Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Dorie Clark - Reinventing You Author | The Hidden Cost of Personal Transformation

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Dorie Clark - Reinventing You Author | The Hidden Cost of Personal Transformation · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  I had a lot of visions in my 20s about what I wanted to do professionally.
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  It took me a while to find my footing. Eventually, I ran a nonprofit and perhaps surprisingly,
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  that actually opened my eyes to entrepreneurship. She didn't just teach strategy. She redefined
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  what it means to stand out in a crowded world. Dory Clark has been named one of the top 50 business
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  thinkers in the world multiple times and recognized as the number one communication coach globally.
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  It's not really where you start, but it absolutely is about where you end up. Are you open to
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  recognizing that this needs to be done? If you are, it actually does open up a world of
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  opportunity. When you are reinventing, we often make a very casual assumption, we just assume,
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  that the people who will be our strongest boosters in reinvention, which is your close friends
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  in your family, but for a lot of reinventions, that actually is not true because your
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  reinventions sometimes threatens their identity. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman and a
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  frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, she teaches executive education at Columbia
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  Business School. Her work has helped professionals all over the world build influence, amplify their
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  ideas, and reinvent their careers. One of the really effective ways to get known for your ideas
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  is to codify something. Sometimes we just have to wait much longer than we want for the goals
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  that we want to achieve, but you keep at it oftentimes, it really will work.
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  You started in philosophy and theology. You shifted to journalism, politics, and then before
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  all of you did all of this before finding your path to business, thought, leadership. So
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  how did these early, I don't want to call them failures, but sort of reinventions or iterations
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  of who you are. How did they shape your approach to reinvention and to long-term thinking?
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  I had a lot of visions in my 20s about what I wanted to do professionally, and the first one was
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  that I wanted to be a university professor. I'd gone through and gotten my master's degree and I
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  thought, okay, I'll get a doctor and I'll be a professor, and I ended up getting turned down
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  by all the doctoral programs I applied to. So I had to scramble and find a plan B, and I decided
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  that would become a journalist, which has similar DNA to being a professor. You're writing,
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  you're reading, you're talking to people, and that was a really satisfying career for me,
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  but unfortunately it didn't last very long, because I ended up getting laid off about a year
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  into my career as a journalist, and because there was, at the time I thought it was a recession,
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  but actually it was really just the start of a cascade where the news industry got essentially
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  demonetized, and we now have about half as many journalists in America as we did 20 years ago.
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  I mean, the numbers are so stark, so not surprisingly, I couldn't get a journalism job anywhere else,
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  so I had to reinvent again. I worked in politics on a couple of political campaigns, which were
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  very high profile, but Governor's race and a presidential race, but they both lost. So it took
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  me a while to find my footing. Eventually I ran a nonprofit for a couple of years, and perhaps
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  surprisingly, that actually opened my eyes to entrepreneurship, because I realized that running
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  the nonprofit, if you're doing it well, you're basically running a small business, and I thought,
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  oh, well, this is how you do it. I didn't realize there was how you do it. So I decided that it
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  wouldn't actually be that much of a stretch to go into business for myself, which is what I've
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  been doing for the past 18 years now. So interesting. So a couple ideas out of that. First of all,
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  I want to understand, because I want to talk about the nonprofit and entrepreneurship, because I actually
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  believe that most people don't treat nonprofits like businesses, and they should. That's a whole other
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  aside. When you think about reinvention, I think that one idea around reinvention is really simple,
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  but very hard for people. It's the will. It's the grit. It's a determination to keep reinventing
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  again and again and again and again, because it takes a lot of energy. I mean, anytime I've switched
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  careers and you've done it a few times yourself in the past, it's like, okay, I'm starting from scratch.
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  Where do I even begin? And then it's a lot for people. It's a skill that when you master it,
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  I think it's a great skill, because it really future proofs yourself. But I would say that most
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  people defer to not reinventing, whether or not they are in a career, nine to five W tube, and they
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  just keep doing their thing their whole life. Or even if they're entrepreneurial, they build one
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  thing and they just want to keep building the same thing again and again and maybe they haven't
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  exited and they build the same company again after the non-compete expires. So what is the
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  strategy? What is the mindset? What is the hack? The skill that allows you to keep reinventing
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  successfully? Incident really clarified this for me early on. I had just written my first book,
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  which was called reinventing you. And I was doing this like book fair where you were signing books
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  and things like that. And a woman came up to the table where I was at and she picked up the book
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  and started flipping through it. And I think she didn't quite understand that I was the author because
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  she probably wouldn't have said this if she did. But she looked at it for a minute or two and then
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  she flung it down. She seemed to have this great animus toward it and she just muttered under her
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  breath. Well, I'm over 50 too late for me. And I thought, oh my god, that's like the saddest thing
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  I've ever heard. Because of course, I mean, the average lifespan of an American woman now is in
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  their mid 80s for people who are younger, you know, under 30. It's going to be mid 90s if not more.
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  And so the idea that you are writing off 30, 40 years of your life and just saying, well, I'm done
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  now just seems so ominous to me and so depressing. And I thought, wow, you know, this is this is
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  what we're fighting against. This is what we really need to help people understand. Why do you think
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  people are so comfortable writing off 40 years of their life? I think that a part of it, a big part
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  of it is to your point exhaustion. They feel worn down by life. And so they don't feel like they
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  have the energy to do it. I think a lot of it is a lack of self efficacy that they
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  feel like life happens to them and they don't have a lot of control over their circumstances.
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  And I think what's great about entrepreneurship is that fundamentally, I mean, that mentality is
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  almost antithetical to the idea of entrepreneurship. Like when you have an entrepreneurial mentality,
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  the entire point is that you can influence circumstances that you can create something that
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  didn't exist. And you know, we are not passive consumers of our life. We are people who are actors
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  and creating movement and momentum. And I really want more people to be able to to feel that.
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  And of course, you know, this is the ultimate, you can't lead a horse to water kind of thing.
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  In reinventing you, I tried really hard because I had gone through a lot of reinventions,
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  mostly not willingly, but because things didn't work out. And it felt hard to me. It felt
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  complicated to me. And I wanted to create a resource that would make it easier for other people.
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  But of course, the truth is if you read the book and you're motivated, hopefully it does make
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  it easier for you. But if someone is just writing themselves off before they even engage,
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  there's not much you can do for those kinds of folks. They have to be going into a willing
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  already. I mean, or have, you know, there's a great quote from Nietzsche, which is a big enough
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  why can endure anyhow. And so the truth is, you don't necessarily have to be excited about
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  your reinvention. You know, I mean, a lot of times things are foisted upon us. I didn't love it
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  that I was laid off from my newspaper job. I would have preferred to keep being a journalist.
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  But I needed to pay bills, honestly. And the cheap skates that I worked for
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  gave me four days of severance pay. So yeah, I had worked there for a year. So they're like,
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  well, you get a year, you know, you get a week's pay for every year you worked here. So they had
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  me work on Monday. And then they're like, well, pay you through the end of the week. Like, wow,
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  that's super kind of you. Then the next day I was laid off on Monday, September 10th, 2001.
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  So the next day is like the worst day in American history to be looking for a job. I don't think
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  anybody's trying to hire right then. That is exactly right. So I just thought, okay, the things
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  are getting real here. And I realized that whether I wanted to, you know, mourn the state of affairs
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  of losing my job, I didn't have time to. I didn't have the opportunity to. I needed, I needed
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  to find a way to bring in revenue. And so my reinvention process was hastened by that exigency.
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  And I think it's, it's not really where you start in terms of your desire for reinvention. But
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  it absolutely is about where you end up. Are you, are you open to recognizing that this needs to
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  be done? Whether you want to or not, it needs to be done. And if you are, then I think it actually
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  does open up a world of opportunity. So one, one thing that I think people will be curious about
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  because you were saying that you were forced to reinvent yourself. But maybe I'm missing
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  part of that story because I don't feel as if yes, you were laid off. But to reinvent yourself into
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  a new person and a new category, why would you have not just gone back and tried to get an apply
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  for a hundred other journalist jobs, for example? So there was a, there was something that prompted
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  complete reinvention versus just doing the same thing again and again and again and again.
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  Yeah, absolutely. And that was additional rejection because I understand.
