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012: Dorie Clark | How to Reinvent Yourself + Book Giveaway
Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Smart Business Revolution podcast episode number 12. This is John Corcoran, and in this episode, I talk with Dory Clark, who is the founder of Clark Strategic Communications, which is a brand strategy consulting firm. She's also the author of the forthcoming Reinventing You, Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. She explains why you must be controlling your personal brand, how you can control your brand, and even reinvent yourself strategically, depending on how and where you want your career to go. What steps you can be doing right now to control your career, whether you're an entrepreneur, an executive, or an employee, and here's the cool part, we're going to be giving away a few copies of Dory's new book, which I read, and I really enjoyed. So I'll be right back after the intro to tell you how you can win a copy. Now your host with a revolution, John Corcoran. Hey, everybody, this is John Corcoran, and thank you for joining us for another episode. I first met Dory about 10 years ago, believe it or not. At the time, we were both working in completely different industries. We were both working in politics, and she was the New Hampshire spokesperson for the Howard Dean for President campaign, remember that? And since then, she's reinvented her career multiple different ways. She has been over the course of her career, a journalist, and executive director of a nonprofit. She's been a documentary filmmaker, and of course, a political strategist. So in her current capacity, she's a brand strategist, and she's worked with a number of impressive names, like, oh, a little company you may have heard of called Google, and little college you may have heard of called Yale University, and also the Ford Foundation. And she's a regular contributor to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review. I really enjoy her writing there. I'm constantly sharing it almost every time I share it on Twitter when she has a new article out. But in her book, she has this great system for how to control your brand, and there's real method to the madness and how she's been able to switch from one career to another and communicate that to her network and to new people. So she had some great recommendations that I know I'm going to be implementing now, and I wish I'd heard of them back when I was graduating from college, because that's when I could have really used her advice. Now, Dory was also really generous, and she was willing to donate a few copies of her new book to give away to a few lucky listeners. So if you'd like to win a copy, here's what you have to do. All you have to do is go to the blog post for this episode, which will be smartbusinessrevolution.com/episode121212, and leave a comment saying you'd like to win a copy. That's it. And I will be announcing the winners about a week after this episode goes live. So if you're listening to this way off into the future right now, we are in about March 2013, then you might be too late. But you can always buy a copy. So I'll be announcing the winners shortly, and we have a couple of copies to give away. So that's really cool of Dory. And finally, if you like this episode, please, I encourage you to go directly into iTunes and you can subscribe so you can receive future episodes of the podcast without even thinking. And I also hope you'll sign up for me email list at smartbusinessrevolution.com so we can give them a touch. All right. So here is Dory. Okay. Welcome everyone. This is John Corcoran, and I'm very pleased to welcome Dory Clark to the line. Welcome, Dory. John, thanks for having me. So it's kind of a cliche to say that this is an extremely mobile world. And of course, almost known as working in the same job or industry or career for a lifetime anymore. But I have to say you're promoting something that in some parts is a very controversial idea. And that is that you should take a very proactive approach and brand yourself and define yourself in a way that other professionals, peers, companies, et cetera, will view you in a way that you want them to view you. So can you tell us about in your new book and in your writing and speaking what that entails? Sure. I think the basic idea, John, is that you either can just let your life and your career happen to you or you can try as best you can to be strategic and take control of it. And I think that for many people, there's not necessarily an understanding that you really can do that. I mean, speaking of great cliches of the modern world, it's, oh, nobody can control their online presence or the internet just kind of happens and people say things and things like that. But the truth is that if you're really strategic, if you are creating content, if you are being conscious of how others are perceiving you, you really can begin to take control and think through what you're online and offline reputation is. You just have to focus it. I think the other key piece is that for a long time, there was a view that it was somehow tawdry to think about your personal brand. That was just something that, you know, that thrusters did. But in actuality, it's becoming more and more important for everyone because as you said, it's getting very rare for people to have a lifetime career at one company. We're moving around people when they hear your name. The first thing that they do is Google you. And so if that's how people find out about you, then you really need to be conscious of what that looks like and put out the kinds of information so that people see you the way that you want to be seen and they understand what you're capable of because otherwise it's just haphazard and you never know what people are going to think and they may form erroneous impressions that could be damaging. You mentioned content creation. I think that's kind of a key point because there's kind of a fine line between people who put out helpful, useful information and others who are just kind of promoting themselves for their own sake. Can you