Dorie Clark - Reinventing You Author | The Hidden Cost of Personal Transformation

Summary

Podcast Summary: Success Story with Scott D. Clary

Episode: Dorie Clark – Reinventing You Author | The Hidden Cost of Personal Transformation
Date: December 28, 2025
Host: Scott D. Clary
Guest: Dorie Clark

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Episode Overview

In this rich and candid discussion, Scott D. Clary sits down with multi-awarded business thinker, best-selling author, and executive educator Dorie Clark. They delve into the nuances of personal and professional reinvention, the psychological and practical challenges that come with change, and the interplay between "playing the long game" and the courage to start anew. The episode is packed with real-life anecdotes, tactical advice, and philosophical musings on influence, identity, and building a fulfilling life and career.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Non-Linear Career Journey (00:00 – 04:58)

• Dorie Clark’s Early Career:
  Dorie opens up about her varied path: wanting to be a professor, switching to journalism after rejections, facing layoffs, pivoting into politics, and finally running a nonprofit that sparked her entrepreneurial journey.

  • “It’s not really where you start, but it absolutely is about where you end up.” (00:26, Dorie Clark)

• The Nature of Reinvention:
  Both Scott and Dorie discuss the necessity and difficulty of repeated reinvention, especially when forced by external circumstances.

2. The Psychology & Reality of Reinvention (04:58 – 09:41)

• On Grit and Determination:
  Scott emphasizes the overwhelming emotional energy it takes to start over multiple times.

• Breaking the 'Too Late' Myth:
  Dorie recounts a poignant story about a woman who dismissed her book because she was “over 50”:

  • “That’s like the saddest thing I’ve ever heard... you’re writing off 30, 40 years of your life and just saying, well, I’m done now.” (05:03, Dorie Clark)

• Exhaustion & Agency:
  Dorie explains that many see life as something that happens to them—not something they can actively shape, contrasting this with the entrepreneurial mindset.

• Necessity-Driven Reinvention:
  Dorie’s layoff the day before 9/11 forced a rapid, need-based reinvention—leaving room for neither mourning nor hesitation.

3. Identity, Opportunity, and Letting Go (12:30 – 23:06)

• Why Not Go Back?
  Scott asks why Dorie didn’t just pursue more journalism jobs. Dorie reveals how circumstances closed doors and pride led her to refuse lower-status offers.

  • “My pride was too great, Scott. And I’m just like, no, I am not going to accept your crappy underpaid job.” (13:32, Dorie Clark)

• Lagging Self-Identity:
  Dorie shares how clinging to a past professional identity blinded her to new, appealing opportunities, until self-reflection prompted change.

  • “For a lot of us, when we're reinventing, there's a lag between who we actually are sometimes in the world and how we think of ourselves.” (17:17, Dorie Clark)

• Community and Self-Awareness:
  Scott reflects on how his own concept of being an entrepreneur constrained his perception of his podcast’s success, highlighting the value of supportive, candid inner circles.

4. The Hidden Cost: Impact on Relationships (24:28 – 31:30)

• Challenging Assumptions About Support:
  Dorie insists that friends and family are not always the best supporters during reinvention; sometimes, their own identities feel threatened by your change.

  • “For a lot of reinventions, your reinvention sometimes threatens their identity… we often need to treat our friends and family like a constituency where we have to prove our seriousness.” (24:38, Dorie Clark)

• Planning Your Case:
  She recommends treating reinvention as a kind of marketing campaign, anticipating objections and clearly communicating the seriousness and thoughtfulness of your plans.

5. Reinvention vs. The Long Game (31:30 – 39:55)

• Reconciling Change and Persistence:
  Scott asks how to balance sticking with something (the “long game”) vs. knowing when to start over. Dorie introduces the “Optimize for Interesting” mindset:

  • “We have one life and we need to keep ourselves engaged. Optimizing for interesting is really about finding ways to seek out that learning edge for yourself.” (31:51, Dorie Clark)

• The Four Waves Framework:
  Dorie explains career/life phases:

  • Learning → Creating → Sharing → Reaping
  • The key challenge: Don’t get stuck in “reaping.” Have the courage to go back to “learning” to avoid stagnation.

6. Staying Engaged & Reinventing for Fulfillment (39:55 – 45:15)

• When Should You Reinvent?
  Financial security is a key consideration; otherwise, “thinking in waves” can help you determine if it’s time to start the next learning curve.
• The Story of Marshall Goldsmith:
  Goldsmith’s mentor told him he was “too successful” and needed to challenge himself—leading to broader impact but requiring a willingness to go “back to the bottom” and learn.

7. The Role of Hobbies & Crossover Utility (40:31 – 47:02)

• Dorie’s Musical Theater Odyssey:
  She discusses learning to write musicals from scratch and how pushing herself out of her comfort zone led to new skills, connections, and humility.

  • “We get comfortable with mastery… to start somewhere else and to sort of suck, to not know what you’re doing… it’s threatening.” (41:56, Dorie Clark)

• Benefits Beyond the Obvious:
  Creative pursuits brought unexpected network and career benefits.

• Combinatorial Thinking:
  Scott points out that top performers often have wide-ranging interests, making them more creative and connected thinkers.

8. Influence, Thought Leadership & Personal Brand (58:51 – 73:07)

• Becoming Known for Your Ideas:
  Dorie shares the power of codifying or framing concepts simply and memorably as a route to thought leadership.

  • Example: Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion.

• One Focus or Multiple?
  Success can come from having a clear “thread” connecting your work, rather than being overly narrow or scattered.

• Defining Influence, Thought Leadership, Personal Brand, and Self-Promotion:
  Dorie provides nuanced definitions and discusses the need for substance over surface-level content.

  • “Influence is just really a kind of quantification of the impact that you’re having on other people... Thought leadership, you have to have followers... but there has to be genuine ideas behind it.” (66:15, Dorie Clark)

• Authenticity & Vulnerability:
  Personal experience adds valuable color if relevant, but narcissism should be avoided.

9. Sharing Your Story & The Power of Persistence (73:07 – 80:27)

• Dorie’s Evolving Approach:
  Initially hesitant to share personal stories due to journalistic training, Dorie gradually included more of herself in her writing, seeing positive responses.

• Long Tunnel Metaphor:
  Meaningful projects are like dark tunnels with unknown lengths:

  • “For me, one of the key values around playing the long game is understanding that... it’s a matter of courage... because it’s saying, regardless of the outcome, this matters to me enough to try to do it.” (79:19, Dorie Clark)

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Notable Quotes

• "It's not really where you start, but it absolutely is about where you end up." (00:26, Dorie Clark)
• "We often make a very casual assumption... that the people who will be our strongest boosters in reinvention are close friends and family. For a lot of reinventions, that actually is not true because your reinvention sometimes threatens their identity." (24:33, Dorie Clark)
• "Optimize for interesting." (31:51, Dorie Clark)
• "The person who is known as the expert is the person who is willing to do the work." (71:30, Dorie Clark)
• "Meaningful projects are like venturing into a dark tunnel... no one tells you how long it is. You just have to keep moving forward.” (79:19, Dorie Clark)
• "Sometimes we just have to wait much longer than we want for the goals that we want to achieve. But you keep at it. Oftentimes it really will work.” (83:45, Dorie Clark)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – 04:58: Dorie's career beginnings & first reinventions
• 04:58 – 09:41: Psychology of reinvention & agency
• 12:30 – 23:06: Professional identity, opportunity, and letting go
• 24:28 – 31:30: Family/friend resistance to change
• 31:30 – 39:55: Reinvention vs. long game, the 4-wave framework
• 40:31 – 47:02: Exploration, hobbies, and creativity
• 58:51 – 61:02: Becoming a recognized thought leader
• 66:15 – 69:05: Definitions: Influence, thought leadership, and more
• 73:07 – 80:27: Telling your own story & long-term persistence
• 83:38 – End: Closing reflections and advice

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Memorable Moments

• Dorie’s pride leading her to reject a low-status journalism job after her layoff, pushing her into new fields (13:32).
• The story of a woman dismissing reinvention after 50, sparking Dorie’s drive to challenge limiting beliefs (04:58).
• Dorie’s candid admission of the discomfort, humility, and eventual growth from starting fresh in the musical theater world (41:56, 42:19).
• The long tunnel metaphor for major life changes and the courage required to persist (79:19).

