166 How to Stand Out and Be a Thought Leader with Dorie Clark

"Take control of your narrative. If you leave it to other people, they'll get it wrong." - Dorie Clark If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/166 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 166 with Dorie Clark.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to today's episode with my friend, Dorie Clark. She's got a book out called Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It. And a lot of entrepreneurs come to me and say, I don't know how to come up with a good idea. And the idea that I do have, I don't know how to attract people, attract customers and build an audience around that. Can you teach me how to do this? And there's some things that Dory talks about in this episode that I think are going to be very helpful and very beneficial for you. Cause we talk about all of the things we need to do to, one, come up with a powerful idea that's really newsworthy. That's interesting enough that people want to spread the message for you.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  Then how to convert that idea into a following and a powerful following and becoming a thought leader in a specific industry or niche or a space. So we cover a lot of these things today about how to do this, find your idea, breakthrough, stand out from all your competitors and build a loyal following around that. I think you're going to enjoy this. Quick little note about Dorie Clark. She's a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker and frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur in the World Economic Forum Blog. She's recognized as a branding expert by the Associated Press, Fortune and Inc. Magazine. And she's an author of the book called Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  And also the new book we just talked about called Stand Out. She's also got some incredible facts and stats about her that I'm about to share with you guys in a second when we start the interview. Uh, that she went to. College at the age of 14. So that alone is pretty remarkable in my mind, considering it took me, you know, seven plus years to graduate college at the, you know, and I could barely get in at 18. So I'm excited for you to connect with this information about how to stand out and build your breakthrough idea. Now let's go ahead and dive in with the one, the only Dorie Clark.

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. Got a friend on today. Her name is Dory Clark. How are you doing, Dory?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Hey, Lewis. Great to be talking with you.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited to dive into this topic, which is a new book you have out called Stand Out, How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It. And I find, I think this is perfect for my audience because there's a lot of entrepreneurs or budding entrepreneurs who are caught, or they're stuck, or they're not sure how to create their own noise, in a sense, and stand out from the crowd of all the different competitors who are talking about similar things. So I think this is a perfect topic to dive into. And before we go into it, there are some fun facts I want to, I want to clarify with you and make sure that these are true, which I didn't

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  realize until we met a while ago because you invited me to an author's dinner. But then the more research I did in you, I was pretty fascinated. And I thought this stands out on its own. Number one fact is you entered Mary Baldwin's college program for the exceptionally gifted at age 14. Is that right?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It is true. We all hated the name. We thought it was very embarrassing, but, but yes, I did do that.

• 3:51Lewis Howes?

  So you were actually in college, like college, college at 14? Is that, is that what it was? Or was it a special college?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  No, it was, it was legit college.

• 4:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they made me take one class because, because I hadn't, I hadn't had it yet in high school. I, you know, I'd gone through ninth grade and then I left to go to college. And I somehow had not taken geometry yet. And they were so concerned about that for some reason. I entered college and was taking regular college classes, but they made me take one high school class of geometry because apparently, you know, you can't be a successful adult without it. But

• 4:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that's pretty incredible. I don't know anyone else who went to college, you know, at 14, so that's pretty incredible. That stands out by itself. Then you graduated from Smith College at 18, is that right?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly.

• 4:42Lewis Howes?

  So you went to one college at 14, but did you transfer or what happened?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did two years at Mary Baldwin and then I transferred up to Smith, which is in Western Mass to finish up.

• 4:52Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. So I don't know any, anyone who's finished college at 18, so that's pretty impressive. And then you received a master's at Harvard Divinity School at 20, so two years later you had a master's, is that right?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, I thought about it and when I was 18, I just didn't really feel ready to enter the workforce. Just everyone was so much older than me. I wasn't even sure how I would relate to them exactly. So I thought, you know what, I might, I might as well keep rocking this school thing. So I figured I'd just plow right into a master's.

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Did you get a PhD as well or no?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  No, you know, actually, one of my, one of my great adversities that I've overcome, so to speak, is that I wanted to get a PhD. I mean, I was, I was sort of on that track and, you know, I was, I was good at school and I liked it. And I decided that I wanted to become a literature professor. And so after I finished my master's degree, I applied to doctoral programs and I ended up not getting into any of them. And I literally didn't have a plan B. I thought for sure I'd get into one of them. I just didn't know which one, but that, that was not to be. And so I had to really scramble and come up with another plan for myself. And that kind of began my reinventing process.