talk about the distinction between those two? Yeah. And I think it's a great distinction. I mean, ultimately, no one wants to be force fed advertisements. I mean, that's the whole premise of the collapse of the television, the broadcast television industry is that with Tivo and other things, the minute people had the opportunity to skip having stuff blared at them, they opted to find ways to skip it. And similarly, you don't want to go on Facebook or Twitter or any other social network and just be bombarded with promotional information. No one wants that in any form, the new way that people are communicating, the only way that you can communicate in such a way that people want to listen to you is if you provide information that actually has value to them, whether that is something, you know, a news you can use sort of thing that they can apply to their own life, whether it's business tips or health tips, or maybe it's something that's funny or amusing, but people have to want to seek it out and on the plus side, it means that that's raising the bar for what you can do, what you have to do. On the minus side, it means that you have to think a little bit more clearly and strategically. You can't just say, oh, I'm great and expect people to pass that on because it will never work in the internet era. So your background is as a journalist and you're a writer and you write for Forbes and Harvard Business Review now. Do you think that those who aren't good writers who don't like writing are held back in this new era? I don't think necessarily. I mean, it's always an advantage if you're a good writer, you enjoy writing, but Gary Vaynerchuk is my favorite example of someone who by his own admission is not a good writer, but he's a smart guy and he's a smart thinker. And so he said, all right, if writing isn't the way that I'm going to be conveying myself to the world, what is? And so he created a video blog, which became absolutely huge and made his career both in terms of his initial goal of selling wine for his family's wine business and then later as a social media consultant. So whether it's podcasting or video or blogging in a traditional written sense, as long as you're creating material in some capacity that people are interested in, you can do okay. And in this era of Twitter, in terms of sharing, you can share other people's content that is short and you don't have to write it originally, I imagine. Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's a very good balance with it. Twitter has really enabled people to gain credibility as curators, which is not something that historically people were necessarily recognized as outside the literal curatorial sense of being an art curator or something like that. But these days with Twitter, if you are seen as a good source of interesting information, if you can be the compendium for other people of what is trending in the industry, of who the thought leaders are, and if you can be that source, that is a very powerful thing. And it becomes even more powerful if you couple it with creating your own information that people are interested in. Now, Dora, you have this really interesting background of having been a journalist, a documentary filmmaker, an adjunct professor, strategy consultant, former presidential campaigns spokesperson. And I can relate to that because you and I have similar backgrounds, both having worked in politics. You know, I also worked in Hollywood and then now I'm practicing law. So we both have gone through reinventions. But I'm wondering where did your professional and personal interest merge? Was it as a result of you having to reinvent yourself multiple times that led you to write this book? Well, in a very literal sense, Sean, the way that the book came about was that I originally wrote a blog article for the Harvard Business Review called How to Reinvent Your Personal Brand. It was, you know, 500 word piece. And it turned out to be so popular that they came back to me and asked me if I would turn it into a 2500 word piece for the Harvard Business Review magazine. And that was terrific. It was also pretty well received. And I was able to turn it into a book from there. But the broader reason and how I came to be writing the article in the first place was because of my own reinventions. Actually, all started for me. I probably if if left untrammeled by fate, I would probably still be a journalist, which was a career that I enjoyed and really valued. But unfortunately, during the first wave of media contraction in the early 2000s, I got laid off from my job working at a week with the newspaper called the Boston Phoenix. And at that point, I really realized I had to figure things out on my own, the path that I thought I was going to take had been disrupted as they like to say in Silicon Valley. And I had to come up with a plan B. And I think more and more people these days are forced to come up with and embrace their own plan B. And do you think that's a trend that will continue going forward that more people are going to be more of an entrepreneurial job hopping kind of professions? Well, there are a number of studies out there that are showing that within the next 10 to 20 years, close to 50% of the workforce is estimated to become freelancers or free agents of some variety. And so I think it is an accelerating trend. The idea of being in a large corporation sort of, you know, cauceted from the winds of fate, that seems to be more and more a thing of the past. And, you know, we can all name industries that we grew up with that have been fundamentally reshaped, certain, you know, by the internet, by globalization, whether your dream was to be part of the music industry, the film industry, if you were going to be a professor in work in academia, if you were going to be a magazine journalist, if you were going to be a novelist or an author, all of those are things that have literally been turned upside down. And on one on the one hand, there are more opportunities than ever. On the other hand, it's harder and harder to make money doing them. And so you really have to have an entrepreneurial mindset, whether