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Resources & Connect

• Dorie Clark’s Newsletter & Content: dorieclark.com/subscribe
• Scott D. Clary’s Podcast Archive: successstorypodcast.com

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Final Takeaways

This episode offers in-depth wisdom for anyone considering reinvention or facing unexpected change. Dorie Clark underscores the importance of identity flexibility, building a supportive narrative, and the courage to start again after reaching comfort zones. Both future-proofing strategies and “optimizing for interesting” are explored as keys to lasting professional fulfillment and personal growth.

Transcript

[Dorie Clark]

I had a lot of visions in my 20s about what I wanted to do professionally. It took me a while to find my footing. Eventually I ran a nonprofit, and perhaps surprisingly, that actually opened my eyes to entrepreneurship.

[Scott Clary]

She didn't just teach strategy, she redefined what it means to stand out in a crowded world. Dori Clark has been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world multiple times and recognized as the number one communication coach globally.

[Dorie Clark]

It's not really where you start, but it absolutely is about where you end up. Are you open to recognizing that this needs to be done? If you are, it actually does open up a world of opportunity. When you are reinventing, we often make a very casual assumption. We just assume that the people who will be our strongest boosters in reinvention, which is your close friends and your family. But for a lot of reinventions, that actually is not true because your reinvention sometimes threatens their identity.

[Scott Clary]

A former presidential campaign spokeswoman and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, she teaches executive education at Columbia Business School. Her work has helped professionals all over the world build influence, amplify their ideas, and reinvent their careers.

[Dorie Clark]

One of the really effective ways to get known for your ideas is to codify something. Sometimes we just have to wait much longer than we want for the goals that we want to achieve. But you keep at it. Oftentimes it really will work.

[Scott Clary]

You started in philosophy and theology, you shifted to journalism, politics, and then before all of you did all of this, before finding your path to sort of business thought leadership. So how did these early, I don't want to call them failures, but sort of reinventions or iterations of who you are. How did they shape your approach to reinvention and to long term thinking?

[Dorie Clark]

I had a lot of visions in my 20s about what I wanted to do professionally. And the first one was that I wanted to be a university professor. I had gone through and gotten my master's degree, and I thought, okay, I'll get a doctorate, I'll be a professor. And I ended up getting turned down by all the doctoral programs I applied to. So I had to scramble and find a plan B. And I decided I would become a journalist, which has similar DNA to being a professor. You're writing, you're reading, you're talking to people. And that was a really satisfying career for me. But unfortunately it didn't last very long because I ended up getting laid off about a year into my career as a journalist. And because there was, at the time I thought it was a recession. But actually it was really just the start of a cascade where the news industry got essentially demonetized. And we now have about half as many journalists in America as we did 20 years ago. I mean, the numbers were so stark. So not surprisingly, I couldn't get a journalism job anywhere else. So I had to write reinvent again. I worked in politics on a couple of political campaigns which were very high profile, but a governor's race and a presidential race, but they both lost. So it took me a while to find my footing. Eventually I ran a nonprofit for a couple of years and perhaps surprisingly, that actually opened my eyes to entrepreneurship because I realized that running the nonprofit, if you're doing it well, you're basically running a small business. And I thought, oh well, this is.

[Scott Clary]

How you do it.

[Dorie Clark]

I didn't realize that was how you do it. So I decided that it wouldn't actually be that much of a stretch to go into business for myself, which is what I've been doing for the past 18 years now.

[Scott Clary]

So. Interesting. So a couple ideas out of that. First of all, I want to understand because I want to talk about the nonprofit and entrepreneurship because I actually believe that most people don't treat nonprofits like businesses and they should. That's a whole other aside when you think about reinvention. I think that one idea around reinvention is really simple but very hard for people. It's the, the will, it's the grit, it's the determination to keep reinventing again and again and again and again. Because it takes a lot of energy. I mean, anytime I've switched careers and you've done it a few times yourself in the past, it's like, okay, I'm starting from scratch. Where do I even begin? I think that's a lot for people. It's a skill that when you master it, I think it's a great skill because it really future proofs yourself. But I would say that most people defer to not reinventing whether or not they are in a career 9 to 5 W2 and they just keep doing their thing their whole life or even if they're entrepreneurial, they build one thing and they just want to keep building the same thing again and again. And maybe they have an exit and they build the same company again after the non compete expires. So what is the strategy? What is the, what is the mindset? What is the hack, the skill that allows you to keep reinventing successfully?

[Dorie Clark]

Incident really clarified this for me early on. I had just written my first book which was called Reinventing youg. And I was doing this, like, book fair where you were signing books and things like that. And a woman came up to the table where I was at, and she picked up the book and started flipping through it. And I think she didn't quite understand that I was the author because she probably wouldn't have said this if she did. But she looked at it for a minute or two and then she flung it down. She seemed to have this great animus toward it. And she just muttered under her breath, well, I'm over 50. Too late for me. And I thought, oh, my God, that's like the saddest thing I've ever heard. Because, of course, I mean, the average lifespan of an American woman now is in their mid-80s. For people who are younger, you know, under 30, it's gonna be mid-90s, if not more. And so the idea that you were writing off 30, 40 years of your life and just saying, well, I'm done now, just seemed so ominous to me and so depressing. And I thought, wow, this is what we're fighting against. This is what we really need to help people understand.

[Scott Clary]

Why do you think people are so comfortable writing off 40 years of their life?

[Dorie Clark]

I think that a part of it, a big part of it is, to your point, exhaustion. They feel worn down by life, and so they don't feel like they have the energy to do it. I think a lot of it is a lack of self efficacy, that they feel like life happens to them and they don't have a lot of control over their circumstances. And I think what's great about entrepreneurship is that fundamentally, I mean, that mentality is almost antithetical to the idea of entrepreneurship. Like when you have an entrepreneurial mentality, the entire point is that you can influence circumstances, that you can create something that didn't exist. And, you know, we are not passive consumers of our life. We are people who are actors and creating movement and momentum. And I really want more people to be able to feel that. And of course, this is the ultimate, you can't lead a horse to water kind of thing in reinventing you. I tried really hard because I had gone through a lot of reinventions, mostly not willingly, but because things didn't work out. And it felt hard to me, it felt complicated to me, and I wanted to create a resource that would make it easier for other people. But of course, the truth is, if you read the book and you're motivated, hopefully it does make it easier for you. But if someone is just writing themselves off before they Even engage. There's not much you can do for those kinds of folks.

[Scott Clary]

They have to be going into it willing already.

[Dorie Clark]

There's a great quote from Nietzsche which is a big enough why can endure any how. And so the truth is, you don't necessarily have to be excited about your reinvention. A lot of times things are foisted upon us. I didn't love it that I was laid off from my newspaper job. I would have preferred to keep being a journalist, but I needed to pay bills honestly. And the cheapskates that I worked for gave me four days of severance pay. So yeah, I had worked there for a year. So they're like, well, you get a year, you know, you get a week's pay for every year you worked here. So they had me work on Monday. And then they're like, we'll pay you through the end of the week. I'm like, wow, that's super kind of you. Then the next day I was laid off on Monday, September 10, 2001. So the next day is like the worst day in American history to be looking for a job.

[Scott Clary]

I don't think anybody's trying to hire right then.

[Dorie Clark]

That is exactly right. So I just thought, okay, things are getting real here. And I realized that whether I wanted to mourn the state of affairs of losing my job, I didn't have time to, I didn't have the opportunity to. I needed to find a way to bring in revenue. And so my reinvention process was hastened by that exigency. And I think it's, it's, it's not really where you start in terms of your desire for reinvention, but it absolutely is about where you end up. Are you, are you open to recognizing that this needs to be done? Whether you want to or not, it needs to be done. And if you are, then I think it actually does open up a world of opportunity.

