MBA895 Guest Teacher: Dorie Clark – Practical Steps to Taking the Leap Into Entrepreneurship

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Heyo. Welcome welcome to the $100 MBA show where it's our business to help your business be the best it could be with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA and webinar Ninja and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. Today we have a very, very special guest teacher, good friend of the show and Nicole and I, Dory Clark Dorie Clark is an adjunct professor at Duke University Student School of Business. She's also the bestselling author of Entrepreneurial youl Reinventing youg and Stand out which was named the number one leadership book for 2015 by Inc. Magazine. Besides being a fantastic entrepreneur herself, she's a student of entrepreneurship and studies great entrepreneurs around her. And on a personal note, Dori is a very sweet friend of ours, one of the most generous entrepreneurs in our space. And in today's episode, Dori is going to teach you a very important lesson. She's going to give you practical steps to taking the leap into entrepreneurial. I know a lot of you who listen to this show have been wanting to start a business for some time. You have some great ideas. You might have even jotted down these ideas and started working on them, but you just don't know how to take that leap, how to take the steps to becoming an entrepreneur. Those steps and those tips. That's what Dory's going to be talking about in today's episode. It's the subject of her new book, Entrepreneurial youl, which comes out tomorrow. So definitely check her out on Amazon. But you're not gonna have to wait till tomorrow to get started. You get started today with her tips. Along with a nice giveaway, she's giving away a self assessment to help you take that leap. More about that at the end of the show. We got so much to cover in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Taking those first steps to becoming an entrepreneur is exciting. It's a great time. But it also could be overwhelming. It could be confusing. Where do you start? How do you start? Sometimes we don't know what to focus on. Don't worry, Dori Clark has you covered in today's lesson. I'm gonna pass it on to her right now, but I'll be back with my takeaways and some insights of my own on this topic. But right now I'm gonna let Dori give you those practical steps taking that leap into entrepreneurship. Take it away, Dori.

Hey everybody, this is Dori Clark. Thanks so much for joining me today. Today I'm gonna be talking to you about practical steps to taking the leap into entrepreneurship. So let's get down to business. So the first thing that's really important to get out there and someone who did not do this, and in retrospect I wish that I did, is that technically you actually don't have to take a leap into entrepreneurship. I started my business, I do marketing, strategy consulting and, you know, later added on writing and speaking and teaching and things like that. But I started it in 2006 and I left my job, which at the time I was running a nonprofit, and I really did leap. I had no clients and it literally didn't even occur to me that that was a possibility, that I could have somehow gotten clients before I started. But I realize now, in retrospect and having written a number of books about this process, you should tee it up a lot better than I did. And in fact, one of my favorite stories in my very first book, reinventing you, was about a woman named Patricia Fripp. And Patricia actually started out as a hairdresser and she was really passionate about public speaking and she wanted to develop a career as a paid professional speaker. But she had a 10 year lease on her salon. And she realized that might feel like a constraint, but it was actually something that she could use to her benefit. And so what she did was she took, she took that 10 years as Runway and she reinvested all the money she earned from her speaking into the business. She got training, she invested in speaker coaches, in great videos, all the kind of marketing collateral you would need. And at the end of that period, she was able to shut her salon down. She did not renew the lease, and she could just walk into her new career because she had already more than replaced her income from hairdressing with her income from speaking. Now, 10 years is a pretty long Runway, but I actually like it as a kind of extreme example of the way that more of us should be thinking, which is that instead of just plunging, instead of leaping, think about small side bets that you can start today. This is a key premise of my new book, Entrepreneurial you, even if you are working in a day job now, but you have entrepreneurial aspirations, there is something you can start today. Think about what that smallest piece is. Maybe it's just setting up a website, maybe it's trying to land your very first client, even at a really low rate, but just something that you can do to begin to get the wheels turning so that by the time you really do go full time, if in fact you want to do that, you are in a position where that actually is safer in some ways than the alternative. The second thing that is important to keep in mind when it comes to practical steps taking the leap into entrepreneurship is that I actually developed a framework in the course of writing Entrepreneurial you, which is first you build trust, next you go deep. Finally you leverage your knowledge. And I think a place where a lot of entrepreneurs, either existing or aspiring, get into trouble is they immediately try to go to the sexy stuff, which is leveraging your knowledge. And you know, oh, I'm going to do an online course and I'm going to get a million dollars or whatever it is. But there's two necessary prerequisites that come first. Building trust is a key one. And one of the stories I tell in Entrepreneurial youl is about Pat Flynn. Some of