Playing the Long Game with Dorie Clark - Episode 19

This week in Episode 19 of the Legal Genie Podcast, your host, Lara Quie, is in conversation with the amazing Dorie Clark.

Dorie is a strategy consultant, executive coach, lecturer, and keynote speaker. She is a Professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. 

She was also recognized as the world’s No. 1 Communication Coach by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. 

Dorie is the author of the fantastic marketing strategy trilogy: Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You and Stand Out, which was named the No.1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. Magazine. 

She has a new book coming out this September called “The Long Game” - How to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. 

Dorie is a prolific blogger and writer having contributed literally hundreds of posts and articles for the Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fast Company. Her many clients include Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and the World Bank.

Lara and Dorie cover Dorie’s escape from small town North Carolina to higher education and then stints as a reporter and working at a small non-profit, where she realised that it would be less risky to start her own business. 

Dorie explains how she learnt about how to run a business and how she got the idea for her first book, “Reinventing You”. 

She then talks about writing “Stand Out” to help experts crack the code to getting their ideas into the public domain. 

Dorie describes how she wrote “Entrepreneurial You” to understand how to create multiple revenue streams and spread the risks associated with losing one’s main source of income little knowing how prescient it would be for the pandemic world we find ourselves in. 

She then talks about her new book, “The Long Game” and how it applies to the legal profession and what young lawyers should think about.

Dorie also covers podcasting, blogging, leaving margin in your calendar for emergencies, and an interesting fact about handstands. 

You won’t want to miss this great episode to hear Dorie on great form as she shares some great advice.  

You can download "The Long Game strategic thinking self-assessment" for free at https://www.dorieclark.com/thelonggame/

You can follow her on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doriec/

You can also read her hundreds of articles and blog posts at https://www.dorieclark.com/

You can connect with Lara Quie for executive coaching as follows:

• On LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laraquie/
• Through her website:

Lara Q Associates
A boutique business and executive coaching consultancy

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Legal Genie Episode 19 Dorie Clark

 [00:00:00] Hello, and thank you for joining me, Lara Quie, for the Legal Genie Podcast. As a former corporate lawyer and APAC Head of Business Development for an international law firm, my mission with this podcast is to provide you with insights into the careers and lives of movers and shakers in the legal industry. 

[00:00:41] Mentors are hard to come by so, by listening to these conversations, I hope that you will gain some valuable insights that will help you move forward in your career and personal life. I ask my guests to share their advice and experience with you. I ask them also to share about their mindset. [00:01:00] As an executive coach, I work one-on-one with lawyers to grow their practice and self-confidence. I also run mastermind groups and business development accelerators designed to bring like-minded people together, to learn, grow, and support each other. 

[00:01:14] If you'd like to learn more, please connect with me on LinkedIn or through my website. The details are in the show notes. Please rate and review the Legal Genie Podcast to help us reach more people who may find it helpful. So, let's move on to this week's episode. I hope that you enjoy the conversation.  

[00:01:32] Lara Quie: [00:01:32] Hello and welcome to Episode 19 of the Legal Genie Podcast with me, your host, Lara Quie. Today, I'm beyond excited to have with me my most high-profile guests to date, the amazing Dorie Clark.

[00:01:50] Dorie is a strategy consultant, executive coach lecturer and keynote speaker.  She is a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of [00:02:00] Business and has been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50.

[00:02:05] She was also recognized as the world's number one communication coach by the Marshall Goldsmith, Leading Global Coaches Awards. Dorie is the author of the fantastic marketing strategy trilogy: "Entrepreneurial You". "Reinventing You", and "Stand Out", which was named the number one leadership book of 2015 by Inc. Magazine.

[00:02:27] She has a new book coming out this September called "The Long Game", - how to be a long-term thinker in a short-term world. And we'll be talking all about that in the episode. Dorie is a prolific blogger and writer having contributed literally hundreds of posts and articles for the Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and Fast Company. Her many clients include Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and the World Bank. Welcome to the Legal Genie Podcast, Dorie!

[00:03:00] [00:02:59] Dorie Clark: [00:02:59] Lara, I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. 

[00:03:02] Lara Quie: [00:03:02] I'm beyond excited to have you on the show as you know. So, I always like to start at the beginning with all my guests.

[00:03:10] I understand that you were born in the United States and grew up in North Carolina as an only child like me. I'm also an only child and at age 14, you entered Mary Baldwin's college program for the exceptionally gifted. This sounds amazing. So, tell me a bit about your childhood and how you ended up in such a program.