[Scott Clary]

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[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. And that was additional rejection because I understand the main goal that I had in Boston. It's true. If I had been super motivated, I suppose I could have applied for journalism jobs all over America. But I wanted to stay in Boston. And the big game in town was the Boston Globe. And so I thought, great, okay, I'll try to work for the Globe. And they were having a hiring freeze because in the immediate post 911 aftermath they froze everything. So they weren't taking on new hires. And, and that lasted for probably six plus months. But eventually they did come to me and they in the meantime had invented a new category which they called, I forget what it was, but it was like you weren't an actual reporter, you were like a AAA reporter or something. It was just something ridiculous. There was a classification that they gave you as an excuse to pay you less money. And they said, well, would you like that?

[Scott Clary]

Love when companies figure out how to do that, Right?

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, it was, it was clever, it was clever. But my, my pride was too great Scott. And I'm just like, no, I am not going to accept your crappy underpaid job. I refuse to do it. And so I ended up switching over at that point into working in politics.

[Scott Clary]

So I think that what you experienced at that point is what a lot of people experienced during COVID and getting laid off from companies they thought they would never get laid off of. They would never get laid off from. Excuse me. So when that happened to you and you pursued the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, what was your personal view on career security, future proofing yourself? Did you approach the next thing with more trepidation or did you jump into it just as quickly as you jumped into journalism? How does this sort of form and shape your worldview? And I'm assuming that your worldview towards reinvention, towards playing a long game, towards future proofing yourself, that's evolved over time. But talk to me about some of the things that you started to even think about in your life, how you wanted to approach your next career so that this couldn't happen again?

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, well, you're absolutely right that after the experience of getting laid off from really my first real job, my first full time job, it sinks in very viscerally that jobs are not secure things. I mean, I didn't see it coming at all. And then you get called in at 4 o' clock in the afternoon and you have whatever, 40 minutes to clean out your desk and be gone by the end of the day and that's it. And so things really can turn on a dime. And I realized that a lot in that moment. But I think that another moment that crystallized it for me. When you're reinventing, there's a lot of push, pull because for many people, unless you have spent a long time really longing for this new direction, there's things that you miss about the past, and you really can't get it back. I mean, this is kind of this liminal state where, you know, you need to move forward, but you kind of don't want to fully. And so for me, it played out with a phone conversation that I had. I was freelancing as a journalist to make ends meet after I got laid off. And so I was hoping to get hired on by the Globe, trying to scrape some stories together to get paid $200 a story. So I was trying to write as many as I could.

[Scott Clary]

That's not a lot.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, yeah. It was a little hard to make rent that way, but I was trying. But I got a call from a guy who I knew because he was a political consultant in town, and I often had interview him for the politics stories that I had done. And he knew, obviously, that I had lost my job because I wasn't calling him anymore. And he had just signed on to be a consultant for this governor's race. And they were staffing up, and they needed a communications director. And he reached out and said, oh, would you be interested in working for us and ultimately being the press secretary for this campaign? And immediately on the phone, I was like, oh, that's so nice of you, but no, thank you. That's not for me. And he was like, oh, okay. Well, figured I'd ask. And I hung up. And I just sat there and thought about it for about an hour. I just sat stock still in my chair, just thinking, like, wait. I had this instinctive reaction. And the instinctive reaction was, no, I'm a journalist. That's my identity. And so therefore, this doesn't fit my identity. But it turns out for a lot of us, when we're reinventing, there's a lag between who we actually are sometimes in the world and how we think of ourselves.

[Scott Clary]

Very interesting.

[Dorie Clark]

As I was sitting there, I'm like, okay, I am a journalist. Air quotes, but I'm not earning a proper living, and the paper that I want to work for has a hiring freeze. They tell me they don't know when they're gonna lift it. This could go on for years. This is kind of ridiculous because the guy was coming to me with a really prime offer, with a kind of sexy campaign for governor. And I thought, you know, you're being ridiculous. You are being given an opportunity. You can't let your identity hold you back. You need to change. And so I called him back like an hour later and I said, actually no, I would be interested in coming in for an interview.

[Scott Clary]

I love that idea because I also find my identity getting wrapped up in the thing that I'm building and it blinds you to opportunity.

[Dorie Clark]

So in what way did that play out for you, Scott?

[Scott Clary]

I think that for the longest time, so remember before we started recording, I said, since the last company, I've tried to build other companies. My identity has always been wrapped up in this idea of becoming an entrepreneur and building something from scratch. And technically that's what I've done with the podcast. But I didn't equate podcast to business because I always very much incorrectly idolize like the sf, you know, build a tech company from scratch. And I've never done it from scratch. I have joined a company as co founder CRO, helped them grow, help them scale and be acquired. But for me, it was this silly little idea that I wanted to build something, a tech company from scratch. That was always what I wanted to do because the people that I looked up to, that's what they had done. And I think this plays out again and again and again in anyone's life. And it's not like, listen, I've had identities that I had to let go of in the past that have allowed me to do bigger and better things even from a young age. I mean, my identity was very different. It was wrapped up in almost what my parents did for a living. And that's what I thought I had to do. And my parents saying, you know, you should go to law school. And, and that's what I wrapped my identity into. So when I took a different career path, that was very hard. So it's not so you can accomplish overcoming this identity tied into your job, your career, what your definition of success is. But then it's very easy to let that thing, that identity that you just created start to consume you again. And then. So, yeah, so fast forward, I mean, over the past, you know, five years now, I've tried to build other things, nothing that successfully. So now I'm letting go of the building a tech company from scratch identity and, and being okay with, well, you've actually built something that's quite successful, which is this show. So lean into that for the time being and see how far you can take it and stop building the show over here and then building companies over here, because it's not serving you. But it took me almost five and a half years to figure that out. So. And I mean, it's not like I was hurting, but it still wasn't serving me optimally, if that makes sense.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, identities can be very useful as a motivating factor, an aspirational factor. But we have to be careful that it doesn't start consuming us or it doesn't start to become a straitjacket.

[Scott Clary]

It kept me blind to opportunities, right? So it kept me blind to the fact that I could have tripled down on this, that I could have, you know, time. Time matters. And you only have so many hours in a day. So, okay, so can I spend time trying to build a new company or think of a new product or spin up a new landing page or whatever? Or can I do another interview with an awesome person and we can have great conversation? And that already gets pushed out to, you know, a couple hundred thousand people, if not more so why not? Right? And I think that that's something that a lot of people struggle with. I think it ties into self awareness. I'm. And I also think that having people around you that can help wake you up and help you see your reality is very important. Like, for example, like Gina, she's my better half. You haven't met her yet. One day you will because you're down the street. But when I get too wrapped up into the work that I'm doing, like, she's a great. She's a great voice that just helps pull me out of my identity being wrapped up into the thing. Because she's like, let's take a look at what's actually going on in your life. What's actually working, what's actually not. And common sense sometimes isn't common. So she just makes it very clear. She's just very logical. She's like, look at Scott. This is what's going on. This is what's going. Right. Just focus on that and stop with all the other, you know, bullshit over here. So. But yes, it's something that I think everybody succumbs to. I think that the sad thing is that some people just don't escape it after five years. Some people never escape it their entire life.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And that's really sad. That woman who was 50 years old, she just never escaped what her identity was. And at 50 years old, even though it sounds like there was still stress and struggle in her life, she still wasn't able to pull herself out of it and see that I have 40 years plus minus left on this planet. See what? Almost the same amount of time that I have been alive already. I can. I can go do something else. I can completely reinvent my life and do a new thing. So, yeah, it's a tough one. It's a very tough one. It's. And how do you make sure that the identity that you have right now is serving you the best? Or is it always dangerous to tie your identity with your vocation and your job?