you may also to his podcast Smart Passive Income. And one of the things that I love about his story, he actually got his start in online business by writing a study guide for passing a green building exam. And he was blogging. He was essentially blogging his way through because he was trying to pass this exam and other people found his free materials so helpful. This is crazy to Me, it's amazing. So when he created his first guidebook about how to pass this exam, he had already put all the material up for free online. This was all stuff that people had already gotten. And so when he put it out in book form, he surveyed his audience afterwards to see why they bought it. 25% of his audience had already taken the green building exam and they didn't need the guide anymore, a full 25%. But they said the reason they were buying it is it was the first chance that they could pay him back for that knowledge. And so if we think about that, that is the level of trust that we're talking about, that he provided information so good that even when people had reached the point past when they needed it, they wanted to somehow thank him. So building trust by sharing great content regularly, building that that relationship is key and going deep. This next part is something that I also highly recommend. Again, a lot of people really want to jump to scale. They want to jump to, oh, I can help thousands of people, millions of people. Instead, a really great thing to do early on is to find a way to help a handful of people very deeply, meaning especially through coaching, through consulting, etc. Because it's that early deep knowledge that enables you to get close to the customer and really see in a profound way what is it they need, what are they asking for, where are they hitting roadblocks, what do they not even know they need, but they really need. If you can understand those things, if you can live and breathe your customer, which you can only do by going deep with them, then once you are able to shift over and to start to scale, you will be creating products and services that are so much more relevant and salient and helpful to people that it's a lot easier to succeed. Now, number three, something key to keep in mind as you are taking practical steps into online entrepreneurship is understanding the importance and the difference of a mind share play versus a market share play. And this is a framework that was introduced to me by a guy named Michael Parish Dudel. He is the author of the official book of the Shark Tank TV series and he was somebody that I profiled in Entrepreneurial youl, my new book. And I loved how he thought about this. Basically what he said is that there are market share plays, you know, meaning things that you can do to get money into your business. And these are things that are really important. I mean, obviously every entrepreneurial venture needs money, especially early on, and so you have to do some market share stuff. It might not be sexy, it Might not really be particularly visible, but it is putting money in the bank. And that is what you need in order to succeed and to essentially have the chance to keep playing tomorrow. But you also simultaneously have to think about a mindshare play, meaning the things that are long term investments that you should be doing in order to raise awareness about who you are, to raise your profile so that you can later come in at a higher level of compensation and respect from other people. And that might include things like appearing on television or speaking at a prestigious conference, things like that. Eventually you would get paid for speaking at conferences, but early on you might not. But it still might be a good decision for you if it's about raising your profile strategically. Television you pretty much never get paid for unless you become a super regular guest. But people still do it. They still consider it valuable for their branding. So it's really understanding that breakdown of what you're doing for mindshare versus what you're doing for market share. A fourth piece that I wanted to talk about with regard to being a practical step into entrepreneurship is understanding that it's actually okay to charge. Now, that sounds a little basic in some ways, but I think it's really important and I wanted to talk about it and highlight it because this is a place where a lot of nascent entrepreneurs fall down. I actually profile a guy in Entrepreneurial U named Andrew Warner. Some of you may be familiar with his business. It's called Mixergy and it's a paid subscription service to a series of video interviews with top entrepreneurs and startup leaders. And he actually started Mixergy early on just for free. He was doing these interviews. It was really kind of a personal quest for him because Andrew had been an entrepreneur and he had had one business that had succeeded spectacularly. And then his next business, which he assumed of course would be even more spectacular of a success, turned out to be a total failure. And so he really wanted to understand and reconstruct what happened, what went wrong, how do you prevent this? Along the way, he began doing these video interviews with successful entrepreneurs to try to get at that. And over time, it became a big thing. Originally it was a hobby, but he started hiring video editors, producers and things like that, really creating high quality stuff. And it began to reach a point where he really couldn't afford to keep it going for free. And so he made what was a hard decision for him to start charging. And it is fraught. Sometimes people might in fact be critical. I don't want to diminish that possibility. It's not an irrational fear. Sometimes people will say, oh, you're a sellout, or, oh, that's way too expensive, blah, blah, blah. But the truth of the matter is, Andrew could not have kept it going if he did not charge. And that's the case for almost all of us, right? Unless we, you