Turn Your Writing Into A $1.7 Million Business In 2025 | 053

[00:00:00] Dorie Clark: It was not easy to break in. There’s so much rejection. So I realized I needed some bills to platform. And this year so far, I’ve brought in about 1. 3 million. It’ll probably be a 1. 6 or 7 by the end of the year. I am the only full time employee that my company has.

[00:00:15] Nathan Barry: Today I’m joined by Dory Clark, who’s a speaker, author, business consultant, and really an expert at getting noticed.

[00:00:21] Dorie Clark: Anyone who is. Good at what they do, but they don’t have the reach. The big breakthrough for me was to start. The average person who’s watching TikTok videos assumes, Oh, lots of views means lots of money. It doesn’t really translate that way. That attention needs to go through a process. Entrepreneurial you is outlining different strategies by which people can make money in their creator businesses.

[00:00:48] Dorie Clark: What are you trying to figure out next? Is there anything that

[00:00:50] Nathan Barry: I can help with or that we can brainstorm?

[00:00:51] Dorie Clark: Is there. A way for me to raise my hand and say, Hey, this company, I’m a fan of, I think you should consider me. So I would probably. That’s really interesting. I hadn’t considered that.

[00:01:07] Nathan Barry: So Dory, we have a mutual friend in Terry Rice and in his creator story, he talks about you and your work being like a big turning point for him. I’m curious just to dive in what, like what book in particular, cause you’ve written a lot of, a lot of different things. What book is he talking about there?

[00:01:23] Nathan Barry: And then what’s some of the change that you helped him create?

[00:01:25] Dorie Clark: Yeah, Terry Rice is fantastic. And I think that the book that he is talking about is called Entrepreneurial You. Basically the book is every chapter is outlining different strategies by which people can make money in their creator businesses.

[00:01:43] Dorie Clark: And I was trying to learn at the time how to be more successful in monetizing my business. And I realized that picking people’s brains is, is just so ridiculous. And I, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to be hitting people up that way. And I thought, all right, I can learn from myself and I can teach other people if I write a book about it.

[00:02:02] Dorie Clark: So I got, I got a book contract from Harvard Business Review Press and I wrote Entrepreneurial U. As a way so that, so that I could learn all of these things and hopefully teach other people. So we break down everything from coaching, to consulting, to communities, to courses, to blogging, to podcasting. And, thankfully that was, I, I think, helpful to Terry.

[00:02:24] Dorie Clark: And I ended up featuring him as a case study in my next book, The Long Game. But you’re even

[00:02:28] Nathan Barry: saying, hey, I want to learn this thing. Writing a book is going to be my ticket in the door to conversations I wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. You have the social proof of Harvard Business Review, press, but then you have this by product at the end.

[00:02:44] Nathan Barry: I really think that more creators should follow this, this process of like. What can I, as I learn something, what can I create for the world and how does it feed this goal? I

[00:02:53] Dorie Clark: mean, one of the things that I learned in my experience that I thought was interesting and part of what made me want to dive in and write Entrepreneurial You was that I realized that.

[00:03:04] Dorie Clark: Building social proof, building credibility, building a following, we often assume that that naturally and inexorably leads to monetization. It actually doesn’t. Those are kind of separate processes and you have to be really smart and thoughtful about how you build the back end because otherwise it’s entirely possible.

[00:03:22] Dorie Clark: I mean, you hear these stories about people who are, you know, YouTube stars and they have millions of subscribers and they’re literally working as a barista because the money is just not. There in a direct way, so I think what’s, what’s so great about the holistic view that, that you are propounding it kit is that if you have an email list, you actually have people you can talk to you have people that you can hopefully sell things to and you need to be mindful of that from the beginning because, the fame or, or influence or people knowing your name is great, but it’s, it’s a different thing than earning money from that.

[00:03:59] Dorie Clark: And I really wanted to.

[00:04:04] Nathan Barry: What do you think are the biggest differences, like, what do you see that works well for building that payment attention, but versus stepping into monetization? Like, what are the, what’s the pivot that people have to make?