[Dorie Clark]

Well, you're in the tech world, so I'm sure you've heard this, but there's a great framing or formulation that they use often in Silicon Valley, which is strong opinions, weekly held. And I like that a lot because I think it's great to have identities that you hold, that you get excited about, that you feel like are motivational in some way. I'm Italian American, or I'm a husband and father, or I'm a tech founder or whatever. It is great. If it speaks to you, go all in on it. But also recognize that things change. You change. You know, holding too tightly to identities is how we get ourselves in trouble. You know, it's a person who's, you know, God forbid they get divorced or their spouse dies or something like that, and then all of a sudden they don't have meaning if that was the thing that was holding them together. Or their startup goes belly up and they don't know what to do with themselves because their worth was tied so intimately to that founder identity. And, you know, well, who am I now? I'm nothing now. And of course you're not nothing. You're so many things. But we need to be loose enough to recognize that it's okay. You can have multiple identities, they can change, and it. It shouldn't chain us to something.

[Scott Clary]

What would be the hardest part of reinvention that nobody. That nobody really speaks about?

[Dorie Clark]

So the piece. I've spent a decade talking about this and writing about this, and the piece that keeps coming up that I think surprises people the most is that when you are reinventing, we often make a very casual assumption, something that we don't really think about a lot because we just assume that the people who will be our strongest boosters in reinvention are the people who typically are our strongest boosters, which is your close friends and your family. And it's interesting, but for a lot of reinventions, that actually is not true because your reinvention sometimes threatens their identity. And so because of that, they can actually sometimes, sometimes because they love you, they want to be the devil's advocate, you know, oh, have you really thought this through? This could be a terrible idea. Sometimes it's because they want that identity they want to hold on. No, I'm a lawyer's wife. I'm not a painter's wife or whatever it is. And so we take for granted that they will see things the way that we do, that they'll be supportive. But we often need to treat our friends and family and it sounds weird to say, but like a constituency where we have to prove our seriousness, where we have to almost show them our business plans, as it were, so that they understand that. No, I'm not being careless with this. I'm not being casual. I'm not throwing things away. I'm really trying to be thoughtful with this new chapter.

[Scott Clary]

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[Dorie Clark]

I mean, sometimes you might need to and extreme situations, but typically what I would advise is, and this does not apply for forced reinventions. I mean, if you're laid off, people understand you were laid off, they want.

[Scott Clary]

You to get a job.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, yeah, they're generally behind that. But you know, for the cases where it's more voluntary, especially if it's moving from something that is perceived as more prestigious or more secure to something that is less so, that's where you need to essentially come up with a strategy, a kind of marketing plan. And so it's useful to war game. What are the objections going to be and what are the places where your, I say in air quotes, your position looks weak that you need to have responses for? And so one thing that comes up a lot is, well, have you thought this through? Are you serious about this or are you going to change next week? And so people sometimes think that if someone has an idea that's out of the norm, that it's because they're flighty or they're a dilettante or something. And so one important thing is to think about what is your consistency strategy in terms of communicating with other people. Maybe it's communicating on social media or what have you to show that. No, no, it's not a passing fad that I want to become a photographer. I love photography. I'm passionate about it. This is the thing that I want to do. I'm not going to change next week. Part of it is for the people who are closest to you where this would impact it. Showing that you have thought through the financial ramifications and that you are not being reckless or irresponsible with your decisions. So it's those kind of things that I think are important.

[Scott Clary]

But we're talking about reinvention. And another thing you speak about and you wrote a book about this is the long game. So interesting ideas because at. There's, there's ways that these ideas can even conflict to a degree. Right. So reinvention means that what you're doing isn't working. You should reinvent yourself. Long game is you stick with something long enough and it's gonna work out very simply. So how do you, how do you reconcile these two ideas? So that woman who's 50 years old, she is playing the long game. Don't get me wrong, she's playing the very long game. She's playing the rest of my life. Long game. So how do you balance these two ideas of reinvention and long game?

[Dorie Clark]

So you're absolutely right that under some circumstances they could be viewed as being intention. I like to think them as complementary in the sense that one of the frameworks that I share in the long game is what I call optimize for. Interesting. And specifically what I mean by that is.

[Scott Clary]

I love that, by the way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that.

[Dorie Clark]

I mean, you know, we've got, to our knowledge we have one life and we need to keep ourselves engaged. And I think for a lot of people, the idea, assuming that we do live to 90, you know, you're probably not going to stop work 40 years before that, right? You'll probably do some things should either. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I mean, it's been proven to be pretty bad for your mental health if you literally do nothing. So let's say you have a career for 50 years, 60 years, which is not impossible. Normal people actually kind of get bored if they're Literally doing the same thing. And so I think the question to ask if we're looking from the 30,000 foot view about what makes a robust life for ourselves is how do you keep yourself engaged? How do you create a project for yourself, an intellectual project that will engage you for your life? And so optimizing for interesting is really about finding ways to seek out that learning edge for yourself. And so reinvention I think is kind of a key part of that.

[Scott Clary]

That's interesting. So it's not about pursuing one thing for forever. It's this mindset of always being engaged, always learning new things, always upskilling, always discovering, always exploring. Is there just to sort of go back to that first idea though of reinvention versus long game? Because I think there is something there that people can learn from outside of the high level 30, 000 foot view of, of playing the long game and being engaged and just living a fulfilling life. If somebody is listening to this and they're like, okay, I get it, there are points in my life when I should reinvent myself, what is your litmus test or barometer for? You should reinvent and you should go down a new path. Is it fulfillment? Is it happiness? Is an ambiguous KPI or is it outside of forced? Because of course, I mean if you're laid off, you're laid off. But say somebody is 50, 55 years old, they've been doing the same thing their whole life, they just feel, they just feel like a zombie every single day. Which I'm pretty sure that happens to quite a few of us. They are, they are looking forward to retirement, but they don't really have plans after they retire. Should they reinvent themselves? Should they do something new? Should they just keep carrying on and find a hobby? What's the playbook to live a good fulfilling life?

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah. So you're asking an important question. Probably the important question as we think about how to really find meaning in what we're doing. I think the first answer which needs to be said is that a lot of it depends on your financial circumstances. If you are in a place where finances are really tight, you sort of need to do what you need to do. And so that's a place where great. Get your hobbies, find things that you can do that bring you pleasure and enjoyment and possibly give you new skills that you can leverage. But in the meantime, if you need to keep doing the thing to earn revenue, then do that. But assuming that we basic needs met and you have enough of a trajectory that you can actually think about Making changes, and it's not going to have dire consequences. There's a framework that I share in the long game, which I call thinking in waves. And I feel like that could potentially be helpful here. Ultimately, when we think about how to determine when to make a change of some kind, I like to think of our progress and in terms of learning and mastery as a series of four waves. So the first one is the learning wave, which is, you know, we start something new. Obviously, there's a huge learning curve. You're. You're just taking it all in. You kind of don't even know what's going on. You're just like, okay, how does this world function? You know, who are, who are the people? How do they fit together? What am I supposed to be doing? So, you know, that's, that's pretty clear. You're just learning how the game is played. In the middle, you have phases two and three, which is creating and sharing. And this is the place where, once you've taken in enough information that you know what's going on, that's the place where you need to begin to add value of your own. Because otherwise, if you're always in the learning phase, you're not actually contributing that much. You're just sort of being a sponge, like, what are you there for? It's nice for you, but it's not very useful to your company or it's not very useful to the people around you. Once you have a sufficient understanding, you need to start sharing your perspective. You need to start coming up with your own ideas and putting it out there. And also the sharing part is connecting with other people, building relationships, and finding ways that the pieces fit together. And the act of doing those things, actually becoming a proactive contributor to the environment that you're in. That's how you make yourself really valuable. And you can build up a pretty good head of steam for your career or whatever you're working on there. Then you do that long enough and it actually starts to work really well. And that's when we get into phase four, which is what I call the reaping phase. And that is where you're basically clicking on all cylinders. You are successful, you are respected, you are making good money. All the things. This is the place that most of us want to stay our entire lives because it feels so good. And this is the place where we feel like, you know what, the reason I've worked so hard is to get here to the reaping phase. And the fundamental challenge for us very fallible humans is to understand that at a certain point we need to cut ourselves off at the trough and actually go back to the learning phase in the long game. I interviewed Marshall Goldsmith, the well known executive coach.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, he's been on here too. Yeah, he's great.