know, have trust funds and are just doing this as a hobby, we somehow need to make money. And so the choice to let ourselves be cowed by other people about pricing is actually a dangerous and a damaging one, because ultimately, if we are not getting remunerated properly for what we're doing, it means it's going to go away because it is not going to be sustainable over the long term. So getting comfortable with that, understanding that, yes, there will be some blowbacks sometimes, but that is par for the course and it is necessary to achieving our mission, which is sustainability is really key. Now, number five, a point that I wanted to make for you guys that I heard again and again throughout the book and I thought was pretty interesting, is about the value of consistency. Now, that is not the sexiest drum to beat here, right? I mean, consistency, okay. Right. Why is that so special? But I heard again and again from the very successful entrepreneurs that I profiled in Entrepreneurial. You. This, above almost all else, was a huge key of their success. I profiled a guy named James Clear. James is a blogger on Habits, and he does a lot of fitness and photography and things like that as well. But he has built a rabid following. He has now about 400,000, I believe, email subscribers. I mean, it's an enormous amount. And when I asked him, well, what accounts for that, how did you build this following? He really attributes it to his decision in late 2012 to blog very consistently without fail, twice per week. And he did it for a period of a number of years and was able to build up a following. A, because people expected the posts to come and they look forward to them, and so it gave them an extra incentive to subscribe. But B, you know, wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where anything you did, if you put enough time into it, would automatically be this amazing viral success? Right? Wouldn't that be great? But the truth is, if we think about it, no matter how long we craft something or how perfect we try to make it, we don't know in a lot of ways what's going to resonate with an audience. And so, you know, saying, oh, well, I'll just blog once a month, but it'll be amazing. That's a little Bit delusional, right. What James did was he mandated for himself that he was going to blog at least eight times a month. And in doing that, basically what he did was give himself more at bats more chances to create great posts that connected and that ultimately enabled him to build up an audience. And also with that volume, he was able to start syndicating his posts as well. So it wasn't just on his own blog. He also was getting published in business insider, entrepreneur, etc. So those things matter. Consistency matters. And the final piece that I wanted to talk about for you guys in terms of practical steps to taking the leap into entrepreneurship is a little bit of my own story, but it really is one that undergirds everything that I talk about in entrepreneurial you, which is A, the importance of building multiple revenue streams in your business, but B, equally important to understand that you can't and shouldn't do it all overnight. This is a process over time, when it's done well becomes a part of your long term strategy and what you're working toward. Now, the reason that I believe it's so important to have multiple revenue streams is is that a, of course if you, if you do, it gives you more chances to make money, more, more things you can sell more opportunities. But perhaps even more importantly, it's a hedge against uncertainty. We might think if we're entrepreneurs, oh yeah, you know, I'm, I'm insulated from risk. I have multiple clients. I'm not dependent on that one paycheck. I have, you know, 10 clients or I have 100 clients. And so if somebody cuts a contract, then I'm okay. But the truth is, if you're doing even just the same thing for all of those clients, if that thing gets disrupted, then you're at risk. I mean, let's say, oh, you were known for your flash programming or something like that. Well, there's a lot less of that these days. And so we need to think it's not about doing a million different things. It's about getting in close to the customer like we talked about before, and really understanding who are they, what do they need and what are the different ways that we can serve them. And so for me, for my business originally I started doing marketing strategy consulting. But these days I have eight different income streams. I do business school teaching, I do paid speaking, I do executive coaching, I write books, I do online courses. But all those things are symbiotic. And that's really the key. It's understanding your audience and what are the multiple things they need and ways you can connect with them. Someone might buy my book and if they like it, they might hire me to give a speech for their company and then they might hire me to do executive coaching for them personally. You know, they all tie in together. So if we can think about that strategically, we'll be in a good place. So finally, just a brief recap. Number one, you don't have to leap overnight. You can do it on in time. Number two, build trust, go deep and leverage your knowledge. Number three, understand the mind share versus market share play. Number four, know that it's okay to charge. Number five, be consistent. And number six, build multiple revenue streams. But don't do it overnight. It's a process. If you want to continue learning about how to develop multiple income streams in your own business, I do have a free resource for you. You can go to doryclark.com entrepreneur and you can receive your free 88 question entrepreneurial you self assessment that walks you step by step through the process of identifying and cultiv new income streams in your own business. And again that's available for free@doryclark.com entrepreneur. Thanks again for joining me today. And back to Omar.