that's the fundamental way you think of yourself, or it's kind of an auxiliary skill that you have to develop. It's something that more and more of us will be forced to embrace. It's actually a great segue into the book and the way that you structure the whole process of reinventing oneself. And so let's just start. I mean, what is the first step for someone who wants to reinvent themselves? What should they do to go about that process? Well, I think, John, the first step for people, if they're in the initial stages of wanting to reinvent themselves, is to take an inventory of who they are and where they are presently. I think we often overestimate our ability to know how we're perceived by others. Sometimes it's just not accurate, not because of any fundamental problem with us, but just, you know, we're too far in the weeds of who we are, who we think we can do. And so getting feedback from the outside world can be a really valuable process. So whether it's through having a series of conversations, you know, inviting friends and colleagues out for coffee and asking them, you know, can we have a really frank talk, you know, about me, about my reputation, what you think I'm good at about areas that you'd like to see me do more in or expand. Any of that can be really valuable. One thing that I talk about in my book is the idea of actually doing a focus group for yourself. We all hear about focus groups for consumer products, you know, do you like this sense on your on your shower soap or whatever? But doing a focus group on yourself, you know, literally having a friend be the moderator, inviting people into your living room and asking them, you know, you sort of sit back and just observe and asking them to talk about you and your strengths and where they'd like to see you go can be very powerful. I profile a woman in my book who went through that process and really gained some personal revelations through it at a very minimal level. You know, hopefully most of your listeners are doing this anyway, but just googling yourself and taking a really objective view about, okay, if someone didn't know me, if they didn't know anything about me, aside from my name, what would they extrapolate about me from the first few pages that they see here online? What's the impression that I'm sending to the world? Those are important questions to ask yourself at the outset. I love that you mentioned the focus group because that really jumped out at me as such an interesting idea, so much so that I actually mentioned to someone I ran into this morning who thought it was a great idea. She was thinking about a career change as well, and she said I should do that. How do you get your friends to show up? I guess free food probably helps. And then how do you get them to be honest with you sitting in the room? Well, I think that one of the keys is that the focus of the focus group, so to speak, is not about your weaknesses. I mean, that can come up certainly, but this is not meant to be some kind of Dr. Drew intervention type thing where they say, oh, well, you know, John, the problem with you is XYZ. What you really want them to be focusing on is thinking through questions of where do you really excel? And sort of framing it in a positive psychology type way of, well, okay, instead of saying where John falls short, it's more what skills would I like to see John expand in? What are the areas where, you know, if he did more of X or less of Y, he could really be that much more effective or powerful in his professional life. So I think that part of it is the framing. And then the other key, of course, is that you always have to be very clear that the person who's the subject of the focus group, all they can do, all they're allowed to do is sit back and listen. They can ask a clarifying question. If something doesn't make sense to them, but they're not allowed to be, you know, an attorney, no offense. And, you know, rebut things as they're being said, because that would very quickly clamp down on people's openness. But if you take it in and listen, people will open up after a while. Yeah, if you start cross examining your friends, that would probably be a bit of a buzzkill or you could install a two way mirror in your house, I suppose, and stand behind it. Okay, so that's a great tool for analyzing where our strengths are. And then I imagine you want to think about where you want to go. So tell us about that process of deciding where you want to go, setting your goals. This is one of the most interesting parts for me in the course of writing my book was talking to people who had really strategically gone through a process of figuring out, you know, where do I want to go? What's next? Because I think many people would like to just sort of magically know or, you know, okay, you know, I've thought about it and this is it. But the truth is it's somewhat of an iterative process. And sometimes the first thing that you think of is not quite right. I mean, just like for many of us, maybe the first job that we have out of college might have seemed like a good idea. But once you get into a field, you realize, you know, this and this is not quite for me. And so similarly, before you take a huge plunge, you want to test drive it a little bit. So some of the folks who I profile board memberships is something that I think is often overlooked. But if you're interested in either gaining new skills to help you in a career path, maybe, you know, for people who are interested in changing industries, let's say you think, Oh, you know, I'd really like to get into health care. If you join the board of a health care organization, not only can you bolster particular skills, whether it's collaboration or fundraising or, you know, oversight of certain areas, but you can also find out if that field is of interest to you. Another key place that you can do a lot is there's a company called Vocation Vacations, which really struck my fancy. You can pay for a week or a long weekend. And if there's someone who's in a profession that is of interest to you, you can essentially go and fly to them and have a sort of shadowing