[Dorie Clark]

He definitely is. One of the stories he told, which I thought was interesting, was early in his career. I mean, the way that most of us know Marshall, where he kind of came to public prominence was he's written some best selling books, triggers and what got you here won't get you there and things like that that spread his ideas and built his repute. Before that, he was just a very successful, highly paid executive coach that the people he worked with knew, but the people outside of it didn't. And he told me that at that point, kind of early in his career, in his 30s, basically, his mentor came to him and said, marshall, you're very successful. And Marshall was like, well, thank you very much. Yes. And his mentor said, you're actually too successful. You're getting lazy with your success because all you're doing is just doing client work and earning money. You need to start pushing yourself and you need to start sharing your ideas publicly because that's what's going to take you to the next level. And Marshall recalled that he actually just sat on that for several years that he didn't take action because it was so nice to keep earning money.

[Scott Clary]

Of course you have. So comfortable.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. But he eventually realized that his mentor was right and that he was doing himself and his ideas and his legacy a disservice if he didn't actually take a step back from all the people throwing cash at him to embark upon a challenging and difficult process. I mean, he didn't have any guarantee that his book would be successful. It could have been a waste of time that took him away from revenue. Instead it worked out really well. But there is a gamble and that's why not everybody is willing to do it. But, but it's really important for our growth to eventually be willing to say, you know what, I'm going to take myself back to the learning phase.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. And I would assume that when you take yourself back to the learning phase, like, like anything, when you start learning something, you really don't know what you don't know. And then opportunities start to present themselves, new directions start to present themselves. I mean, with Marshall now, he's built a massive brand and he's built a huge audience. And when I interviewed him, I think he's taking all of his knowledge and he's codifying it into some sort of AI tool or something like that. Like a martial bot.

[Dorie Clark]

He's big on the martial bot. Absolutely.

[Scott Clary]

What do you explore and reinvent? Like, what are you exploring and reinventing right now about you?

[Dorie Clark]

Well, so for me, there are lots of small ways that I try to push the envelope. But the biggest, which I've actually been pursuing for close to nine years now, is I decided that I wanted to learn to write musical theater. And yeah, and I had never done it. This was not, you know, people say, oh, you know, was it your childhood dream that you're reconnecting with? No, I didn't grow up around musical theater. My parents didn't know anything about it. I had gone to, you know, they took me to two musicals, like, you know, the first, I don't know, 18 years of my life. So I really was just not familiar with this genre. But I went to a show with a friend and about nine years ago, and it just kind of hit me. I'm like, oh, I need to learn how to do this. And so I was really starting from zero. So for me, this was very much a case of walking my own talk. I had to reinvent myself and starting from zero. Part of the reason, also you would ask the question, why is it that people are so resistant to reinventing themselves? And a big part of it is that we get comfortable with mastery. We like how it feels to be good at something. And by the time you're mid career, you probably are pretty good at the thing that has been your main gig. And so to start somewhere else and to sort of suck, to not know what you're doing, to have everyone around you better, I mean, I entered this musical theater training program and I'm like, oh, good, this is where I need to be. It's a musical theater training program. Well, I had never written musical theater. I. And meanwhile, like, to my left is two people who are graduates of NYU Tisch. You know, they had master's degree in musical theater. To my right is a guy who actually is a music professor at a university. You know, I mean, it's just.

[Scott Clary]

That's a very threatening crowd.

[Dorie Clark]

It's a threatening crowd, yeah. And, you know, immersing yourself in that, I just literally had to remind. I mean, I'm better now. I'm much better now. But early on, I just had to remind myself after class every time I would have my little mantra like, you do not derive your self worth from this. You derive your self worth from other activities.

[Scott Clary]

Well, so this is an Interesting thought. When you explore, does that have crossover utility in the other things that you do, or is it for pure enjoyment? And is there a benefit to having some sort of crossover application? Very obviously, or maybe even not so obviously, maybe writing musical theater lets you think in a different way or lets you be more creative. And maybe I'm just reaching. Maybe it doesn't at all. Maybe it's just a total hobby. But have you ever thought about those ideas about what am I doing on the side? Does it help my main thing? Or is that not something that. Like a thought exercise you go through?

[Dorie Clark]

So I'm not. I didn't start out doing it because I wanted some kind of ancillary benefit. I started out doing it for its own reason. I think that initially and probably for a long time, you don't even know what the benefits are because they kind of become manifest in the doing. But certainly it has caused me to think much more deeply about story structure and narrative, which is helpful in terms of storytelling and writing and things like that that are valuable in a business context. And I've met really some amazing people through musical theater. I mean, it's interesting because it allows you to connect with different people on sort of different levels. And so there are people that I've met that are really cool Broadway actors and directors and things like that that I probably just wouldn't have run across if it weren't for that world or that overlap. So it's brought more interesting people into my life. It's also been technically helpful. I mean, a mantra that I have in terms of how do you find assistants or people that work for you? Is I like working with artists. And I've done this for well over a decade because it turns out they're very smart, they're very literate, and they're usually underpaid, which means that they are.

[Scott Clary]

Looking for good work. Good work? Yeah.

[Dorie Clark]

Good work is virtual. So anyway, I, for over five years now, have employed somebody that I met in the musical theater program, first as my assistant, now as my chief of staff. And I actually call it the Composer Full Employment program because a guy did my website who was a composer that I met in the program. Another composer was my va sort of doing spot tasks for me. So, yeah, you meet a lot of great folks that can be quite helpful.

[Scott Clary]

And I mean, I don't think that if you're exploring, it has to. It has to really have this ancillary benefit to your main thing. But I am a big fan of combinatorial thinking and bringing in all these disparate concepts and bringing them and helping them just enhance your worldview. Outside of finding great talent to hire and great people to network with, I think that there's all these different benefits. I think that, I believe that if you, if you tie your identity to one thing and you become, you know, you achieve mastery, I still believe to some degree you can put a ceiling on that mastery by not seeking out other influence and input. I think that the most interesting people in the world that you would look to and say, oh, they've, they've killed it in their field. They've achieved whatever level of success they are multi dimensional people, human beings, they do a lot of different things. Multifaceted. They all are multidimensional, multifaceted. They have a lot of different passions and hobbies. Yes, they are laser focused on one thing, but when you start to speak to them, they can actually. One of my favorite measures of, of whether or not I'll be interested in a person is whether or not you can just ask them a question about anything and will they have an interesting, unique perspective?

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And it can't just be chance that the smartest people in the world could speak to you about anything and everything. And they're very interesting just to chat with. I think there's something, I think there's something there that probably just helps by exploring new ideas, by having passions, by having hobbies. It probably just helps their thinking process or creative process. I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but I just notice it in people.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, no, I think it's true. I mean, I've always worked hard to try to be as much of a polymath as I can because I think it probably helps on a lot of levels. But a big one is just being able to connect with different people about all kinds of things. And so it irritates me a little bit. I mean, sometimes people get very righteous about the no news diet and things like that. And I understand. I don't wanna read 10,000 articles about Donald Trump. It's fine, you don't have to read them, it's too many. But it's also true that I think reading the newspaper or reading other sources of information about the world in the news media is important. It's powerful because you understand things. I mean, if you meet somebody from, you know, from a certain country and there's been unrest, you're able to say, oh, you know, how's, how's your family? Like, what's, you know, what's going on for you There and the fact that you've heard of the place and you know what's going on in the place and you can actually have a conversation is very meaningful. And there's a million examples like that.

[Scott Clary]

So I notice it because in Canada we are not as we are interested in politics, but not to the same degree as you see in the US And I think what I see is, I see people's identity getting wrapped into political parties and lack of exploring context and ideas outside of that main ideology that you subscribe to. It creates a lot of animosity and anger, which I don't think is healthy for anyone. And I think that we've seen that play out again and again and again. So just to be a better human being and to be a better person, it's really important to seek out ideas that are outside the realm of what you're used to, whether or not they conflict with what you believe or whether or not they're just adjacent to what you believe. But the point is like, it helps you become a better person, helps you become a more empathetic person. It helps you become a person that can understand different points of view and like you said, and like have a conversation with somebody halfway around the world because you may not understand their circumstances completely, but at least, at least you're educated and at least you're trying to learn something that's not in your core competency. And this is not a political podcast, obviously, but I think that it's just, listen, if it can help you form greater bonds with people that are literally across the aisle in politics, think about it, what it can do for your career or whatever you're trying to do in your life.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, I mean, my favorite story about it is years ago I was dating this woman who was like very skeptical of my self improvement crusade. And so I was, I was reading this book.