[00:03:32] Dorie Clark: [00:03:32] Well, thank you very much. Really, I grew up in this little town, it was about 3000 people when I was growing up there and there was not a lot to do. It was a well-known golf resort. And so, it had a lot of golf courses, but not a lot of culture besides that. And so, I never was completely happy where I was, and I wanted to try [00:04:00] to get out and do things. I felt like there was this exciting world out there. So, I was eager to pursue that. And then it became even more acute when I was 13 and I realized I was gay and I'm just like, oh God, I really need to get out of here. So, I decided I would accelerate my plans. And so, I came up with a few different strategies. And I was very methodical. I thought, okay. The best option is to go to college early. If that doesn't work, I could go to boarding school or there were these public magnet schools that they had in North Carolina, like a magnet boarding school. So, I thought about that. So, it was working all the different angles, but fortunately I was able to get accepted at Mary Baldwin College. And so, I was able to just shave three years off of high school and go early, which was great. 

[00:04:50] Lara Quie: [00:04:50] Wow. That does sound pretty amazing. I haven't really heard something like that here where you can accelerate through like that. But then you went to Smith College, and you did a [00:05:00] BA in philosophy.  And then you went on to study a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. So, tell me about your study of philosophy and theology and what your long-term plan was at that stage of your life. 

[00:05:15] Dorie Clark: [00:05:15] So, my long-term plan at that stage, I think when, you're younger, you don't necessarily know about a lot of careers. And so, I just really liked school. So, mostly I thought I wanted to be a professor. I'm just like, this is great. I'll keep doing this. But there were other things that I was interested in and ironically, I feel like one of the fascinating things in the last 20 years that I've witnessed up close.

[00:05:40] Is that almost all of the other professions that I was interested in, I feel like it’s, sort of simultaneously miraculous and demoralizing because I've been able to do almost everything that I wanted to do. And simultaneously those things have become profoundly demonetized. So, I was interested in being a [00:06:00] journalist and yay, I actually did get to be a journalist for a year and then I was laid off and then the entire journalism industry collapsed, or I wanted to become a documentary filmmaker. That was something I was really interested in. And I actually did make a documentary film. But you know, it's of course now you can shoot films, really inexpensively, which is fantastic, and it democratizes it, but it also is well-nigh impossible to make money from it.

[00:06:29] Unless, you know, you get some kind of a magic Sundance, distribution deal or something like that. So, I do feel fortunate that I've, gotten to accomplish a lot of the dreams that I've had. I wanted to write a book and I was able to do it, but broadly speaking, I liked philosophy and I liked theology because I liked asking big questions and I kind of still do, which is part of what animates the "Long Game".

[00:06:53] Lara Quie: [00:06:53] Absolutely. And it is all about the very big questions and really thinking outside the [00:07:00] box, because we are presented with so much on a plate, literally, as you say through mobile phones, everything is at our fingertips. Everything is immediate. So, it's pretty interesting. I like the fact that you've mentioned how you've actually accomplished all your childhood dreams, because I had seen that, and I had thought about that.

[00:07:18] And your career does involve a lot of things that relate to words. So, language, for me, the number one thing about all your three books is the clarity and the practicality of them. Each of your books has got a nice summary and you go try this or do this.

[00:07:37] And you've got all the boxes where it's like step by step. Bite size. So, that is the perfect approach for people in this world, right? So, you, mentioned being a reporter and then being in politics and then you became a professor. So, again, achieving your goal you've taught it so many business schools all over the world. [00:08:00]

[00:08:00] And then you launched your own business. Do you want to just tell me a little bit about what brought about Clark Strategic Communications in 2006? 

[00:08:09] Dorie Clark: [00:08:09] Well, the immediate impetus was. For the two years prior from 2004 to 2006, I was the executive director of a small nonprofit.

[00:08:19] And when I say small, it was a really small, it was three people, and our total budget was $150,000 U.S. Dollars. So, you could imagine we were just scraping by with, almost no money, but in running this organization about a year in, I had a realization, which just hadn't occurred to me. It had not occurred to me to be an entrepreneur, but about a year in, I suddenly realized, oh, running a nonprofit is the same thing as running a business.

[00:08:48] And then that made me realize I could run my own business. And I was under so much stress because almost I mean, we did have a board, but it was not really a fundraising [00:09:00] board.  They were not really super clued into that. And try as I might, the lion's share almost all of the responsibility for raising the money fell to me.

[00:09:09] And so it just felt like an enormous amount of pressure to suddenly have this thing where every year you have to raise $150 grand from scratch or else you and your two employees are going to lose their jobs. It was just super high pressure. And so, I made changes that I hoped would solidify and stabilize the organization's finances over time, which I think they did.

[00:09:32] I mean, one of the big initiatives that we had was a direct mail campaign that was able to double our membership so that we had a far greater base of recurring revenue support. But beyond that what, it just made me realize it was like, oh, ironically, it would be so much less stressful to work for myself because I knew that I could find a way to support myself.

[00:09:52] Like I was making so little money. I think one of the big bars to entrepreneurship for many people is they, have these like golden handcuffs because they're [00:10:00] making so much corporate money. That was not my problem. I was making so little money. I'm like, oh my God, literally, whatever I do, I can make more money than this.

