58: Monetize Your Ideas with Dorie Clark

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am so excited today because I am bringing back Dory Clark, one of my best friends in New York City at Favorite People Friend Tours. Dory is amazing beyond words and in fact so much so. She just came back from the Grammys and is now.

Two Grammy Award winning author, expert and thought leader. Dorie is a marketing and strategy consultant and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur and Forbes. And she does speaking all over the world, consults with groups as diverse as Google, the World Bank, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley. She has written several books. The first, reinventing you, which is Pivot's doppelganger older brother or sister. I don't know if we decided a gender on that one. Then she wrote Stanley Standout about building an idea, breakthrough idea and building a following around it and is now working on her third book which is all about monetizing those ideas. Dorie, welcome back to the show.

Jenny Blake, it is great to be on with you.

I always love chatting with you and I particularly love the topic of this third book in your Idea Recognize Expert trilogy about monetization. One of the things you talk about early in the book, which isn't out yet but will give listeners a sneak preview, is the courage to monetize. Say more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that one of the challenges that happens when people start to become entrepreneurs or dip a toe in the entrepreneurial world is that it's really easy to question yourself. I mean, first of all, pricing is hard in general because you're never sure what's an appropriate amount or what it's okay to ask for. But especially you begin. And I think, I think everyone who has been an Entrepreneur has experienced this to some degree or another, you begin to worry about getting blowback. You have this fear, sometimes warranted, that someone might reach out and say, well, that's a rip off. Why are you doing that? In fact, in my most recent book, Stand Out, I Tell the story. I interviewed Ramit Sethi, who some of your listeners may know. He started out as a sort of personal finance expert and has now branched into different lifestyle topics. But he told the story about selling his very first product, which was a $4.95 ebook, and he decided to market this. And he had up to that point been blogging for three years for free. So he puts out the Notice about this $5 ebook and he actually gets hate mail about it. It's like everybody's worst nightmare. But the truth is, if we want to build sustainable businesses, the kind of businesses that we can keep doing for the rest of our lives, you have to surmount that hurdle. You have to figure out what's the way to be able to crack the code and develop meaningful revenue streams in different areas. And so even though there's kind of this valley of fear that you have to get through, it is an incredibly worthwhile process. Ramit Sethi says now his courses go for anywhere from several thousand dollars all the way up to 12,000 DOL for a course. And he says he gets basically no blowback at all because he's learned how to position things, he's learned how to change things, and we can all overcome it if we are strategic in terms of how we think about monetization.

It seems interesting to ride that cusp of you say the first step is becoming a trusted source. And let's say that source you could be an expert, a thought leader, an artist, entrepreneur of any kind. And it's interesting trying to find that line of when it is time to monetize and when it's too soon, is there such a thing as too soon? And is there such a thing as too late in terms of monetizing one's creative business or ideas?

Yeah, that's a great question. Also for my upcoming book, which is called Entrepreneurial youl. It's coming out this fall from Harvard Business Review Press. I interviewed a guy named Mike Michael Stelzner, who is the creator of Social Media Marketing World, which is a big annual conference. They also have a big website for marketing. And he said that in his mind, his threshold was 10,000 email subscribers that he felt like. And of course, this is something that's different for everybody. There's certainly not One right answer. But he felt like in his own mind, if he could get his business to having 10,000 email subscribers, he knew that he could make a reasonable living by creating products to sell to those folks. So that's one point of view. Another one is I interviewed someone who's a mutual friend of ours, Jason Van Orden of Internet Business Mastery. And Jason is actually an advocate of starting pretty early on. I mean, of course, the premise in a lot of online businesses is that you need to get out there fast and just test what your audience is interested in. Jason said that if you have 1,000 email subscribers and you're not selling something to them, you're probably leaving money on the table. I know from my personal experience, which I incorporate throughout entrepreneurial you, I think that I was on the spectrum of waiting too long to develop multiple revenue streams. I mean, for years, my business, which I started in 2006, was providing marketing strategy consulting to corporations. And so I would create a lot of free content, really, with the almost exclusive goal of building my reputation in a general sense, and in hopes that it would lead to consulting inquiries or to speaking gigs. And that's a perfectly good model. But I was not aggressive about trying to be really focused on getting email subscribers. And that was definitely a mistake because that is the way in this completely crowded, noisy space that you are able to communicate directly with your audience. And once you are communicating directly with them, you know, there's not one magic right answer about when to monetize, but it gives you that line of communication so that your audience can begin to talk to you and to ask you for the things that they want.

