Latest / The Bold Lounge / Dorie Clark: Reinvent Boldly, Crafting an Authentic Brand

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Dorie Clark: Reinvent Boldly, Crafting an Authentic Brand · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or douse along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Dory Clark.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Dory helps individuals and companies get their best ideas heard in a crowded, noisy world.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: She has been named three times as one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers 50.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: She was honored as one of the number one communication coaches by the Marshall Goldsmith leading global coaches awards and one of the top five communication professionals in the world by Global Guru's.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: She is a keynote speaker and teaches for Columbia Business School.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: In addition to this, she is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Long Game Entrepreneurial U, reinventing U and Stand Out, which was named the number one leadership book of the year by Inc Magazine.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge, hey Lee.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me so, so excited to get into it and start talking about all that is bold in your world, dory, and we're going to start off with how do you define bold?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: What does bold look like in your world?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: So for me, I think boldness is about proactive choice.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we do things that are, you know, a big change or a big deal, because we're we're forced to or we don't have any choice.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: But for me, the essence of boldness if we're really going to own that is about making a choice when you don't have to to to do something that feels out of your comfort zone.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Because of all the definitions, I haven't heard someone actually and we've had hundreds talk about the choice that is all encompassed in being bold, because usually when you're being bold, you're potentially in a comfort zone or in some zone of like I don't have to change.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not being forced to change potentially, but it's a choice.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: So a credible definition based on that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: When was the first time that you think you had a bold moment or a memorable bold?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: time.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: So when you know you were kind enough to you know, send a note kind of reminding me that this is a question that you were going to ask, and the first thing that that occurred to me was actually from when I was a teenager.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: And this is.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: This is certainly a choice, although I think that when, when you're a teenager, sometimes you are just so fueled with like righteousness and self righteousness that you're like, you're like bold all over the place, all the time like 24, seven, but yeah, I remember, you know I mean I have I have like such a good relationship with my mom.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: We get along really well.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I just talked to her this morning, like you know, 10 minutes ago, but when I was like 15, 14, 15, I had my first girlfriend and we my mom had taken us and we were, you know, out at some whatever we're like kind of walk, walking around town and we were holding hands and you know, this is like a long time ago.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: We were not such used to such things, yeah.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And so afterwards my mom, you know sort of debriefed with me and she's like, you know, did you really have to do that?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Do you really have to be so, you know, open and so out there, and you know, I mean she's just sort of parroting the conventional wisdom of the time.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: And you know, I mean I think she's like, you know, she's like I just I just let loose, I'm like that is homophobic, that is ridiculous, you need to not say that anymore because that is not cool.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: And I think she was like very shocked that I was pushing back so forcefully.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: But you know to, to her credit, I think my mom thought about it and realized like OK, all right, I'm getting on the train here.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: And so she, she never said that to me again and she, you know, she really is just very incredibly open and supportive.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: But but yeah, I think that you know, there's a lot of people with anything in life, whether it's about sexual orientation or just different aspects of their life or their personality, where they're sometimes afraid to speak up.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And I was just so utterly convinced that, no, no, I'm right, you're wrong, that I, that I went for it and I'm proud of myself for doing that.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely A couple of things in there, like so kudos for your mom for having the conversation, and then kudos for you were saying no, but I think at that point you were saying this is me, this is who I am, and not being.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: That is really not the way that I want to live, or anyone should.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: So I want to be fully and authentically me, and at such an early age to do that, I think that's.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome and certainly a bold move, probably at any age, I think in some of my conversations, like with Marcus Collins, we've talked about going against the convention.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: You know, of what people think of us, or what people think we should be doing, or what we should do next, whether you're going to college or whether you're starting a job, or who you're dating, etc.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Or are you getting married, are you having children?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Like there's all these roles that I don't know sometimes where they came from, other than it's how other people live their lives, but it's how you want to live your life.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: That's the most important thing.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and just as a nice full, full circle moment, lee, I was, you know, talking to my mom on the phone this morning with my, with my fiancee, who my mom really loves.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Congratulations.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I didn't know you were engaged.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Congratulations.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, and anyway.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: My fiance's mother teaches a course with Marcus Collins.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Oh nice, there we go.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Boucher small world.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Totally, totally for sure.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: So, from the perspective of the bold moves when it comes to and you've written a lot of books around personal branding and reinvention, which probably is where I want to focus, because I think in 2024, maybe you know, we're still going through some of those things that I think really got catapulted in 2020.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Like, of who am I aligning with what I want to be doing, deciding the role and the job I want to have?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I think, too a lot of our listeners, they're at a point of like do I want to keep doing this?