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay. Now, why did you decide to create this book and to research this topic? And, you know, why stand out? Is it because you've been, you've always stood out since you were younger or why the reason?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's, in some ways, it's actually the opposite, Louis. It's that from the time that I was young, and maybe, maybe some of your listeners have felt similarly, I knew I wanted to have an impact. I knew I wanted to do something great. I wanted to be able to make a difference, but I really didn't know how. Or in what realm? I just kind of had this amorphous sense that I wanted to do something big or important or meaningful. But, you know, I really didn't know. And, you know, when you're when you're a teenager, it's like, oh, I'll be a rock star or whatever. And then, you know, when I was in my twenties, it's it took me a really long time to actually settle on my field, not for lack of trying, but there were a lot of different things that I tried, you know,

• 7:01Speaker 01

  I tried to enter the doctoral program and that didn't work. I got it. I then got a job as a political journalist and promptly a year later got laid off because journalists were losing their jobs. Then I got a couple of jobs working on political campaigns. I mean, actually, pretty cool campaigns. I was the press secretary for a governor's race. I was the spokesperson on a presidential race. Both my candidates lost. So I was doing all these things. And it was it was like a hypothesis, you know, I'm testing. All right, well, maybe maybe I can, you know, have impact here, or maybe I can do this. But, once, once I found that, once I actually found the place that I wanted to to really make my mark that that, you know, felt like a good career,

• 7:43Speaker 01

  which is nine years ago, I started doing what I'm doing now with my consulting business and marketing and strategy and strategy work. I realized, you know, wow, you know, I've found it. But then, how do you stand out and get noticed? How do you actually get people to pay attention to you? And even more importantly, how do you sculpt yourself into the kind of person that is worth paying attention to? And so, essentially, in search of answers for myself, I wanted to write this book where I interviewed about 50 top thought leaders, many of whom have actually been on your show, like David Allen and Gary Vaynerchuk and Ramit Sethi, and and also people in other fields as well, from science to urban planning, to try to understand what

• 8:26Speaker 01

  makes for a breakthrough idea, and then how do you get noticed for it?

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, now, you know, we've all heard the term thought leader a lot. And what is what is thought leader, the definition of thought leader, and who coined this term, or where did it originate?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the original use of the term thought leader actually came in 1994. There was a guy named Joel Kurtzman, who was a journalist who worked at a business publication. It was called Strategy Plus Business. And he came up with the term, which originally, he just used it to mean a thinker whose ideas, quote unquote, merited attention. But the term has just kind of metastasized since then. I mean, now everybody's calling themselves a thought leader. And as a result of that, I think a lot of people push back on it, or they sort of make fun of it a little bit because they think, oh geez, yeah, another thought leader.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  But I actually want to be a little bit of a defender of the term because if, for me, if you parse the pieces of it, the pieces are actually pretty important. And that is, you know, the first part, thought. It implies that the person is famous, not for being famous, not in a Kardashian sense, but they are famous for their ideas. And the second part, you know, their thought leader, it implies they have to have followers, meaning it's not an ivory tower academic. It's not someone who's just coming up with ideas. It's someone who's actually getting out there and doing them and talking to people and having an impact. And I think those are pretty worthy things to aspire to.

• 10:02Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. And what do you think is the difference between thought leader and an entrepreneur?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  So I think that an entrepreneur can be, doesn't necessarily have to be a thought leader, but I think that when the two combine, that can actually be tremendously powerful. Because, you know, what you're trying to do here, as a thought leader, it's about moving the dialogue forward in some way. It's really about having a lasting impact with your ideas. And so as an entrepreneur, if you can do that, which, you know, is sort of a societal good, and you're able to monetize that, that's, I think that's the best thing in the world. That's what I strive for, and I think probably a lot of your listeners do as well.

• 10:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure. And why do you believe that building a strong reputation is the best way to protect or advance your business, your career? You know, we're talking about becoming a thought leader, becoming, and I want to dive into how to do that here in a second, but why do you believe it's, you know, building this reputation is the best way to protect yourself for your future?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Well, I think one of the key things here, Lewis, is that as we have gotten to be a much flatter, more global society, it has become increasingly clear that literally for anything you do, there is someone who's going to do it cheaper. And they might be around the corner, they might be around the world, but there is an alternative. And I remember even 10 years ago, when I was starting my business, you'd look for a web designer, and it's like, oh, well, who do I know from the Chamber of Commerce? Oh, okay, I'll get him. And it was like, well, your range of possibility was, who is the person in your town? Now, the range is, who can you find on Elance or oDesk? And the competition

• 11:56Speaker 01

  is just huge. And so as a result, for all of us, we really have to justify why us. And it doesn't have to be a bad thing. It doesn't have to be a thing that puts us on the defensive. Ideally, this is a positive and proactive thing. You are giving people a reason to want to seek you out specifically and to choose you to do business with because you offer something unique by dint of your expertise or your own personal experience that no one else can. And I think that that leads to greater authenticity. If we really claim it, that can be a very powerful force.