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  The main goal that I had was, you know, in Boston, it's true. If I had been super motivated,
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  I suppose I could have applied for journalism jobs all over America. But I wanted to stay in Boston.
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  And the big game in town was the Boston Globe. And so I thought, great, okay, I'll try to work for
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  the globe. And they were having a hiring freeze because in the immediate post 9-11 aftermath,
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  they froze everything. So they weren't taking on new hires. And that lasted for probably
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  six plus months. But eventually they did come to me. And they, in the meantime, had invented a
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  new category, which they called, and forget what it was. But it was like, you weren't an actual
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  reporter. You were like, like a AAA reporter or something. It was just something ridiculous.
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  There was a classification that they gave you as an excuse to pay you less money. And they
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  said, well, would you like that? Love when companies figure out how to do that, right?
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  Yeah, it was clever. It was clever. But my pride was too great, Scott. And I'm just like, no,
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  I am not going to accept your crappy underpaid job. I refuse to do it. And so I ended up
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  switching over at that point into working in politics. So I think that what you experienced at that
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  point is what a lot of people experienced during COVID. And getting laid off from companies they
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  thought they would never get to get laid off of. They would never get laid off from excuse me.
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  So when that happened to you and you pursued the next thing and the next thing and the next thing,
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  what was your personal view on career security, future proofing yourself? Did you approach the
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  next thing with more trepidation or did you jump into it just as quickly as you jumped into journalism?
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  How does this sort of form and shape your worldview? And I'm assuming that your worldview towards
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  reinvention towards playing a long game towards future proofing yourself, that's evolved over time.
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  It talked to me about some of the things that you started to even think about in your life,
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  how you wanted to approach your next career so that this couldn't happen again.
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  Yeah, well, you're absolutely right that after the experience of getting laid off from my,
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  you know, really my first real job, my first full-time job, it sinks in very viscerally
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  that jobs are not secure things. I mean, I didn't see it coming at all and then you get called in
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  at four o'clock in the afternoon and you have whatever, 40 minutes to clean out your desk and be
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  gone by the end of the day. And that's it. And so things really can turn on a dime and I realized
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  that a lot in that moment. But I think that another moment that crystallized it for me,
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  I mean, when you're reinventing, there's a lot of push pull because for many people,
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  unless you, you know, have spent a long time really, you know, longing for this new direction,
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  there's things that you miss about the past and you really can't get it back. I mean,
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  this is kind of this liminal state where you know you need to move forward, but you kind of don't
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  want to fully. And so for me, it played out with a phone conversation that I had. I was freelancing
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  as a journalist to make ends meet after I got laid off. And so I was, you know, hoping to get hired
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  on by the globe, you know, trying to scrape some stories together. I get paid $200 of story.
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  So I was trying to write as many as I could. That's not a lot. Yeah. Yeah, it was a little hard to,
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  to make rent that way, but, but I was, I was trying. But I got a call from a guy who I knew because
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  he was a political consultant in town. And I often had interviewed him for the politics stories that
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  I had done. And he knew obviously that I had lost my job because I wasn't calling him anymore.
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  And he had just signed on to be a consultant for this governor's race. And they were staffing up.
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  And he, then you do a communications director. And he reached out and said, oh, you know, would
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  you, would you be interested in working for us? And, you know, and ultimately being the press
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  secretary for this campaign. And immediately on the phone, I was like, oh, that's so nice of you.
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  But, you know, no, thank you. That's, that's not for me. And, you know, he was like, oh, okay,
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  well, you know, figured out, I'd ask. And I hung up. And I, I just sat there and thought about it
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  for about an hour. I just, you know, sat stock still in my chair, just thinking like, wait,
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  I had this instinctive reaction. And the instinctive reaction was, no, I'm a journalist. That's my
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  identity. And so therefore, this doesn't fit my identity. But it turns out for a lot of us,
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  when we're reinventing, there's, there's a lag between who we actually are sometimes in the world
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  and how we think of ourselves. And I just, as I was sitting there, I'm like, okay, I am a journalist,
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  air quotes. But I'm not earning a proper living. And the paper that I want to work for has a
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  hiring freeze, they tell me they don't know when they're going to lift it. This could go on for
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  years. This is kind of ridiculous, because the guy was coming to me with a really prime offer,
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  with a, you know, kind of sexy campaign for governor. And I thought, you know, you're being ridiculous.
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  You are being given an opportunity. You can't let your identity hold you back. You need to change.
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  And so I called him back like an hour later. And I said, actually, no, I would be interested
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  in coming in for an interview. I love that idea, because I, I also find my identity getting wrapped
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  up in the thing that I'm building. And it, it completely, it completely, it blinds you to
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  opportunity. So in what way did that play out for you, Scott? I think that for the longest time.
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  So remember what before we started recording? I said, since the last company, I've tried to
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  like build other companies. My identity has always been wrapped up in this idea of
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  becoming an entrepreneur and building something from scratch. And technically, that's what I've
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  done with the podcast, but I didn't equate podcasts to business because I always
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  very much incorrectly idolize like the SF, you know, build a tech company from scratch. And I've
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  never done it from scratch. I have joined a company as co-founder, CRO helped them grow,
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  helped them scale and be acquired. But for me was this silly little idea that I wanted to build
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  something a tech company from scratch. That was always what I wanted to do because the people that
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  I looked up to, that's what they had done. And I think this plays out again and again and again
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  in anyone's life. And it's not like listen, I've had identities that I had to let go of in the
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  past that have allowed me to do bigger and better things. Even from a young age, I mean my identity
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  was very different. It was wrapped up in almost what my parents did for a living. And that's what I
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  thought I had to do. And my parents saying, you know, you should go to law school and that's what I
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  wrapped my identity into. So when I took a different career path, that was very hard. So it's not,
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  so you can accomplish overcoming this identity tied into your job, your career, what your definition
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  of success is. But then it's very easy to let that thing, that identity that you just created
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  start to consume you again. And then so yeah, so fast forward, I mean over the past, you know,
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  five years now I've tried to build other things, nothing that successfully. So now I'm letting go
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  of the building a tech company from scratch identity and then being okay with, well, you've actually
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  built something that's quite successful, which is this show. So lean into that for the time being
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  and see how far you can take it and stop building the show over here and then building companies
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  over here because it's not serving you. But it took me almost five and a half years to figure that
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  out. So and and I mean, it's not like it's not like I was hurting, but it still wasn't serving me
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  optimally, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's it's identities can be very useful as a
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  motivating factor, an aspirational factor, but we have to be careful that it doesn't start consuming us
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  or it doesn't start to become a straight jacket. Get me blind to opportunities, right? So get me
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  blind to the fact that I could have tripled down on this that I could have, you know, time, time
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  matters and then you only have so many hours in a day. So okay, so can I spend time trying to build
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  a new company or think of a new product or spin up a new landing page or whatever or can I do
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  another interview with an awesome person and we can have great conversation and that already gets
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  pushed out to, you know, a couple hundred thousand people if not more. So why not, right? And I
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  think that that's something that a lot of people struggle with. I think it ties into self-awareness.
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  I'm and I also think that having people around you that can help wake you up and help you see your
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  reality is very important. Like for example, like Gina, she's my better half, you haven't met her yet,
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  one day you will because you're down the street. But when I get too wrapped up into the work that I'm
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  doing, like she's a great, she's a great voice that just helps pull me out of my identity being wrapped
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  up into the thing because she's like, let's take a look at what's actually going on in your life,
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  what's actually working, what's actually not, and common sense sometimes isn't common.
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  So she just makes it very clear. She's just very logical. She's like, look at Scott. This is
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  what's going on. This is what's going right. Just focus on that and stop with all the other, you
• 19:52
  know, bullshit over here. So, but yes, it's something that I think everybody succumbs to. I think that
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  the sad thing is that some people just don't escape it after five years. Some people never escape
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  it their entire life. Yeah. And that's really sad. That woman who was 50 years old, she just never
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  escaped what her identity was. And at 50 years old, even though it sounds like there was still stress
• 20:15
  and struggle in her life, she still wasn't able to pull herself out of it and see that I have 40 years
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  plus minus left on this planet. Let's see what almost the same amount of time that I have been
• 20:28
  alive already, I can go do something else. I can completely reinvent my life and do a new thing.
