able to add to it, thank you for for kind of leading me that way. And I think that’s what this book will do for a lot of the people that it’s not just, it’s a mirror where they can see many stages of themselves, and not the one that’s 2030 years from now, we’re never might never happen. But the small successes could also take you on to like big journeys, and it’s really exciting.

Dorie Clark 25:46
Oh, well, first of all, it’s very nice of you. Thank you. But yeah, I just, you know, I like to, I definitely do like to be helpful to, to folks where I can and I think that I see stereotype, although, you know, from stories that I’ve heard, in some places, or in some industries, it’s apparently true of women having to play this zero sum game and be competitive with one another is just so sad. And so ridiculous. I got my, I literally got my store, my very first job ever was I was an unpaid intern for now, the National Organization for Women, when I was 16 years old, and in DC, at their, at their national offices. So, you know, from from a young age, I have been a really strong feminist. And so it’s bothersome to me when I see places that are uniformly male. And I think it’s it’s extremely rare, extremely rare that anyone is consciously trying to discriminate. For the vast majority of people. It’s not that they want to harm other people, it’s that they want to help their friends, which is actually a noble impulse. But the problem is that their friends are often very much like them. And so it ends up replicating these patterns of power of privilege. And so if you have an environment that is very heavily male, people might legitimately you hear this attack, especially they might say, well, we would like to have women but we we can’t find women. And of course, they can’t find women because the women are not necessarily part of their social networks. Because you know him awfully right, that’s a natural thing with people, we’re drawn to people with similarities. And so I think that, in order to be able to create more of the society that I think just about everyone would like to have, we need to just be conscious about trying to, to be helpful to as many people as we can, but especially if you’re either a man or a woman. And you can see examples of women who are really rocking it and doing cool things, I think that’s a great thing to hold up and celebrate because it shows everybody what’s possible. And it begins to change the picture a little bit, yeah.

Fei Wu 28:48
When I recommend sort of the strategy, we’re talking about freelancing, entrepreneurship, I noticed whenever I mentioned, your name, your story, for some reason, they picked it up right away, I notice and I hear feedback, you know, women really love to look at, you know, a figure, in this case, many steps ahead of them to be able to relate to that. So, I also noticed, and one of the reasons is, you talk about side hustles in your book a lot kind of as a theme throughout, I came across a lot of people and in particular, women, I would say would be the majority of them, who have this incredible fear for side hustles. And the amount of excuses is really astonishing. A lot of that what I hear that bothers me is that my boss won’t like it. That even comes to thy will. Why would I need a blog? Why would I need a website to talk about my work? And at some point I even told them, why don’t you build it and put a password on it. And as soon as I ended the conversation, I thought to myself, remove that password immediately. Why are you ashamed of us? You know, have you noticed that it and maybe not in talking to your guests, but how do you typically help people kind of steer away from that feeling or that that fear?

Dorie Clark 30:09
Well, I gave a talk a couple of years ago at Harvard Business School. And there was a woman who was speaking just before me. And so we were having a conversation. This was a, you know, older senior executive woman. And she knew she had heard me speak yet cuz she was going first. But she knew I was gonna be talking about personal branding. And so she kind of launched in this conversation, she’s like, so you do personal brand, she said, You know, I’m so bothered by these, you know, millennials, that all want to have a personal brand. She said, I need to have a personal brand. Because you know, I’m a senior executive. But what my philosophy is, is that if you’re working for me, if you’re 25 years old, you shouldn’t be off doing all these things. If you really want to get ahead, you need to be working hard working for me doing your job, and then I will notice, and then you will do well. And, you know, I’m just sort of smiling and looking at her and like, I’m like, Yeah, and what happens when you get fired? Therefore, is what’s I mean, like, that’s a nice universe that she lives in. It’s kind of a self justifying universe that she lives in. But if that contract really was a contract, then okay, maybe you could argue that, you know, sure, okay, then, you know, we have this little contractual agreement. And then once you hit 40, or 45, then maybe you’re allowed to have a personal brand. But guess what, your employer can let you go in a nanosecond, it happened to me, I got laid off from my very first job, they gave me four days severance pay. I mean, there is not loyalty coming in the direction of you. And so I’m not saying don’t be loyal to your company. But don’t be stupid, either. You know, let’s go back to feminism. Let’s go back to empowerment. If you are a woman, and you just say, You know what, I’m going to rely on this man to give me all my money. And I’m not going to develop any skills. And I’m not going to have any fallback plan. And just like, oh, things will take care of themselves. Guess what, they don’t always work out. And if that happens, you are in a bad bad place. And I don’t want anyone male or female, to have that happen to them professionally. You know, in many ways, enlightened bosses will will actually look at that and recognize and say, Wow, you’re doing something actually amazing. That’s how did you learn that? Look at the initiative that you took, and in entrepreneurial you. I actually profile a guy named Linnea Chon, who started his career as a nurse and ended up as the Head of Communications for his entire hospital system, on the strength of the fact that he developed these apps in his own time, his boss found out about it, and then kept promoting him and promoting him because he was so impressed with Lenny’s self motivation and desire to learn. And so a lot of smart bosses will actually look at whatever sort of side hustle or whatever you’re doing, and be impressed, it can help your day job. But you know, what, if if you’re working for somebody that feels threatened by it, that’s probably not going to be the person that’s actually helping promote you, anyway, they’re probably going to be threatened by just about anything that you do. And so I would be very wary. And I would not use that as an excuse to just not do it. Because it just leaves you really at risk. Now, this is to say, of course, we’re assuming that whatever you’re doing is not like somehow poaching business from your employer or something like that, you know, it’s, you know, we’re assuming that you’re adhering to proper norms about, you know, not disclosing private information or not, you know, trying to grab clients, you shouldn’t be grabbing or something like that. But if you’re doing something that is a legitimate side, venture on your own time, enlightened bosses will be impressed with it. And it is important for you, regardless to be developing your own thing, that is how we protect ourselves in the modern economy. That is how we thrive in the modern economy. Yeah,

