Developing Thought Leadership Content | Dorie Clark

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Developing and evolving content for online in real-time and beyond.

An interview with Dorie Clark about creating content in real-time and evolving it based on feedback.

Today’s guest is Dorie Clark. She has been named one of the Top 50 Thinkers in the world by Thinkers 50,  and was recognized as the #1 Communication coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. She is the author of Entrepreneurial You and Reinventing You as well as a business professor at Duke and Columbia University.

Dorie joins us to discuss what traditional avenues are still working for thought leaders in a world on pause due to COVID-19. Also, she talks about what creative and new ideas have come from having to adapt to how the industry functions.

Dorie shares how she created an online course by starting with a test group. And then, she began developing the content in real-time, asking questions and taking feedback from the participants to nail down what was most important to them. Plus, she explains how she adds community to the fully developed course and why that aspect is so important to make the content really stick.

Finally, we discuss the future of thought leadership post-COVID-19. Dorie and Peter talk about the plans that are being made to account for the unknown variables that still lie ahead. They discuss what changes we’ve made that we might stick with and what old habits will we return to.

If you are thinking about developing online content or worried about how to continue business in the future, Dorie and Peter have some amazing advice for you in this episode.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:

• Thought Leaders can gain an invaluable amount of feedback from running their content at a discount with a test group.
• You can add additional value to your thought leadership by developing a community that allows peer-to-peer learning.
• Thought Leaders need to be prepared for how the industry will change post-COVID-19 and what aspects we are currently living with that might stay the same.

If you would like help developing content for your thought leadership, contact Thought Leadership Leverage. We can assist you with everything from book launch strategies, research, marketing, branding, sales, and more.

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Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. So I’m really, really excited about today’s guests, which is Dorie Clark is here and I can talk for hours on thought leadership. So I’ll give you just sort of I was reading Dory’s bio earlier today and I’m totally depressed and feel like an underachiever, so I would like all of you to feel the same. So I’ll share it with you. So Dorie has been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by thinkers, 50 recognized as the number one communication coach in the world by Marshall Goldsmith leading Global Coaches Award. She’s the keynote speaker. She teaches at Duke at the Fuqua School of Business and at Columbia Business School. She’s been recognized as a branding expert. I want to fast forward to like the cool stuff that people probably don’t know. Harvard Business Review written a bunch of bestsellers, but at age 14, you went to the college program for exceptionally gifted kids. And at 18, you graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College, right? 18 I was trying to figure I had open a beer with my teeth. So there’s a bit of a difference between us. And then of course, a couple of years later you got a master’s in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. So without further ado, let’s just sort of dive in. So I’ve just confirmed my theory that there is no linear path default leadership. So how do you how did you get here? How did this happen?

Dorie Clark Yeah. Thank you very much, Peter. Well, the very short version is that my original hypothesis was that I wanted to be actually a literature professor. And I got after I got my master’s degree in theological studies. I got turned down by all the doctoral programs I applied to in literature. So I said, All right, well, what’s the next best alternative? And so I became a journalist. But unfortunately, that was basically right when the industry started to collapse. So I was a journalist for a year, got laid off, could not get another job as a journalist, worked in politics for a number of years, always on losing campaigns. So I was not having a good run in my early 20s. But I did learn a lot. But eventually I. I began running a nonprofit. And it was through running this nonprofit that I realized, wow, wait a minute. Actually, this has never occurred to me. I’m like, Actually, what I’m doing is running a business. And then I said, Well, geez, maybe I could run my own business. And so I became an entrepreneur in 2006 and have been consulting and coaching and doing the entrepreneurial sort of thought leadership business since then.

Peter Winick Fantastic. So on the thought leadership side. So I think there’s two things that I always think about. Number one, there isn’t a typical linear path, right? People come from all different places. I’ve heard everything from well, I was a homeless juggler to stories like yours to was a CEO of a Fortune 500. So I think that is still very much holds true that there is no one best way or whatever. What I find equally interesting is the creative ways that folks are dabbling with business models. And obviously in the sort of the I was hoping to say post-COVID world. But whatever world this is that we’re living in, certain business models have gotten blown up in a speaking right because it’s hard to get 400 people to come to your house and pay you. So people are doing all sorts of interesting and creative things. So break down for us sort of what you see as sort of traditional opportunities that are still working well for thought leaders and maybe some new and creative and innovative ways thought leaders, because there’s still messages to get out. There’s still people that love to hear your stuff. This intermediary phase of getting from people on a stage in Vegas that’s temporarily sort of on hold. So what are you seeing? What are you doing that’s different?