• 12:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And I think a lot of people might be somewhat scared of this idea of being a thought leader. So I'm going to ask you that question in a second. But in your book, I have a section written down, I want to read, you say that thought leadership is a lot more than just making money. True thought leadership is a gift. It's a willingness to be brave, open up, and share yourself. It's a willingness to have your ideas shot down because you genuinely believe they can help others. It's a willingness to trust that your generosity will benefit the world. And that speaks true to me. I'm all about that game. But for some people, it can be really scary because they're like, I don't want to get my idea shot down. I don't want to put myself out there and be that open

• 13:18Lewis Howes?

  and vulnerable because it sets me up for potential failures. So do you think it's necessary that everyone strive to be a thought leader? Or is it more, can they still be a successful entrepreneur if they're not a thought leader?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I think one of the keys here, Lewis, is that when we talk about thought leaders, I mean, generally, when the term is applied, it means, you know, the thought leaders of the world, you know, the great business pantheon. But, and certainly, you know, it's not realistic for every person to be that or to want to be that. That's fine. But what I do think is really essential is that in whatever realm you're in, you need to try to be a thought leader in that realm. You know, if you're an IT guy, you darn well better be the most knowledgeable person about computers in your company. You can be a local thought leader within your company about, you know, how to fix the computers or whatever.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  So I think it's really just thinking about how do you become recognized for your expertise in whatever universe you want to play in?

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  I like that. It's kind of like, yeah, any type of community, it could be your town, it could be your company, it could even be your family, it sounds like you could be the person that can solve the problems for the five people in your family and be known as that expert or thought leader in your little clan, right?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, who wants to live a life where they are the most average person in every realm of their life? I mean, that sounds terrible, you know? You've got to find a place. You can pick the place, but find a place and a thing to stand out for.

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  I like that. And we're talking about standing out, and specifically in business, it's important to be able to stand out in some way, shape, or form to be able to generate sales and get customers or, you know, and build your business so you can survive. So you've got to stand out and you've got to build a following around it, which is valuable, what you talk about. So with all the information out there, shared every day, every minute, all of the noise constantly online and, you know, advertising all over the place, how can someone get started to stand out?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a couple of key pieces here, Lewis. I mean, the first part is coming up with the kind of ideas that really do merit attention, that are worthwhile. And then, you know, the second part is beginning to share that with the world and hopefully get them excited about it. So, I mean, just to share a couple of strategies initially with you, and we can go into more depth about any of these. What I discovered in these interviews with the 50 top experts is that there's actually real patterns in terms of the types of ideas that people come up with and get known for. You know, what is it that makes

• 16:09Speaker 01

  them famous? I was really captivated by this question because, you know, when we think about some of the top people in our field, it almost seems like the way that they're talked about, they've always been famous. You know, oh yeah, Dan Pink, he's always been famous. David Allen, he's always been famous. But the truth is, they haven't. You know, there was a point where they weren't, and then suddenly they were. And what happened in between? And so I wanted to look at that moment. And so, one example that I think is really, I found it useful in my life, is to think about if you were wanting to come up with something that really is a breakthrough idea, how do you prime your mind for that? Well, one of the things that I discovered is that combining ideas from

• 16:54Speaker 01

  different disciplines or different fields is actually one of the most powerful ways to do it. And the reason is that if you are so locked in the mentality and the mindset of one particular discipline, it is really hard to see other ways of doing things. But if you suddenly bring in this infusion from another field, possibilities present themselves. And one example that's become a huge business bestseller in the past few years is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. This is a guy who worked in the startup space, and he ended up, you know, writing a book about it, where he combined technology, entrepreneurship, and something that literally...

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Almost couldn't be further from it, which is lean manufacturing techniques that were pioneered by Toyota to improve processes on an industrial factory floor. I mean, that's, that's almost anti, you know, high tech. And he melded them together and was able to create literally a revolution in terms of how people thought about creating startups and launching businesses. Today, there are 750,000 people around the world who are involved in lean startup meetup groups.

• 18:09Lewis Howes?