Yeah, it's been so interesting to see the triumph of the email list or the email newsletter. And I say triumph because I think in the beginning it was one of many experiments amongst having a blog and maybe later a podcast. I know for me, you know, I just had a little bit of everything and then now I come to where I describe it to coaching clients is having a blog or a podcast or articles is like readers get to window shop, but the email newsletter is they come in and subscribe to the catalog for the store. So rather than just happening upon the site randomly, now they're really part of your world and you get to build a relationship with them and build trust over time.

Yeah, that's well put. I love that.

It's been cool to see. Once you did decide, I think I don't remember what your list started, but in the last year, I think you grew at something like 15,000 to 35,000 or tell me a little bit about what you did. Because I think a lot of people feel like, okay, I know a newsletter list is important or staying in touch with people, and yet I feel like I'm speaking into the void. So how did you grow your list so much and make it sticky?

The truth is, it was embarrassingly simple to grow my list. I mean, not to minimize the process because it takes some time and some thought. But I look back and I think if I had made a few small tweaks a few years prior, I could have grown things so much faster than I did. And so I think that the difference between growing a list and not growing a list is sometimes just minor things that people don't realize are so important. So, for instance, a big one is I have always used blogging as a cornerstone of my marketing strategy. And so early on I would create a lot of content. And in the bio section at the bottom of the post where you say, you know, Dorie Clark is a, you know, blah, blah, blah. What I would do early on is I would just link to my Twitter account. You know, you can follow her on Twitter here. And, oh, you know, you can. At the time, I have a sort of now abandoned podcast that I. That I started in like 2009 or something when the first sort of vogue happened. You have done that far better and kept that up compared to me. But I'd say, oh, you can listen to her podcast here. And so I was driving people to other resources that was good again for building maybe name recognition, but it wasn't doing anything to generate subscribers. And so something very simple that I did was for those bios on, you know, at the bottom of the blog posts that I would write, I just substituted it out and I created what is called a lead magnet. You know, there's different names for them, but basically, you know, lead magnet, the concept is it is a free resource that you create that is, you know, hopefully interesting and useful and desirable, and you can promote it to people, which is sort of an easier ask than, hey, subscribe to my newsletter. Because a lot of newsletters are boring and rubbish, and so nobody wants more of that. But they might want your free video series or they might want your free ebook or what have you. In my case, I created something that was a 42 page, standout self assessment workbook. And it's a series of questions that walks you through that, that process of how to really hone your own ideas and develop them and spread them to the world. And so I would promote that to people. I would have the list, I would have the link to it at the bottom of my bio. Oh, here's Dori Clark. Here's a little bit about her and you can Download her free 42 page self assessment workbook here. That was the biggest change and it just drove people to be opting in. So I'd have that at the bottom of blog posts and I would mention it when I was on podcasts like this. I did a lot of podcasts around the release of my book Standout and so I would always be sure to mention to people.

Where they could download that resource. And in fact, as we're talking now, I'll put in the plug. We can mention it later, but I have a new and updated awesome resource which is a recognized expert evaluation toolkit. It's this cool questionnaire that I developed to help people figure out where they are along the path of becoming a recognized expert. And you know, we'll talk about it more, but if people are like dying for it right now, they can go to doryclark.com jenny but anyway, all that being said, just having having a simple and well executed lead magnet that you can talk about is a huge driver. I started my campaign to grow my email list in February of 2015 with about 9,500 names on my email list. I made a goal for myself that by the end of the calendar year of 2015 I would get up to 20,000 email subscribers. And I actually exceeded that. I made it to 25,000 by the end of the year just by having a really big push. And now as we are doing this interview in early 2017, my list is up over 38,000.