[Scott Clary]

I don't think you're a self improvement. I think you are self improvement, but you, you're very science based and evidence based. I mean, that's interesting that she call you that. She would call you a self improvement crusade or. She said you're on a. So that's interesting.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, I mean, she, you know, she, she I think was like anti capitalist or something. You know, like it just, it was the, the idea of, of, you know, the questing to improve seemed a little silly to her, but I was into it. And so I was reading a book at the time which was called how to Talk to Anyone about Anything.

[Scott Clary]

I love that.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, it's actually a great Book, it's by a woman named Leel Lowndes. But the basic idea of this book is I love how it's laid out. And I think I'm remembering this right, that basically every chapter she sort of prefaces. She prefaces her concept, of course, which is that if you really want to connect with people, you need to ask them intelligent questions about things that are important to them, which, of course makes sense. That sounds good. So she goes from A to Z in her book, and for every letter, she picks a subject. And she will give you this five page primer about the subject. So that by the end, you've got 26 topics that you've read, from whatever accounting to zoology. And you now know enough, you have enough context that you're able to have an intelligent conversation. And so people are multifaceted. And so if I meet you, it's not necessarily the case that you'll have one of these 26 things, but you might, and it teaches you how to do it for other subjects. So I was out with a woman that I was dating and we met a friend of hers. And anyway, the friend, I was asking her, I'm like, so, what do you like to do for fun? And I was rather taken aback because in the metro areas that I travel, this is not usually the answer. But she said, you know what I really love? I love fishing. And my first thought is like, okay, what am I gonna do with this? I've never been fishing. I have no idea. And then literally this was a chapter in the book, and I'm like, saltwater or fresh? And the woman was like, oh, my.

[Scott Clary]

God, it doesn't take much, right?

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah. And we immediately had this rapport because she, she was so psyched to talk about saltwater fishing.

[Scott Clary]

And I think that it's also about, like, approaching conversations, like, without judgment, without just like, with the generous, like the genuine interest of getting to know that person. I mean, that's literally. So keep in mind, this is. I. I've thought about this a lot. This is what I have to do for a living. So I have to dive into somebody's life. And as you know, you're a journalist, you did this as well. I. The second you ask that question, like, oh, she's good at this too. I have to make sure that I bring my A game. No, it's because you have to dive into somebody's life and you have to be genuinely curious. And I think that's. I think that anybody who is a journalist or somebody who podcasts or does any of this professionally, you just go in with no assumptions and you're just trying to learn as much as you possibly can. I think that that's a great skill for what we're doing right now, but also just in life that's a great skill because I think a lot of times people go into a conversation with these preconceived beliefs and ideas and that forms their questions and then that put that person puts a gate up or a wall up because they feel like they're being judged while being asked a question at the same time which is not conducive to relationship building whatsoever. So yes, it's a very, very good skill. So as you've reinvented yourself multiple times and you've played the long game with your life and creative pursuits and sort of trying new things and doing that, you live the work that you teach. Why are these the ideas that you've chosen to sort of focus on more recently? Why do you feel like in society these ideas are so important to people?

[Dorie Clark]

So my starting place has always been essentially attempting to solve my own problems.

[Scott Clary]

Which is a great starting place.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a not unreasonable assumption that if you're interested in it, other people will be as well. But yeah, I guess it goes back to that self improvement crusade that I wanted to crack the code on things. So reinventing you was my attempt to sort of make sense of my career path and foibles in my 20s and kind of finding my way into the work that ultimately proved to be my trajectory. My second book, standout, the subhead of that is how to find your breakthrough idea and build a following around it.

[Scott Clary]

And we haven't even talked about thought leadership yet, which we can totally.

[Dorie Clark]

Yes, yeah, I know, it's always so interesting. And I was basically trying to solve that. I'm like, okay, I wrote a book, that's nice. But if you really want to get known in your field, if you want your ideas to be heard, it's a crowded marketplace, There's a lot of people out there. How do you actually break through? And I just didn't know the answer to that. And so I wanted to create an excuse for myself so that I could interview dozens of very smart people who had solved that problem so that I could attempt to learn from them. And I wanted that knowledge for myself. But also, you know, I'm not a hoarder. I was very happy to share it.

[Scott Clary]

Indeed is a success story partner. Now if you're hiring, indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example, if I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to Indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio. I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years, gets our style, and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. And people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed Data Worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com Clary just go to Indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with Indeed. HubSpot is a success story. Partner. Now look, if you're in marketing right now, or if you're an entrepreneur who's hired marketers, or if you're a founder founder who leads a whole marketing team, you know the drill. You are creating content for 12 different channels. You're launching campaigns, you're scoring leads, you're analyzing all the data. And somewhere in there, you're actually supposed to do great marketing. And it's exhausting and you're spread too thin. But this is what actually works for marketers to give you your life and your time back. HubSpot's marketing hub HubSpot's content hub, combined with their new AI called Breeze. Now, what this actually does is basically everything that you shouldn't have to do yourself. It remixes your content instantly so you're not starting from scratch every single time. It handles lead scoring so you know exactly who to focus on, which customers will probably convert. And it pulls all your analytics and your data and KPIs into one place instead of having them scattered across 15 different tabs and tools. Plus, the AI agents that HubSpot builds for you can automate the repetitive stuff that's eating away your day. Bottom line, you get better results faster without burning out. See, with HubSpot, everything's connected in one platform instead of duct taped together. So if you're tired of being spread too thin, check out HubSpot.com marketers to see how this actually works. When. So that. On that topic, when you think, so, everybody who's listening is to some degree, a little bit entrepreneurial, even if they're in a company they've probably thought of, okay, what do I want to build or how do I build? There are. Some people are actively building their first company, their second company. So that topic in particular, I think that's a very difficult topic for people to wrap their head around because they never know what idea to focus on or they want to talk about absolutely everything that's important to them. And I've, I've wrestled with this problem myself as a creator, trying to figure out, like, what's the topic I want to niche down on, or do I want to open it up a little bit? And when I started the podcast, it was more niche, and then it's. Now it's a little bit more broad. And then there's another idea wrapped into there, where the people that you look at that have built large audiences, now, they may be a little more broad in the stuff they speak about, but when they started, maybe they were a little bit more focused on one particular topic and that's how they built the audience in the first place. Now, I did not do a full study on it, so these are just sort of ideas that are floating around in my head. But when you interviewed these people in terms of building influence, thought leadership, personal brand, whatever buzzword you want to call it, what were the findings? What did you find was the most effective way to become known, for one thing, and galvanize people towards the ideas that you have?

[Dorie Clark]

There's not necessarily one path, of course, but what I discovered in Standout is that there are, there are a variety of different ways that you can put ideas together so that they'll get noticed. And you know, one, for instance. And, and speaking of a meta analysis here, earlier in our conversation, I was talking about frameworks that I had created and that I shared in the long game. It turns out that one of the really effective ways to get known for your ideas is to codify something, because there's a lot of things that people know intuitively or that they're interested in, but Maybe no one has actually taken the time to wrap their arms around it and say, it's this, here's the acronym, or here's the 1, 2, 3, or here's the Venn diagram that really helps you understand it. But when you do, you can't unsee it. It's like, oh, this explains everything. And so you get quoted, you get talked about. So a perfect example of this would be Robert Cialdini, the author of Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. I mean, people have been interested in persuasion forever. It's a sexy topic. Everybody wants to know about it, but until him, no one had actually said, okay, if you want to influence someone, there are six ways of doing it. Here are the six ways. And once he put it together, it's like, oh, well, duh, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[Scott Clary]

But he codified it, he put it together.

[Dorie Clark]

And so he gets mentioned every time people want to talk about persuasion.