  So you say 750,000?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yes, in 84 countries.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow, who are just going over these ideas and brainstorming and talking about how to use it for their own business?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, that, to me, that's, that's actually the, you know, the, the ultimate in a powerful idea is you reach this place where you're not even the person talking about it anymore. People, other people are talking about it. Eric Ries can't be in 84 places at once or 84 countries at once. The, the genie is out of the bottle and his idea has officially spread.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  I like that. That's cool. So, so what are a few questions that someone can ask themselves when wanting to find, you know, a breakthrough idea, you know, that was Eric Ries's breakthrough idea? But what's someone, some questions that people can ask to see what is mine? You know, what am I going to do that's thought leadership worthy to put out there?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, one, one thing I'll actually just mention quickly, Lewis, is that for folks who are interested in diving into this in a big way, I actually created a free 42-page workbook that I adapted from Standout. And literally, it is all of the questions from the end of the chapter sections that I put into workbook format. It is 139 questions that walks you through in incremental steps, how to develop your breakthrough idea. And that's available for free on my website, doriclerk.com.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll make sure to link that up as well.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. So in terms of specific questions, though, I mean, you know, one that is a favorite of mine is how are how are your skills and experiences different than those of most people in your industry? And, you know, that that that's sort of, I think, speaks to an important part. I actually wrote a previous book called Reinventing You, where I I talked about this theme a lot, that when someone is different, when they are, you know, maybe, you know, changing careers or something, they come into a new industry, or maybe they just look different than everybody else in the room, they start to to sometimes doubt themselves and say, you know, should I be here? Because, you know, obviously, everyone else has this same background or the same education.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  You know, do I really, you know, can I make a contribution? Am I going to be helpful? But actually, the really important thing is to reframe that, because this is the moment where your perceived weakness can actually become your strength, and it can be the locus of innovation. Because since you have done something differently than everybody else, I mean, let's say you have, you know, everyone else is an engineer, and you studied advertising or marketing or something like that, you are absolutely going to see the world in a different way than them. And you could, you know, let that attitude sort of infect your brain and say, oh, like, you know, I can't help them. I don't know anything about engineering.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  But instead, it's about stepping up and saying, actually, I can help them a lot, because I'm seeing things that they probably aren't.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I, you know, I had a conversation with Robert Greene one time, the author of The Forty Eight Laws of Power. And I asked him about, you know, was he always as successful at writing books? And he said, absolutely not. You know, it took me about fifteen, twenty years to actually figure out how, figure out coming to the point of writing these types of books, where he used to do screenwriting, and then he did copywriting for people, and he did, you know, other storytelling writing and newspaper writing. And he he figured out that all the skills that he learned along the way, in all these different areas, brought him to create these Unique type of books that people fell in love with. And it was all the different perspectives that he learned along the way.

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  And all the different skill sets he learned, which actually allowed him to create, you know, what it looks like this breakthrough idea now to create kind of a following around that. So I like that. And it reminds me, and it kind of confirms the point for me that I always try to look for things that I can use in the different things I do in my life. Like I try to use sports in business and I try to use salsa dancing in my business and I try to figure out how can I use something that I learned in another skill towards making what I'm doing better or more interesting. So I think that's cool point that you have there.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, you know, one brief story that I'll just share on along these lines of someone that I profile and stand out is a guy named Paco Underhill, who actually wrote, I think, one of the best business books of the last 10 or 20 years called Why We Buy. And he has a consultancy. It's actually a retail consultancy called EnviroCell. And he started out his training as an anthropologist and he literally he worked for a nonprofit called the the Center for Public Spaces. And he would be monitoring pedestrian street traffic to see, you know, where people were moving and why and understanding all these things about civic and

• 23:03Speaker 01

  urban planning. And he had this epiphany one day standing in line at the bank where, you know, it was obviously really poorly organized and everybody was waiting in line at the bank. And he thought, wait a minute, we could apply these same principles to retail customers, you know, what makes for a good city is makes for a good store. And we could actually sell our services and this could be like a whole new line of business. And so he goes to his boss, his boss is completely uninterested. And so Paco ends up going out on his own and starting his own company doing it. But, you know, today, what he is, is an anthropologist who consults for businesses about how to make their their retail environments, both in person and online better,

• 23:48Speaker 01

  based on these fundamental human characteristics about how, you know, what we look for in a comfortable space.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That's pretty cool. He leverages talent that way.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  It's very cool. Tell me about this concept of slow hunch. Can you tell me what that is?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, this is an interesting one. Stephen Johnson, who is a really interesting Bay Area writer, done a number of books. Most recently, one called Future Perfect. One of my favorites of his is, is actually called Where Good Ideas Come From. And it's really just sort of tracing the, the concept of these breakthrough ideas. So certainly it informed a lot of my thinking in writing my book. But in his, he talks about this, this notion of a so-called slow hunch, which is, the story that he tells to exemplify it is that of Charles Darwin. Because, you know, we, we sometimes think, when, you know, when we picture what an archetypal

• 24:51Speaker 01

  breakthrough idea is, we just imagine, you know, oh, right, it's, it's gotta be this like lightning bolt of insight and then all of a sudden, you know, one minute you don't know it, the next minute you do, boom, you know, the person has been enlightened. But the truth is, enlightenment, quote unquote, usually goes a lot slower. And it, it comes in different forms and that's perhaps why it can be surprising to us. And so literally for Charles Darwin, if you look, as, as researchers have done, at his diaries, when he was discovering the concept of evolution, for months, he was, he was almost there. He was literally just so close, you know, kind of hashing it out and, you know, trying to think about it, trying to figure it out.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  And one day it broke, but it was, it was literally this months-long process of being just a few paces away from, from really being able to perceive it in, in its entirety.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That's very cool. You also, you know, this is something I talk about with newer entrepreneurs starting out, they always have interesting questions about how to kind of break through and just gotta start getting sales in the first place. And you suggest building a base knowledge in a narrow subject area, which is something I talk about as well. You know, originally I got, started talking about LinkedIn. And it's not what I wanted to do long-term, but I wanted to be, you know, known for something first in a narrow space, talking LinkedIn as opposed to all of social media like everyone else was doing. I became the expert in one topic. How do you recommend someone finding their niche, getting started like that?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think your experience, Lewis, is terrific because what you really need to do if you're going to be leveraging a niche strategy to develop as a thought leader is exactly what you've done, which is find the initial place to make your mark, go deep in it, and then use that strategically. And so, some of the ways that you can, I mean, number one, if you become an expert on this niche item, you have far less competition, right? Because if I say, to take your example, "Oh, I'm a social media expert," then there's literally a million people that they could be talking to about it. Why on earth would they pick you? There's not a