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  So yeah, it's a tough one. It's a very tough one. And how do you make sure that the identity
• 20:41
  that you have right now is serving you the best? Or is it always dangerous to tie your identity
• 20:50
  with your vocation and your job? Well, you know, you're in the tech world. So I'm sure you've heard
• 20:56
  this, but there's a great framing or formulation that they use often in Silicon Valley, which is
• 21:02
  strong opinions weekly held. And I like that a lot because I think it's great to have identities
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  that you hold that you get excited about that you feel like are motivational in some way. I'm
• 21:17
  Italian American or I'm a husband and father or I'm a tech founder or whatever it is. Great. If
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  it speaks to you, go all in on it, but also recognize that things change, you change,
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  you know, holding too tightly to identities is how we get ourselves in trouble. You know, it's
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  it's a person who's, you know, God forbid, they get divorced or their spouse dies or something
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  like that. And then all of a sudden they don't have meaning if that was the thing that was holding
• 21:46
  them together or their startup goes belly up. And they don't know what to do with themselves
• 21:52
  because their worth was tied so intimately to that founder identity and, you know, well, who am I
• 21:58
  now? I'm nothing now. And of course, you're not nothing. You're so many things. But we need to
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  be loosened off to recognize that it's okay. You can have multiple identities. They can change
• 22:10
  and it, it shouldn't chain us to something. What would be the hardest part of reinvention that
• 22:17
  nobody really speaks about? So the piece, you know, I've spent a decade talking about this and
• 22:24
  writing about this and the piece that keeps coming up that I think surprises people the most
• 22:30
  is that when you are reinventing, we often make a very casual assumption, you know, something that
• 22:36
  we don't really think about a lot because we just assume that the people who will be our strongest
• 22:42
  boosters in reinvention are the people who typically are our strongest boosters, which is your
• 22:46
  close friends and your family. And it's interesting. But for a lot of reinventions, that actually is
• 22:54
  not true because your reinventions sometimes threatens their identity. And so because of that,
• 23:00
  they can actually sometimes sometimes because they love you, they want to be the devil's advocate,
• 23:06
  you know, oh, have you really thought this through? This could be a terrible idea. Sometimes it's
• 23:10
  because they want that identity. They want to hold on, you know, no, I'm a lawyer's wife.
• 23:17
  I'm not a painter's wife or, you know, whatever it is. And so we take for granted that they will
• 23:25
  see things the way that we do that they'll be supportive. But we often need to treat our friends
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  and family and it sounds weird to say, but like a constituency where we have to prove our serious
• 23:34
  ness where we have to almost, you know, show them our business plans as it were so that they
• 23:40
  understand that, you know, no, I'm not being careless with this. I'm not being casual. I'm not throwing
• 23:45
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• 26:29
  NetSuite.com-scot-clary. What would be your advice for somebody, should they,
• 26:36
  is there a strategy to get people on board with your reinvention, or is there a point?
• 26:42
  If possible, sometimes it's not if they're your spouse, unless you take drastic, drastic measures,
• 26:49
  but say your friends, your family, your parents, is there a point where you have to limit
• 26:55
  your exposure because it's going to jeopardize your own reinvention?
• 26:57
  I mean, sometimes you might need to in extreme situations, but typically, what I would advise is,
• 27:06
  in this does not apply for forestry inventions. If you're laid off, people understand.
• 27:11
  You were laid off for us. They want you to get a job, yeah. They're generally behind that.
• 27:16
  But for the cases where it's more voluntary, especially if it's moving from something that is
• 27:21
  perceived as more prestigious or more secure to something that is less so, that's where you need to
• 27:29
  essentially come up with a strategy, a marketing plan. It's useful to war game. What are the
• 27:34
  objections going to be? And what are the places where your, I see an air quotes, your position looks
• 27:41
  weak, that you need to have responses for? And so, one thing that comes up a lot is, you know,
• 27:46
  well, have you thought this through? Are you serious about this? Are you going to change next week?
• 27:51
  And so, you know, people sometimes think that if someone has an idea that's out of the norm,
• 27:57
  that it's because they're flighty or they're a dilatant or something. And so, one important thing
• 28:02
  is to think about what is your consistency strategy in terms of communicating with other people.
• 28:07
  Maybe it's communicating on social media or what have you to show that no, no, it's not a passing
• 28:13
  fad that I want to become a photographer. I love photography. I'm passionate about it. This is
• 28:18
  the thing that I want to do. I'm not going to change next week. Part of it is for the people who
• 28:24
  are closest to you where this would impact it, showing that you have thought through the financial
• 28:29
  ramifications and that you are not being reckless or irresponsible with your decisions.
• 28:34
  So, it's those kind of things that I think are important.
• 28:37
  But we're talking about reinvention and another thing you speak about and you wrote a book about
• 28:41
  this is the long game. So, interesting, interesting ideas because there's ways that these ideas can
• 28:49
  even conflict to a degree, right? So, reinvention means that what you're doing isn't working. You should
• 28:54
  reinvent yourself. Long game is you stick with something long enough and it's going to work out.
• 29:00
  Very simply. So, how do you reconcile these two ideas? So, that woman who's 50 years old,
• 29:06
  she is playing the long game. Don't get me wrong. She's playing the very long game. She's playing
• 29:10
  the rest of my life long game. So, how do you balance these two ideas of reinvention and long game?
• 29:16
  So, you're absolutely right that under some circumstances, they could be viewed as being
• 29:21
  intention. I like to think that this complementary in the sense that one of the frameworks that I share
• 29:27
  in the long game is what I call optimized for interesting. And specifically, what I mean by that
• 29:33
  is. I love that. I love that. I mean, you know, we've got to our knowledge. We have one life and
• 29:43
  we need to keep ourselves engaged. And I think for a lot of people, the idea
• 29:48
  assuming that we do live to 90, you know, you're probably not going to stop work 40 years before
• 29:58
  that, right? You're probably doing some things to it either. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's been proven
• 30:02
  to be pretty bad for your mental health if you literally do nothing. So, let's say you have a
• 30:07
  career for 50 years, 60 years, which is not impossible. Normal people actually kind of get bored
• 30:13
  if they're literally doing the same thing. And so, I think the question to ask if we're looking
• 30:18
  from the 30,000-foot view about what makes a robust life for ourselves is how do you keep yourself
• 30:24
  engaged? How do you create a project for yourself that will an intellectual project that will engage
• 30:30
  you for your life? And so, optimizing for interesting is really about finding ways to seek out that
• 30:36
  learning edge for yourself. And so, reinvention, I think, is kind of a key part of that. That's
• 30:41
  interesting. So, it's not about pursuing one thing for forever. It's this mindset of always
• 30:47
  being engaged, always learning new things, always upskilling, always discovering, always exploring.
• 30:56
  Is there just to sort of go back to like that first idea, though, of reinvention versus long
• 31:00
  game? Because I think there is something there that people can learn from. Outside of the
• 31:05
  high level, 30,000-foot view of playing the long game and being engaged and just living a fulfilling
• 31:13
  life, if somebody is listening to this and they're like, okay, I get it. There are points in my
• 31:20
  life when I should reinvent myself. What is your litmus test or brometer for you should reinvent,
• 31:27
  and you should go down a new path? Is it fulfillment? Is it happiness? Is it an ambiguous KPI,
• 31:34
  or is it outside of forced? Because of course, I mean, if you're late off, you're late off. But say
• 31:40
  somebody is 50, 55 years old. They've been doing the same thing their whole life. They just feel
• 31:49
  they just feel like a zombie every single day, which I'm pretty sure that happens to quite a
• 31:53
  few of us. They are looking forward to retirement, but they don't really have plans after they retire.
• 32:01
  Should they reinvent themselves? Should they do something new? Should they just keep carrying on
• 32:07
  and find a hobby? What's the playbook to live a good fulfilling life?