[00:10:11] Lara Quie: [00:10:11] I love the idea. But yeah, that’s the realization that ultimately, if you were doing all of that fundraising and actually you had to support these other people, you may as well have been running it for yourself. And so, in 2006, I suppose, as well, it was sort of just the dawn of various initiatives with regard to the internet and   email and all of that sort of starting to come on board in more of a marketing way.

[00:10:37] And so, you must have learned a lot of different things. Tell me a little bit about how you've actually been able to come up with all of the ideas. And the things that you've learned, I mean, how have you actually learned all of this stuff? 

[00:10:53] Dorie Clark: [00:10:53] Well, there's a variety of different ways that I've learned aspects of my business. When I [00:11:00] decided about a year into my tenure, working for the nonprofit that I would ultimately start my own business. I started taking classes. I gave my employer a year's notice. I told him like, okay, I'm going to work here for another year. And then I'm going to leave the following June. So, there was plenty of time for them to find a new executive director.

[00:11:20] But I started taking these adult ed classes and I just started thinking about things. I mean, I had a very imperfect understanding of how any of this would work, but I did my best. So, I started thinking about like, okay, what is it that a small business owner needs to know that I don't know. And so, I took these day long classes, like I'd spend my Saturdays at the adult ed center, and I took a class on how to write a business plan.

[00:11:43] I mean, not that I needed a business plan, but like because I wasn't getting funding or something, but like, you know it's, a useful strategic exercise. So, I did that. I took a class on QuickBooks and how to do like bookkeeping. I took a class on PowerPoint, how to create better PowerPoints.

[00:11:58] I [00:12:00] and I read a ton. I kept checking business books out of the library. Because I, never studied this.  I didn't have an MBA. I had never taken any business classes, so, I really needed to educate myself. So, I was just voraciously reading in the library and that's what I did for a year before I even launched my business was just kind of plan for it.

[00:12:20] So, that was the initial way that I prepared. And then of course as, you know, as entrepreneurs, we learn a ton on the ground. It's kind of like the, I think the Mike Tyson quote is something like, " you can have the best plans in the world until you get punched in the face." and I think entrepreneurship is like that in a lot of ways. 

[00:12:40] Lara Quie: [00:12:40] Definitely.  So, a lot of your work is based on personal experience and the things that you've just mentioned about becoming an entrepreneur and thinking about what does someone need? And your first book, "Reinventing You" is very much along those lines. So, tell me a little bit about that book and how it came about. 

[00:12:59] Dorie Clark: [00:12:59] The [00:13:00] way "Reinventing You" actually came about was ironically I had wanted to write a book for a long time and in 2009, I got serious about it. I'm like, yes, this is the year.

[00:13:12] And of course, as it turned out, it was not the year I wrote multiple book proposals. They all got turned down. Because I, was not famous enough. I had not yet built my platform enough. So, eventually I had to go back to the drawing board. And start blogging so, that it could build up a following. And so, eventually in late 2010, I started blogging for the Harvard Business Review and one of my very first posts was about reinventing your personal brand. And I was lucky enough that post became popular. And so, they asked me to turn it into a magazine article and then I was ultimately able to turn the magazine article into a book proposal and then a book that became "Reinventing You", which was released in 2013.

[00:13:55] Lara Quie: [00:13:55] That's fantastic. And then I'm going to talk about your second [00:14:00] book - " Stand Out", which of course I also have.

[00:14:04] Dorie Clark: [00:14:04] Amazing.   

[00:14:05] Lara Quie: [00:14:05] It flowed very nicely on from "Reinventing You", so that idea of the personal brand, but then finding your breakthrough idea.  I think you're such a big believer in the big idea, right?

[00:14:16] So, people who are really experts in their field and I think perhaps because of academia, maybe you had noticed certain professors or people in academia, or just generally, maybe in the political world as well, who really did have fantastic ideas, but were pretty rubbish actually about getting them out there and sharing them with people. So, is that the idea you felt like these people needed. help? 

[00:14:43] Dorie Clark: [00:14:43] Well I, think there's a couple of use cases. One, is of course it is true, that there are a lot of really smart people with good ideas that just are not heard in the marketplace, right? I mean we all know them, right? We all can think of like the amazing [00:15:00] painter that's making paintings in the coffee shop, not in the Whitney. And we all know about the amazing writer that just can't seem to get picked up anywhere or whatever the profession is whatever the example is. There's a big difference that I think people don't necessarily recognize between being good at the thing and being well-known for the thing.

[00:15:21] And, I wrote "Stand Out" because I wanted to try to crack the code to help people crack the code. Because to me, it just felt very unfortunate that there are a lot of talented people that, you know, it’s just, they don't know what the rules of the game are. Maybe they don't have a bunch of friends that already have done the thing.