That's so incredible. I like to you put it in your. Dori has it in her email signature. Join 38,000 subscribers with impeccable taste and download my free recognize expert evaluation toolkit. So it's cool that even in every email that you send there, it is a call to action for people.

Yes, yes. That's another place where you can promote it to the people that may in fact be most likely to be interested in it, which is people that you are corresponding with directly.

One of the things that impresses me most and blows me away about you and how you've monetized your ideas and your recognized expert status is your speaking career, which is really incredible. You did 74 speaking gigs last year. How did you take it from blogging? And I know you've written a lot of content for sites like HBR and Forbes and inc. But how do you go from writing articles to getting that amount of volume in your speaking? That's part one and part two. How do you manage it on a list logistical level of traveling that much for 74 different engagements in a year?

Well, you know, you raise a great question, Jenny. And in fact I actually just, just calculated out because at the end. So it was 2015, around the book launch for Standout that I did 74 talks. I mean, I just decided I needed to go nuclear with the launch and so I was pursuing every opportunity. But you know, 74 talks, that was, that was too much like I like speaking and I like traveling to speak. But I had sort of hit a threshold where I was like, you know, that is obscene. So I actually made a commitment that I would scale back on my travel in 2016. I had some more substantial kind of heads down projects that I wanted to work on. For instance, writing my book Entrepreneurial youl, which is coming out later this year because you have to write it pretty well in advance when you're doing work with a mainstream publisher. And also launching and creating my online course, which is called Recognized Expert, Things were a little bit more monastic activities. It's you sitting by yourself and just creating as opposed to the phase when you're in the promotional phase. So I decided that I would tamp back the speaking a little bit. And that meant raising fees. It meant just being more selective sometimes strategically, if you are looking to promote something, you may accept, let's say a free engagement where you're speaking to some prestigious alumni association or something like that. But so in this case for 2016, for 2015, I probably would have said yes because I had the goal of promoting the book for 2016. I did not have that goal. You just sort of change and go through cycles. And so if I got those requests, I would either say no or I would defer them and say, you know what, talk to me when my book is coming out. So I was able to cut it down and I actually just tallied it up. I did 37 talks in 2016, which is a lot more reasonable. But all told, over the four year period from beginning of 2013 to the end of 2016, I did 231 talks. So it's a pretty ferocious pace that we're operating on. And so a question that a lot of people have is, oh, how do you get the talks? Did you work through bureaus or something like that? Do you have an agent that got you the talks? And it's not a bad Question. Because even people in the know, like an editor at a publishing company or your agent, they will ask you that question. And I am here to say that is the wrong question. Because a speaker's bureau or a speaker's agent, quote unquote, they are not, they are not going to care about you at all until you are famous enough that your fees justify them doing proactive marketing. And what they really like, frankly, is to be order takers where their client comes to them and says, oh, can you get me Dory? And then they send you an email and you say yes, and then they get a 25% cut. If you pin all your hopes on working through bureaus, you are going to be sorely disappointed. That is not where you should be focusing your energy instead. Basically everything that I have done in terms of speaking, I mean I've had an, a handful of stuff that's come through bureau's which literally is because the client has requested me. But you know, even that if you trace it back, it all comes down to so called inbound marketing, which is creating content that gets you noticed by people and gets them specifically asking for you. So I don't, I don't do outbound marketing for speaking. I think that's largely ineffective. Instead, I create content that tries to attract my ideal customer.

To me, I found the same thing. I not only do I, I just have never found outbound sales to work and nor do I enjoy it. So I've always taken the long route, which is I guess in some ways the long route and in other ways much shorter. So it takes a long time to write a book and get it out and market it and develop that intellectual property. But then the inbound starts working and that's where inquiries start coming in and referrals through amazing people like you where just developing a network of people who have similar topic areas of expertise can also be really helpful because for example, if you're tamping down speaking, you might decline something that's a perfect fit for me. And I call that drafting in. Pivot.

Yes, exactly.

I love how you. Part of Dory's strategy, by the way, for paring down speaking events was buying two kitties last year.