• 32:13
  Yeah, so you're asking an important question, probably the important question as we think about
• 32:19
  how to really find meaning in what we're doing. I think the first answer which needs to be said
• 32:26
  is that a lot of it depends on your financial circumstances. If you are in a place where
• 32:32
  finances are really tight, you sort of need to do what you need to do. And so that's a place where
• 32:38
  great, get your hobbies, find things that you can do that bring you pleasure and enjoyment,
• 32:44
  and possibly give you new skills that you can leverage. But in the meantime, if you need to keep
• 32:49
  doing the thing to earn revenue, then do that. But assuming that we have basic needs met and you
• 32:55
  have enough of a trajectory that you can actually think about making changes and it's not going to
• 33:01
  have dire consequences, there's a framework that I share in the long game, which I call thinking in
• 33:07
  waves. And I feel like that could potentially be helpful here. Ultimately, when we think about
• 33:14
  how to determine when to make a change of some kind, I like to think of our progress in terms of
• 33:23
  learning and mastery as a series of four waves. So the first one is the learning wave, which is,
• 33:29
  you know, we start something new. Obviously, there's a huge learning curve. You're just taking it all
• 33:34
  in. You can't even know it's going on. You're just like, okay, how does this world function? You
• 33:38
  know, who are the people? How do they fit together? What am I supposed to be doing? So, you know,
• 33:43
  that's pretty clear. You're just learning how the game is played. In the middle, you have phases two
• 33:50
  and three, which is creating and sharing. And this is the place where once you've taken in enough
• 34:00
  information that you know what's going on, that's the place where you need to begin to add value of
• 34:06
  your own. Because otherwise, if you're always in the learning phase, you're not actually contributing
• 34:12
  that much. You're just, you're just sort of being as a sponge. Like, what are you, what are you
• 34:15
  there for? Like it's nice for you, but it's not very useful to your company or it's not very
• 34:19
  useful to the people around you. Once you have a sufficient understanding, you need to start sharing
• 34:25
  your perspective. You need to start coming up with with your own ideas and putting it out there.
• 34:31
  And also the, you know, sharing part is connecting with other people, building relationships and
• 34:38
  finding ways that the pieces fit together. And the act of doing those things, you know, actually
• 34:44
  becoming a proactive contributor to the environment that you're in, that's how you make yourself really
• 34:49
  valuable. And you can build up a pretty good head esteem for your career or whatever you're working
• 34:54
  on there. Then you do that long enough and it actually starts to work really well. And that's when
• 35:01
  we get into phase four, which is what I call the reaping phase. And that is where you're basically
• 35:06
  clicking on all cylinders. You are successful. You are respected. You're making good money. You
• 35:12
  know, all the things. This is, this is the place that most of us want to stay our entire lives
• 35:18
  because it feels so good. And this is the place where we feel like, you know what, the reason I've
• 35:23
  worked so hard is to get here to the reaping phase. And the fundamental challenge for us,
• 35:30
  very fallible humans, is to understand that at a certain point, we need to cut ourselves off
• 35:36
  at the trough and actually go back to the learning phase. In the long game, I interviewed Marshall
• 35:43
  Goldsmith, the well-known executive. He's been on here too. Yeah, he's great. He definitely is.
• 35:48
  One of the stories he told, which I thought was interesting, was early in his career. I mean,
• 35:53
  the way that most of us know Marshall, where he kind of came to public prominence, was,
• 35:58
  you know, he's written some best-selling books, triggers, and what got you here won't get you
• 36:02
  there and things like that. That spread his ideas and built his repute. Before that, he was just
• 36:08
  a very successful, you know, highly paid executive coach that the people he worked with knew,
• 36:14
  but the people outside of it didn't. And he told me that at that point, kind of early in his career,
• 36:19
  in his thirties, basically, his mentor came to him and said, Marshall, you're very successful.
• 36:27
  And Marshall was like, well, thank you very much. Yes. And his mentor said, you're actually too successful.
• 36:34
  You're getting lazy with your success because all you're doing is just doing client work and
• 36:41
  earning money. You need to start pushing yourself and you need to start sharing your ideas publicly
• 36:47
  because that's what's going to take you to the next level. And Marshall recalled that he actually
• 36:52
  just sat on that for several years that he didn't take action because it was so nice to keep
• 36:56
  earning money. Of course. You have people. So comfortable. Yeah. Absolutely. But he eventually
• 37:01
  realized that his mentor was right and that he was doing himself and his ideas and his legacy,
• 37:08
  a disservice. If he didn't actually take a step back from, you know, all the people throwing
• 37:12
  cash at him to embark upon a challenging and difficult process, you know, I mean, he didn't
• 37:20
  have any guarantee that his book would be successful. It could it could have been a waste of time
• 37:24
  that took him away from revenue. Instead, it worked out really well. But there is a gamble. And
• 37:31
  that's why not everybody is willing to do it. But it's really important for our growth to eventually
• 37:37
  be willing to say, you know what? I'm going to take myself back to the learning phase. Yeah. And I
• 37:42
  would assume that when you take yourself back to the learning phase, like, like anything, when you
• 37:48
  start learning something, you really don't know what you don't know. And then opportunities start to
• 37:52
  present themselves, new directions, start to present themselves. I mean, with Marshall, now he's
• 37:58
  built a massive brand and he's built a huge audience. And I actually, when I interviewed him,
• 38:03
  I think he's taking all of his knowledge and he's codifying it into some sort of AI tool or
• 38:07
  something like that. Yeah, he's big on the Marshall plot. Absolutely. What do you explore and reinvent?
• 38:14
  Like, what are you exploring and reinventing right now about you? Well, so for me, the, you know,
• 38:19
  there are lots of small ways that I try to push the envelope. But the biggest, which I've actually
• 38:23
  been pursuing for close to nine years now, is I decided that I wanted to learn to write musical
• 38:28
  theater. And yeah, and I had never done it. This was not, you know, people say, oh, you know,
• 38:33
  was it your, your childhood dream that you're reconnecting with? No, I didn't grow up around musical
• 38:38
  theater. My parents didn't know anything about it. I had gone to, you know, they took me to two
• 38:44
  musicals, like, you know, the first, I don't know, 18 years of my life. So I really was just not
• 38:50
  familiar with this genre. But I went to a show with a friend and about nine years ago. And
• 38:58
  I just kind of hit me. I'm like, oh, I need to learn how to do this. And so I was really starting
• 39:04
  from zero. So for me, this was very much a case of, you know, walking my own talk. I had to reinvent
• 39:11
  myself and starting from zero part, part of the reason also, you would ask the question, you know,
• 39:17
  why is it that people are so resistant to reinventing themselves? And a big part of it is that we
• 39:22
  get comfortable with mastery. We like how it feels to be good at something. And by the time
• 39:28
  your mid career, you probably are pretty good at the thing that that has been your main gig.
• 39:34
  And so to start somewhere else and to sort of suck to not know what you're doing to have
• 39:40
  everyone around you better. I mean, I entered this musical theater training program. And,
• 39:45
  you know, I'm like, oh, good, this is where I need to be. It's a musical theater training program.
• 39:49
  Well, I had never written musical theater. And meanwhile, like to my left is two people who are
• 39:54
  graduates of NYU Tish, you know, they had, they had master's degree in musical theater to my
• 39:59
  right is a guy who actually is a music professor at a university. You know, I mean, it's just, it's
• 40:05
  a very threatening crowd. It's a threatening crowd. Yeah. And, you know, immersing yourself in that,
• 40:12
  I just had, I literally had to remind, I mean, I'm better now, much better now. But early on,
• 40:16
  I just had to remind myself after class every time I would have my little mantra, like,
• 40:21
  you do not derive yourself worth from this. You derive yourself worth from other activities.