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Thank you Dorie for that great lesson. When I listen to this lesson I often think about wow, the fundamentals are so important. What makes a great business is so important. Dori talked about building trust, building that relationship with your audience and it's the key element to building any sustainable long term business. And the thing that a lot of People don't talk about is that there's no shortcuts with this. There's no shortcut to building those relationships. It takes time. It takes work. It takes, like she mentioned, takes blogging, writing blog posts, or if you prefer, videos on YouTube or if you prefer podcasting, whatever it is. But you have to build that relationship through content. And you got to take the time, set aside the time to do that. Just like I set aside a time to record this podcast episode and every episode that we publish. I know that it's an investment in building a relationship with you, my listeners. So I can't stress this enough. Every time somebody comes to me, sends me an email, talks to me in person, says, hey, I want to start a business, or what's your advice? I tell them, just get started with building your audience, building your content. Just blog. Start blogging every day or start blogging every week, or start building any kind of content, infographics, videos, whatever it is. But stop thinking and start doing. What I've realized is that that's not sexy. That's not, you know, headlines for, you know, Forbes magazine. Omar Zinnam publishes another podcast episode. That's not a headline, right? And we think, well, is that business? It is business. It's the grind, it's the training montage we don't see that allows, you know, your inner Rocky to be successful. Sorry, guys. I'm a Rocky fan, and I use a lot of metaphors from that series of movies, but it's true. Why do you think they show you that training montage where he's, you know, running at the crack of dawn, chasing chickens, you know, climbing a mountain in the snow, Whatever it is, that's hard work. That's not fun. But they show you that's what it takes to be a champion. You had to endure conflict and adversity and challenges in order for him to become a champion, Right? The same goes with business. You're going to do things that people don't know you do. It's that internal struggle of, you know, getting down to it and working on building that audience and building great content to attract that audience. So put yourself on a publishing schedule, whatever medium you're using. Number two, and this is a topic I'm going to be going into very deep in the next year. When you're starting a business, you're often distracted with a lot of the little things that fly around in the world. Online, we think everything is important when really it's not. Only a few solid things really move the needle. Let Me give you an example. You might be a fitness expert and you want to start a fitness blog and a fitness business, but you heard that Snapchat is the newest thing and you got to be on Snapchat. You got to be on Snapchat. Now, I'm not hating on Snapchat. Snapchat is a great medium, but Snapchat is not going to move your business to the next level. That might help you connect with your audience and build content in that way that lasts only 24 hours. But social media in general takes a lot of time. And a lot of us think that, oh, social media, I gotta be on social media. And you get distracted with these little things you think are business, when really if you focused on some core principles on attracting your audience, like building great content and through that, having great SEO for your website. So when people search you on Google or search your keywords like, you know, personal trainer or personal fitness in Kentucky, if that's where you're based, that you show up at the top of the rankings, that is going to move the needle. You're going to get incredible organic traffic by building great content on your blog and on your website and really going to town and making sure that you're offering great value and optimizing your SEO on your site, building that relationship through email marketing, building your email list, communicating regularly through a newsletter. These things move the needle. So it's really important to know where you should put your efforts and where you shouldn't really worry about so much. Once you have a solid business and things are moving and you're really starting to get some traction, then you can start saying, hey, maybe I can add this element. Maybe I should try start, you know, becoming more active on Twitter or Snapchat or whatever the case may be. But a lot of us start there thinking that my business will blow up because I'm on Facebook. I've said this so many times. Business is done at your business, right? So if you have a physical business, if you have a coffee shop, that's where you make money at the coffee shop. When people go to your coffee shop, if you have an online business, then where do you think you make your money on the website? So make sure you optimize for that. Business is not done on Facebook. Now you might be saying, well, it gets people to my website.

That's great.

But you got to make sure you have something for them at your website, great content for them to absorb and build that trust with you. So they can say, hey, this person knows what they're talking about, I'm really getting a lot of value from it. There's no point in having a great Facebook presence or running even Facebook ads if your site doesn't have any value on it. It's like me inviting you to my house and not even offering you a cup of water, let alone a meal. So know what to focus on at the start. Work on the things that really move the needle. And in my opinion, that's great. Content on your site builds your SEO and building that relationship through email marketing by building your email list. The last thing I want to share with you on this topic and Dori really stressed this and I really loved it. Well, there you have it guys. You know, Dori's lesson was fantastic. Those are my takeaways or my little pieces of advice on the topic. I highly recommend you pick up Dori's book Entrepreneurial youl out tomorrow. And right now what you could do is download her free assessment. It's a self assessment on how to take that leap into entrepreneurship and you can get it@doryclark.com entrepreneur again it's doryclark.com entrepreneur. It's absolutely free. She's going to email it to you, no strings attached. Dori is good people, so go ahead and check it out. All right guys, that wraps up today's lesson. I hope you loved it. Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can get all your lessons automatically. And you have access to our archive of over over 900 episodes. By hitting subscribe you have access to all those episodes. If you don't subscribe, you don't. So make sure you hit subscribe. Alright, that's it for me today guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I loved that Dory said is understanding that this takes some time. Have a long term view. Don't put so much pressure on yourself. Where he's like, I gotta be a billionaire by next week or by next year or in 10 years. It takes time. If I look at myself and look at the $100 ratio, it took us a very long time to get to this point where we have, you know, 50, 60, 70,000 downloads per episode. I mean I just mentioned we have over 900 episodes. I had 900 chances to try to improve and get better and deliver great content. Give yourself the time to be successful. All right, I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take.

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