Dorie Clark Yeah. Certainly. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, so I’m glad you asked. This was actually the topic of my of my most recent book, which was called Entrepreneurial You. And it’s basically a book about how to create multiple income streams in your business. So I’ve been pretty attuned to this for a while. So certainly you’re right. A lot of people in the thought leadership space, including myself, made a significant chunk of money from keynote speaker speeches, which has been hit the hardest. But there’s a lot of other areas that I have been trying to build over time and encouraging other people to as well. I would say that probably the most notable standout has been online courses which have performed like a champion during Covid. So for me personally, I started experimenting with it in 2014 and I did a course for first for Creative Live. Then I did a course for a company called Learning Lee, which was partnered with The Economist. Then in 2016, I started working with LinkedIn Learning and also began launching my own courses independently, and so have been doing a lot with that. And that has really just there was a dramatic uptick in terms of what has been possible with Covid for my flagship course, which is called recognized expert. I would typically get about 50 people per time to register for it. And, you know, it’s a $2,000 course. So it was, you know, a decent moneymaker. But I decided I wasn’t sure if it would be a great success or a terrible failure. Shortly after Covid, I’m like, I really don’t know what the what the pulse is here. Sure. But I did a launch in May and 125 people signed up for it. I mean, it was just by far more interest than I had experienced. So I think there’s a real hunger for that. So I think that’s definitely a key thing. I’ve also shifted to masterminds that I run online as well.

Peter Winick So I want to unpack the course is though, so, so I’ve seen many of your courses and they’re really well done. And what I mean by that are people that are speakers, consultants used to delivering value to their clients in a face to face environment or consulting environment or as a professor, whatever they hear. Well, everybody’s doing an online course, so I’ll just take my iPhone and hit record and blab it, right? And because that sort of works for me when I’m in the room and I think people I don’t think they do intentionally, but I don’t think they have a level. Of awareness or respect for instructional design and what it really takes to produce a quality course. It’s not just about the video and the slick graphics and the handouts and all that stuff, but really being able to chunk something down into sort of it’s in almost the elements and say, okay, I the curse of the expert is I just know, right? So if someone was to ask you a question, you just sort of know right off the top of your head because you’ve seen it before. But if you have to decompose that so that it’s teachable, that’s not an easy thing to do. So did you get help from a learning efficacy instructional design standpoint in terms of breaking through things like how did you how did you conquer that? Because you’ve done a great job at it.

Dorie Clark Yeah. Thank you, Peter. I did not I did not hire an instructional designer. I was, you know, partly because I was I was too cheap to do it because I just didn’t know if it work. I didn’t know if anyone would be interested. So I certainly wasn’t going to shell out a ton of money for something that like I did. Nobody cares. So I was really committed to like, All right, what is our minimum viable product? Like, how do how do we test this sucker? So I think one of the things that was extremely valuable for me in April of 2016, I launched a pilot for the Expert course. So I, I decided that I would test it with a small group of people. I capped it at 40 people and I did it at a steep discount. I offered it for 500 bucks. And I’m like, No, hey, we’re testing this out. Who wants to basically be the guinea pig? And so for 500 bucks, people were willing to take a chance. And so it was actually it was great in terms of validation for the premise because in Fortune five minutes it’s sold out. I sent the message and, you know, less than an hour later we filled it. But I created the course in real time with those participants. So it’s kind of part of the bargain. I surveyed them relentlessly. And so before it was like a six week program and before every week I would say, okay, the topic this week is Finding your breakthrough idea. What are your questions? What problems have you had? What have you tried before that didn’t work, etc., etc. And I’d ask them all these questions and I would create the material based on their feedback and what they wanted to know. And then at the end of every week, I would say, What did you think of this session? What did you like? What did you not like? What was confusing?

