172: How To Create and Build Your Personal Brand with Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark is an adjunct professor at the Duke University School of Business. She’s the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out (named the #1 leadership book of 2015 by Inc. magazine). She’s a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and she regularly consults and speaks for clients such as Microsoft, Google, and The World Bank. Dorie’s first job out of graduate school was as a political reporter. When she was laid off from that job, she began the process of reinventing herself. She tried a lot of different things, not all of which worked out. She worked in two unsuccessful political campaigns and then turned her talents to running a nonprofit. After two years of doing that, Dorie realized that running a nonprofit is exactly like running your own business. So…Dorie decided to start running her own business. For the past 11 years, she’s run her own marketing and consulting company. She’s done all kinds of activities to help build her brand and the brands of her clients, including: Writing books Giving speeches Doing executive coaching Launching online courses In this interview, we talked about what a personal brand is and how to build yours. We took a deep dive into social networking, how to do it, and why it’s essential to building your personal brand. Why Dorie Decided to Start Her Own Business Dorie was the head of a small nonprofit for two years. She decided to start her own business because running the nonprofit and being responsible for the livelihood of three other employees was super stressful. Also, she didn’t get paid very much. Working for herself and being responsible only for her own income and needs seemed like a move toward a more stable, less stressful life. Dorie’s time as the head of that nonprofit was an incredibly valuable learning experience. Running the nonprofit taught her what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be a jack of all trades, because you’re responsible for everything that happens in your business. “You have complete independence. Yeah, you might have to solve problems yourself, but you don’t have to answer to anyone, you don’t have to answer to a boss, nobody’s telling you what to do. Everything is more fulfilling because you are making the choice to do it.” – Dorie Clark Why Dorie Decided to Write Her First Book Dorie made a New Year’s resolution in 2009 to publish a book that year. She’d always wanted to write a book. She thought it would be cool, and she also thought it would raise her company’s profile and demonstrate thought leadership in her field. All of that turned out to be true. What Dorie didn’t count on is how difficult it would be to actually publish her first book. In the first six months of 2009, Dorie wrote three book proposals. They were all turned down because she didn’t have a big enough author platform. So she went back to the drawing board and figured out how to build that essential author platform. She was ab