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And maybe I do and maybe I don't, but how do I figure it out?
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: So we're going to kind of flex into that little bit of that.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: If you're, if you're cool with that, I'm cool with that, all right.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So, when you talk about personal branding it's a word that's used so much and you hear it, you know, 300 times a day but how would you define it?
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Because I think it's important before we start that we understand what does personal branding mean to you?
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: So you're absolutely right that the term personal branding has been much maligned.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean it's, it's what, it's one of these sort of twitchy things.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: I mean I love leaning into them.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Like you know, networking is another one where it's like people, people sort of acknowledge like yes, I guess this is a useful thing, and then simultaneous, they're like but I ate it.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: It's awful.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: So I think personal brand is very similar.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: But honestly, I think that the most clarifying way to think about personal brand is literally in this is true, it is just a synonym for your reputation.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: It's, it's just.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: It's just another way of saying well, what do people think about you?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: And I think if we frame it that way, it helps to sort of illuminate the stakes that you know.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: It's not some weird thing where you're trying to manipulate people or you're trying to be like famous on Instagram.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: It's just, it's at a really basic level.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Do other people see in you the things that you would wish them to see?
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Do other people recognize what you can do and what you can contribute?
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Because if they don't, I mean I would say quite obviously that's kind of a problem, because they're never going to recognize you for it, they're never going to tap you for those things, they're never going to ask you to do those things and some degree of your potential and abilities will go unfulfilled.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: What's interesting about personal branding to me is one of the things that I think people struggle with is that potentially not everyone, but potentially they've not actually been their true selves or been able to share their true selves throughout their career or throughout their life.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: And so when someone says you know you need to be authentic, you need to be transparent, you show the ups and the downs, it's kind of like needle across the record.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: That's not the way that you're supposed to live Like.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to have the perfect life.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to show perfection.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to not show the messy bits.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Right, and the messy bits are what life's all about, in my opinion.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: So so how can someone like you said lean in to being more authentic and maybe take the baby steps that they need to take, versus leaps, if it doesn't feel as comfortable when they're beginning their personal brand journey?
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a really important question, lee, and this is something that actually in my first book, reinventing you, we talk about quite a bit.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which you wrote like in 2014,.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: So 10 years, 13 or 14.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: It's in there in that zone like 10 years yeah, and it's just as relevant today as it was then.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: And these, these same, these same things keep coming up.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: You know, how do I, how do I get people to see myself the way that I would like to be seen?
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: How do I change my reputation in the eyes of other people If I feel like they, you know they've gotten something wrong or if we've gotten off on the wrong foot?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: You know, these are things that people face all the time.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: But I think that there's a lot of confusion sometimes, you know, sometimes deliberately, because people are looking for a little bit of a straw man to beat up.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: But you know, there's this question of like, well, how authentic should you be?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And you know, don't be authentic.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: You know what it?
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Authentic you, that's too much, too much, exactly, and it's like, ok, come on, like, let's, let's be rational here.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Of course you can be authentic and professional.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Those things, those things are not mutually exclusive, you know it's not like you're going to be going around saying, you know like actually I don't feel like working today.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Like yes like that, that person should be fired.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: No, matter how authentic they are.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: But but I think that it's true that when we're talking about aspects of our lives, what I found most interesting is I was researching, you know, questions of authenticity and personal brand and things like that is that there really is a clear and demonstrable weight that people have to bear when they are excessively worried about other people's opinion of them.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's actually really interesting.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: There's a phenomenon known as covering, and Deloitte's Leadership Center for Inclusion and NYU professor Kenji Yoshino first wrote about it about 10 years ago.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: They actually just re-upped and did a 10-year review of the data and, you know, covering is basically the idea at work of.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily that you're like lying about your identity, but you are managing your identity in some way.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: You're sort of putting a focus on oh gosh, you know, I have to make sure that I'm presenting this in an inoffensive way, or I have to, you know, make sure that I'm not being too in your face about whatever it is.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: I mean it could be about, you know, a different cultural identity or ethnic identity.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: It could be that you're a single parent and you don't really want to draw attention to that because people might think you're not as committed to your job as you should be and whatever it is.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: And there's really deleterious elements to that, because the more you are distracted with the weight of that, the less you're able to really focus on performing at your job.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: And so the antidote really is for leaders at the top to just, you know, essentially normalize things and let people know like, hey, it's okay, you know, don't worry about this so much.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: It's true, of course, that you know if you're in the middle of a crisis or something, I mean you know you don't necessarily want to be talking about that all the time in the middle of it, because that can be a little bit destabilizing for people like, okay, my boss is like freaking out here, what do we do?