• 40:26
  Well, so this is an interesting thought. When you explore, does that have crossover utility in
• 40:33
  the other things that you do or is it for pure enjoyment? And is there, is there a benefit to
• 40:39
  having some sort of crossover application? Very obviously, or maybe even not so obviously, maybe
• 40:46
  writing musical theater lets you think in a different way or lets you be more creative. And maybe
• 40:50
  I'm just reaching, maybe it doesn't at all. Maybe it's just a total hobby. But have you ever
• 40:54
  thought about those ideas about what am I doing on the side? Is it helped my main thing or is that
• 40:59
  not something that like a thought exercise you go through? So I'm not, I didn't start out doing it
• 41:04
  because I wanted some kind of ancillary benefit. I started out doing it for its own reason. I think
• 41:10
  that initially, and probably for a long time, you don't even know what the benefits are because
• 41:16
  they kind of become manifest in the doing. But certainly, it has caused me to think much more
• 41:24
  deeply about story structure and narrative, which is helpful in terms of storytelling and writing
• 41:30
  and things like that that are valuable in a business context. And I've met really some amazing
• 41:36
  people through musical theater. I mean, it's interesting because it allows you to connect with
• 41:41
  different people on sort of different levels. And so there are, there are people that I've met
• 41:51
  that are really cool, you know, Broadway actors and directors and things like that that I probably
• 41:57
  just wouldn't have run across if it weren't for that world or that overlap. So it's brought more
• 42:02
  interesting people into my life. It's also been technically helpful. I mean, I,
• 42:08
  a mantra that I have in terms of how do you find like assistance or people that work for you
• 42:14
  is I like working with artists and I've done this for well over a decade because it turns out
• 42:22
  they're very smart. They're very literate and they're usually underpaid, which means that they are,
• 42:27
  they're looking for work. They're looking for a good work. You know, good work is virtual.
• 42:31
  So anyway, I for over five years now have employed somebody that I met in the musical theater
• 42:38
  program at, you know, first as my assistant now is my chief of staff. And I've, you know,
• 42:44
  I actually call it the composer full employment program because a guy did my website who was a
• 42:48
  composer that I met in the program. Another, another composer was my VA sort of doing spot tasks
• 42:56
  for me. So yeah, you meet a lot of great folks that that can be quite helpful. And I mean,
• 43:02
  I don't think that if you're exploring it has to, it has to really have this
• 43:07
  cillary benefit to your main thing. But I am a big fan of combinatorial thinking and bringing in
• 43:14
  all these disparate concepts and bringing them and helping them just enhance your worldview.
• 43:21
  Outside of finding great talent to hire and great people to network with,
• 43:25
  I think that there's all these different benefits. I think that I believe that if you,
• 43:30
  if you tie your identity to one thing and you become, you know, you achieve mastery,
• 43:36
  I still believe to some degree you can put a ceiling on that mastery by not seeking out other
• 43:42
  influence and input. I think that the most interesting people in the world that you would look
• 43:47
  to and say, oh, they've killed it in their field. They've achieved whatever level of success.
• 43:54
  They are multi-dimensional, these people, human beings. They do a lot of different things,
• 43:58
  multifaceted. They all are multi-dimensional, multifaceted. They have a lot of different passions
• 44:03
  and hobbies. Yes, they are laser focused on one thing. But when you start to speak to them,
• 44:07
  they can actually, one of my favorite measures of whether or not I'll be interested in a person
• 44:15
  is whether or not you can just ask them a question about anything. And will they have an
• 44:19
  interesting unique perspective? Yeah. And it can't just be chance that the smartest people in the
• 44:28
  world could speak to you about anything and everything. And they're very interesting just to chat
• 44:34
  with. I think there's something there that probably just helps by exploring new ideas, by having
• 44:40
  passions, by having hobbies. It probably just helps with thinking process or creative process.
• 44:44
  I don't know. I'm not a scientist, but I just notice it in people. Yeah. No, I think it's true. I
• 44:50
  mean, I've always worked hard to try to be as much of a polymath as I can because I think
• 44:59
  it probably helps on a lot of levels. But a big one is just being able to connect with different
• 45:04
  people about all kinds of things. And so, you know, it irritates me a little bit. I mean,
• 45:11
  sometimes people get very righteous about, you know, the no news diet and things like that. And
• 45:16
  I understand I don't want to read, you know, 10,000 articles about Donald Trump. It's fine. You
• 45:22
  don't have to read them. It's too many. But it's also true that I think reading the newspaper or
• 45:27
  reading other sources of information about the world in the news media is important. It's powerful
• 45:34
  because you understand things. I mean, you know, if you meet somebody from, you know, from a certain
• 45:39
  country and there's been unrest, you're able to say, Oh, you know, how's your family? Like what's
• 45:45
  what's going on for you there? And the fact that you've heard of the place and you know, what's
• 45:49
  going on in the place and you can actually have a conversation is very meaningful. And there's
• 45:54
  a million examples like that. I saw I noticed it because in Canada, we are not as
• 46:00
  we are interested in politics, but not to the same degree as you see in the US. And I think what I
• 46:09
  see is I see people's identity getting wrapped into political parties and lack of exploring
• 46:15
  context and ideas outside of that main ideology that you subscribe to. It creates a lot of
• 46:22
  animosity and anger, which I don't think is healthy for anyone. And I think that we've seen that
• 46:26
  play out again and again and again. So just to be a better human being and to be a better person,
• 46:31
  it's really important to seek out ideas that are outside the realm of what you're used to, whether
• 46:38
  or not they conflict with what you believe or whether or not they're just adjacent to what you believe.
• 46:44
  But the point is like it helps you become a better person. It helps you become a more empathetic
• 46:49
  person. It helps you become a person that can understand different points of view. And like you
• 46:52
  said, and like have a conversation with somebody halfway around the world because you may not understand
• 46:57
  their circumstances completely, but at least, at least you're educated and at least you're trying to
• 47:02
  learn something that's not in your core competency. And it's not a political podcast, obviously,
• 47:06
  but I think that it's just listen, if it can help you form greater bonds with people that are
• 47:11
  literally across the aisle in politics, think about what it can do for your career or whatever you're
• 47:16
  trying to do in your life. Yeah. I mean, my favorite story about it is years ago, I was dating
• 47:23
  this woman who was like very skeptical of my self-improvement crusade. And so I was reading this book.
• 47:31
  I don't think you're a self-improvement. I think you are self-improvement, but you're very science-based
• 47:35
  and evidence-based. I mean, that's interesting that she would call you a self-improvement crusade,
• 47:41
  or she said you're on a self-improvement. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think it was like
• 47:48
  anti-capitalist or something. It was the idea of the questing to improve seemed a little silly to
• 47:57
  her, but I was into it. And so I was reading a book at the time, which was called How to Talk to
• 48:03
  Anyone About Anything. I love that. Yeah, it's actually a great book. It's by a woman in
• 48:07
  Leal Lounds. But the basic idea of this book is, I love how it's laid out. I think I'm remembering
• 48:16
  this right, that basically every chapter, you know, she sort of prefaces her concept, of course,
• 48:23
  which is that if you really want to connect with people, you need to ask them intelligent questions
• 48:27
  about things that are important to them, which of course, you know, makes sense. That sounds good.
• 48:31
  So she goes from A to Z in her book. And for every letter, she picks a subject and she will give
• 48:40
  you this like five-page primer about the subject so that by the end you've got 26 topics that
• 48:45
  you've read, you know, from whatever accounting to zoology. And you now know enough. You have
• 48:51
  enough context that you're able to have an intelligent conversation. And so, you know, people are
• 48:57
  multifaceted. And so if I meet you, it's not necessarily the case that you'll have one of these
• 49:02
  26 things, but you might. And it teaches you how to do it for other subjects. So I was out with
• 49:08
  the woman that I was dating. And we met a friend of hers. And anyway, the friend I was, you know,
• 49:15
  asking her, I'm like, so, you know, what do you like to do for fun? And I was rather taken
• 49:22
  aback because, you know, in the metro areas that I travel, this is not usually the answer. But she
• 49:27
  said, you know what, I really love, I love fishing. And my first thought is like, okay, what am I
• 49:33
  going to do with this? I've never been fishing. I have no idea. And then literally this was a
• 49:37
  chapter in the book. And I'm like, saltwater or fresh. And the woman was like, oh my God. I
• 49:43
  didn't take much, right? And we immediately had this rapport because she was so psyched to talk about
• 49:49
  saltwater fishing. And I think that it's also about like approaching conversations, like without
• 49:53
  judgment, with that, just like, with the general, like the genuine interest of getting to know that
• 49:58
  person. I mean, that's literally, so keep in mind, this is, I've thought about this a lot.
• 50:03
  This is what I have to do for a living. So I have to dive into somebody's life. And as you know,
• 50:08
  you're a journalist, you did this as well. The second you asked that question, I'm like, oh,
• 50:12
  she's good at this too. I have to make sure that I bring my A game. No, um, it's because you have
• 50:17
  to dive into somebody's life. And you have to be genuinely curious. And I think that's, I think
• 50:21
  that anybody who is a journalist or somebody who podcasts or does any of this professionally,
• 50:28
  you just go in with no assumptions. And you're just trying to learn as much as you possibly can.