• 27:12Speaker 01

  good reason. But if you say, "I'm an expert in LinkedIn," or "I am the world's number-one Meerkat expert," which is not very hard, since it just launched.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  It's like a month old, yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Okay, you actually can probably do that. You start your Meerkat blog today, and pretty soon, a month later, you have 30 entries about Meerkat. So yeah, you probably do know more than any other human about it at that point. So you dive in, get known for it, and two things happen. Number one is you start making connections. If you get interviewed by someone because you're the LinkedIn expert, well, guess what? They probably write a lot of other articles. And because they've come to you, they know who you are, they know that you're smart, they know you have good things to say. Pretty soon, because you have those relationships, they're going to start coming to you for other things. Or you have the connection where you can say, "Hey, I have this guest post that I'd like to pitch. It's on a slightly different

• 28:08Speaker 01

  subject, but it's related. Would you run it?" And they're far more likely to say yes because they already have that relationship.

• 28:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  The other thing is what is called the halo effect, which operates in psychology. And it basically is the phenomenon that refers to the fact that if you are perceived by others as being good at one thing, that actually spreads out like a halo, and people begin to think that you're good at everything. And so, this is how we get things like Arnold Schwarzenegger being the governor. You know, it's, "Oh, he's a great actor. Clearly, he'd be a good governor." And it's just these sort of general qualities that get attributed to people.

• 28:53Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think that's, I mean, I think the reason that works for me specifically is that, or why that works on me is because if someone can learn to be great at one thing, and they can show that they've been disciplined and worked hard enough to get to the top in one area, then they can usually replicate that. Now, it may be a bad fit, you know, maybe they shouldn't be the president or something, but they can usually replicate engineering greatness in something else if they learn to be great in one thing or be an expert. So,

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:20Lewis Howes?

  I think that's kind of why it works for me. So, once you've created your breakthrough idea, you've gone through the questioning of figuring it out, you've built this thought leadership, and you're starting to build a following, a small following, what are some ways that you talk about and emphasize on building a bigger following? And really building a following where people just talk about you organically, like with Eric Ries and these groups all over the world where they're creating their own following for you?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, what I discovered, Lewis, in doing this research is that when it comes to building your following, there is a three-step process that that almost everybody follows. And if you if you do it, you know, in this order, it's, that's really what it's necessary to do because otherwise it can become a little bit of a disjointed process. So, the first step, as you alluded to, is starting with a small following, a small group of trusted advisors. That's, you know, what I call building a network. And the reason that I think that's so important is that, in all honesty, some ideas at the beginning are not that good,

• 30:32Speaker 01

  or they're not that refined. And you need people that that are have your back, but that you trust enough to listen to them so that they can say, you know what? Maybe not this one. Or you know what? This would be so good if you just did these two things. And that is what enables you to get the ideas into a good enough form, into a good enough shape, that when you actually do present them to the world, the world is ready to receive them. And they can provide, you know, pretty crucial early resources, support, you know, they can, they can help you with that spread. The next stage is building an audience. And that is where you start to communicate more broadly with the world.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  This is probably the most visible part of the marketing effort. It is going out and talking on podcasts, or writing blog posts, or giving speeches, or otherwise getting your idea into the public square and making people aware of it. And, you know, so, so then, you know, okay, people can discover you, they get intrigued, they get drawn in, then, for the very best ideas. Because a lot of ideas die at that phase.

• 31:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  But for the best ideas, the ones that actually cross over, that is where it goes from communicating with an audience, to having a community around them. And the distinction is that it's no longer just you talking about it. It's people who believe in it enough that they are talking to each other about the idea and helping it spread. And what I've discovered is that the crucial ingredient, I mean, of course, there's some tactical things you can do to make it easier for people to share the information, or whatever. But fundamentally, what determines whether an idea is going to be able to have a community around it, is almost baked into its DNA. From its inception, it has to be a useful idea, and useful to

• 32:25Speaker 01

  someone who is not you. I think that's, that's where a lot of ideas die, is that they're, you know, it's great for you, but it doesn't necessarily have value, or interest, or relevance to the rest of the world. But when people heard Eric Ries's lean startup idea, they said, you know what, that can help me run my business better. That can help me get venture funding faster. That can help me avoid a painful failure. And so they glommed onto it. If you have an idea like that, that really is useful for people, they will go to the ends of the earth to support you and to spread it.