[00:04:15] Dorie Clark: There’s a difference between making money from something. And making money because of something.

[00:04:22] Nathan Barry: Okay.

[00:04:23] Dorie Clark: And it’s a, it’s a subtle distinction, but we often tend to say I’m going to make money from this. And so a person who hasn’t thought about it closely, or the average person who’s, you know, maybe watching Tik TOK videos or something like that assumes, Oh, lots of views means lots of money. And we all know that it doesn’t really translate that way.

[00:04:44] Dorie Clark: You can, you absolutely can make money from being a Tik TOK person or YouTube person or podcaster or whatever it is, but. It’s the nuances that that attention needs to actually kind of go through a process of being transmuted into making money. And so it’s thinking, well, what, what can we do with that attention and how do you use it to, to fuel other things?

[00:05:11] Dorie Clark: And so, I mean, you’ve talked about this on the show. It could be anything from, okay, Kylie cosmetics, or it can be turning it into courses or, you You know, in, in the sort of clearest sense, consulting engagement or speaking gig or something like that, but we have to really be thoughtful about putting those pieces into place.

[00:05:31] Dorie Clark: My personality type, I think is because I’m really big into risk mitigation. I’m always thinking like, well, what, you know, what if X collapses or what if Y happens? I like having enough diversification so that. You have a portfolio of ways that you actually can be making money from something.

[00:05:49] Nathan Barry: Getting to this point, I think it’s really interesting.

[00:05:52] Nathan Barry: How did you first decide that you wanted to be a content creator and that like, how did you first step into the world of writing?

[00:05:59] Dorie Clark: So like a lot of people, I wasn’t necessarily starting with being a content creator in mind. I launched my business doing consulting in 2006 and I knew I needed to get clients and I really was not sure how I didn’t know a lot about entrepreneurship.

[00:06:17] Dorie Clark: I had previously been running a nonprofit for a couple of years before that. And that taught me a lot about the kind of day to day mechanics of running a business. But biz dev and actually getting work was a very different thing. I mean, I had done, I had kind of done what I could, like I knew a year before I left my job that I wanted to start a business.

[00:06:36] Dorie Clark: So I started reading books from the library and I started taking classes at the local adult ed center. You know, here’s how to do quick books. Here’s how to use PowerPoint, you know, things, things like that, that I thought would be helpful. But, you know, it teaches you these pieces and it doesn’t teach you the most important part, which is how to get a client, how to actually get money in the bank.

[00:06:56] Dorie Clark: I came to realize that I needed visibility strategies. I needed ways to get in front of people so that they would know who I was. but in my case, I had actually started my career as a journalist and I had, very quickly been laid off from my job. So I didn’t last that long as a journalist. But I did have training in how to write.

[00:07:16] Dorie Clark: So I thought, okay, you know, that’s a thing I can do. I will try to do a lot of that so that I can raise my profile and get in front of the right people. Okay. And so then what were the first places that you were writing? I was living in Boston at the time. So I was writing for lots of local things. I was writing for literally my local paper, you know, the Somerville journal.

[00:07:34] Dorie Clark: I’d do like a letter to the editor and be very proud. I would write a piece for the Boston business journal or. there was like a think tank called Mass Inc. and I’d, I’d write for those things. And, you know, that was, that was great. It exposed me to a certain audience, but I knew that eventually what I needed to do was to start writing for high profile publications that had more national reach and that had more meaning in the minds of clients.

[00:07:59] Dorie Clark: You know, people have heard of, you know, a Forbes or a fast company or a Harvard business review. So. It was not easy to break in, and honestly, it’s, it’s kind of insulting, it’s, it’s this very demoralizing thing, which I think a lot of people don’t get past, there’s so much rejection, I mean, I was, I was I was a former professional journalist who had done it for a living and I was raising my hands and saying, hi people, I’d like to write for you for free.

[00:08:24] Dorie Clark: Will you accept my volunteer services? And they’re like totally dissing me. Absolutely not. No,

[00:08:31] Nathan Barry: they’re like, we have no interest in accepting any of that. Yeah. It’s, it’s ridiculous. How did you actually get in the door at like any of these

[00:08:37] Dorie Clark: publications? So I was actually very methodical about it. I made a spreadsheet of about two dozen publications that I thought would be.