• 50:33
  I think that that's a great skill for what we're doing right now. But also just in life,
• 50:37
  that's a great skill. Because I think a lot of times people go into a conversation with these
• 50:42
  preconceived beliefs and ideas and that forms their questions. And then that person puts a
• 50:48
  gate up or a wall up because they feel like they're being judged while being asked a question at
• 50:53
  the same time, which is not conducive to relationship building whatsoever. So yes, it's a very,
• 50:59
  very good skill. So as you've reinvented yourself multiple times and you've played the long game
• 51:05
  with your life and create a pursuit and sort of try new things and doing it, you live the work
• 51:09
  that you teach. Why are these the ideas that you've chosen to sort of focus on more recently?
• 51:15
  Why do you feel like in society, these ideas are so important to people?
• 51:20
  So my starting place has always been essentially attempting to solve my own problems.
• 51:26
  Which is a great starting place. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's a not unreasonable assumption
• 51:31
  that if you're interested in it, other people will be as well. But yeah, I guess it goes back
• 51:37
  to that self-improvement crusade that I wanted to crack the code on on things. So reinventing you
• 51:43
  was my attempt to sort of make sense of my career path and and foibles in my 20s and kind of
• 51:53
  finding my way into the work that ultimately proved to be my trajectory. My second book stand out
• 52:01
  the the the subhead of that is how to find your breakthrough idea and build a following around it.
• 52:07
  And we haven't even talked about thought leadership yet, which we can totally yes.
• 52:10
  Yeah, I know it's it's always so interesting. And I I was basically trying to solve that.
• 52:14
  I'm like, okay, I wrote a book, you know, that's nice. But if you really want to get known in your
• 52:19
  field, if you want your ideas to be heard, it's you know, it's a crowded marketplace. There's a lot
• 52:22
  of people out there. How do you actually break through? And I just didn't know the answer to that.
• 52:26
  And so I wanted to create an excuse for myself so that I could interview dozens of very smart
• 52:33
  people who had solved that problem so that I could attempt to learn from them. And I wanted that
• 52:40
  knowledge for myself. But also, you know, I'm not a hoarder. I was very happy to share it.
• 52:45
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  actually works. So that on that topic when you think so everybody who's listening is to some
• 55:21
  degree a little bit entrepreneur even if they're in a company they've probably thought of okay what
• 55:25
  I want to build or how do I build or some people are actively building their first company,
• 55:29
  their second company. So that topic in particular I think that's just a very difficult topic
• 55:37
  for people to wrap their head around because they never know what idea to focus on or they want to
• 55:41
  talk about absolutely everything that's important to them and I've I've wrestled with this problem
• 55:48
  myself as a creator trying to figure out like what's the topic I want to niche down on or do I want
• 55:52
  to open it up a little bit and when I started the podcast it was more niche and now it's a little
• 55:56
  bit more broad and then there's another idea wrapped into there where the people that you
• 56:01
  look at that have built large audiences now they may be a little more broad in the stuff they speak
• 56:06
  about but when they started maybe they were a little bit more focused on one particular topic and
• 56:11
  that's how they built the audience in the first place. Now I did not do a full study on it so these
• 56:16
  are just sort of ideas that are floating around in my head but when you interviewed these people
• 56:20
  in terms of building influence thought leadership personal brand whatever buzzword you want to call
• 56:26
  it what were the findings what did you find it was the most effective way to become known for one
• 56:32
  thing and galvanize people towards the ideas that you have. There's there's not necessarily one path
• 56:38
  of course but what I discovered and stand out is that there are there are a variety of different
• 56:44
  ways that you can put ideas together so that they'll get noticed and you know one for instance and
• 56:51
  speaking of a meta analysis here earlier in our conversation I was talking about frameworks that
• 56:57
  I had created and that I shared in the long game it turns out that one of the really effective ways
• 57:04
  to get known for your ideas is to codify something because there's a lot of things that people
• 57:10
  know intuitively or that they're interested in but maybe no one has actually taken the time to
• 57:16
  to wrap their arms around it and say you know it's it's this you know here's here's the acronym
• 57:21
  or here's you know here's the one two three or here's the here's the then diagram that really
• 57:25
  helps you understand it but when you do you you can't on see it you know it's like oh this explains
• 57:31
  everything and so you get quoted you you get talked about so a perfect example of this would be
• 57:37
  Robert Chaldeini the author of influence the psychology of persuasion I mean people have been
• 57:41
  interested in persuasion forever it's a it's a sexy topic everybody wants to know about it but
• 57:47
  until him no one had actually said okay if you want to influence someone there are six ways of
• 57:53
  doing it here are the six ways and once he put it together it's like oh well duh yeah that makes
• 57:59
  perfect sense but he codified it he put it together and so he gets mentioned every time people
• 58:04
  want to talk about persuasion so a second thought on that because that makes a ton of sense but
• 58:11
  does it not hurt and I'm gonna ask because you've written books on different topics does it not
• 58:15
  hurt you to a degree to every four five years switch the thing that you're focused on versus
• 58:24
  every four five years because you put out books on all these different topics now have you
• 58:28
  thought through well what if I just keep putting out an updated book on this topic and and do
• 58:34
  six books on whatever reinvention long game personal branding thought leadership implement like
• 58:41
  have you thought about that and is there is there some learnings that you discover that you can
• 58:45
  be known for multiple things or does it just get confusing yeah it's it's a great question and
• 58:50
  there's also gradations right because the books that I've written I mean they're all basically
• 58:56
  business and career books and so they're they're different but they're they're of a piece
• 59:02
  you could look at them and say okay I can see that one person would write this
• 59:07
  if you were doing a book about entrepreneurship and then a book about horse racing and then a book
• 59:12
  about you know whatever molecular gastronomy that might actually confuse people
• 59:19
  so I think the key is understanding what is the narrative thread that you are putting together to
• 59:25
  help make make it make sense for people so for instance someone who actually did do the equivalent
• 59:30
  of that is Tim Ferris he writes the four hour work week which is you know essentially a business
• 59:35
  book he then goes to the four hour body which is a health book then we have the four hour chef
• 59:42
  which layman would say is a cookbook which he I think it sort of sounds like he thinks it's a
• 59:49
  misfire and he's always like no no it's a book about how to learn it's I think a poorly titled
• 59:54
  book about how to learn but nonetheless you know he was trying to to do very different and very
• 1:00:00
  distinctive things but the way that he made sense of it and I think actually did a very good job
• 1:00:06
  in making sense of it to his audience is he identified a strand which is okay it's not that I was a
• 1:00:13
  business author and now I'm a health author you know I'm not whipsawing you it's actually the same
• 1:00:18
  thing which is about how do you attain high performance in all aspects of your life and so he
• 1:00:25
  found that and it was an understandable and an intelligible thread for his audience and they're
• 1:00:30
  like great I want to be a high performer in all aspects of my life and so that worked so I think
• 1:00:35
  the question is really if you if you can find that thread then you're you're golden and so that
• 1:00:41
  makes a lot of sense so there's a there's a through line between all the work that you put out
• 1:00:44
  between all the work that Tim put out I actually saw you on I think you and Seth Godin I love Seth
• 1:00:50
  too I think you get went on his show then he went on your show but there's always this through
• 1:00:56
  line between all all three of you all all of your work it's business it's peak performance it's
• 1:01:03
  it's career like regardless depending on who we're talking about is there is there a difference in
• 1:01:10
  your mind between influence thought leadership personal brand self promotion oh you go go deep
• 1:01:18
  on the why not six area yeah yeah yeah absolutely so because everybody throws these words
• 1:01:24
  around and nobody actually knows what they mean very few people actually know what they mean and
• 1:01:27
  then it's just a very confused okay so does this mean I put you know post on Instagram or does
• 1:01:33
  this mean I have to write a newsletter to write a book have to go on stage or do I have to talk
• 1:01:37
  of my company or not talk about my company and it's just a mess so I like to like talk to people