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  I like that. So what do you think makes you stand out? And what's helped you build the following that you have?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Well, you know, one of the strategies that I'm trying to follow, because I am trying to, you know, walk the talk with this. One of the five strategies that I lay out in the first part of the book about how to come up with your breakthrough idea. David Allen, your previous and recent guest on the School of Greatness, actually exemplifies this. And it's called "A Strategy of Building a Framework." And essentially, you know, what this means is that we often assume for, you know, the sort of day-to-day professions that we work in or fields, that everything that could possibly have been said about it has been said.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I think, you know, a lot of people would be pretty surprised to contemplate the idea that, you know, "Oh, you know, the framework, the fundamental framework of a field hasn't really been articulated." But the truth is, people have been talking about things like influence and persuasion for millennia. And it took Robert Cialdini, who the well-known psychologist, who's the author of the book Influence, it took until he, 20 or 30 years ago, wrote that book to come up with a framework where he actually said, "Hey, actually, there's only six ways you can persuade someone. Here's what they are." Right. And it was so profound. It was such a profound simplification and, you know, a structure that made sense to

• 34:35Speaker 01

  people and helped them, that literally anytime someone talks about influence now, they talk about Cialdini. Similarly with David Allen. I mean, people have been grappling with how to be more productive forever. Certainly, it's only gotten worse since, you know, the advent of social media and email. But, you know, this is a concern forever. But David Allen encapsulated it in getting things done. He created this real structure and framework so that people could rely on it and it could help make their lives simpler. And in doing that, he became the go-to guy for that. For me, what I'm attempting to do with this book is to really provide a framework for people who would like to stand out in their

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Fields, but you know, maybe, maybe they're not sure what their big idea is yet. Maybe they, they don't quite, they want to make a contribution, but they don't quite know how. Or, you know, they might have an idea, but they're not quite sure how to spread it. I would like to be able to provide enough of a roadmap for them that it becomes easier for those good ideas to spread, because I would like to live in a world where it's not the loudest voice that wins, but instead it's the best idea that wins.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that. And you also mentioned that you say, actually in the book, it's rare that we make time for the kind of sustained reflection that is necessary for breakthrough ideas. Can you elaborate on that?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of the stories that I tell in Stand Out is actually about Daniel Goleman, who some of your listeners may recognize as the, the gentleman behind the emotional intelligence phenomenon. And, you know, when I started to look into Daniel Goleman, I mean, I, you know, I started out by literally just sort of brainstorming like, well, you know, what are the really big ideas in the world of business or, you know, other big professions? And emotional intelligence just stood out. I mean, the Harvard Business Review called it literally the breakthrough idea of the 1990s. And so, so I started, you know, peeling it back and saying, all right, well, where did that idea come from? You know, what, what actually is its genesis? And I had assumed, I didn't really know anything about his background, that Daniel

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Goleman was a researcher, that he was, you know, talking about his findings, maybe. But that's actually not true. He, he did go to graduate school for psychology, but at the time he was a reporter. And he was literally, as part of his job, he was reading a psychology journal. It was, you know, a really, really boring article, which I've read, in this, in this psychology journal, where, you know, he's just kind of paging through, essentially looking for story ideas. And he sees, you know, buried in a bunch of dross, he sees what he recognizes as gold. You know, there's this article that's basically saying, hey, IQ.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  That thing that for the past 50 years, everyone has thought of as being the most important thing in a person's life and future success. Actually, no, it's not. And he saw this and he's like, oh, my God, this is really profound. But no one was ever going to hear about it if it stayed in the pages of this boring psychology journal. So as a journalist, he starts writing about it, gets a book contract, writes a book about it, becomes a bestseller. Literally, it's on the bestseller list for like five years. You know, changed the way that the culture thought about things. And for me, hearing that story, I thought, you know what? Who does that now? Who actually has the time now to sit back and read a journal

• 38:14Speaker 01

  article? I mean, everybody's reading tweets or BuzzFeed listicles on their phones. They're not reading articles. And it goes back to something that David Allen told me when I interviewed him, which is, you don't need time for a great idea. I mean, literally, you can have a great idea in 30 seconds. What you need is space. You need mental space to have a great idea. And I think that if there's a drum that I want to beat here or a message to get across, it's that we need to create more white space in our lives so that we are better equipped to let our minds wander and to be able to make the kind of

• 38:56Speaker 01

  fruitful connections that Daniel Goldman did, or that David Allen did in coming up with their breakthrough ideas.