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: But by the same token, when you are out of something, when you are past something, it actually becomes a positive act of generosity to be able to talk about it and share about it, because it's a nice way to help other people and say you know what?
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: I've been there too, I've gone through something similar.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: You know you can get through it as well.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so normalizing being human.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Basically yes.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: That's what leaders can do, right?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I think that sometimes, especially with social media, that we don't see the imperfections, we don't see the things that go wrong or the things that you know might not work out the way we thought.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: So it is this interesting tool that someone can use for their personal brand.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Do you have any best practices that you recommend for people when it comes to social media, personal branding and being authentic?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, everybody has their sort of different comfort level, and yeah, it's almost your brand, right?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Your brand is associated with how you use your social media.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And so you know, I run a mastermind of you know sort of high performing, successful professional service providers, you know, executive coaches or consultants and things like that.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: And at one of the recent mastermind meetings a group of people were talking about a colleague that they knew and they really admired her.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: But a number of them were saying like, well, you know, she just is really happy sharing all kinds of things you know.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, oh, it's a picture of the dog, it's a picture of you know, this sort of like hey, I met this person, I went and did this thing, and they thought that that was really cool because, you know, they recognized it was a way for them to be reminded of her, it was a way for them to kind of feel like they knew her better.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: But they're also like, but I'm more private than that and so I don't know how it would work for me, and that's totally okay.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Like you know, nobody has to be doing social media in the exact same way.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: That's fine.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: But I think that it is useful to kind of ask yourself a high level question Like okay, if we acknowledge that social media is a useful thing and it is for most professionals, right, I mean at a basic level.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It's like all right, give people a feel for who you are and just kind of periodically remind them that you exist, like if we accept that as a baseline, it's A good baseline.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's useful to just sort of say a few things like, okay, what would I most want them to know about me, or what would I most want them to think.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And so, okay, if I want them to remember that I'm a specialist at helping teams with conflict.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: You know I can take a picture like okay, hey, look, I'm so glad today I spoke at this company and look at these great folks.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: We were able to help them talk about solving conflict with teams.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: And you know, it's a reminder there and you don't have to be showing people your salad if that is not in fact how you roll.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, so I think in a sense it goes back to your permission for yourself to one potentially choose your adventure, choose your path right.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: You don't have to go to the salad if you don't want to, or you know being able to.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: What you said was what do I want people to know about me, or to remember about me right, or to think right.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: You know to understand or to think deeply about.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: So those are pretty simple things to start with, and you can start at step one in doing that, because I think sometimes people get overwhelmed with that very first step and you hear, you know from thousands of different people of how you're supposed to do it.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I think that to me sometimes becomes annoying, and what I just tell people is you do you Just make sure that you do.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: You Don't change because of an algorithm, don't start posting things because you think it gets more this or that.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Just be you.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And I think if you do that and you're consistent with that, that really does help your brand, because then you're not you know flexing all over the place with the.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: You know the algorithm of the day rule, I think one of the things that you know in your book.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: You've really interviewed a lot of incredible people that have reinvented themselves or have done something unique with their personal brand that sticks.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Are there certain things, traits or habits that those individuals have that we can learn from?
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I think that reinvention is something that you know.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: It kind of ties in a little bit because my most recent book is called the Long Game how to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World and over the years I've become kind of fascinated with these questions of like how long do things take and how patient do we have?
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: to be?
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Are you a very patient person?