[00:15:39] And so, there's nobody to whisper into their ear and go, oh, do it this way or try this or talk to this guy. And they don't know. And so, they get excluded from the discourse and the world is not benefiting from their ideas and they're not benefiting from their ideas. And meanwhile, you've got a lot of jackasses [00:16:00] that do seem to be able to dominate the stage because they perhaps understand how the system works better. I wanted to try to reverse engineer the process. So as to level the playing field more effectively. 

[00:16:14] Lara Quie: [00:16:14] I like that idea of a level playing field. It's very important. Exactly. Let me just get onto "Entrepreneurial You", which of course I also have. 

[00:16:24] Dorie Clark: [00:16:24] This is amazing. You were a completist, Lara. I love it. I love it. I hope you. I hope you've pre-ordered "The Long Game". Oh, my goodness. 

[00:16:33] Lara Quie: [00:16:33] I have. 

[00:16:34] Dorie Clark: [00:16:34] Oh, yay. It would be so sad like the collection would just be sort of pining for its friend. 

[00:16:42] Lara Quie: [00:16:42] I have a little place on my bookshelf that's you know, the "Dorie" area. So,

[00:16:50] anyway, on "Entrepreneurial You", now the thing about it for me, even though, it came out in 2017, I must say, it [00:17:00] is literally spot on for 2021. If we think about the pandemic and the way that many people are now working from home, looking at the jobs that they have thinking about the side hustle, maybe that they used to have that they're suddenly realizing, wow, actually I could make this into something.

[00:17:18] I could escape the daily grind. I can be my own boss or even if they're an employee. To look at their job in a different way to look at how they can build their personal brand, to look at how they can leverage technology. So, media such as the podcast and, blogs and all of these things. Tell me about, that book and what people can learn from that. 

[00:17:43] Dorie Clark: [00:17:43] Well, in writing "Entrepreneurial You", ultimately, it's a book about how do you create multiple income streams in your business? And it was something that I personally became really obsessed with back in around 2015. That was when I started ideating around it.

[00:17:58] And I [00:18:00] had just released "Stand Out" and frankly, I just kind of went nuts on, travel and promotion. Like I just, I wanted to max it out. And so, I did. And so, I gave 74 talks that year, which meant an average of like, one and a half talks a week or something like that, which meant that I was on the road almost all the time.

[00:18:20] And it was very hard and stressful. I was sick a lot. I was constantly getting colds and being run down and at a certain point toward the end of the year after this very, very intense year of travel, I just thought, oh my gosh, why am I doing this? Like, I live in New York, right?

[00:18:37] Apartment, which is not inexpensive and I'm hardly ever here. And it just seemed kind of crazy. And I thought this is not really sustainable. You know, maybe it's because I just get really sick of it, and I don't want to do it at a certain point. Maybe it's unsustainable because, you know, God forbid like a health problem emerges, maybe it's unsustainable because there's a recession [00:19:00] and all of the people who are paying to fly me around to speak suddenly they cancel conferences because, they want to have budget cuts. That was what I envisioned, those were to me, the plausible scenarios. And so, what I wanted to answer for myself was, okay, how do you prepare for that eventuality? How do you war game it so that you don't get crippled by that? And to me, the answer was how do you increase passive revenue streams? And so, it's things like maybe it's not literally passive because of course there is some work involved in getting it up and running or getting it going.

[00:19:29] But it's revenue streams where you are not constantly trading time for dollars it's revenue streams that are leveraged in some way. So, it could be online courses. It could be online communities. It could be things like running masterminds, or it could be coming up with membership sites there's a million things.

[00:19:48] But I wanted to explore that and as it happened, the things that I had predicted or worried about. It's not necessarily that they came to [00:20:00] pass, but something related did, which was the pandemic. And it had the same characteristics in the sense that no longer could we do business in the usual ways.

[00:20:11] And it became really, critically important all of a sudden for us to be able to earn money online and in those leveraged ways. So, I did not realize that I was preparing for the pandemic or creating a kind of guide so that people could, but as it shook out, you're exactly right, those same principles were very applicable to things that make you resilient to a recession. It turns out also make you resilient when there's something crazy, like a pandemic. 

[00:20:39] Lara Quie: [00:20:39] Absolutely. So, you were really a total visionary when it comes to the concept of making sure that you have income from multiple sources to protect you and not having all your eggs in one basket, basically. And what we're seeing right now is people waking up to the fact that [00:21:00] there are so many other things they can do. I noticed on LinkedIn, the number of people that have a primary role, and it can be a major job say at a bank or something.