program. So if you've always wanted to be a schooner captain, it's your big chance to go out on the boat and see what it's really like so that it doesn't have to be a fantasy anymore. And you can figure out if it really is for you. That's such a cool thing. And I love the board idea, but in part because that's one thing I actually did when I was in my third year of law school is getting kind of bored because by third year, you're kind of ready to move on and actually join my town's design review board. And then the planning commission after that learned great skills and now I do a lot of land use law based on large part and things I learned through that experience. That's great. But I think the key part is that it doesn't need to be the board of Coca-Cola or GE or anything like that. You're talking about small nonprofits, which you obviously have experience in having been an executive director of a nonprofit, correct? Yeah, that's right. And I think it's true. I mean, many executives, particularly if they've been working at a high corporate level, may think, "Oh, yes, I need to be named to a Fortune 500 board." And of course, this is a difficult process. But yeah, you can practice many of these skills. And people are so grateful if you just find small local things that are of interest to you in some way. I mean, one woman that I profile in the book, she was young, she was in her 20s. And many 20-year-olds don't think that they would be good board candidates because maybe they don't have a lot of money to give or what have you. It's just not really that commonly talked about. She worked as a staffer at a nonprofit, but she decided at the urging of a friend to join the board of another nonprofit. And through that, she was able to get so much experience that it actually helped her on her future professional trajectory to land all of the other jobs along her path so that now she has a successful career with her own fundraising consulting business. It never would have happened just on the organic track laid by her first job. It was entirely a result of the experience that she gained nights and weekends. Didn't cost her money. She didn't have to go back to school for it, but she put in the time and it altered the course of her professional career. You also talked about informational interviews. And I love how you explained that the goal really is not to extract as much out of the person that you're doing the informational interview from. The goal is really to get to know them as a person so you can follow up with them. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that informational interviews are something that has really been drilled into college students and young people. People of all ages at this point know, oh, if I'm looking for a job or if I have a career change, I should do informational interviews. That is the thing that people tell you to do. That being said, there's not a lot of information about how to do them well, or even more importantly, how to keep up that connection. I think back to earlier in my professional career, because I didn't know this, I was literally just doing these hit and run informational interviews. It was like, oh, okay, tell me about your career. Marvelous. Thank you so much. Okay, bye. And then you never talked to them again. It was a waste of time, ultimately, for both of you. And so the real key, if you're meeting with people who you have a legitimate interest in them in their path, hopefully these are the people that will ultimately be your colleagues. And so the real dream scenario is to start now and then build a relationship with them, not necessarily so they can give you a job, but so they can become part of your broader network. So the challenge that you have to ask yourself, if you're doing an informational interview, and this is hard, this is really the hard work, is to say, okay, here's this person who on the surface has a lot more than I do. I'm looking for a job or I'm sort of this newbie doing a career change. Here's a person that's settled in their career. They're probably more advanced than I am. You know, what do they need from me? That's a hard question to answer, what you can give them, but you have to answer it. You have to be smart enough to figure out how you can help that person, whether it's through information, whether it's through, you know, just, you know, providing them with news articles. It would be of interest or industry insights or whatever it is, you know, during your meeting, you find some sort of point of commonality and a reason to stay in touch and a way to help them. And if you can do that, then you are really proving yourself and you can create a lasting relationship that's going to have a benefit far beyond the 30 minutes that you spend in coffee with someone. Such a great piece of advice. I wish I'd been listening to that advice a long time ago, because I did the same thing as you, hit and run informational interviews. But so let's talk about the skills that people have, because oftentimes they don't have the skills to go get to the end point. How do they decide if they need to go back to school or how they can develop those skills or what's that process like? Well, I think that for a lot of people, going back to school is sort of standard advice. You know, people think, oh, you know, I can't go wrong. If I have another degree after my name, surely it will pay off. And in some cases that, you know, that's exactly true. If you have certain goals, particularly involving fields that require professional licensure, then you probably do need to go back to school. You know, there's no way that you'd be a lawyer if you didn't have your JD. And similarly for other fields of that ilk. But for other things, if you want to be a successful journalist, if you want to be a successful business person, it's the easy answer. You know, oh, go to journalism school, go get your MBA. And you know, I will say I teach in a number of MBA programs. I think I think that they're great and they can be great. But I'll also say they're not the answer for everyone. They can be incredibly overpriced. You have to, it's much less