Fei Wu 34:26
absolutely. And I love the underlying theme, and just the argument that diversity, diversifying your portfolio, the term that you use is the portfolio career and I love that as in using the metaphor to say, Would you ever put all your investment in one stock option? Of course not. You have to diversify. And that’s a lesson that neither one of my parents taught me, you know, now I can learn from scratch and learn from people and their experiences. I think you pointed out another good reason to not fear for that and maybe that’s time to relax. valuate you know who you’re trying to learn from or impress or, you know, having the single point of failure, which is your current employer is something that we need to, you know, basically recognize what I also love about this book, which is I think it’s your unique character and your writing style is not only it’s very concise, but I love these exercises or consider this. Let’s try that. So at the unit, even at the end of the chapter, at the end of each storyline, there are takeaways for people to do and to think about. So have you heard feedback on that maybe we should ask people to, you know, talk about their own experience.

Dorie Clark 35:40
So to your point, Fe, one of the things that I that I talked about in entrepreneurial, you know, with these kind of self assessment questions, I really did want to walk people through that, because when I wrote the first draft of my first book, reinventing you, I didn’t include any of those. And my editor actually came back and he was like, oh, you know, could you create these kind of like, try this sort of activities? And I’m like, Ah, I’ll do it if you make me but I don’t think anybody likes those. Like, I don’t think anybody uses those. And then I, you know, but he’s like, Yeah, I think you should do it. So put it in the book. And then afterward, people just like went nuts. Like, that was the part. They were like, Oh, I really loved the try this at the end, it was so helpful. And I was like, Oh, wow, okay, I should just like never listen to myself at all, because because, you know, I didn’t I didn’t think it would it would resonate in that way. But but it really did. And so for every book that I’ve done, I’ve created these sort of, you know, self assessment questions. And so actually, for people who are interested, I pulled them all together, I took all of the the self assessment questions at the end of the chapters, and I created an 88 Questions special for you, Fay super lucky, Ada question, entrepreneurial you self assessment, and folks can can download it for free at Dorie clark.com/entrepreneur,

Fei Wu 37:00
I will have to go through them and also the way they serve is really good bullet points. I you know, this book isn’t very thick. So I don’t think people need an excuse not to read it. So that I think the bullet points are summarizing and distilling the kind of combining the methodology as well as with an action plan. And none of them came across as in, okay, you need $10,000? That’s step one. There’s none of that.

Dorie Clark 37:26
Yeah, all the all the steps. I mean, this Yeah, you’re right. Something I feel very passionately about, is that all the stuff I recommend requires no money, or I mean, let’s, let’s say virtually no money, like even starting podcasting. I have, I have a handout, in the book that people can download. That is a list of all the equipment that I use to create my videos for for online courses. And, you know, people think sometimes like, oh, it will cost like $10,000 to make an online course No, it doesn’t. I filmed it all myself and the the sum total of the equipment that I use for it, and it costs like, I don’t know, $150. So I mean, maybe it’s like a negligible amount of money, but presumably anyone in a western economy reading it could could buy the things that they need, and you know, and it’s not, it’s not out of reach at all, if people actually want that list, they can get that for free at Dorie clark.com/video tools, and they can download a list to all the links.

Fei Wu 38:23
I love that and that makes me feel so good about the most recent ebook I wrote, going from $0 podcasting equipment to my most recent upgrade at one which I think it’s 1500 and it was so worth it. But in between I kind of wrote down all of the different price points. And I think the moment you get into the realm of working as an entrepreneur in these different endeavors, that’s another part I like is you didn’t just interview podcasters but you interview people who are online coaches and you know pursuing really the seven now eight revenue generating ideas, you basically interviewed entrepreneurs for each one of these domains, you know, speaking and coaching and give people an idea of what that may be.

Unknown Speaker 39:09
Thank you Fei. It’s such a treat to get to talk to you about entrepreneurial you your your your star turn in entrepreneurial you.

Fei Wu 39:17
So I’m just really excited and I haven’t finished the book about to get to the most exciting chapter. Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much Dory.

Dorie Clark 39:26
Awesome. Cool. Great to talk to you. Fei likewise Dory.

Fei Wu 39:29
See you next week Yes.

Hey, it’s Fei. I am back for a few words at the end of the show. I hope you enjoy what you heard. You can visit us online at face world.com where social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, also under face wear well to keep things simple, I personally review and respond to all the messages. Love to hear from you. Thank you and lots of hugs. See you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai