Episode 1: Reinventing Yourself Profitably with Dorie Clark

From the studios of Fractal Recording, this is the Profit first podcast, episode one of one. Oh, yeah, he's already cracking up. Welcome, everyone. I'm Chris Curran.

You just know if we're in episode one of one, we've set ourselves up for a monumental failure.

Hey, welcome, everyone, to the Prophet. Welcome to Profit first podcast. We are just so psyched to be here. And I'm Chris Curran, the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz. I'm the author of Profit First. And this show is about the bottom line, about profit. It's what matters for every business. It's the alpha and omega. We're going to talk about profit from every angle you can think of for one episode and then we're done.

It's one of one for today. So we're available as a podcast on itunes and stitcher. And you can go to profitfirstpodcast.com that's the URL to use, which is really cool. So, yeah.

So what have you been up to, first of all? Because we have to get to know each other.

Yeah. Cause thank you, Mike. I appreciate that being so cordial. No, I was. We were having a meeting, like, a few weeks ago, and I was coming out of my parking lot and some woman backs into my car.

Yeah, no, I remember that. I was coming here. We were planning this one of one episode and your car. You've got sideswipes.

Yeah, she backed right into my car. And luckily there was no big fight, but so I had a rental car for two and a half weeks, so we already had a trip planned to Maine. So we just drove up to Maine with the rental car.

And do you have to pay the miles for that? Because. Oh, really?

No. No, miles included. I checked before.

I would totally check for that. Oh, that's good. How was Maine?

Maine is great.

Okay.

Yeah. Bar Harbor. Wow.

Oh, okay. So you're on the coast.

Yeah, up. Up there. Yeah, it was nice. What about you? What have you been up to?

So I came in this morning. I literally flew back from San Jose. I was out there speaking. The guy sitting next to me. First of all, you know there's a problem when the guy walking down the aisle to the middle seat next to you has his own belt. Okay. And he's a picker. The guy sits down. I'm not kidding, Chris. He sits down and says, I gotta be honest with you. I'm gonna use more space than this chair alone. He goes, I do snore when I sleep, and I do kinda smell Bad. And I sometimes bite. Right. Like that little joke, I sometimes bite was supposed to disqualify all the other stuff, right? Well, he doesn't bite. He picks and flicks. Oh, he was. He snored. He woke up to pick his nose. Flicking on my chair. It was hard.

Oh, man. You had to endure that.

I wanted to rent a car and go right to Maine.

You just. You had to. That's what needed to be done. So we have a sponsor, Mike, for.

The episode one of one. So who's the crazy company that stepped up? It's nextiva. Nextiva. One of your. You do a lot of business with them, right?

Lots.

Lots. Who doesn't? Nextiva is a phone company. And so what Nextiva does is they do voice over IP. Are you familiar with VoIP?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

That's what Skype is. But it's.

Yeah, it's Skype. Like Hyper Skyper is what. They should have called it nextiva. They should have called it Hyper Skyper because it's an actual phone that you can pick up and you think you're on a regular phone line, but it's over voice over IP. It's 100 times cheaper than your regular phone. Yeah, well, it's probably like three times cheaper than that. Like a hundred times unfair.

That's not accurate.

Then personally driving or it's a hundred times cheaper than renting a jet to fly your message to someone. For sure. But I use nextiva. I've been using it for two years now. I love them. It's a great phone system. So go to nextiva.com and here's your first little kind of profit tip. Reduce your phone cost by using our.

Buddies C. Reducing costs. And in fact, that's what you talked about in your first book.

I did. I did. I didn't know Next step then. So I didn't plug him like I should have.

But yeah, the toilet paper entrepreneur.

Yeah, I did. I did talk about reducing costs.

Yeah, it's important.

Did you have bomb me?

No, no, no.

So we got a guest today.

Yes. Hold on, though, because we have to.

Yeah, so. Yeah, so she won't hear this.

Yeah, she won't hear this. Go ahead.

Okay, so her name's Dory Clark. And here's the deal, dude. When we interview guests, if we get by our one episode of one, I have one rule for us. I or you will give a keyword that must be used in our interview. So the keyword for you, because you're not expecting this. I see your breathing is getting Deep.

Right.

Your keyword is skidmark. And here's the deal. At some point, you have to respond to something and say, oh, yeah, and you have to use the keyword, or you have to use a question where the keyword applies. So you think knowledge or comments. You know, that was really smart. That reminds me of a skid mark once. Or you could say, you know, have you ever experienced, like, a skid mark? Now, it doesn't have to be the last word. You can embed it, but that's the rule.

Wow. Skid mark. That's my word.

Yeah. And then we're gonna invite our guests and anyone listening to our podcast right now, send us your word of the day and throw it over to Chris or myself, and we'll use it as our word of the day.

Yeah, that's a great one. Okay, that's great. Skidmark. Okay, so now I have on a piece of paper in front of me our guest name, and in parentheses, it says skidmark.

Oh, my God.

So there. All right, should we get her up here?

Yeah, let's get her back.

All right. You want to introduce her?

So Dori Clark is a personal friend of mine. We go back quite a few years. She is one of the most remarkable. And I'm not just saying that. One of the most remarkable authors I know. She wrote a book called Reinventing youg, which is about reinventing you. But she is an Ivy Leaguer through and through. She teaches at Duke, which I guess is not Ivy League, so now I take that back. But she teaches at Duke. She's a columnist for Harvard Business Review, Forbes. She lectures all over the place, and she's taking time out of today to meet with us.

Yes. Welcome to the show, Dory.

Gentlemen, thank you so much. Great to be here.

Oh, great.

I thought you were playing the silent game with us.

Yeah, I know. We didn't hear you for a second.

So welcome. We're very happy that you're here for the Profit first podcast, episode one of one.

Isn't that horrible, Dory? I mean, it's great. You're our first guest.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for being. So where are you calling in from today?

Today I am in St. Cloud, Minnesota, which is. Actually, I've been here twice. I have been invited out by a group of prevention specialists. So these are anti drug and alcohol prevention people. And my first year, last year, I spoke to them about social media. And this year, I just finished giving a keynote talk about networking and relationship building. So the part that I Love best about the kind of work that we do speaking and writing and touring around is that sometimes you get to talk to some really awesome random groups. So I think this qualifies on both counts.

So do they have cocktail hour afterwards? Seriously, what do they do? Like apple juice?

You know, the Prevention World. Coffee and donuts all the way.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, No, I was curious.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, it's a fair question.

Thank you. So, Dory, tell us about reinventing you. And I want to hear about your next book coming out. But first, tell us about reinventing you. What's the concept of this book?

Absolutely. So the Concept of Reinventing youg. It actually started from my own personal experience because after graduate school I became a journalist. And that was a great, awesome career for me. I loved it. But about a year into starting my work, I got laid off. And it was really the vanguard of the collapse of the journalism industry. And I realized that I had to reinvent myself. And so over the course of the ensuing decade, I went into politics. I became a presidential campaign spokesperson. I made a documentary film. I ran a nonprofit. I did all of these things before finally reinventing myself as a consultant and a speaker and author. But in the course of doing all that, I realized, number one, that most other people weren't necessarily keeping up with my reinventions. And number two, it's really important to make sure that they are, because other people are the folks that hire you or that give you referrals or give you opportunities. And so I decided to write this book as a way of trying to lay out best practices for other people. I interviewed dozens and dozens of professionals who have reinvented themselves, either in small ways or in large ways to make sure.

Am I hearing when you say reinventing yourself with your network intact, I mean, is this a way to change what you're doing but keep the money flowing?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the most important parts of reinvention is sometimes people get scared because they think it's about jumping off the cliff economically, that if you're going to reinvent yourself, you know, you quit your job and have to somehow figure something out immediately. And one of the things that I talk about in the book is that oftentimes that's a pretty poor idea. If you are somebody who has responsibilities, you can do a sort of side reinvention or a simultaneous reinvention. So one of the stories that I tell is about a woman named Patricia Fripp, who now is a really well known public speaker. But the way that she Actually got her start is that she was a hairdresser, of all things, and she had a successful hairdressing business. And a lot of her clients were top executives in San Francisco where she worked. And they, because she was so good on her feet, they began to ask her, hey, will you come in and give a talk to my executives about relationship building and about a variety of other things? And so she did that. And for nearly 10 years, she simultaneously kept up her hairdressing business and built her public speaking business so that when she ultimately decided to go full time into public speaking, she already had a fantastic book of business and was able to hit the ground running.

Is that the trick to keeping the money flowing is to run two jobs simultaneously? Keep the hairdressing going while you're talking? And was she doing the hairdressing while talking? Like, do you simultaneous? Because that would be pretty awesome presentation.

I know sometimes that's something that I would pay to see for sure. But yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the potential answers, is to have a side gig that you kind of nurture and grow until it's ready for launching. But in terms of reinventing yourself, I think that another key point is that you need to make sure, no matter what, that if you're moving into a new area, you. That you have taken the time somehow to build up both your knowledge and your credibility in that field. And so there's a whole lot of different ways to do this. In my new book, in fact, Stand out, which is coming out in the spring, in which you were alluding to Mike, I profile a guy named Tim Walker, who he started a web design and advertising business, which he ended up selling. He's 35 years old, sold his business. What does he do after he sells a business? He gets an internship. A lot of people would think that was kind of a crazy move.

Well, for where?

For who?

Yeah, who the intern for.

He interned for Seth Godin.

Oh, I thought you can say Fractal Studio, where we're recording, because I knew you had that one intern in here.

Yes.

Okay, but so it wasn't him.

That would be pretty odd.

Yeah. So Seth Godin. That's like saying, like, you interned for Donald Trump and your name's Bill Rancic. I mean, that's awesome. But that's atypical, isn't it?

Yeah, it certainly is atypical. But, you know, I think the. The exciting. The exciting thing here is, you know, you might think that a guy who sold a company, you know, the last thing he would want to do is intern for anybody. But, you know, I think that the. The key here is that no matter how old you are, if you're 20 years old, if you're 35, if you're 55, you have to be willing to say, I want to keep learning from other people. My. My education is not done. And for all of us, that question is. I mean, if you can get an internship with a great marketing guru like Seth Godin, you should take it. But for. For every single one of us, there are probably people that we admire and that we should be thinking about learning from.

And I got it. I got to ask you something.

Yeah.

I got to ask you about the money side, because I love what you're saying. Reinvent yourself. Go all in. But it sounds like he walked in with all this money and he could. He could spend time. How do you do this? You know, there's people caught in the rat race. I know you're talking with them, Dory. There's people that are stuck in the rat race. They don't like what they're doing. They want to transition to a new business that they own, but they can't afford to do it. That. How do you navigate that? How have you seen that happen?

Money is a key part of it, Mike. You're absolutely right. So I will. I will tell you about somebody who did this when they were in their 20s and had absolutely no money. There was a woman that I got to know when I was. When I was running a nonprofit called the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, and her name was Karen Turer. She's someone that I actually profile in Reinventing you when she. She became one of our board members. And when she started on the board, she was in her 20s, and she had a sort of the antithesis of a high powered job. She was the volunteer coordinator at a homelessness nonprofit. So she definitely did not have a lot of big bucks to contribute as a board member, but she decided that the way that she would contribute is through sweat equity. And so for five years, she actually ran one of our big annual fundraisers, which was a bike festival. And in the process of doing that, she raised tens of thousands of dollars, created this big event that, you know, served hundreds of people. And she gained enough skills and realized, in fact, that she was so passionate about event planning that she decided that she wanted to go into fundraising full time. And so on the strength of her volunteer work, not anything she was doing during her day job, but on the strength of her volunteer work for MassPike, she was able to Get a job doing development work at a College. And now, 10 years after the fact, she has actually launched her own event planning and fundraising consultancy because of what she learned nights and weekends, just volunteering for a charity that she cared about.

That's great. I. I was.

I want to. We. We have your attention. You have our attention. Okay.

Excuse me. I had. I coughed. I wanted to ask you about, you know, what, making the transition from one. Either from one job to another or from one business to another. How. How much do you plan for profit? I mean, you know, you plan for, you know, the. The things you need. Like, you need an office, you need a phone, and you need a business name and a next diva phone. You need an XIVA phone. Thank you. But how much do you plan for profit? Because I can imagine changing careers or change or going from one business to another sometimes might be like changing your underwear. And sometimes there might be a skid mark in the previous. But. So how about that? How do you plan for profit, Dorie?

Well, I think that there's a couple of things. One, which, you know, I know is probably a topic that you're going to be talking about a lot once you are in episode two out of two and three out of three, but it's all about keeping your fixed expenses down. For me, that was really the key. When I launched my own consulting business eight years ago, I didn't have any clients. I literally had nothing teed up for myself. I just had the conviction that because I was coming off of running a small nonprofit, that almost as soon as I got one client, I could probably make more money than I made running my nonprofit. So I was a very big fan of keeping expenses down. So, I mean, some basic things like not paying for office space if you can work from home initially do that. I bought a house, and I bought a house in a neighborhood that, you know, I thought it was nice, but, you know, a lot of people wouldn't live there, hadn't been there, you know, big, big drug busts across the street.

So you. You thought it was nice. And a lot of people said, no, no. You're like, no, I love this place. And there's a drug bust going down in your house. They're probably doing PSP, not PCP. Yeah, PSP. We found out on an earlier episode, episode 00, that there's a drug you're probably familiar with, PCP. There's another drug that's even more intense called PSP.

And this show is called PfP.

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so you move into this drug den. And then what?

Well, you know, it was, it was a really nice apartment in a neighborhood that, shall we say, was developing. And so, you know, I was a buy and hold type. And so I actually just sold the place earlier this year and you know, made it, made a good profit on it because I made my wager based on looking at the long term development projects that things would improve in the neighborhood. So I tried basically to just live as cheaply as I could because the less expenses you have going out, the more freedom you have to make the kind of bold choices that can enable you to really be successful. You know, to take, to take the moonshots you need to really advance your business. So I think that's key. And of course Mike, as one of, one of the key tenets that you talk about in your book, Profit first, making sure that you're not paying yourself last but instead are paying yourself first. That is one of the important disciplines to make sure that you're not frittering your money away on things you don't really need.

There you go.

I couldn't agree more.

I was gonna say my next book is gonna be called Pay Kris First.

I like that.

Serious, I'm telling you.

Yeah, but who's gonna read that? Only Chris is. But you know, there's a lot of Chris's in this country. So. So, so what now? What are you up to next? Dory, you got a great. I say great book. I haven't read it yet, so I. A potentially great book called Standout coming Out. Not. It's not called Standout coming Out, it's called Standout. When is it coming out?

It is going to be coming out in April of 2015. So it's exciting. Anticipation is building because in fact it is available for pre order now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and all of that, but it won't be released until the spring. So I'm starting to roll out some of the material from it and give talks about it. It's basically a book about how to become a recognized expert. Expert in your field. Which of course is key to making sure that you can bring in the kinds of fees that you deserve and generate the kind of profit you need.

Yeah, because that doesn't just apply to celebrities or speakers or whatever. That applies to CEOs today. They're very public. And I'm saying a CEO, you could be a CEO of a two person business. Your personal brand, I assume is pretty darn significant. I said darn. Do we have to beep that? Yeah, so, okay, so who's this target? Does this target the celebrity kind of expert niche, or is this toward businesses or is it all the above?

Well, one of the points that I make, Mike, in the book is that being an expert in your field can mean a lot of different things. I mean, it certainly can mean, you know, if there's, if there's somebody who wants to be the next Dr. Oz or they want to, you know, be world renowned, that's fantastic. And they can certainly use the principles in the book. But what the audience that it's really aimed at is professionals who recognize that if they are perceived as having a lot of authority, that will benefit their business. Because, you know, if you are an accountant in your city, there's plenty of accountants, there's plenty of reasons why people is one or the other. But if you are recognized as the expert, that gives people a reason to choose you. It brings business in the door. The same for lawyers, it's the same for consultants. The same for anybody in a field where ideas are recognized. That's who I'm aiming to look at.

Yeah, and I think people can find you will determine your expertise immediately. You leave that room from a meeting as their potential new accountant. They're on the Internet typing in, you know, who is this guy Chris Curran? And then they see that you're the guy talking about it. You did the TED conference and you have the book. I mean, that's what you're saying, Dory, right? Then, then you have the advantage.

Yeah, that's. That's exactly right. You've given people a concrete reason to select you. And you know, these days it's, it's more complicated than ever because your reputation really exists on two parallel tracks. You have your in person reputation, but we also now have to really think about your digital reputation and creating the kind of content so that when people do Google you, which as you said they do right away, they'll find the kinds of things that convince them, oh, this is the person I should be working with.

And so I have one question that we ask all of our guests that we've had on all one of our episodes. How important is profit to you?

Profit is incredibly important. It is one of the most important things out there. I have a really good friend who has a business that is larger than mine in terms of people. It's larger than mine in terms of revenue, but I bring in more profit.

Okay, we have to know their name right now. Who are they? We want to call them out. Yeah, we will not mention their name. Joanne Smith in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We will not say, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

That's right. And, you know, ultimately, that is the metric that matters when you think about what impacts your quality of life, your overall satisfaction, your ability to do what you need to do. So putting profit first, to quote one Mike Michalowicz, is just about the most essential thing you can do.

Right. And by the way, Dory, part of what you didn't hear in the beginning was that he told me I had to fit in the word skid mark.

Oh, you didn't have to disclose that. Oh, you can tell.

You did it so well, did you?

Horrible question.

Was it awkward when he said skid mark?

I was a little awkward.

Yeah, it was. It was a little awkward. So here's the challenge we have on every podcast we've done, and we do, we're going to do in the future, is our podcast community. Our listeners asked Chris or I to give a word. To give us a word that we're assigned, and we have to use it in a conversation. Chris, by pure happenstance, was the first one to get assigned a word, and it was skid mark. And that's why it was sprung upon you that way.

Awkward.

Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, can I. Can I make a nomination? How about, like, chauffeur? Can you do chauffeur?

Okay, that's our next word, right?

We're writing that down.

That's actually even better. I shouldn't say it's better. We want our community reaching out. But our current guests can suggest the.

Word for the next one. Yeah.

Okay. Chauffeur. Chauffeur is the next one. And who would you like to sign that to? Chris or Chris or Mike?

I think this one should be on you, Mike. It's only fair.

It's only fair.

Thanks, Dory.

Good. I will run with it. Dory, if people want to learn more about you and people you want to learn more, Dory, what do they do, where they go, whose house they visit?

Excellent. Well, you can. You can come on down. I live in the financial district in Manhattan. She does awesome.

Really?

She's a New Yorker.

I am. If you prefer to stalk me electronically, my website is doryclark.com D O R I E C L A R K. I'm on Twitter oreClark, and on my website, in fact, I have more than 400 free articles talking about marketing and branding and all this good stuff. And my book, Reinventing youg is Out Now. Stand out is going to be coming out. And they're both available on. On Amazon, et cetera.

World class person. You know, if. If people ask me, what's one word for dory? It would not be skidmark. It would be just. I think it'd be so preferred. I don't know. She is just such a giving person. It'd be probably giving. Just a good person. It's not just her content. She cares for other people. So, Dory, an absolute, absolute. An absolute privilege having you on today. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Yep. Thanks, Dory. Talk to you soon.

All right.

That was awesome.

That was awesome. It was a little choppy with the skid mark.

Yeah. That was awkward.

I felt. I felt. Yeah. I wonder if we should tell them that we use the word. It's just there's, you know, or we.

Could tell them we're gonna use a word, and they can try and pick out which word.

Oh, that might be a good challenge, too. I was thinking that we just leave it hanging because then there's that perpetual awkwardness with our guests. But not. But our community. Our buds are just hearing.

They're gonna know it.

Yeah, they're just gonna know it.

So. So we're gonna do a little debrief here, huh?

Yes, we are. So I'm trying to look at my notes. Oh, here's one thing that stood out for me. She said that her friend has this big business, and she's. And Dory's more profitable. And kudos to her for making fun of her friend, but also just for realizing that, you know, it's not about the size of the business. Everyone talks about. How big is your business? How big is your business? Who freaking cares, man? I care about, can you pay the rent? Can you live the lifestyle you want? And I thought that was a cool takeaway for me. How about you?

That's great. Yeah. I actually. When. One of her tips was to keep your fixed expenses down when you're making. When you're reinventing yourself, which I thought was. I mean, that's kind of an obvious one, but is that one overlooked? I wanted to ask you, Mike.

Well, of course it is. Because, you know, first of all, we've. We believe that many expenses are fixed expenses when they're really variable, meaning your rent. People say, what's a fixed expense? Fixed means it's permanent. No, you can renegotiate it. No. If you are totally out of money, you will stop paying. Not because you're trying to be a schmo, but you don't have the money. There's no such thing as a fixed expense. Everything's negotiable. So I love that she kept those things down. And I think they're really recurring expenses that we can reduce.

And she also talked about her next book called Standout is going to be about standing out. Standing out. Being the expert. My question. Well, my thought was, is being an expert, does that translate into being more profitable?

Yeah. That's good. You know what? I wish we asked her that, because I question that too.

Right. Well.

I personally do public speaking and so forth. Right. So there's a perception of expertise. But the problem is you're. I'm in the time for money trap. Every time I speak, I can get paid, but I can only speak so much before there's no more time. It's the people that can scale their business that have other people or other things doing the process that I think can go much bigger. So I wish we still had her for that. Maybe we should invite her back.

Right? Should we call her?

Yeah, it'd be awkward. Nah, we're at our time limit. That would be funny. Hey, Dory, we've got to ask a question. This is episode one B.

Call her back eight times.

Episode one C of one.

And she also said she described profitability as. I don't know if you heard this or maybe it's one of your quotes. She described profitability as the metric that matters.

Yeah, I didn't hear that. That's pretty cool. I loved it. Yeah, I love it now.

Should we steal that?

Yeah, Yeah, I saw a lot of them. You know, one tip she gave us for the next show is it's going to be episode two of two and then three of three. I thought that was genius.

That is genius.

Episode three. Here's the final quote for the day. This came in from Oscar Wilde. Not that he submitted. I mean, this is. That sounded weird. Yeah. Oscar, thanks for the call.

Thanks.

From the 1800s, he said, when I was young, I thought that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know that it is.

Mm.

And I'm Casey Kasem. I sound like Casey Kasem, right?

You always want to go into the radio voice.

Who do we have? Coming up next?

We have Michael Port.

Michael Port. Michael Port. Author of Book Yourself Solid. The Think Big Manifesto. Just the guru expert on sales. And we're going to question him on how to sell stuff and be profitable doing it.

That's right. So thank you for listening to the Profit first podcast. This is all about profit. And if you have any questions or comments, you can find us@profit first podcast.com. and again, catch the podcast on itunes. And stitcher, I'm Chris Curran. Mike Michalowicz.

We're out of here.

Thank you.

Episode 101. Done.

Episode 1.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening.

So, Chris, if people want to learn more about you and see what you look like. What's she do?

Oh, yeah, they can't see us, right? Good thing. So they can go to fractal recording dot com. That's fractal F, R A C, T, A, L. Fractal Recording Calm.

Yeah. And check out what the school studio is all about.

Yeah, we do a lot of shows here. We help local people host their own shows. It's. That's awesome.

And you can do it remotely, too.

You could do remotely. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of stuff there. We have a cool product called the Blog Generator.

Yes, definitely. Check that out.

Yeah. And how about you?

Yeah. So you want to learn more about what I got going on, you can go to my site, mikemicalicz.com but if you really want to learn about profit, the place I encourage everyone to check out is Profit First Professionals. These are folks that are helping small businesses become profitable. So it's accountants and bookkeepers and coaches. And if you're an accountant, bookkeeper, or coach and want to help others do profit first, it's the same thing.

Go to profitfirstprofessional.com profitfirstprofessionals.com awesome. Thanks.

Thank you.