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I am not.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So I don't know.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Like, when I see the Long Game and I hear you say take small steps, I'm just like no, like what about the big steps?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, to your point, lee, I wrote the book, you know.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, we sort of solve the problem that we need to have solved.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: Personally, I'm not a very patient person either, and so, by all means, you know, like if you can solve a problem quickly or achieve a goal quickly, like yeah, do that.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: What I have come to understand, though which is, I feel, like, a deeply frustrating but important lesson of adulthood is that there actually just are some things, there are some goals, there are some achievements that we might want to get.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: That literally, under no circumstances can you life hack it.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: You just have to do it and be patient and put in the work and put in the time and effort, and where people actually run into trouble is trying to find a short cut, and it usually blows up or goes badly or whatever.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I think that it's not that I love patients I don't at all but it is that I have made peace with patients, because sometimes you really do just have to be patient in order to achieve something that is truly important to you, and that's how I think about that.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: And when it comes to questions around reinvention and I think all of us we're in our minds on to the next thing it's like, yeah, well, I'm going to be a professional photographer.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to be there, and we want everybody to think of us as a professional photographer and we want people to hire us for that and whatever, and that's great, but the problem is that reinvention, like a lot of things actually does take a while.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: You have to keep reminding people.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: You have to keep telling them more times than you think is appropriate.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: You need to keep.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: You know we're talking about social media.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: You need to keep posting on social media like, hey, here's the photo shoot that I did so that they can say, oh right, she's a photographer.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Now she's not a, you know, an insurance sales person or she's not a pharmaceutical executive or whatever you know the person used to be.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: And it takes a while for people's perceptions of you to really change and get ingrained.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And it can be frustrating because we wish it happened yesterday, but we have to kind of keep plugging away at managing that brand until it becomes second nature for people to think of us in that capacity.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk about capital R reinvention and lowercase R reinvention.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that?
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Because I think people also think potentially when being bold, that it's something big and loud and you know it has to be this big thing and boldness can actually be a very quiet moment.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Actually, I think my boldest moments are quiet and not posted like a decision I made or something I did or relationship I healed or you know those types of things.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I don't post about that.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: But when we think about reinvention it's the same way there's something big and there's something that might be more incremental or something that using our curiosity.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: So I'd love to hear you about the big R and the little R of reinvention.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is an important distinction, so I'm glad that you raised it.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: So, the way that I think about it, I mean when, when we conceptualize reinvention, when we talk about it, most of the cultural conversation is about the big moments.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: As you say, it's, you know, I quit my job to become an entrepreneur, or, you know, I changed careers and now I'm doing something completely different, or whatever it is, and you know I can call that capital R reinvention.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Those are the very visible moments and it's, you know, that's that's important.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Of course, sometimes you choose that, sometimes you are forced into it Like if you're yeah you're laid off or what have you.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: But you know the those moments certainly don't come all the time, which I think is is often good, because they can be traumatic.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: They're, they're exciting, but they can be very traumatic in terms of your sense of identity, in terms of your financial security, because the bigger the change you're making, the less likely you are to enter at the same income level.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: You often have to like reestablish yourself in your new field.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: What I think it's forgotten inappropriately, is what I call lowercase R reinvention, which is the small steps that we take every day, we can take, we should take, so that we keep ourselves fresh, that we're we're reinventing ourselves as kind of a habit, so that we don't have to face a reckoning moment where certain things come to the fore.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: I mean just as an example, let's say, you know, years ago you were an architect.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: If you were a person who absolutely resisted learning new computer assisted technologies, you're like no, no, no, I don't need that, I don't want that.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden you know it might take a while, but a day comes where literally all of architecture is done with computer assisted design and you and your hand drawing are not wanted or needed anymore, the only choice at that point is a capital R reinvention, because, guess what, sorry, we don't need you anymore.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: That's pretty traumatic.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Whereas, you know, assuming that you wanted to stay an architect, if you had been willing, even an hour a week to take a tutorial, take a class, fiddle around with the software so that you had some degree of familiarity and proficiency with it, you wouldn't have had to lose your job.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: You could adapt to the new reality and say all right, we're doing it with computers.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Now I got it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Mm, hmm, what level of vulnerability do you think people need to be comfortable with when it comes to reinvention?
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Because so, for example, I went from, you know, being in the corporate healthcare world and still doing some work in there, but now more transitioning to coaching and creating environments for community etc.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And it's very different.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: But I did that in healthcare, but very differently now, in a more full time capacity.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: So I know when I started off, people didn't understand, like how could you leave this and go to that and what is that?