• 1:01:42
  who study it yeah absolutely all right well we'll get granular so what was the first one we'll do
• 1:01:47
  one by one influence personal brand thought leadership self promotion you know influence is just
• 1:01:53
  really a kind of quantification of the impact that you're having on other people so it is as a term
• 1:01:59
  agnostic about how you're how you're attaining that maybe it's good you know through good quality
• 1:02:05
  content maybe it's bad quality content maybe you're you know as Robert Chaldeini says right
• 1:02:11
  influence can be a tool for good or evil right Hitler was very influential that was not a good
• 1:02:16
  thing so so it's saying okay lots of people are listening so then we go to thought leadership
• 1:02:25
  and that's actually a little bit more about more about you you know it's like balanced here because
• 1:02:33
  if we're breaking it down thought leadership you are you have to have followers if you are
• 1:02:38
  leading sort of a topology there but you can't be a thought leader if no one is listening to you so
• 1:02:44
  you do need an audience you do need to have some influence but you are not influencing people
• 1:02:51
  through like you know trashy dances on tiktok if you were a thought leader there has to be genuine
• 1:02:58
  ideas behind it there has to be at least some degree of intellectual heft so some people don't
• 1:03:02
  like the term thought leader they think it's you know icky somehow or whatever and I'm never a fan
• 1:03:06
  of people bestowing labels upon themselves but I think that thought leadership to me is actually
• 1:03:13
  a noble category I think it's something worth aspiring to because it means if you reach that goal
• 1:03:18
  that you have ideas good enough for people to want to listen to them so for me that's a that's a
• 1:03:23
  positive I like okay so then then then the last to be a personal brand and then self promotion
• 1:03:30
  yeah so personal brand basically your reputation how people think of you and uh yeah I think
• 1:03:37
  we can we can we can try to influence that but ultimately it is in the eyes of the beholder
• 1:03:42
  and so our goal is to try to understand what that brand is and if it doesn't match what we would
• 1:03:49
  want it to be to try to take action to remedy that and then uh finally self promotion is the
• 1:03:57
  active attempting to get noticed or to get your ideas heard and again it's it's one of those good
• 1:04:03
  or ill right you know you you can self-promote to it's almost like on the way to thought leadership
• 1:04:09
  yeah that's what you're trying to you're trying to do but it's almost like you're
• 1:04:13
  optimizing for the wrong thing you're optimizing for fame versus doing something impressive and
• 1:04:19
  drawing people to your work yeah it's like you're just pushing yourself on people right I I think
• 1:04:26
  there can be a neutral uh version of it but I think often when it is talked about it has a
• 1:04:31
  pejorative connotation you mentioned one thing about codifying an idea within the thing that
• 1:04:38
  you're an expert in and that helps people notice you is there anything else that you would suggest
• 1:04:44
  people do to find a unique sort of a unique voice on a topic outside of just codifying an idea
• 1:04:49
  another interesting one which I feel like is kind of counterintuitive but in the research that I
• 1:04:54
  did for standout pretty effective um lots of people to your point Scott say you know I don't I
• 1:05:01
  don't know what my ideas I don't necessarily have good good enough ideas I'm just not sure they're
• 1:05:07
  not distinctive enough and so for a lot of people that ends the discussion they just they say well I
• 1:05:12
  can't do it I don't know how to proceed but one of the things that in my studies have actually
• 1:05:20
  been surprisingly effective is for people to take essentially a journalistic approach to things
• 1:05:25
  because if you have a topic and you become the expert through talking to large amounts of people
• 1:05:32
  or doing a lot of research you know getting case studies and things like that eventually just the
• 1:05:37
  act of compiling it gives you enough knowledge enough breadth of knowledge that you become known
• 1:05:42
  as an expert in it and so an example of this uh which is sort of a personal example because it's
• 1:05:49
  a guy that used to work for me and so I took always a keen interest in his career he later left
• 1:05:55
  my employee and went on to graduate school in urban planning and he's become a very successful
• 1:06:01
  urban planner he's had his own business for 15 years he's done a great work um his name is Mike
• 1:06:06
  Leiden but where Mike really got his start was soon after he started his own business
• 1:06:14
  there was an emerging concept at the time in urban planning called tactical urbanism was just
• 1:06:19
  kind of this this new thing that was developing and so there wasn't a lot written about it it was
• 1:06:23
  kind of you know this like an emerging space sort of the way that like you know Bitcoin or whatever
• 1:06:28
  is now very new yeah and and you know or AI it's like you know okay this is this is a place where
• 1:06:34
  there are not um there's not a hierarchy of seasoned experts because we're all at the same place
• 1:06:39
  we're all at the starting line and so Mike saw that opportunity and said oh great okay I'm going to
• 1:06:43
  do something with this so he started gathering case studies about tactical urbanism and just
• 1:06:48
  whenever he heard of it an example he you know sort of grabbed it wrote it up put it together and
• 1:06:52
  he ultimately created a book I say book in air quotes because it was really like a like a PDF file
• 1:06:58
  and there's just you know super simple um created this PDF file with all the case studies and he
• 1:07:03
  put it on his website and allowed people to download it for free by doing this you know this like
• 1:07:08
  no cost research project giving it away for free he managed number one to ultimately land a book
• 1:07:14
  contract where he wrote a book and you know was paid to do it about tactical urbanism and number
• 1:07:19
  two almost immediately became recognized as the expert in tactical urbanism because he knew more
• 1:07:25
  about it than anyone else he was the guy that wrote the guidebook within three months ten thousand
• 1:07:31
  people had downloaded his ebook which in the world of urban planning circles is actually enormous
• 1:07:37
  one thing that gets brought up a lot with personal brand and I love that idea as well so that you can
• 1:07:42
  really own this really niche self-specialty whatever unless you unless you have a you know a group
• 1:07:49
  of noble prize winners and Olympic athletes but outside of that I think niching is an important piece
• 1:07:54
  to it um people speak a lot about authenticity in the context of personal rant still I don't think
• 1:08:01
  many people even really understand what it means so when you're putting stuff out there
• 1:08:07
  is there value to include some of your own lived experience into that content I mean with your
• 1:08:13
  example he didn't he was just aggregating resources and putting them on a website what is your
• 1:08:20
  view should you include your lived experience should you include that you're going on a vacation
• 1:08:24
  with your kids into your content you put out into your whatever thought leadership personal brand
• 1:08:30
  whatever definition you choose or is that unnecessary I think it is useful where it's relevant
• 1:08:38
  and in his case you know tactical urbanism if he had done a tactical urbanism project as sort
• 1:08:44
  of a civilian before he had become an urban planner great bring it but in in the particular case
• 1:08:51
  it just it wasn't justified by what was what was necessary for the project but I do think that in
• 1:08:58
  general you know we know we know from studies and research that people connect much better when
• 1:09:03
  there's a human element when there's stories behind it so if something if something is relevant
• 1:09:09
  you know if you're talking about leadership and you've been a boss talking about your your own
• 1:09:15
  experience on the front lines it it may not unless you are a super successful fortune 500 CEO
• 1:09:22
  that everyone is just dying to know it's probably not enough for you to just talk about your
• 1:09:26
  experiences a leader but you want to have a broader base of research or anecdotes or things like
• 1:09:32
  that but it also shouldn't prevent you from doing it it adds something to it to say yes I've
• 1:09:39
  experienced this myself and here's here's my story I've thought about two and like some of the
• 1:09:43
  content that I put out unlike so again I'm sort of like I'm the I'm the quasi successful but definitely
• 1:09:50
  not fortune 500 executive that has had some career success it adds color and context to what I
• 1:09:57
  believe but I didn't really feel comfortable making it my whole personality my whole online presence
• 1:10:04
  I felt that there was still something that and this is actually why I started the podcast start
• 1:10:08
  the podcast to bring in other ideas from people that have achieved way more than I've ever
• 1:10:13
  achieved in my career because I wanted to bring in some other perspectives and I thought that
• 1:10:16
  would actually serve the audience better um but yeah I also found that when I include a little bit
• 1:10:22
  of my story the content does quite well so it's a balance it's always a balance and I also think that
• 1:10:31
  yes if you're not a fortune 500 CEO or you haven't built the next Netflix or the whatever
• 1:10:39