worth it. If you're not going to a real top tier of school, where the alumni network and connections are really superb, which is part of the value. So people need to just think carefully about it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do, but it's an expensive thing to do. And so you have to weigh the cost and the benefits. If what you need to know is how do I write a better blog post? You know what? There's online courses you can take. You can hire a tutor. You can ask a friend. You can learn just by doing it. You don't have to go to journalism school to learn to write a good blog post. So just think through what is the easiest and most minimal way that I can get the knowledge and training and connections that I need. And if you're able to do that, then just be smart. Sometimes school is the right answer, but sometimes it's not. Good advice. You also write about ensuring that your job grows with you, which I think is the frustration for a lot of people is they feel like they're pigeonholed in a particular area and they don't get the growth from it. So how can someone ensure that what they're doing is allowing them to get that kind of personal growth and fulfillment? Yeah. So I think in some cases, it's just never going to happen. And we have to acknowledge that. If you're in a situation where your boss is not supportive, where they want you to be the widget in the factory doing the thing that you do and nothing else, that's an adverse scenario. And you may need to leave. However, I think that in many positions, there is room for growth and expansion and people, it would be great if everyone's boss was proactively looking out for them and looking for great growth opportunities. But we're not all that lucky. And so you need to be looking out for it for yourself. And I think that there are a lot of situations where bosses and employers would be amenable to you expanding your job description if you suggested it. And if you can explain to them why it would actually be helpful and valuable. So really, the advice is to be looking around the edges, look around the horizons. What's not being done? What could you do? What would be interesting to you? How could you take a step closer to the place that you ultimately want to be in three years from now? What can get you those skills and training? And is there something that you can volunteer to do or ask or offer to do? Because odds are your company will probably say yes, especially if you're agreeing to do your regular job plus this other thing. And you can really begin to get some good notches on your resume through it. I want to ask you also about mentorship and finding a good mentor, because that is a struggle for many people. Sometimes people luck into it and sometimes they're able to actually go out and proactively find someone. But what advice do you have for people towards finding a mentor? I think that the key piece of advice about finding a mentor is that many people are looking for one particular thing. They have one sort of platonic ideal of a mentor in their head. And if the possibilities out there don't look like that, they say, "Oh, it's not a mentor." But the truth is, it's very rare that the platonic ideal of a mentor comes to you. And what I mean by that is somebody that is older, somebody that is either at your company or in your field who chooses you and takes you under their wing. It's sort of like a rich dad, a rich dad poor dad. Who's that person that's going to show you exactly how to be them? The truth is, and I'll credit Tom DeLong, who's a professor at Harvard Business School, who I interviewed for my Forbes blog and quote in my book, "As corporate America has become a harsher and harder place over the past 20 to 30 years, older executives have less and less time to be mentors to other people. They're being driven relentlessly to perform and to be rainmakers and to put in more hours. And the thing that gets cut is helping out and coaching and mentoring younger people. Because you know what? It's not measured, so it doesn't get done. So it's rare. It's a great thing when somebody is willing to do that, but fewer and fewer people are willing to do that. So I think for many people what we need to do, if you're a mid-career professional or a younger professional, is you kind of have to invent your own mentors. And that usually means that instead of one person that you're turning to, you need to create your own ad hoc board, as it were. You need to look to the half dozen or so people that you admire professionally. And maybe they're not the whole package, but they have pieces of it. Maybe Seth is great at social media, and maybe Joe is really great at sales, and maybe Tina is really good at networking. And you know that you can learn pieces from all of them, but we essentially have to create our own network of mentors these days. And assuming that you can find someone, either a network or an individual who's going to be your mentor, what can the mentee do to ensure they have a successful relationship with that person? I think that one of the key things that often gets overlooked, again, in the hurly-burly of everyday life, is being proactive and reporting back. Those are the two key things that need to happen. Being proactive means thinking through what do I really want to learn from this person? What can they teach me? What questions do I have for them? And how can I get the most out of this relationship? Well, for me, and so I'm not wasting that person's time. Looping back is the gratification that a mentor can experience. From hearing, "Oh yeah, they really did listen. They really did follow through on this. I'm not just spouting advice that is useless or that they're not listening to. This person takes what I'm saying seriously." And that's a powerful thing for people who are looking for meaning in their lives, and it makes them more likely to want to help you the next time. You also write in the book, that's a great point there, and there's so much in the book that I don't want to cover, so I'm sorry if I feel like I'm marching through one thing after another. But you write about leveraging