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: And what's being bold, like what's that to do with anything?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: So it was a vulnerable moment.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: I remember being very careful with my creation when I first started off because I felt like it was getting judged and I was getting judged.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: And so one of the things Michael Gervais talked about on a previous podcast was FOPO fear of other people's opinions right, so I've definitely had that on and off.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to reinvention, there is a sense of vulnerability.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: That happens.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Is there a way or a strategy that someone can traverse that sense of vulnerability and protect but still be able to move forward into it or lean into it?
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're raising a really important point, which is one of the things that I discovered in the course of researching reinventing you is that the assumption that most people had prior to going into the reinvention process is that their family, their close friends, would typically be their biggest supporters for their reinvention.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And oftentimes, ironically, it was the opposite, because a stranger doesn't care.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: You can introduce yourself hi, I'm Lee, I do coaching and everyone's like cool, that sounds great.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not invested.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: What do they care?
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're going to be supportive because they have no dog in the hunt, right.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: But friends and family oftentimes because often there's a misguided sense of wanting to help you, protect you Somehow they assume that clearly you've not thought through the consequences of like.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Of course you've thought through the consequences, but they wanted somehow informally, gosh, you might not make a lot of money at first, we're going to have other helpful pieces of wisdom, and so you really have to have a sense of internal strength around that and also recognize that you essentially have to perform almost a kind of marketing campaign with people close to you.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: You might be thinking of them as like oh, they're my pillars of support, but actually it's more apt to think of them almost in the sense of like a political campaign is.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: They are a constituency that you need to persuade and convert, to get on the side of your reinvention, and that's a tough mental shift but it's an important one.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And some may need just a nudge or just an understanding or just even a couple one conversation, where others may need more.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And I think what I realized is those that need that much time to understand maybe get moved to the outer loop of really my inner circle.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe they were and they can come back.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: It just means, but for now, while I build, while I grow, while I gain confidence or while I strengthen my concept or my brand, that I just need to be in a space where I don't have to explain or protect or whatever could come into someone's space.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I know I was most nervous to tell my mom and we're extremely close, we talk every day but she was the one that was immediate Like I'm so happy for you, it's going to, you're going to be so much healthier, you know, like because I was working very hard.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: It was a point of craziness and so, but I think for me sometimes that's also just a reminder of people.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: We might think someone's going to judge us or say something negatively and we might be surprised and I was super surprised by that.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: That's so interesting.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: That's such an important point.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: So when you think about actually knowing and understanding where we want to go, our passion, our purpose, our vision for ourselves sometimes feels very personal, and it should.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: But when we're trying to, like, walk the line of what's, what do I want to communicate in my professional setting, that my values and my passion and those things can come through, where do you think is there a line someone should start?
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Or how do they start actually sharing that more so than they have before?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Because I think sometimes that's the piece that hasn't been shared as openly.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: When it comes to personal brandy is your vision, your passion, your, you know your purpose, why you want to do what you do.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's very true.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I'm a big believer in and this is a process that I went through myself as I was initially starting my business, which now is back in 2006 early on, you really have to be thoughtful about how you're distinguishing yourself in the marketplace, because it sort of seems like you know, all of a sudden, like the minute you jump into a new field, it's like, oh my god, there's like 100,000 people doing this and people ask very well-meaning questions like so how are you different?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Or who is your ideal client.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: And you know it's very paralyzing because if you don't have a great tight answer for that, you kind of feel like an idiot, and so I struggled with that at first.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: But I really tried to study the process because I wanted to understand how people that I admired had actually been able to kind of distinguish themselves.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: And so over time I developed what I call the recognized expert formula, because I really wanted to understand what gets somebody recognized for their expertise in the marketplace.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: And ultimately it comes down to three different components which kind of work together as a flywheel.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: The first piece is content creation, and I am deliberately agnostic about the method.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: It could be podcasts like this, it could be articles, it could be books, it could be speeches, you know videos, it doesn't matter.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: But the basic idea is that you need to start sharing content with your ideas so that other people understand what your ideas are and you can be recognized for them.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: They also become, helpfully, a shareable tool so that people can refer them, they can send it to people.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: It can get amplified.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: The second piece is social proof, because you need to be able to telegraph to people very quickly in a busy world why you're credible.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: So social proof is essentially what are the markers of that credibility?