Peter Winick So what I love about that is I have found in my work with clients that that there’s sort of there’s a continuum. There’s people that are you know, it takes them 11 years to write a book because, you know, polished, polished, polished, polished. And, you know, ultimately it’s a fear of ship. It it’s a fear of failure. It’s a fear of, you know, you know, it’s got to tweak that one more thing. And then there’s the other folks that throw it out the door. Right. And it sounds like you’re closer to that. But in a in a more deliberate and thoughtful way, Right? Meaning you are transparent with this population and said, listen, I’ve got more than a hypothesis here. It’s not going to be perfect. And the bargain is you’ll get a financial discount. But I need the data. So how different was what was delivered the second time based on the result of working with a bunch of human lab rats? Like what was the 2 or 3 major breakthroughs like, Geez, I never would have thought of that.

Dorie Clark Yeah. So format wise, it was pretty different. Okay. The original pilot cohort, I was delivering everything live via Zoom actually. I mean, it was, it was able to be the world’s cheapest horse because it was basically just the Zoom subscription and the button. Yeah, exactly. So I, I, you know, I would create these kind of super like ransom note looking PowerPoint slides and just walk people through it on Zoom. And then we’d have tons of time for Q&A. And again, through the Q&A, I viewed that in many ways as an exploratory type thing because I’m like, they’re asking questions about things that are probably important to them, Sure. But I left out. So we did all of that on Zoom. They really enjoyed the experience because it was a lot of, you know, sort of personal contact with me. And I was building it based on their needs. So I think it was it was satisfying for them in that way, even though it was not fancy or flashy. But by the time I did the second iteration and non pilot iteration, I had turned it into video modules. So based on all of all of the feedback and what I had created and the questions, I came up with a list. Okay, so when it comes to finding a breakthrough idea, which is what is the top ten.

Peter Winick Things they’ll probably ask for?

Dorie Clark Yeah, social media. Yeah, whatever. I’m like, okay, here’s the top ten. And so I made say 3 to 5 minute videos for each of those things. And I film and I did actually film them all on an iPhone. The iPhone has its actually amazing picture quality. I think sometimes people get obsessed with the techniques and the technology. I mean, I actually one thing which is a good reality check, in 2007, I actually directed a documentary film in 2007 that that was the year actually that the iPhone was introduced. But, you know, we were using a camera. And things like that. But the film that we used, you know, what we created for a lot of money in 2007 is actually less good than write an iPhone is. So I, I feel perfectly fine about that. I think the key is.

Peter Winick You know, but it’s more about the thoughtfulness. So when I’m buying your course, I’m not grading you against Star Wars. I don’t expect, you know, special effects and you to blow up things. It’s really about the efficacy of the learning and the thinking that we should add, like blowing things up to do courses that matter. That’s kind.

Dorie Clark Of yeah, you know, new revenue stream.

Peter Winick New revenue, right? It’s extra if you want the.

Dorie Clark It’s the is the car.

Peter Winick Chase, you know, the car chase going to the to the speech or something. Yeah, that’s very cool. If you’re enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about our podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick I think one of the things I take away from what you’ve said is, is the benefit the second time to you now that it’s recorded is it’s now asynchronous, right? Correct. Even though the zoom one you have to do when it’s profitable and whatever. Now it’s like click go and you’ve got an asset that could that could click out some dividends for you. And this concept of minimum viable, viable product, co-creation, etc., the market will tell you what they want. I think one of the most amazing things that’s under utilized for thought leaders is actually having the courage to go out there and find the market and talk to them and say, Hey, I have a hypothesis about how you might enjoy my content in this format, in this modality. And, you know, it’s sort of pencil drawings, right? I’m like, why don’t you tell me what you’d like if this was a house? You know, maybe I want the kitchen facing that way. And they will tell you and they will tell you loudly and feel like, you know, they’re part of the process. No one’s ever hung someone else’s kid’s art on the refrigerator. Right. So it’s getting that ownership piece. What are the other opportunities that you’re seeing in terms of creative ways the thought leaders could connect? Let me throw this out at you and see how you respond. So mastermind touches this, but one of the things that that I’ve come to realize over the last couple of months is I was asking, well, why was everybody going all these events? Right? It seems like, you know, either one group of people that I know were speaking at the event, another group of people I know that are going to events, but everybody was so event centric. And what I realized is there’s content is one piece. It’s convenient to go to Orlando for three days. If you’re in the industry and hear everything there is. But the other is this community. So if you and I lived in different cities and in the same industry, you know, it’s the one time of year we can grab dinner. It’s insurance for my career. It’s all those other things. So what I’m seeing now is great thought leaders taking their awesome content and wrapping a little bit of community around it are the ones that are winning. What do you see?