[00:21:11] And also especially many legal counsel, lots of in-house counsel in particular, who are executive coaches on the side. And it makes my mind boggle because I do think, wow, how on earth do they manage to juggle all of that? But it's such a great way of building their personal brand, making incredible contacts for the long-term as well for their future job prospects for all sorts of ideas. And so, definitely the way to go is to have multiple streams. And so, for myself, I also have various different interests and, various smart, passive incomes, as Pat Flynn would say, I was such an early adopter of his podcast. I've learned a lot along his journey, 

[00:21:57] Dorie Clark: [00:21:57] That's great, I'm talking to him on Friday. I'm going to be on his [00:22:00] show. 

[00:22:00] Lara Quie: [00:22:00] You can say hello from me.  I'm his biggest fan in Singapore.  So, anyway, this podcast really is aimed at the legal industry generally, and it is that world of instant gratification. And I'm always saying to the lawyers that I coach. Folks it's about the long game. This is about consistency.

[00:22:21] This is about starting small and like James Clear, making atomic habits. So, really, really small things that you do on a daily basis that compound over time and lead to exponential growth in the long term. So, tell me about "The Long Game" and how this relates to the way in which lawyers should approach their career and build their brand and expertise.

[00:22:44] Dorie Clark: [00:22:44] Well, certainly the approach of "The Long Game", I think really fits in nicely Lara, with the message of your podcast. And I think it's so true. Ultimately, when it comes to being an attorney and the climb to [00:23:00] being partner, which essentially means being a Rainmaker. You are winning business on the basis fundamentally of two things: one is your professional reputation, such that people recognize that you are competent, that you were an expert that, you know what you're doing, and you will do it well. And the second is the level of connection and trust that you have with the buyer. 

[00:23:25] So, you need to have both of those pieces generally in order to be able to make a sale successfully. And both of those things are things that boy, wouldn't it be nice if they could happen overnight, but they definitely don't. They both take time to develop. And "The Long Game" fundamentally is about understanding how we can be not just patient, because I think patience often implies like a level of passivity that I don't like, but strategically patient so that we are not rushing things [00:24:00] prematurely.

[00:24:00] And so, that we do not give up too soon on things that are promising, but instead we are thoughtful about the process, and we recognize that we have to do the work. And also, that the work will pay off that the dinner gathering that you bring together today, that that is what is going to feed your business pipeline eight years from now.

[00:24:22] And that the connections that you make, the things that, that seems stupid, that take away from billable hours that all being willing to, write the op ed for the business journal you know, being willing to talk to that reporter about the story. Those are the things that accrue over time.

[00:24:39] And we think about the aggregation of like certain search engine optimization, right? That if you're the person that when people are Googling a topic and, your city, if you keep coming up year after year as the expert source that has written pieces about something but is being [00:25:00] quoted about something over time you are able to develop an in controvertible expert reputation. That means that you do not have to be banging on doors, begging for business, or doing the kind of frankly insulting kind of degrading things that sometimes people feel like they need to do in order to get business. What you want is for business to come to you.

[00:25:24] What you want is for people to walk in the door and say, please, would you consider working with me? That is the goal. And so, by playing the long game, it enables you to do that rather than to have to prostrate yourself and contort yourself in stupid ways in order to get business, you're better than that.

[00:25:42] And when you play the long game you don't have to do it. You really are able to be recognized as the expert that you are and business will come to you, but it only happens if you make the right strategic moves up front. 

[00:25:55] Lara Quie: [00:25:55] Absolutely. And you're totally right to focus on the billable hour. [00:26:00] So, the majority of law firms still to this day work on a billable hour model, which means that anything that's not billable.

[00:26:07] So, all of the article writing, the going to make presentations and all of that sort of stuff is called "unbillable". And it's a curse. It's a terrible, terrible thing. But ultimately, as you say, those are the things, which over time, when you build a body of work and especially you leverage the internet and Google, so that your name comes up for certain keywords, deciding what is it you want to be known for, stick your profile on LinkedIn and put those keywords in there.

[00:26:40] Then start to write articles about all of those things. Talk at conferences and virtual seminars, all about those subjects all the time. So, let's say you're a shipping lawyer, for the word " shipping", you want your name next to that word anytime someone Googles it. So, thinking about all of the ways [00:27:00] you can demonstrate your expertise and think about people in that industry. So, hanging out where those people hang out, writing in their publications. So, “Shipping Monthly", or all of those kinds of things. 

[00:27:15] Dorie Clark: [00:27:15] "Shipping Weekly", if you want to be really crazy about it. 

[00:27:17] Lara Quie: [00:27:17] But this is it right? Dedicating time. I know that you talk about John Lee Dumas a lot, right? Because he was somebody who took podcasting and everybody, all the diligent people, like me were doing a weekly podcast, which is already, you know, quite an effort to be honest, but he switched to a daily model. So, tell us a bit about the long game when it comes to podcasting. 

[00:27:42] Dorie Clark: [00:27:42] Yeah. So, this is a story that I tell in my book, "Entrepreneurial You" and thank you for bringing it up. I do think it's an interesting one. So, one of the things that quote unquote, everyone knew about podcasting was that podcasting was great for networking. It was [00:28:00] great for brand building, but you could not earn money at podcasting.