  it's it's not going to be like your story is going to make it you know on the front page of
• 1:10:48
  whatever pick a paper but I still think that people who are comfortable talking about their own
• 1:10:53
  experiences and their own story I think it's actually very rare on social so it actually does stand out
• 1:10:58
  even if it is not uh doesn't matter how you measure success but a billion dollar company that you
• 1:11:05
  built I think that it it it makes you more human and I think that that's actually something that
• 1:11:10
  people really resonate with and then if you talk about not only your story but the things that
• 1:11:14
  didn't go right and it adds an element of vulnerability which I also like I think that helps as well
• 1:11:20
  absolutely yeah have you started to include in your books lived experience to or are you still
• 1:11:25
  focused on like I want to extract from all these wise people around me and have you noticed a
• 1:11:30
  difference in how different type of content is is received by your audience so in the long game
• 1:11:35
  which is my most recent book I put in much more of my personal experience than I ever had before
• 1:11:40
  it was it was actually interesting because for me it's been a learning journey because since I got
• 1:11:45
  my start as a journalist and everybody gets imprinted by their early training and in journalism
• 1:11:51
  you know straight news journalism we're not talking about opinion pieces it is considered really
• 1:11:57
  gauche to include yourself it's like no you are not the story you're not important here you need to
• 1:12:03
  write a story about what other people are doing uh it's it's a form of narcissism to put yourself
• 1:12:08
  as a journalist in the story don't do that and so for my for my first book for reinventing you
• 1:12:14
  I submitted a draft to my editor and he's like so you reinvented yourself right and I'm like well
• 1:12:21
  yeah and he's like how come none of that's in the book I'm like oh oh I'm like you think people
• 1:12:27
  want that he's like yes and so I had to like take another pass at it because it hadn't occurred to me
• 1:12:32
  to do it and and I felt very uncomfortable so I didn't I didn't probably do it enough so it's
• 1:12:39
  over the course of the 10 years that I've been writing books that I have begun to flex that muscle more
• 1:12:44
  do you find that the more you lean into it the bet like the it's a net positive reaction from the audience
• 1:12:51
  absolutely yeah I mean people people really like to learn through stories I mean I know I know
• 1:12:57
  that I do um I think that we always have to keep the the north star in mind that if it's too much
• 1:13:04
  just about about you period it can tip into narcissism but if you are telling a story in service
• 1:13:12
  of a point or in service of a purpose that will be useful to other people then that is something
• 1:13:19
  that I think a lot of people connect with what are you working on next what what is the next book
• 1:13:24
  that you're going to put out that we're also going to have a second podcast about when it comes out
• 1:13:28
  amazing amazing well I'm I'm still working it all out but actually speaking of getting comfortable
• 1:13:35
  writing about myself I'm working on a memoir project oh my goodness okay so you went all the way in
• 1:13:39
  yeah we're all the way in exactly so it's it hasn't it hasn't been sold it hasn't been published
• 1:13:44
  it's uh it how many books is this done this would be the fifth one yeah but uh but yeah look
• 1:13:50
  forward to come and back what would be one last insight some last words of wisdom that you
• 1:13:56
  want to leave the audience with so what I what I would say Scott you were asking earlier about
• 1:14:02
  what it takes to sort of play play the long game and to take the the long-term perspective
• 1:14:09
  especially when of course as humans we are always being grasped at by the short term and you know
• 1:14:17
  all the all the emails you have to answer and all the meetings you have to go to origin important
• 1:14:21
  or feels like origin important fires you have to put out exactly and so how can we stay focused
• 1:14:27
  on the on the long-term long enough to actually see three see things through to working because
• 1:14:35
  you've been doing the show for years now right I mean if we had stopped you in month three or in
• 1:14:41
  month six and said you know hey how's it going you know not great not great yeah early on it you know
• 1:14:48
  it just it just takes a while for almost everything to gain traction and so I think the thing that I
• 1:14:55
  would most want to leave your audience with is the metaphor that I like to use is that when we
• 1:14:59
  are embarking upon a long-term project and something that something that matters something is
• 1:15:03
  important to us in a lot of ways it's like going into a dark tunnel and the problem with this tunnel
• 1:15:09
  is that no one tells you how long it is and it could be a hundred feet it could be a hundred miles
• 1:15:15
  and you just don't know and so it's very easy for people you know even even people close to the
• 1:15:21
  finish line to get discouraged and to quit because they say well you know how long is this going to
• 1:15:26
  go on and it can be challenging and so for me one of the key values around playing the long game
• 1:15:34
  is understanding that in a lot of ways it's a it's a matter of courage it's a matter of character
• 1:15:40
  because it's saying regardless of the outcome this matters to me enough to try to do it and I think
• 1:15:48
  there's something really noble about that and it's something that I would like to see more of
• 1:15:53
  and encourage more of in the world where can people connect with you so where do you want to send
• 1:15:57
  them social website we didn't even talk about your newsletter that you put out okay so where should
• 1:16:04
  everyone go and connect and sort of learn more if they want to read more of your work all of that
• 1:16:08
  well thank you if folks are interested in the newsletter which I do put a lot of literary care
• 1:16:15
  into Forbes said it is it is the the kick in the pants that you need that's good yeah
• 1:16:24
  yeah that's maybe you are a little bit self-help then that that sounds like a self-help newsletter
• 1:16:28
  nothing wrong with that that's right have it in space no fly fishing though I don't talk about that
• 1:16:34
  uh but uh but yeah folks you get it at dory clerk dot com slash subscribe and uh and my website
• 1:16:42
  dory clerk dot com I've got I have all the articles over it and for different places there is more
• 1:16:46
  than eight hundred by now that I've done over the past decade for Harvard Business Review for Forbes
• 1:16:50
  for entrepreneur etc what would be that one piece of advice you'd want to tell your younger self
• 1:16:56
  build an email list yeah yeah exactly start sooner that's not fair another piece of advice all right
• 1:17:02
  yeah we start tactical um but yeah philosophical I um you know I think in a lot of ways
• 1:17:12
  when we're talking about about life lessons I mean we there's there's there's a reason that I've
• 1:17:17
  written the books that I have you know these are the topics that sort of obsess me a little bit
• 1:17:22
  and I actually just uh I got married last month so just congratulations yeah thank you very
• 1:17:28
  congratulations yeah so you know first first marriage took took me quite a while and uh we're all
• 1:17:33
  going for one like I mean like it doesn't always happen but that's fine take as long as you want
• 1:17:38
  yeah that was my philosophy that was my philosophy but um yeah the the story that that stands out
• 1:17:44
  in my mind is that like 20 years ago I was with a friend we were we took like a day trip together
• 1:17:51
  and she's this very kind of woo person and we were walking around the downtown and she saw a psychic
• 1:17:58
  and she's like oh my god a psychic let's go to the psychic and I was like okay let's go to the psychic
• 1:18:04
  and uh and so my friend went in and got her reading she's like oh that was so good that was so
• 1:18:09
  profound and I went in and got my reading and I I remember walking out of there I'm like oh my god
• 1:18:14
  this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard this is ridiculous but whatever whatever made my friend happy
• 1:18:19
  so I I literally forgot what the psychic told me and so probably five or six years ago I went
• 1:18:26
  back to this town where my friend actually was now living and she started telling me this story
• 1:18:32
  and she says blah blah blah my psychic and it reminded me I'm like oh my god do you remember that
• 1:18:36
  time we went to the psychic here she said that woman is still my psychic I she was so good I've been
• 1:18:42
  going to her ever since I'm like are you kidding she's like I'm like wow I thought my reading was
• 1:18:47
  like so off and she starts laughing and she and I'm like what and she's like well you remember
• 1:18:52
  what she told you and I'm like no I actually don't even remember what she told me and apparently
• 1:18:57
  what the psychic told me according to my friend is it will be a very long time before you find a
• 1:19:03
  partner oh my goodness she was right that's a very ambiguous open-ended statement and whatever but
• 1:19:11
  still that's amazing that's right so I would say part of my secretive success is literally
• 1:19:17
  blocking out negative messages that's one but also but also I think it is true that you know
• 1:19:25
  sometimes we just have to wait much longer than we want for the goals that we want to achieve but
• 1:19:30
  you know what you keep you keep at it yeah oftentimes it really will work