your points of difference and embracing really your differential, the way that you stand out differently, which, in a lot of fields, for example, law, the one I'm in, people tend to be very similar to one another. No one wants to stand out, but there are other fields like that as well. So can you tell us a little bit about that? How people can take advantage of the way that they're different without seeming like the unusual one or making themselves so different that an employer wouldn't want to hire them or a client wouldn't want to work with them? Yeah, so in the past, the push was always toward homogenization. What are your credentials? Do you have the same credentials as everyone? Because we only hire people who went to these three schools, or we only want people who have 10 years of experience doing XYZ. The good news, the upside of the traditional career track splintering is the fact that these days, you're actually at a disadvantage if you have this sort of marching-in-lock-step kind of resume. The world has opened up for people who have new perspectives, who have different skill sets, who have backgrounds that would have seemed maybe a little odd before, but now people are increasingly realizing if you portray it properly and can tell the story properly, that having done different things means that you will have a different perspective and you have the ability to see things that others don't. And in a society in flux, that can be very valuable. So the question to ask yourself really is, how am I different? And how can I communicate that difference in a way that makes it appealing and desirable for the people who want to hire me? Because it's usually that special spark that they're going to remember. I mean, in politics, which we've both worked in, it's not how the 50 ways the candidates are the same. What voters want to know is how are they different? And that's how they can make their call about who to vote for. And in the business world, it's the same thing. That's who they determine who they're going to hire. So I'd love to take an example from your life, having worked in politics, having been a former presidential campaign spokesperson. How have you leveraged that differential when doing the high level consulting that you've done now for Google and other Silicon Valley companies? There's a couple of different ways. And it's a great question. I mean, one at a very basic level is it gives people a way to hook in and something that is interesting and different. So there's a lot of people in the world that find politics interesting or fun. And so it's something that they know that they can talk to me about. Whereas with other consultants, they may have to just stick to the script and let's talk about our business. They know that the story is a little bit different because we can have fun and talk about politics and analyze things and kick it around. One of the people that I profile in my book, in fact, is a reporter who does fairly dry economic reporting. He does government securities and things like that. But he also writes a restaurant stuff. It's things about the food and wine industry on the side. And his sources that he talks to, he's the fun reporter for them to talk to. They seek him out and want to be with them because he also knows about food and wine. And so it's a kick for them to get to do that. Another advantage is that, unlike speaking of blue ocean strategy, unlike many of my colleagues who, if they're appearing on TV or something like that, it's strictly talking about business topics and things like that. Many of my media appearances focus on politics as well and sort of being a pundit, talking about those things, which in the case of crisis communications, branding, and things like that, have a lot of political overlap. But I'm fortunate that I'm able to have credibility on both the political and business side of the aisle. So it gives me more opportunities for media exposure. And then just in terms of analogies and background that you can draw from, when we talk about just to keep running with crisis communication as an example, I'm not just thinking, "Oh, how did Tylenol handle the poisoning crisis?" In 1982, it's not just business examples. I'm also able to draw from a reservoir of how things were handled in politics and perhaps have access to and gather more best practices that can benefit the clients that I work with. What similarities do you see between those two? Do you find that decisions that voters largely make in politics are similar to decisions that consumers make when buying from businesses? I think that there's a lot of overlap. I mean, just to take a few pieces there's always a huge advantage to incumbency. I don't really want to think about my toothpaste. And so unless crest displeases me, I will continue to buy crest so that it is one less thing that I have to worry about. Similarly, do you really want to have to think about who your congressman should be? You're going to give the benefit of the doubt to the incumbent and keep going unless there's a scandal, unless there's a problem, that sort of thing. I think that there's similar lessons that you can draw in terms of how to grab the public's attention, how to frame issues, how to really make sure that you're presenting the image that you want in terms of policy substance and things like that. You want to present things in a given way so that people understand that you're on their side and fighting for them. Another thing you write about in the book is about creating your narrative. Some people call it an elevator pitch, an explanation for why, maybe why you're switching from one career path to another career path or one industry to another industry. And so tell us a little bit about that and how people create a narrative that's interesting and it's quirky and memorable without being too unusual. There is always a risk that they're going to talk about their obsession for sock puppets and it's just going to weird people out. Right. Well, I think that the key thing that one needs to keep in mind is the question of how that narrative can add value to other people. There's a