[00:28:03] That is what everybody knew. And certainly, that was true under the common circumstance that everyone was doing because, as you said, Lara, what pretty much everyone was doing is maybe they'd have a monthly podcast. Maybe if they're really diligent, they'd have a weekly podcast, you know that's, great.

[00:28:20] But they have other responsibilities, right? It's not like their full-time job is podcasting, but John Lee Dumas realized something and for me, this, is just a, kind of clever insight about how do you question industry assumptions and just go one step beyond it?

[00:28:38] So, the reason people weren't making money was the way that revenue was calculated. It was advertising revenue, and it was based on the number of downloads. And if you have weekly episodes, even if you're really popular, I mean, there's kind of a cap, right? I mean unless you have millions of listeners, it's very hard to get that many downloads, but [00:29:00] because the metric to optimize for is number of downloads, not necessarily distinct listeners or whatever, John had an insight a way to hack the system essentially.

[00:29:11] And he said, wait a minute, what if I did a daily podcast? Because even with the same listeners, you were seven X-ing the number of downloads on a weekly basis instead of once a week at seven times a week. So, it's instead of four episodes it's 28 or 30 episodes and he realized that if he could get up to at least a decent number of listeners, all of a sudden that could become massively more lucrative for him.

[00:29:42] And so, he decided to go all in, and it did involve some risk because upfront he had to do a bunch of interviews and sort of plan for this and be ready for this. And it might not have worked. But you know, the truth was it wasn't a massive risk. He took a few months off work to do this. But you [00:30:00] know, you can do something else if it doesn't work.

[00:30:02] Right? But he gambled a few months of his life, a few months of his time, but it turned out that, it took a little while, but several months in, he started to get real traction. He started to get real advertising revenue. And that of course created more momentum and people began to sort of look around and be like, oh, wait what's, he doing?

[00:30:22] What does he know that I don't? And then he began to be able to have whole side businesses around coaching other podcasters. How do you start a podcast? Let's have an online community around podcasts, which created more new revenue and built his brand reputation. And before long, it became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and his podcasts became really quite prominent.

[00:30:44] Lara Quie: [00:30:44] So, let’s go back to what the young lawyers should think about. One of the things that I say to young lawyers is think long term start your LinkedIn profile now. Don't worry that you've got nothing in particular to put in terms of your [00:31:00] job history. But start to make those connections, start to write little things. And actually, what I realized recently is, that LinkedIn is a blog.  So, I have a website and it comes with a blog and I have been transferring my long articles that I've written on LinkedIn.

[00:31:19] Right. So, I was like, looking at my blog and I'm thinking of how this is such a huge task to write this blog and this and that. But I actually write pretty much daily on LinkedIn. Like every single day I post something and it's not short. I write it's something, a thought that has occurred to me, something to share something, to add value and then just like I thought, oh my goodness. Actually, for years I've been writing a blog without knowing it. 

[00:31:47] Dorie Clark: [00:31:47] Blogging without blogging. I think that's a great name for a course, Lara. 

[00:31:52] Lara Quie: [00:31:52] I like the idea of blogging without blogging, but anyway, what about young lawyers and playing the long game? What, key [00:32:00] takeaways will younger people take away from your book? 

[00:32:04] Dorie Clark: [00:32:04] Well, I think there's a few things.  In terms of being a younger lawyer or a younger professional, it can be really frustrating. And I know, because in my twenties I was really frustrated that it just felt like everything was taking so long.

[00:32:22] I mean, it's not that we're like impatient per se. I mean, some of us are, I was, but, you know, you want some kind of guidance about whether something is working and as long as you're getting feedback, like, okay, you're on the right track, you're on the right track. Like oftentimes you can deal with it.

[00:32:43] You can be like, okay, okay. Just a little longer. I can do it. The problem in life is mostly, you don't get feedback mostly. No one tells you mostly no one knows. And. It is extremely painful. This gap where you're not really showing [00:33:00] results yet. And you just literally do not know, is it not working or is it not working yet?

[00:33:08] And that is a really uncomfortable place to be. And as you can imagine, a lot of people just can't deal. And so, they quit, or they changed strategy, or they change course. And oftentimes it may in fact be too soon because they haven't given it enough time to show results. So, a few important things that I will mention, number one, I think it is really important for all of us.

[00:33:32] We have, most of us have blind spots that we just really have no idea about, but a very common one is that we have not researched, and it hasn't even occurred to us to research what it actually takes to be successful. Like, like how much time, like literally, what are the steps? What, is involved in it?