Dorie Clark Yeah, I think I think community is really key. And in fact, to your to your point about the fact that with the second iteration of the recognize expert course, it could become asynchronous. That is true. And one of the ways that I’ve tried to make it a worthwhile experience for people is that they’re not just paying 2000 bucks for, here’s, you know, tons of hours of video. What we actually have done, which I think really enables it to be a sticky experience and a meaningful experience, is that we have a super robust Facebook community that people are very into. And we also do monthly live webinars, and I give people like a lifetime membership in that so that they are just part of it, part of the community.

Peter Winick So on the Facebook community side, you create value by just putting a bunch of people in a room that have a common desire to learn what you’re teaching. And they have a place to, to do that amongst each other. And that’s the whole peer to peer learning, right? Like, yeah, you’re the expert, you know, more than most, but they can teach each other and then you integrate a little bit of live piece to sort of keep that community 3D, if you will.

Dorie Clark Yes, that’s exactly right. Because yeah, for a lot of these folks, I mean, they don’t they don’t have a good place necessarily where, you know, they’re looking for a new logo for their business. Well, which one is good? You know, how do you how do you tell. Well, if you put up the six versions and you have 50 people who are commenting and voting and say, my God, definitely number two. Yeah, it makes it makes it a lot easier to get recommendations for a videographer or, you know, a client wants me to do this. How do you think I should think about pricing it? The community aspect does make it very sticky and very valuable.

Peter Winick Well, and there’s you know, and I experience this in my work with clients. I’m curious your take there’s a loneliness to thought leaders. And I don’t mean like boo hoo, they’re crying in the corner. But accountants know other accountants. Lawyers know other lawyers like thought leaders. Now there are communities of thought leaders out there, but by and large, you’re the only one in your physical proximity. It’s not like you go stand on the side of. Your kids soccer game. And there’s three other accountants there, you know, and three other key notaries. They’re usually the only one in sort of your physical proximity that does what you do. So I’ve always found a hunger of thought leaders to connect. I always find it’s magical. And whether it’s a dinner or cocktail or whatever. Anytime you get a bunch of them in the room, assuming there’s ego management, cool things happen.

Dorie Clark Yeah, it’s so true. I think I think you’re right on with that here because yeah, if you, if you were part of a profession that has a particular training path, you know you’re, you are a doctor so you go to medical school with hundreds of other doctors. Well, obviously you’re, you’re going to be chock full of contacts in your field. But because as you were saying at the outset, there are so many heterogeneous paths. Yeah. The thought leadership, there’s not necessarily a way for people, at least in the early phases of what they’re doing to break in.

Peter Winick And what they’ve also found The other side of that is, is people that are earlier on in their career, I always encourage them to reach out, reach out to the folks they love, reach out to the folks they work. You’d be surprised how generous thought leader people think a published a book. They must, you know, sit around all day smoking a pipe in a tweed jacket or something exotic or whatever. But I think you’d be surprised when you reach out to thought leaders with a point of view and not just, you know, sort of enamored how generous most are.

Dorie Clark Yeah, I think I think that’s right on and yeah it’s interesting how you know how far that can go. I think some sometimes people do it a little bit askance like you know when you said like a point of view I’ve seen some people you know every once in awhile someone will do this with me. But I’ve heard I’ve heard colleagues talk about it where it’s like someone will reach out to them and it’s sort of a fan letter, but it’s also them sort of like nagging you, like, I saw I saw like a flaw in your analysis. And it’s like, Yeah, motherfucker, I don’t really want to hear this. You know, like, okay, that’s like, this is not the way to become best friends is like, actually, you’re wrong.