To stay home.

I decided that.

If I wanted to get serious about traveling less because there's always the temptation to keep doing more of what works. And so, oh, I need to keep being out there, I need to keep building momentum and sometimes it just gets unhealthy. And so if you have a really good reason to stay at home, then you're able to be choosier. And that was something that I wanted and intended to be in terms of which engagements I was accepting. So I did. I fulfilled a long standing goal and adopted two little kittens. And so they've given me a good reason to be judicious in the talks that I accept.

Let's talk about intellectual property, often referred to as ip. What's important to that? How do you monetize it? And what's different? What differentiates IP from just public blogging for sites like hbr?

Yeah. So for intellectual property, I mean, of course this is a question of definitions in some way. I mean, technically your blogs or whatever you create is your ip. But if we're sort of narrow casting it, essentially when we think about iPad and how to leverage that, it usually refers to some kind of a specific model that you've developed, some kind of a codification of a system. And you might write about that in a blog post, but you also might use it to teach a workshop or you might use it as the cornerstone of an online course something. You might use it in your coaching practice. All of those things are possibilities. And so the IP is really just.

Kind of the framework that you have been able to develop. And it can take a while sometimes. I mean, I know certainly when I started my consulting business, I knew what to do for clients, but it was a little bit ad hoc in some ways. It was a little instinctive and, oh, well, I have to do this for this and that for them. And. And it takes a while to be able to kind of see the forest for the trees so that you can create that very clear system where you say, nope, these are the steps, this is how it works. And you can apply this in the aggregate to most situations and it will work. But once you have that, it becomes very powerful because you can deploy it in a lot of different ways.

Yeah, it's. I love how you talk in the new book about online courses, digital products, licensing, speaking, podcast, blogging, vlogging. But then once you have the ip, that's the thinking is the hard part. So people often ask me, was it hard to write a book? The complex, the most complex aspect is thinking and developing that ip. And then by the time it gets to writing, at least for me, hopefully most of the. The thinking is done, so the writing is just about expressing it. Or at least those two things happen in tandem. Yeah, I know a lot of people get very overwhelmed, especially clients and readers who I talk to nowadays in this glut of information of not Knowing where to put their time and attention, should they start a blog anymore or a podcast or guest post. It feels like there are so many ways to get thought leadership out, but what of them are actually effective? So, so how have you tested this for yourself and what do you recommend for someone starting now?

Yeah, such an important question because of course, you know, it seems self evident that we can't do everything and yet there's often a real push toward that, either because you feel like you should be doing it or, you know, sometimes there'll be kind of almost a, you know, peer pressure. Like, you know, I, I remember at various points.

I would have people that I knew from the business world and they'd be astonished, oh, why aren't you doing whatever the thing du jour is? Why aren't you on Pinterest? Why aren't you doing vine videos? Why aren't you exploiting the game changing value of Google?

And of course, right.

Pinterest is still there, but Vine's gone, Google is gone. I mean, that's the reason is that if you're a social media consultant, yeah, you need to jump on the new technologies, but for a lot of us, sometimes you want to wait a little while to see how things play out and to see which platforms actually gain traction. I think that it's far better to choose and to specialize because when it comes to your preferred channels, I like to tell people, when it comes, for instance, to social media, I mean, yes, everybody should be on LinkedIn. If you are a professional, that is kind of the sine qua non. But besides that, pick one channel that you use for business purposes and just do that because otherwise you are spreading your energy and your attention too thin and it's very hard to get good at it. That in fact, is why I do not presently have a podcast. Lots of people have suggested it for me. I agree. I think it's a great thing to do. I would heartily recommend other people look into it. I think you do a fantastic job, Jenny. I subscribe to yours, but I know that right now because I do not have the bandwidth to properly devote myself to it and do it well. I do not want to do it. I want to focus on areas where I can actually add unique value and be able to push it towards something. And so for me, that my fallback just based on my background and my aptitude. I used to be a journalist before I got laid off years ago. So writing has always come pretty easily to me. So the core of my activities have centered around Blogging that might change in the future, but I think that it's really good for people to master.

Whatever channel it is that seems most appropriate to them. Now, how to figure it out? It's kind of this Venn diagram right where you want to figure out, okay, where are you naturally good? So if you used to be a journalist, yeah, blogging is probably pretty good. If you hate writing, well, then don't make yourself do it. There's plenty of other options. You also want to ask, of course, where your customers are. If you are dealing with the teen market, I'm not sure that blogging is necessarily the best way to reach them. I mean, probably Instagram would be cooler or better.

But you want to ask yourself those questions. And then also, finally, is there some inherent aspect of your message that lends itself to a different medium? So, for instance, if you are a wedding photographer, Instagram would be a perfect place to showcase your work. If you are an insurance salesperson, there's. I mean, yes, you could use Instagram, but there's a little less of a natural fit there. And so maybe for something that's kind of a complicated sale, like a long sale that involves a lot of data, maybe blogging is better for you. So those are the questions I'd ask in terms of getting to that answer of where you should focus.

I would also add giving oneself permission to redefine parameters around expectations. So, for example, podcasting is quite involved. There's a lot of steps and it takes time. So I recently, after two years of doing it, gave myself permission not to publish weekly. That maybe if I'm in a phase where publishing weekly works for me, great, I'll do that. But instead of thinking of it all or nothing, because it would be so easy for me to say, well, if I can't publish weekly, I won't do it at all. And there's no podcast police that are monitoring. You're gonna yell at me. And I'm guessing everyone listening. Maybe you notice if one doesn't come out, you know, every single week. Maybe not. There's probably. I know for me, I have so many podcasts in my queue that I haven't listened to that I will. I would almost prefer if people would slow it down a notch so that I could really take my time with each one. So that's an example where I've had to learn over and over because I've been blogging and doing the online thing for 11 years now, that it doesn't have to be some rigorous schedule that ends up Burning you out that you can give yourself permission to adjust over time. Dori, the last thing I want to ask specifically about entrepreneurial you is you talk about how to succeed without being salesy. I think this is something you've mastered. And I'm curious what your best nugget is on this, because I know there are so many people listening who want to succeed, want to have their own business, and yet when it comes to what they traditionally think of as sales and marketing, they cringe, myself included. So what are your tips for succeeding without being salesy?

Yeah, thank you, Jenny. I appreciate it. Well, you know, I have a few thoughts. The first one is that I think it's really good for people to expose themselves to a cross section of templates, essentially, you know, cross section of different people who are operating in your industry or adjacent to your industry. Because. Because it's easy to kind of fall into this idea of, oh, there's only one way to do email marketing, or there's only one right way to do webinars. And, you know, yeah, there's certainly people who are exemplars that can say, well, I did this and it worked great, but if their approach is not consonant with yours, if it feels weird or awkward or like, oh, I would be so embarrassed if I had to do that, then that is not the right approach for you, and it's not the right approach for your audience. I mean, in fact, the majority, I would say, of my email subscribers have come through my writings in the Harvard Business Review. And these are folks who are typically mid to senior level professionals. They may work at large companies, they may have MBAs. These are educated people. And so if you tried to do this stupid shtick that a lot of people do, and, oh, it's this special, you know, limited time sale, oh, my goodness, blah, blah, blah. You know, like, if you're a car salesman that, you know, frankly, it's just offensive. It's offensive to the intellectual sensibilities of your readers. And I would be embarrassed to do that. So I stay away from that altogether. There, there are different ways to make it work for you. And so by seeing lots of other examples, you can begin to see that, you know, where you might fit in that palette of things. I mean, I always try to take the, the perspective of, you know, what I have. I have this thing. It might be helpful to you. If it is great. If not, no worries. You know, so that goes to point number two, which is that you have to eradicate all neediness. You know, when, when people of Any kind.

Are desperate. That just leeches out and it taints things. You know, if you go on a date with someone that's desperate.

I was just gonna say dating.

Yeah. You want to get away from that. If you. And if someone is desperate, you can tell they're desperate to sell you something that is a warning signal that repels people. And so I think that, you know, cultivating the attitude, and frankly, you cultivate this attitude by not. By just not being needy. It means that you need to, you know, make smart decisions about things like your savings or your spending so that you are not in a position where you ever are desperate. But, you know, making the decision to never be desperate for the sale, to always be in it for the long term rather than the short term, I think is critical. Because the truth is, I don't care if people give me their money. I don't need their money. I would like to have a relationship with people, and it would be great if they. If they wanted to, you know, enroll in my course or, you know, come to a workshop that I did, etc. But it is a lot. It is a world of pain if someone enrolls and they somehow decide that they, you know, that they really don't want that or they feel they were tricked into that. I don't want that situation ever. And so I would rather tell people, if you have any doubts whatsoever, don't do it. Because that means that the people who do come through the door are far more likely to really be your tribe, to really be your people, and to love what you do. And that creates the best kind of community and frankly, the best kind of marketing, because other people can then see that, hear about it, and realize that that's for them.

Absolutely. I remember one of the biggest mistakes I made a couple years into running my business was I was so obsessed with the business model and how do I scale this and that. And I was reading all the books and I was so entirely focused on the business model that I started seeing my community as dollar signs, my audience as dollar signs. How am I going to monetize this community? And it hurt. It didn't work. It. It was painful. I wasn't good at it. It just didn't feel good. And so I made a shift. I decided everything I write in my newsletter, it's essentially free. Yes, I'll create courses, the momentum community coaching, you know, yes, of course there are services, my books, but that at the end of the day, if everyone's hanging out and having fun, and then it's Companies and conferences who are hiring me. I was. I was cool with that. And so instead I focused on how can I be most helpful to this, this amazing community, some of whom have been around 10 years. And in doing that, it just is so much more natural to create products and courses that I was excited about, that I wasn't doing because I should, because they were what everyone else was doing for online business, but really because I wanted to. And then, I love what you said, Dori. Then with that energy, it attracts the people who genuinely want to be part of it.

Yeah. Amen.

So, speaking of, here's the thing I made. I hope it's helpful for you. No worries. If not, tell us about this recognize expert course that you have coming up.

Yeah, absolutely. So I do in fact have an online course that I developed throughout basically all of 2016. We did a pilot and then an official launch of a cohort of people in the fall. So about 100 people have now been through it. And it's called the Recognized Expert course. And it takes people who are entrepreneurs, consultants, coaches, anyone, service professionals, anyone who it could conceivably be beneficial to their business to be viewed as a recognized expert. If expertise and a perception of expertise is what attracts clients to you, this is something that I think can be quite powerful because you may have all the credentials in the world, but if your voice isn't being heard, then you're not able to really have the impact that you want. And similarly, you may have amazing ideas, but if you don't, let's say, have traditional credentials, then what is that formula so that you can get people to listen to you? And so I've created, through the hundreds of people that I've interviewed, top thought leaders over the past five years or so for places like Forbes and the Harvard Business Review, I've developed a methodology that really hones in on how regular professionals can be able to be known for that expertise. We've created a really amazing community around it, a very lively Facebook group, and there is.

A pretty detailed course with live webinars, 26 plus hours of video content that we've developed, and really walking you step by step through that process. So if folks are interested in that course or just to kind of think about where you might be positioned in terms of where you are on the path to becoming a recognized expert. I actually have this free resource which I alluded to before. It's essentially a questionnaire, self assessment questionnaire, and it enables you to score yourself based on certain criteria to figure out where you are on your path and also what are the key activities that you need to be investing your time and energy in to get the greatest return on building up that recognition. And so folks can download that for free. It's called the Recognized Expert Evaluation Toolkit and it's available for free at doryclark.com jennY-O-R-I e c l a r k.com Jenny Amazing.

Dori Clark thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and for being one of my closest friend tours, friends, mentors. You're just an amazing person in my life in New York City and beyond. So thank you again for being back on the Pivot Podcast and I can't wait to hear how this course unfolds. And we can't wait for your book launch too.

Jenny thank you so much. Always amazing talking to you.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.