[00:33:53] I mean, I think most people they, know the basics or it took about eight years to be partner whatever it is. [00:34:00] They know that, but I want to go way more granular than that, like, okay. Do you know for the people who made partner like exactly how much did they bring in, in business? And also, how did they do that?   Where did they develop the relationships? How did they develop the relationships? What did the sales process look like? How did they actually bring it up? How do you start talking to someone about possibly doing business with your firm, and on, and on and on whatever, it is?

[00:34:31] But there's a lot that we don't know and that we assume, or we, fill it in and if we actually know it, it gives us so much of a better basis for understanding it. And just as one example, one of my favorite examples. There's a Jeff Bezos letter, a letter to Amazon shareholders and he tells a story about a friend of his who wanted to learn to do handstands.

[00:34:55] And the friend literally hired a handstand coach for this. [00:35:00] And what the handstand coach revealed is that the average person thinks that it will take about two weeks to be able to master a handstand. No, it turns out that on average, it takes six months of daily practice to be able to do a handstand.

[00:35:18] Now that if we parcel, this out, this is a 12 X difference in what people think versus what is actually the case. And it is like that in so much of life. So, we need to ask those questions. We need to understand what that looks like. So, that we can actually gauge like where we are in the process.

[00:35:39] And that just the last piece Lara, that I'll mention is something else that's really important is what I call watching for rain drops. Because I think for many of us, we erroneously sort of just fixate on the end product and whatever that end product is, oh, I'm going to be invited to be the keynote speaker or, well, I'm going to make partner, or I'm going to win this [00:36:00] award, or whatever the thing is.

[00:36:03] And that is great, but whatever this big end goal is that we're thinking about that usually whatever it is, takes a lot of time. And so, it is very, very important for all of us to notice many of us literally don't even notice the small steps in between the small signs of progress on their own they're not a big deal. It's not like, oh, yay, amazing. But it's the little things. It’s are you getting LinkedIn requests, unsolicited from people that have just heard about your work? Are you getting a note of praise from a partner that you worked with? Is a client saying something nice about you to that partner?

[00:36:46] Those are the little signs of progress that enable us to actually gauge in the aggregate, whether we're on the right track. And I think many of us just skip over that and don't notice it, but we need to. [00:37:00] 

[00:37:00] Lara Quie: [00:37:00] You're absolutely right. It's about celebrating the small wins and looking for the social proof that you're heading in the right direction.

[00:37:09] And I often say to coaching clients, keep a little book with all the good stuff. So, save those emails. In law you’ll, receive so many maybe complaints or people giving you a hard time. So, it's important to find the things when the client really does praise you or a partner says something great about you and then copy and paste those into another spreadsheet.

[00:37:37] Because hey, yeah, you don't need to have a notebook, but have an Excel spreadsheet, which is basically your wow list where you only need to take their names and stick their name next to the one sentence that they said that was good. Ignore the rest. Delete, but take that one good sentence.

[00:37:56] "Wow, excellent piece of work, Dorie, you knocked this out of [00:38:00] the park.” So, having that because I think it's so, easy to get really down and, to lose confidence and a lot about your future is self-confidence.  And you were talking about feedback and how difficult that is to get generally, but the whole point of social media is the feedback that you get, right? So, it's the likes, the comments. And now LinkedIn, for example, they've even changed a little emoji, right? So, it's not just.

[00:38:29] Like with the thumbs up, you can get the support, the curious, the applause celebrate people can really express genuinely how they feel about your posts. And now that LinkedIn posts you can actually use up to 3000 characters. It means that you can express opinions. The thing about lawyers is they're very risk averse. And so, they're not generally inclined to put themselves out there. This is something they [00:39:00] do find quite hard. But I recommend starting really small and innocuous, no need to like really go all out there with your opinions if they are a bit abrasive. But at the same time, people want to be able to join your tribe.

[00:39:17] So, talk a little bit, Dorie, about how you've managed to build your incredible community around you. 

[00:39:23] Dorie Clark: [00:39:23] Yeah. Thank you very much, Lara. Five years ago, I started my Recognized Expert community. It's an online course and community, which I'm very lucky that you're part of.  It's, been a really tremendous experience for me to get to work with so many awesome folks, just smart, talented professionals that are working together in learning about how to share their ideas more widely in the world.

[00:39:50] And the way that I was able to start building that, I guess, in a literal sense. One thing that I'll just mention for anybody who's thinking [00:40:00] about starting an online course or community is it is a really good idea to do a pilot program first because it gives you a chance to experiment with kind of lower stakes, you're not necessarily sending it out to the world and saying, oh, here's the finished product. But instead, it gives you the chance to kind of co-create with people and iterate a little bit to make sure that what you're offering is really something that people want and are responding to. I think that's been a valuable thing. I did an initial. Small, minimum viable product, six weeks 40 people.

[00:40:33] And it enabled the program to get a kickstart and it took on the shape that it later had. But I will say in general, to your point about LinkedIn or other social channels and sharing yourself, lawyers are risk averse. I’m risk averse too. You know, I think smart people are risk averse and oftentimes a lot of the public dialogue around social media.