[Scott Clary]

So a second thought on that, because that makes a ton of sense. But does it not hurt? And I'm going to ask, because you've written books on different topics, does it not hurt you, to a degree, to every four, five years, switch the thing that you're focused on versus every four or five years because you've put out books on all these different topics. Now, have you thought through, well, what if I just keep putting out an updated book on this topic and do six books on whatever reinvention, long game, personal branding, thought leadership, influence. Like, have you thought about that? And is there some learnings that you've discovered that you can be known for multiple things, or does it just get confusing?

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, it's a great question. And there's also gradations, right? Because the books that I've written, I mean, they're all basically business and career books, and so they're different, but they're of a piece. You could look at them and say, okay, I can see that one person would write this if you were doing a book about entrepreneurship and then a book about horse racing and then a book about whatever molecular gastronomy that might actually confuse people. So I think the key is understanding what is the narrative thread that you are putting together to help make it make sense for people. So, for instance, someone who actually did do the equivalent of that is Tim Ferriss. He writes the Four Hour Work Week, which is essentially a business book. He then goes to the Four Hour Body, which is a health book. Then we have the Four Hour Chef, which Lehman would say is a cookbook, which he. I think it sort of sounds like he thinks it's a misfire. And he's always like, no, no, it's a book about how to learn. It's I think a poorly titled book about how to learn. But nonetheless, you know, he was trying to to do very different and very distinctive things. But the way that he made sense of it, and I think actually did a very good job in making sense of it to his audience is he identified a strand which is okay, it's not that I was a business author and now I'm a health author. You know, I'm not whipsawing you. It's actually the same thing, which is about how do you attain high performance in all aspects of your life. And so he found that and it was an understandable and an intelligible thread for his audience. And they're like, great, I want to be a high performer in all aspects of my life. And so that worked. So I think the question is really if you can find that thread, then you're golden.

[Scott Clary]

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[Dorie Clark]

Oh, you go. Go deep on the. Why not civics here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Scott Clary]

So, because everybody throws these words around and nobody actually knows what they mean. Very few people actually know what they mean. And then it's just a very confused. Okay, so does this mean I put, you know, posts on Instagram, or does this mean I have to write a newsletter? Do I have to write a book or I have to go on stage, or do I have to talk about my company or do I not talk about my company? And it's just a mess. So I like to, like, talk to people who study it.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, we'll get granular. So what was the first one? We'll do one by one.

[Scott Clary]

Influence, personal brand, thought leadership, self promotion.

[Dorie Clark]

You know, influence is just really a kind of quantification of the impact that you're having on other people. So it is, as a term, agnostic about how you're. How you're attaining that maybe it's good you know, through good quality content. Maybe it's bad quality content. Maybe you're, you know, as Robert Cialdini says, right. Influence can be a tool for good or evil. Right. Hitler was very influential. That was not a good thing. So it's saying, okay, lots of people are listening. So then we go to thought leadership. And that's actually a little bit more about you. It's balanced here. Because if we're breaking it down, thought leadership, you have to have followers if you are leading sort of a tautology there. But you can't be a thought leader if no one is listening to you. So you do need an audience, you do need to have some influence, but you are not influencing people through like trashy dances on TikTok. If you are a thought leader, there has to be genuine ideas behind it. There has to be at least some degree of intellectual heft. So some people don't like the term thought leader. They think it's icky somehow or whatever. And I'm never a fan of people bestowing labels upon themselves, but I think that thought leadership to me is actually a noble category. I think it's something worth aspiring to because it means if you reach that goal, that you have ideas good enough for people to want to listen to them. So for me, that's a positive.

[Scott Clary]

I like that. Okay, so then the last two would be a personal brand and then self promotion.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah. So personal brand, basically your reputation, how people think of you. And you know, I think we can, we can, we can try to influence that, but ultimately it is in the eyes of the beholder. And so our goal is to try to understand what that brand is and if it doesn't match what we would want it to be, to try to take action to remedy that.

[Scott Clary]

Understood.

[Dorie Clark]

And then finally, self promotion is the act of attempting to get noticed or to get your ideas heard. And again, it's one of those good or ill. Right. You can self promote to.

[Scott Clary]

It's almost like on the way to thought leadership, that's what you're trying to do, but it's almost like you're optimizing for the wrong thing. You're optimizing for fame versus doing something impressive and drawing people to your work. Yeah, it's like you're just pushing yourself on people.

[Dorie Clark]

Right. I think there can be a neutral version of it, but I think often when it is talked about, it has a pejorative connotation.

[Scott Clary]

You mentioned one thing about codifying an idea within the thing that you're an expert in, and that helps people notice You, Is there anything else that you would suggest people do to find a unique, sort of a unique voice on a topic outside of just codifying an idea?

[Dorie Clark]

Another interesting one, which I feel like is kind of counterintuitive, but in the research that I did for standout, pretty effective. Lots of people to your point, Scott, say, I don't know what my idea is. I don't necessarily have good enough ideas. I'm just not sure they're not distinctive enough. And so for a lot of people, that ends the discussion. They say, well, I can't do it, I don't know how to proceed. But one of the things that in my studies have actually been surprisingly effective is for people to take essentially a journalistic approach to things. Because if you have a topic and you become the expert through talking to large amounts of people or doing a lot of research, getting case studies and things like that, eventually just the act of compiling it gives you enough knowledge, enough breadth of knowledge that you become known as an expert in it. And so an example of this, which is sort of a personal example because it's a guy that used to work for me and so I took always a keen interest in his career. He later left my employ and went on to graduate school in urban planning. And he's become a very successful urban planner. He's had his own business for 15 years. He's done great work. His name is Mike Leiden. But where Mike really got his start was soon after he started his own business. There was an emerging concept at the time in urban planning called tactical urbanism. It was just kind of this new thing that was developing and so there wasn't a lot written about it. It was kind of like an emerging space. Sort of the way that Bitcoin or whatever is now very new. Yeah, or AI. It's like, oh, okay, this is a place where there's not a hierarchy of seasoned economic experts because we're all at the same place. We're all at the starting line. And so Mike saw that opportunity and said, oh great, okay, I'm going to do something with this. So he started gathering case studies about tactical urbanism. And just whenever he heard of an example, he sort of grabbed it, wrote it up, put it together, and he ultimately created a book. I say book in air quotes because it was really like a PDF file and it was just super simple. Created this PDF file with all the case studies and he put it on his website and allowed people to download it for free by doing this, this no cost research project, giving it away for Free. He managed, number one, to ultimately land a book contract where he wrote a book and was paid to do it about tactical urbanism. And number two, almost immediately became recognized as the expert in tactical urbanism because he knew more about it than anyone else. He was the guy that wrote the guidebook. Within three months, 10,000 people had downloaded his ebook, which in the world of urban planning circles is actually enormous.

[Scott Clary]

One thing that gets brought up a lot with personal brand, and I love that idea as well, so that you can really own this really niche, subspecialty, whatever, unless you, unless you have a, you know, a group of Nobel prize winners and Olympic athletes. But outside of that, I think niching is an important piece to it. People speak a lot about authenticity in the context of personal brand. Still, I don't think many people even really understand what it means. So when you're putting stuff out there, is there value to include some of your own lived experience into that content? I mean, with your example, he didn't. He was just aggregating resources and putting them on a website. What is your view? Should you include your lived experience? Should you include that you're going on a vacation with your kids into your content you put out into your whatever thought leadership, personal brand, whatever definition you choose? Or is that unnecessary?

[Dorie Clark]

I think it is useful where it's relevant. In his case, tactical urbanism, if he had done a tactical urbanism project as sort of a civilian before he had become an urban planner, great, bring it. But in the particular case, it just, it wasn't justified by what was, what was necessary for the project. But I do think that in general, you know, we know, we know from studies and research that people connect much better when there's a human element, when there's stories behind it. So if something, if something is relevant, you know, if you're talking about leadership and you've been a boss, talking about your own experience on the front lines, it may not, unless you are a super successful Fortune 500 CEO that everyone is just dying to know. It's probably not enough for you to just talk about your experience as a leader, but you want to have a broader base of research or anecdotes or things like that, but it also shouldn't prevent you from doing it. It adds something to it to say, yes, I've experienced this myself and here's my story.