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful thought. And what do you recommend people do to create that, you know, that white space? What are some things they can do on a daily basis or monthly or whatever it may be?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Well, you know, they don't have to be complicated. You know, this is, you know, some people are, you know, increasingly, you know, you see articles that they're taking a digital Sabbath or something. So, you know, they have 24 hours where they're not looking at their phones or whatever. If you want to do that and you can do that, that's great. But you don't even have to go that extreme. I mean, literally, this is something along the lines of, you know, during dinner, turn off your phone. Or, you know, is there a way that you can? Get into your schedule a short walk every day.

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Psychology research actually has determined that a 30 minute walk per day is the psychological equivalent, in terms of its benefit, of a $30,000 raise.

• 40:00Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 40:01Speaker 01

  So, yes. So if you, if you would, all listeners, if you would like to give yourself a $30,000 raise, take a walk every day. And, you know, not a walk looking at your phone, but an actual walk. And you're going to be happier, you're going to feel better, and you are probably going to be able to come up with a lot better, more fruitful connections in, in your life as your mind has the freedom to be able to range around things.

• 40:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I can definitely speak into that because, you know, some days I'll be, I feel like I'm on my phone constantly all day, whether it's checking something or on the phone, calling someone back, or whatever it may be, looking something up, researching, and it can be exhausting. But it's those days where I'm, have a better balance and I put my phone in the other room and I allow myself to relax or just to say, focus on tasks and not get distracted with my phone, that I feel more productive and more creative throughout the day. So I can definitely speak into that. And I'm sure a lot of people are nodding right now as they hear this, because they can experience, they experience that as well. Very cool. Well, I want to, I want to wrap things up here in a second. I want to make sure that everyone, I'll tell you guys where to go here in a minute to

• 41:08Lewis Howes?

  get the book on my, on my site, but you can also go to bookstores and Amazon and Barnes and Noble and get Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It by Dorie Clark. Couple of questions left for you that I've been asking people recently. One is, what are you most grateful for? I'm curious about that first.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I would say, Lewis, that right now I'm actually most grateful, you came to one of my author dinners earlier this year. I moved to New York last summer and I, I had had, I'd lived for Boston, I lived, lived for like 20 years in Boston since I finished graduate school. And I came to New York because I really wanted a change in my life and I wasn't sure how it was, it was going to go. I, you know, whether I could make friends or find a new community. It's kind of a big existential leap to do that. And one of the ways that I decided to

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Take the reins and try to make my own community was by starting this monthly author dinner series and it's actually become one of the nicest things in my life. I feel like it's been so great in terms of introducing me to interesting and cool people, enabling them to make connections amongst themselves. I know you were gracious enough to have Peter Bregman, who was also at the dinner on your show a couple of months ago, which was a great episode. And so I really feel like that's been personally and professionally really fruitful.

• 42:42Lewis Howes?

  Very cool. I love it. Yeah. And I think it's always valuable to stand out when you can connect other people together and be that kind of champion of the network for people. That's always a great way to get started. If you haven't, you know, if you're not sure what you can do to stand out, you can always connect other people and support them in standing out and that in a way will support you. So I love that. Here's a question I've been asking people, two questions left for you. One is, it's the end of the end of your time. Time is almost up for you, you know, in a hundred years and all the books, you've written many books by this point and articles, thousands of articles, but somehow they all get deleted and erased and the books go away. And now you have, it's your

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  last couple hours and you have a pen and a paper in front of you and you get to write three things and it's the three truths you've learned about life that you get to share. And this is the only thing that people will get to read about you that you create for the rest of time. Now, what would you write down that comes up for you right now as the three truths that you know about life?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say, Lewis, number one is you have to take control of your narrative. You have to tell your own story because if you leave it to other people, they're going to get it wrong. You have to do it. The second one that I would say is that

• 44:12Speaker 01

  You you need to take the lead on building the relationships you want. Whether that, you know, is inviting people to a dinner or improving your marriage. You can't wait for other people to sit back. You know, you can't sit back and wait for other people to do it. You need to be the agent of that change. And the third thing that I would say is that that people should adopt pets. I always like to to try to to try to talk about that. I'm I'm really big on animals and I think that they add so much to everybody's life. And, you know, if if you have the opportunity to adopt a homeless pet.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  It's the, you know, it's a nice thing for them, obviously, because you're saving them from very sad fates. But it's a great thing for you and can be one of the most meaningful relationships of your life.

• 45:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's a that's a great answer. I wasn't expecting that one. How many pets do you have then?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Right at the moment, I have zero. So, yeah, not practicing what I preach. But but no, actually, the reason that I moved to to New York was I I had I had a cat and I loved him so much. He was, you know, we were together for seventeen years. I I got him like, you know, the month that I started graduate school and he died. And I was actually so terribly sad when he died that I really felt like I couldn't live in my condo anymore. It was just too sad to to be there without him. And so it really made me think about things and take stock of my life. And I thought, you know what? If I'm not going to live in this condo anymore, I probably shouldn't live in Boston anymore.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Maybe this is like a clarion call for me to just do something different. And I thought, if I if I just keep doing the same thing as I was doing before, it's always going to be just like less than. It would be like, oh, it's the same thing, but not with my cat. And I thought, all right, the only answer to that is to do something different and hopefully better. And that's the way that I can move forward. So that's why I don't have a have a pet now, but I'm I'm actually dating someone now who has a lot of pets.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's perfect.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  You know, living vicariously.