[00:40:57] You know, you hear these horror stories about [00:41:00] oh, well they said this and then they got canceled or they said this, and then they got fired. And so, understandably people would say, well, God, I don't want to do that. But I think that it's, important to understand that there's just a wide band of possibilities.

[00:41:16] That so often it’s somehow painted as this black or white thing that either you're doing very little on social media or else it's like super standard kind of boiler plate, or it just sounds like a press release, or you go nuts and you get fired. And there's a lot of possibilities in between.

[00:41:33] You know, all of us think things, we don't need to share them, but it's about thinking about what your audience actually might want to hear from you, where do you have knowledge or expertise, or just, an observation to share that people might find enlightening in some way. And so, as one example, you can take things that happen to you and it doesn't necessarily even have to tie into the law, although it could, maybe it ties in [00:42:00] with the theme of preparation or being risk averse, and maybe the tie-in is like, oh, it's a good idea. Actually, this is why you have lawyers is to make sure that bad things don't happen or whatever it is. But one example, a couple of weeks ago, I chipped a tooth and I needed to go to the dentist, obviously because of this.

[00:42:20] And so, I took a picture of myself on Instagram at the dentist and I wrote a little screed about it. And basically, what I said was it, what it made me think about was margin in our schedule and responding to emergencies. And for a lot of us, I mean, of course, emergencies, we don't know when they will happen, but they do inevitably happen.

[00:42:42] I mean, statistically we know that's the case. Your boiler's going to break, your tooth is going to get chipped, and you have to get it addressed when it needs to be addressed. And life will be a lot less painful for you, if you leave enough margin in your calendar so that you are able to do [00:43:00] that without throwing away an entire day we, need to have margin because something, whatever that thing is will always be there.

[00:43:08] And so, it was just my reminder to people to think through how to leave the bands of margin around the schedule so that we can be responsive to critical needs in the moment. And that was a very successful post, I think, because it made people think, or it resonated, everybody in their own ways like, oh yeah, I chipped a tooth.

[00:43:27] And you can have your own version of that, just telling your story. It's a thing that happened to you. Maybe there’s a moral to the story, quote unquote. But it helps people get, to know you better, and you’re not going to get fired for writing about your chipped tooth and things like that. So, I think there's a lot more we can be doing with sharing ourselves than we might I'd imagine. 

[00:43:48] Lara Quie: [00:43:48] Yeah. You touched on quite a number of points. Certainly, building a buffer into your life. I do recommend to younger lawyers that in their electronic diary, they do put in "me [00:44:00] time". So, build in those buffers where people can't basically block your entire day, because any lawyer, basically not just juniors, will have calls back-to-back and meetings back-to-back and all sorts, but you can, because quite often they'll look at your schedule, you can actually build in blocks of time, which you can move around. If someone really needs you at 3:00 PM on a Wednesday, you just move that to five instead, but you build in time for yourself thinking time, self-care time. Recharging time, whatever, but build it into your weekly diary so that you protect that time, and you could then use it to go to the dentist if you need.  

[00:44:45] Anyway, I'm very conscious of time. We need to wrap up, even though I could talk to you all day. So, I know that you love to offer huge value every time you, write a book, you always have some amazing freebie to go with it. [00:45:00] So, what would you like to flag up for us with regard to your new book? What, have you got for everybody? 

[00:45:06] Dorie Clark: [00:45:06] Thank you, Lara, I appreciate it. So, yes, I do, as a matter of fact, have a free resource in case it's of interest. And that is "The Long Game strategic thinking self-assessment" and folks can download load that for free at www.dorieclark.com/thelonggame. 

[00:45:24] Lara Quie: [00:45:24] Perfect. And if people want to reach out and connect with you, where should they go?

[00:45:29] Dorie Clark: [00:45:29] Thanks. My website is the best place. There's a contact form on there. It's Dorieclark.com. And while you're on the site there are 700 free articles available on the site that I've written for places like Harvard Business Review and Forbes and Entrepreneur that I hope might be helpful. 

[00:45:45] Lara Quie: [00:45:45] They're definitely very, very helpful. And Dorie has an amazing LinkedIn newsletter as well that you can subscribe to. So, do go and follow her on LinkedIn and get that newsletter as well and go to her website, [00:46:00] www.dorieclark.com. So, thank you so much for being on my show today, Dorie, it's been an absolute pleasure. 

[00:46:05] Dorie Clark: [00:46:05] Thank you. It's so great to be here.

[00:46:07] Lara Quie: [00:46:09] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode of the Legal Genie Podcast, please go to Apple Podcasts and give it a rating and review to help others. Find it. Please do subscribe so that you don't miss the next exciting episode of the legal genie podcast. Thanks for listening. Have a magical week ahead.

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