woman that I profile in my book named Libby Wagner, who I love her story because she started out as a poet and then became a management consultant, which seems like a naturally unusual. Yeah, exactly. So if that was framed, and this was not the case, but I mean, if somebody framed a story like that, oh, well, I love poetry, but then I had a midlife crisis and I said, why not? That's like an inspiring confidence. Nobody would want to hire a person like that who's just doing it for their own narcissistic reasons. The question is, what can she offer that makes her valuable and interesting to other people? And so as she thought about it and what could she offer, she has a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of language, which really matter when you're talking about marketing, when you're talking about how to communicate with employees, with stakeholders, she looks at language in a way that most people who were trained in other ways, through MBAs or what have you, would not. And so that became her competitive advantage. Interesting. And you also gave a great example from the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell, a great book about, I believe it's from Sesame Street about how kids would get confused and they see action on TV if they don't understand the narrative behind it. If they don't understand the story behind it, they would just turn away and disengage. And you would now analogize that to adults similarly who need kind of a personal story behind them. Can you give us some examples of how that's worked in the business context? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, just going back to the Sesame Street piece, there was originally the thought that the kids really liked all kinds of chaos. And you know, oh, it's going to be really interesting for a kid when there's all kinds of things going up on screen and people are running around and screaming and, you know, wow, it captures your attention when stuff is happening. And the truth was, as you said, if they couldn't understand the context behind that wild and crazy stuff on screen, they just disengaged. Nobody was willing to really take the time to bother to figure out what that madness was. They just stopped watching. And so I think that if you are a company, if you are an individual, and your goal is to try to make some kind of a transition, you need to make sure that people really grasp it so that they're not just, you know, writing you off. It's a matter of making sure that people really understand, okay, we have point A, we have point B, and here's how the dots connect. And so, you know, one person I profile in my book, now she works at a Fortune 500 company. She's an executive doing consumer goods, but she was a military helicopter pilot. And on the surface, you know, you'd say, well, that's nice, but, you know, why would I hire you? All you know about is being at war in the Middle East, and, you know, literally, like, flying a helicopter, what on earth does that have to do with with selling soda pop? And in her case, she was able to sort of, we have to lead people through and say, wait a minute, it's not about the fact that literally I'm capable of flying an Apache helicopter. It's the fact that when I was in my early 20s, I had 20 people reporting to me, and I had to be responsible for, you know, these, these multimillion dollar fleet of aircraft. And it's about responsibility. It's about leadership. And that's the through line. I think that's the key is that you want to phrase things not as a disjunct, but as a continuation. And you've learned at every step along the way of that continuation. So after someone's determined, they've looked at themselves, they found their skills, they determined where they want to go. And they've created this narrative of the story, how they're going to tell their story, how they're going to explain where they're going, where they've been, and how those two are connected. How did you go about reintroducing yourself to everyone? I think, John, this is where content creation really comes into play, because it is an unprecedented opportunity. I mean, now that we have the internet, you know, there's no gatekeepers, you can create whatever you want, you don't have to, you know, wait for Simon and Schuster to publish your book or something like that, you can create a blog, and you can start putting it up tonight. So if you suddenly decide, you know, the law is great, but I want to be, you know, John, the world expert in whatever, Viennese pastry, you could, you know, say, I actually have a side blog and that's really funny that you picked that example. There we go. There we go. So yeah, exactly. You know, you can just, you know, purchase creampuff.com and, you know, boom, go from there. I think that might be taken, but for a different reason. Probably so. And, you know, I think that for most people, you sort of reach a point where, you know, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, I can say I'm an expert in XYZ, or I can say, oh, yeah, I started a consulting business doing, you know, blah, blah, blah. People are not going to take you seriously, because there's, frankly, there's a lot of flaky people out there. You need to prove to them that you are not one of them. You need to prove to them that you know what you are talking about. You're not just doing this on a whim. You're not just having some kind of crisis. This is your new direction and you're serious about it. And the way that you do that is number one, you do things over time so people can see that it's consistent. And number two, it's creating some kind of content, you know, again, whether it's blogs, video, podcast, whatever it is, but you are demonstrating to people that, you know, they can really reach out and touch it, because in a world of knowledge workers, you know, where everything is in our heads, it can be very hard to determine whether you actually know what you're doing. And so you have to manifest it and put it out there so that people can take a look and feel confident that before they become your client or before they refer people to you and put their own