• 46:30Lewis Howes?

  So no responsibility to all the reward.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  It's like being a grandma. Yeah.

• 46:35Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Okay, cool. I can definitely relate to that. You know, I've been wanting a dog for a long time since I've been in LA, but it's, uh, I just know myself that I'll just fall in love with it so much that I won't get anything done. So it's kind of like, I need to learn how to be able to like, balance that where I'm not staying in all day because I just want to hang out with my dog, you know, but I love animals as well. That's a good, it's a good tip. Um, well, before I ask the final question, I want to take a moment, Dory, to acknowledge you for standing out in your own unique way because, you know, when I first met you, I didn't really know what to expect and you were very loving, warm-hearted and generous with your time and you're a great listener. And so I want to acknowledge you for that. But I also, since I've started to learn more about you,

• 47:20Lewis Howes?

  I didn't know a lot of these things about you until I researched more, is that, man, you've done some scary things in your life. In my opinion, I would be terrified to do all the things that you've done and you've achieved so much. So I want to acknowledge you for being committed to, I feel like you've stood out your entire life and being committed to not being afraid to, to move forward when scary situations come, when you're faced with a lot of different, interesting challenges, you've moved forward and stood out in your own unique way. So I really value that and I appreciate you and, uh, thank you for coming on. I've got one more question for you, but I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge you there, Dory. So thanks for all that you do.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  That's, that's so kind of you, Louis. I, I appreciate that. And, uh, you're especially gracious because I was just coming off of this, this terrible cold when I met you and I, and my, my eye was all messed up and I looked funny and I was just like, you know, I couldn't even, my ears were so blocked because I was just off of a plane from Kazakhstan. I couldn't even, uh, hear people properly. And so I probably, I would, well, I was not at my best, shall we say, but you know, so it's, uh, it's so nice. I look forward to getting to hang out with you again when I am at my best. And, uh, you were so, so gracious to just come and have fun, uh, you know, at the dinner and, and share yourself. And every, uh, you know, you know, multiple times a week, you're sharing

• 48:46Speaker 01

  yourself with your audience. And part of why I wanted to meet you is that I've just loved your podcast so much. Uh, I feel like it's so informative and, and you're such an insightful questioner. It's really a treat to, uh, to get to be part of it.

• 48:59Lewis Howes?

  Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, and I remember that we had a, it was like a blizzard, supposed to be a huge blizzard that day, but we weathered the storm. So.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 49:07Lewis Howes?

  Well, you know what this question is coming. It's the last question and it's what's your definition of greatness?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yes. My definition of greatness, Lewis, is people being able to fulfill their potential. And I think that for me, that's, you know, it's all different, you know, for everybody, what they want to accomplish, or, you know, only they know what their potential actually is. And that's why I'm so committed to the idea of, through my books, hopefully helping people be able to tell their story and to show the world what they're capable of. Because I think a lot of people are written off too early, you know, just people look at them and they don't, they don't pay any attention and they just make these assumptions about what somebody

• 49:55Speaker 01

  can do and what they can't do. And I think for a lot of people, they know that there is potential that is untapped inside themselves. And I would like to, to see them be able to seize that and to get that recognized so that we can live in the kind of world we want to be in.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  Love that. Dory Clark, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Lewis, thank you. Great to be here.

• 50:21Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, guys. Thank you again so much for joining on today's interview and episode with Dory Clark. To get all the information, the links, the resources, the book, make sure to check out lewishouse.com/166. Again, lewishouse.com/166. For those that have some friends in the business world that are struggling getting started, that want to stand out in their own unique way, feel free to send them this interview and make sure to get them in front of this information because it's all about needing the tools and the information to help people succeed. And when you can help someone else succeed, they're going to help you succeed in the long run. So make sure to share this episode with your friends, email

• 51:04Lewis Howes?

  them, or post it on Facebook, Twitter, any other social media site that you love. Again, How's dot com slash one six six again. Big thank you to Dory. Thank you to everyone listening. I'm so in love with everyone that listens right now because you mean the world to me and you're the reason I keep doing this because it gives me a platform to explore ideas and interview inspiring people and share them to the world. So without you, I would not be able to do this the way I do. So thank you guys so much and I'm so excited for what's to come. Get ready. The School of Greatness podcast is going to blow up even more soon. More news on that here shortly,

• 51:46Lewis Howes?

  but you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.