Peter Winick Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean. I mean, that’s just lack of tact, right? So there’s. There’s lots of ways to start a relationship. One is, you know, you have big ears and you’re funny looking. Probably isn’t. That doesn’t get you a second date, right? So unless you have enough now, you can disagree with someone with respect and say, listen, I’ve studied your model and it’s really cool, but there’s another one that I’ve developed and we overlap here and we have some differences. It might be interesting to have a conversation, but more of a, you know, kind of a quaint, actually a respectful disagreement and dialog. We remember those days that were so quaint. You could actually have a respectful disagreement with folks. Anyway, I think there’s a bit of that. But I also, you know, when you unleash the power of lots of thought leaders in a safe space, the collaboration and the cool stuff that happens is just awesome. I just love being sort of the being part of that process of connecting folks from different fields and different connections and all that.

Dorie Clark Absolutely. Yeah. It’s fantastic.

Peter Winick So what’s next other than obviously there’ll be a new book and all that, but when what do you see coming around the bend? Let me sort of preface it saying I don’t think that as a result of Covid, we’re in a resume world where, good, that was just like a really long snow day. And we go back to exactly where we were. I think a lot of it is about reinvent. And I think anything so many things were taken off of our proverbial plates. We’re going to be really mindful when we put anything back a lot a commute, a lot going to an office hour, jumping on an airplane five times a week. What are your thoughts on.

Dorie Clark You know, I’ve actually been I’ve been doing detailed scenario planning analysis. Like I’ve actually I’ve actually been and I think lots of people talk about scenario planning and it’s a good thing to do. But I actually have been doing it and literally writing it down and trying to take action steps as a as a result of it, because I recognize that I there’s a lot of way things a lot of ways that things could break and I sure don’t know. So I think that one possibility is that we are you know, we are very skeptical. And there is like a high bar for time about what would warrant travel. And so we’re going to be virtual for a long time, if not ever. And that that’s going to be the default moving forward. I think another possibility, I mean, this is sort of more how things happened after the 1918 flu pandemic, albeit there was not an Internet then, was that people had just been cooped up for too long and the Roaring 20s started exactly like, my God, fantastic. We can see other people, we can go crowds.

Peter Winick Yay, We can go dancing.

Dorie Clark Yeah, we can go to the movies. Okay. And so it’s possible that another scenario is that is that everybody wants to have a conference is that you know the speaking business booms because people are so desperate to actually. Yes. I want to go to that conference. Yes. I want to get away from my family. Yes, I want to.

Peter Winick Yeah. But it’s a big unknown. Right? So, I mean, I also think that people will evaluate and say, hey, if I was going to 8 or 10 conferences a year, you know, maybe 3 or 4, because everyone now there’s the cost of travel and you’re more aware of when everyone is doing. In one way there is this herd mentality. And now it’s like I think we’ve all realized because if we’re taking, you know, imagine if the technology was only five years before where it was today and we were struggling with like a go to meeting or something like versus Zoom, how worst this would be. I think people realize there is so much more and a lot of people is forced on that. You can do it in a digital way. Yeah. And again, nothing replaces human contact, but is it absolutely necessary for everything when you do a full, full cost load it, you know so yeah.

Dorie Clark Yeah that’s, that’s exactly right. So yeah, I think there is a world where very high priced premium experience could become quite popular because it just becomes that much more valuable. And I think about it as like. A lot of people thought that putting TEDTalks online would demonetized Ted. And instead it actually made a household name that everybody wants to go to.

Peter Winick So actually, the price of Ted as an event has probably three Xed since the sort of democratization of Ted. Yeah. Terms of the actual tickets. So I mean the now I think is 12 15,000 for Big Ten.

Dorie Clark It’s ten currently. But for the big one, although they’re charging, I think it’s 12 now for a smaller one for next year. I I’m aware of this because I was supposed to go in April and of course, it was canceled for the pandemic. The attempted to reschedule it for July and I was overoptimistic. And now they’re now they’re under optimistic and they’ve canceled it first for 2021. And they’re doing some other alternate things. So now theoretically, I’m going sometime in April 2022. I mean.

Peter Winick Who knows? That’s cancel everything. I think life is in pencil. Anyway, this has been fantastic. I appreciate your time. I admire your huge body of work for such a long time. And thank you for spending time with us. I appreciate it.

Dorie Clark Thank you so much, Peter. What a great opportunity to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. To reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.