capital at risk in doing so that they have a good grasp that, yes, you are a good bet. And I think that that point about consistency is such a great point because I think we can all think of someone who constantly reinvents themselves, but too quickly, you know, from one thing to another. And so there's a tendency to think if someone's going from one to another, maybe they're not going to be there for a while. Maybe they're going to be a pastry chef for a while, but it's going to be a fleeting interest. So the restaurant might not want to hire them because they're going to lose interest in a couple of months. At least that's the fear. But you wrote that people often make small changes and they think that the world sees them. So small internal changes are changes the way they behave or small things. And so it's important to look more comprehensively and make sure that it's perceived by the outside world. That's right. And then this is where your personal board of advisors can kind of come into play because they can give you a little bit more of a reality check about what it is that you're seeing versus what the rest of the world is seeing. I mean, you know, the honest truth is that you pay a lot more attention to you and probably anyone else in the world. And you know, the same is true for me. It's the human condition. And so we may think that we are screaming from the rooftops about our new identity or our new brand or, you know, I am, you know, this new thing. And other people just haven't clued in. They haven't really taken the time to notice or it doesn't seem that drastic to them. And so that's really where, whether it's a question of consistency and a question of knowing exactly what impact your actions are having on other people. It just pays to have a little bit of outside perspective so that you can calibrate it accordingly. How do you make sure that it's not doesn't come across as you boasting or bragging about yourself? Well, I think as we were talking about earlier, if you are keeping the lens on how you can benefit other people, you know, what is the value to them, then it's not bragging. I think people because of stupid things that parents told them often put anything positive about themselves into that category. Oh, you know, I can't, I can't tell anyone, you know, that I got this promotion because then people will think I'm bragging, you know, even if it's, if it's a factual thing that impacts your life. The truth is sharing good things about yourself or sharing advice that you think is really helpful to other people, that is not bragging. That is sharing important things about you and helping others. But, you know, I'll say that if people do persistent feeling uncomfortable about such a thing, there's a couple of ways they can do it. Number one is that you can enlist a friend, you know, a like-minded friend, and you can promote each other. If you feel embarrassed talking about yourself, you can have a buddy, you know, I mean, it's, it's not you bragging if I'm saying, oh my gosh, you know, do you know how great of a lawyer John is? If you have any land use issues and you're, you're in California, you should really call him and, you know, you go through and they'll promote you, you promote them. It's a, it's a nice symbiosis. The other piece, you know, which, which I do is just think about some phrases. You know, you don't have to say, well, I'm so great. I got a promotion. You can just put things in the bucket and say, you know, I feel so lucky that dot, dot, dot. I'm really honored that recently dot, dot, dot. And, you know, just acknowledging a sense of humility, a sense of gratitude, that's important, but you shouldn't hesitate to say good things or positive things if your intent really is to, to be sharing of yourself and not, you know, grinding it in somebody's face to make them feel bad. If you're coming from a good place, then go for it. You know, as you grow into this new, I don't want to say new personality, but, but a new individuality and you, you are becoming the new identity that you want to be. How can you ensure that the feedback that you get is helping you to improve? And how do you monitor that feedback that you get going along, or maybe feedback that's happening in the back channels? Yeah, I think that one of the best ways that you can do it, and hopefully many of your listeners already do this, but at a minimum, I recommend that everybody have a Google alert out on their name, you know, free, basic, but you want to know what's being said about you. You want to have the ability to respond in real time if something erroneous is out there, or you want to thank people who have said something kind. So just, you know, having that as a, as a baseline is useful. Again, you know, I'll mention your network of friends and trusted advisors. These are not things that we can very easily do on our own because we are all going to have blind spots. And so if you have people that you trust, so listening their feedback on a regular basis, you know, whether it's, you know, oh, okay, every two months, I'm going to have coffee with so and so, and just having that as a regular ritual can be a way to, to give you the perspective that you might otherwise not be able to have on your own. Great. Well, I thank you so much, Dory, for taking the time to talk to me. I know we've gone a little bit longer than I said I would, but the book is reinventing you. Tell us about where people can get it when it's coming out, and where they can learn more about you. Thank you so much. Well, again, my name is Dory Clark. If you're interested in staying in touch, my website is doryclark.com. I'm on Twitter at Dory Clark. And my book, the release date is April 9th. It comes out from Harvard Business Review Press, and it is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, indiebound, wherever, wherever books are sold, hopefully. And I would be honored if people were interested in reading it. Great. Well, thank you so much, Dory. Thank you, John. Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you're there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution podcast.