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: You know, have you written for or been quoted in certain high-profile publications?
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Do you have marquee clients that people have heard of?
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: They say, oh well, gosh, if she works for them, you know she's probably good enough for me.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Or you know things like that.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Have you guest lectured at universities?
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: You know things like that.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: And then the third piece is your network, because you need to be in conversation with other professionals.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: That can help with referrals.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: It certainly helps with the amplification of your ideas and it just makes you part of that world, and so if you have those three pieces spinning together, you actually can get recognized as an expert.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Excellent, yeah, so I think, is there any one of those that has higher weight than another, or are they the perfect Venn, or it just depends?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: So they are all necessary ultimately.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that I have seen with professionals who kind of reach a plateau and they feel like they're they're stagnating you know it's people sometimes come to me and they're like I am working so hard, I'm working all the time, I'm doing all these things and I'm not getting the traction that I want.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: And after you ask them some questions, what you discover oftentimes is they are working hard.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: That is absolutely true.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: They're, you know, they're really putting in a lot of effort.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: But the problem, because we're humans, is that we often do the things we like to do and avoid things we don't like to do, and so this is a situation where you really have to focus on all three components.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: And so somebody like if they're into networking, they can have, you know, coffees with people every day of the week.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: That's amazing, and they will succeed in knowing lots of people.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Lots of people will say, oh yeah, I know him, he's a great guy, he's awesome.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: But if, if that person isn't creating content no, it's like he's a great guy that's not actually going to result in a referral, because no one knows what to refer him for, right, because he hasn't done the work on content creation or social proof.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: So I think ultimately they're all important.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: If you're starting from zero, start anywhere it doesn't matter.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: But if you're a little bit further along, it's important to analyze what you haven't been doing and think about that.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: And I'll actually just mention for anyone who's interested I have a free scored test, a scored self assessment, that can actually help you quantify that, and people can get it for free at doryclarkcom slash tool kit and it can help you think through where are you stronger, where are you weaker and therefore where should you be spending your time as you're building your expert brand?
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: We'll add that in the episode notes as well.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: As we end here, I think some of there's some things that stay the same and that we need to keep continually thinking about and working on when it comes to personal branding and re-evention.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: But what do you think some of the key trends or shifts are going to be in the next few years around this, particularly whether it's AI or usage of X, y or Z technology?
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you're seeing that's going to really spin us to a different space with this, or is it really going to be continuing what we've been doing?
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, of course, you're right, there are always key pieces that stay the same.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I think probably one of the most interesting things that we're really just starting to wrap our arms around is AI, because AI is fantastic at creating a lot of fairly high quality content pretty rapidly.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Ai as it stands now is not as good as the best writers, but it is better than average writers.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: And so you can say oh, okay, here's the transcript of my podcast.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Now write a newsletter from it.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Now create 25 tweets, now turn it into an Instagram post, and it will do it.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: And these are things that before you would have had to pay a social media agency to do, or you would have had to take hours and hours of time.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: And so, as a result, there's an important quote from years ago by the economist and computer scientist Herbert Simon, and he said basically, whenever one thing becomes really, really plentiful in the environment, something else becomes scarce commensurately.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And so he said along those lines when information becomes very available, attention becomes very scarce, and so this certainly has been the trend for a while, but I think AI is going to accelerate it to an almost ridiculous, unprecedented degree, because all of the things that I mentioned, that would have taken a person multiple hours to do.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Ai can do in, you know, 15 seconds, and so if everyone is doing that, the volume of noise is going to be incredibly high, and so we have to get smart and thoughtful about who are we trying to reach?
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: How can we reach them with a laser like focus and really speak to their needs, Because a scattershot approach is just going to get lost.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, it becomes even more important asking the question is how do I get attention of those who are in my niche or who I'm solving a problem for?
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Because there's just I just think of the word cacophony or chaos when I think of, like all the information that comes at us every day, in whatever form we're looking at it.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Totally, and it can be overwhelming.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: So the key is to key in on what we can do to create one connection and keep attention.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: It sounds like, and how we do that.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: We can figure that out within our own personal brand and how we do that in our messaging.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Excellent.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for being on the Bull Downage.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Our time went really quick.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: All the information about Dory, her books, the assessment she spoke about, are in the episode notes.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Lee, thank you, it's a pleasure talking with you.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.