[Scott Clary]

I've thought about too in like some of the content that I put out. I'm like, so again, I'm sort of like, I'm the. I'm the Quasi successful, But definitely not Fortune 500 executive that has had some career success. It adds color and context to what I believe, but I didn't really feel comfortable making it my whole personality, my whole online presence. I felt that there was still something that. And this is actually why I started the podcast or the podcast to bring in other ideas from people that have achieved way more than I've ever achieved in my career because I wanted to bring in some other perspectives and I thought that would actually serve the audience better. But yeah, I also found that when I include a little bit of my story, the content does quite well. So it's a balance. It's always a balance. And I also think that, yes, if you're not a Fortune 500 CEO or you haven't built the next Netflix or the whatever, it's. It's not going to be like your story is going to make it, you know, on the front page of whatever, pick a paper. But I still think that people who are comfortable talking about their own experiences and their own story, I think it's actually very rare on social, so it actually does stand out. Even if it is not. Doesn't matter how you measure success, but a billion dollar company that you've built, I think that makes you more human. And I think that that's actually something that people really resonate with. And then if you talk about not only your story, but the things that didn't go right, then it adds an element of vulnerability, which I also like. I think that helps as well.

[Dorie Clark]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Have you started to include in your books lived experience to. Or are you still focused on like, I want to extract from all these wise people around me. And have you noticed a difference in how different type of content is received by your audience?

[Dorie Clark]

So in the long game, which is my most recent book, I put in much more of my personal experience than I ever had before. It was actually interesting because for me it's been a learning journey because since I got my start as a journalist, everybody gets imprinted by their early training. And in journalism, straight news journalism, we're not talking about opinion pieces. It is considered really gauche to include yourself. It's like, no, you are not the story. You are not important here. You need to write a story about what other people are doing. It's a form of narcissism to put yourself as a journalist in the story. Don't do that. And so for my first book, for Reinventing youg, I submitted a draft to my editor and he's like, so you reinvented yourself, right? And I'm like, well, yeah. And he's like, how come none of that's in the book?

[Scott Clary]

That's so funny.

[Dorie Clark]

Oh, oh. I'm like, you think people want that? He's like, yes. And so I had to take another pass at it because it hadn't occurred to me to do it, and I felt very uncomfortable, so I didn't probably do it enough. So it's over the course of the 10 years that I've been writing books that I have begun to flex that muscle more.

[Scott Clary]

Do you find that the more you lean into it, it's a net positive reaction from the audience?

[Dorie Clark]

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, people really like to learn through stories. I mean, I know that. I do. I think that we always have to keep the North Star in mind, that if it's too much just about you, period, it can tip into narcissism. But if you are telling a story in service of a point or in service of a purpose that will be useful to other people, then that is something that I think a lot of people connect with.

[Scott Clary]

What are you working on next? What is the next book that you're going to put out that we're also going to have a second podcast about when it comes out?

[Dorie Clark]

Amazing. Amazing. Well, I'm still working it all out, but actually, speaking of getting comfortable writing about myself, I'm working on a memoir project.

[Scott Clary]

Oh, my goodness. Okay. So you went all the way in.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, I went all the way in, exactly. So it hasn't been sold, it hasn't been published.

[Scott Clary]

How many books is this now?

[Dorie Clark]

This would be the fifth one. Yeah, but, yeah, look forward to coming back.

[Scott Clary]

What would be one last insight, some last words of wisdom that you want to leave the audience with?

[Dorie Clark]

So what I would say, Scott, you were asking earlier about what it takes to sort of play the long game and to take the long term perspective, especially when, of course, as humans, we are always being grasped at by the short term. And all the emails you have to answer and all the meetings you have to go to.

[Scott Clary]

Urgent, important, or it feels like urgent, important fires that you have to put out.

[Dorie Clark]

Exactly. And so how can we stay focused on the long term long enough to actually see things through to working? Because you've been doing the show for years now. Right. I mean, if we had stopped you in month three or in month six and said, you know, hey, how's it going? You know, not great.

[Scott Clary]

Not great. Yeah.

[Dorie Clark]

Early on it, you know, it just takes a while for almost everything to gain traction. And so I think the thing that I would most want to leave your audience with is the metaphor that I like to use is that when we are embarking upon a long term project, you know, something that. Something that matters, something that's important to us. In a lot of ways, it's like going into a dark tunnel. And the problem with this tunnel is that no one tells you how long it is. And it could be 100ft, it could be 100 miles, and you just don't know. And so it's very easy for people, you know, even, even people close to the finish line to get discouraged and to quit because they say, well, you know, how long is this going to go on? And it can be challenging. And so for me, one of the key values around playing the long game is understanding that in a lot of ways it's a matter of courage, it's a matter of character, because it's saying, regardless of the outcome, this matters to me enough to try to do it. And I think there's something really noble about that. And it's something that I would like to see more of and encourage more of in the world.

[Scott Clary]

Where can people connect with you? So where do you want to send them? Social website. We didn't even talk about your newsletter that you put out. Okay, so where should everyone go and connect and sort of learn more if they want to read more of your work, all of that.

[Dorie Clark]

Well, thank you. If folks are interested in the newsletter, which I do put a lot of literary care into, Forbes said it is the kick in the pants that you need.

[Scott Clary]

That's good.

[Dorie Clark]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Maybe you are a little bit self help then. That does sound like a self help newsletter. Nothing wrong with that.

[Dorie Clark]

That's right.

[Scott Clary]

Evidence based research.

[Dorie Clark]

No fly fishing though. I don't talk about that. But yeah, folks can get [e-mail] subscribe and my website, doryclark.com, i have all the articles I've written for different places there. There's more than 800 by now that I've done over the past decade for Harvard Business Review, for Forbes, for Entrepreneur, et cetera.

[Scott Clary]

What would be that one piece of advice that you'd want to tell your younger self?

[Dorie Clark]

Build an email list.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Start sooner. That's not fair. Another piece of advice.

[Dorie Clark]

All right, yeah, we'll start tactical, but yeah, philosophical. I think in a lot of ways when we're talking about life lessons, I mean, there's a reason that I've written the books that I have. These are the topics that sort of Obsess me a little bit and I actually just, I got married last month.

[Scott Clary]

So just congratulations.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, thank you very much.

[Scott Clary]

Congratulations. Oh my goodness.

[Dorie Clark]

So you know, first, first marriage took, took me quite a while and we're.

[Scott Clary]

All going for one, like, I mean like it doesn't always happen, but that's fine. Take as long as you want.

[Dorie Clark]

Yeah, that was my philosophy. That was my philosophy. But yeah, the, the story that stands out in my mind is that like 20 years ago I was with a friend, we took like a day trip together and she's this very kind of woo person. And we were walking around the downtown and she saw a psychic and she's like, oh my God, a psychic. Let's go to the psychic. And I was like, okay, let's go to the psychic. And so my friend went in and got her reading. She's like, oh, that was so good. That was so profound. And I went in and got my reading and I remember walking out of there, I'm like, oh my God, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. This is ridiculous. But whatever, whatever. It made my friend happy. So I literally forgot what the psychic told me. And so probably five or six years ago I went back to this town where my friend actually was now living and she started telling me this story and she says, blah, blah, blah, my psychic. And it reminded me, I'm like, oh my God, do you remember that time we went to the psychic here? She said, that woman is still my psychic. She was so good. I've been going to her ever since. I'm like, are you kidding? I'm like, wow, I thought my reading was so off. And she starts laughing and I'm like, what? And she's like, well you remember what she told you? And I'm like, no, I actually don't even remember what she told me. And apparently what the psychic told me, according to my friend, is it will be a very long time before you find a partner. I was like, oh, oh my goodness.

[Scott Clary]

She was right. That's a very ambiguous open ended statement and whatever. But still, that's amazing.

[Dorie Clark]

That's right. So I would say part of my secret of success is literally blocking out negative messages. That's one. But also, I think it is true that sometimes we just have to wait much longer than we want for the goals that we want to achieve. But you know what, you keep at it. Oftentimes it really will work.