[00:08:46] Dorie Clark: Feasible, you know, things that had a reasonable brand name, things that had some salience in the business world and publications that I checked on their website did accept contributions from non staffers. And so I had my list, I plugged in my best guests, from their website about who was the contact person.

[00:09:09] Dorie Clark: And I just, I went through it and I was doing cold pitches to all of them. In some cases I knew people and of course I was trying those warm leads first, but it was largely a brute force effort. I was able after trying with about half a dozen people, to break in at Huffington Post, which at the time was very sexy.

[00:09:31] Dorie Clark: So that was, that was at least a step in the right direction. But the big breakthrough for me out of those 24 publications, I reached out to 21 of them completely ignored me and did not get back to me at all. Even after multiple attempts. Three of them did get back to me, two of them said, Hey, well, will you send us some stuff?

[00:09:50] Dorie Clark: Will you send some pitch ideas or something? And then they ignored me. And the third one was Forbes, which at the time was just starting its contributor network. And they were, it was, it really was a question of, of the right time. I’m partly making my luck by doing this legwork, but it was the right time for them.

[00:10:10] Dorie Clark: And they said, great. Can you write us your first article within 10 days? So I jumped on that and over the next three years, I wrote 250 articles for them. Oh, wow.

[00:10:19] Nathan Barry: Yeah. So really building on top of that reputation that they already have and they can say, Hey, I’m a writer for Forbes. And then parlay that into other things.

[00:10:29] Dorie Clark: Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly right. I also used it as a vehicle to interview other people, especially fellow authors. And so it became the best networking tool that I had at my disposal. Because almost always, especially if someone had a book, they would say yes, they’d like to be interviewed for Forbes. And so it was a, it was kind of my entry card to meeting a lot of the people I wanted to.

[00:10:51] Nathan Barry: How did it go to, to parlay the Forbes experience into not just more connections, but also, you know, more social proof

[00:10:58] Dorie Clark: while I was in the midst of, you know, desperately trying to break in at these places that were ignoring me. I sold my bike on Craigslist. I used to run, the nonprofit that I ran was a bicycle advocacy organization.

[00:11:12] Dorie Clark: And so I had this, this quite nice bike that I had managed to get cheap because I, I got an industry discount for it. So I was like, you know, like, okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna sort of trade, trade in my bike. So I sold it on Craigslist and the woman. Who bought it turned out to be a copy editor at Harvard Business Review.

[00:11:30] Dorie Clark: And that was a publication that was not even on my radar. I wasn’t thinking about it at all. But because she had checked me out to make sure I was like, not going to cheat her about the bike.

[00:11:40] Nathan Barry: You know, I’m not going to mug her in a parking lot or who knows what if when you’re doing a deal on

[00:11:44] Dorie Clark: her. Yeah, exactly.

[00:11:45] Dorie Clark: She’s handing me this wad of cash. she actually said to me, Oh, Hey, I see you do writing in the business world. I work for Harvard Business Review. And I at least had the presence of mind to say, Oh, do you accept contributors? Can you introduce me to someone? And I had to follow up with her even, probably about three times, but she did eventually introduce me to an editor and he looked at my pitches and he said, yes.

[00:12:12] Dorie Clark: I think the creators,

[00:12:14] Nathan Barry: many of them really dismiss the, Traditional social proof aspect of things. I don’t know. What are other ways that creators that you think they should like pursue key points of social proof?

[00:12:27] Dorie Clark: Yeah, I actually have a framework about this because my, my quick version is what I call three by three.

[00:12:34] Dorie Clark: One time is, is an, is it a, an accident twice as a coincidence and three times as a pattern. And so if you can demonstrate. That you have done something three times, most people will say, Oh, okay, well, that’s a, that’s a legitimate occurrence and not question it. And so if you can have three different types of social proof and three examples of each, then you are creating for yourself a rock solid bio.

[00:13:02] Nathan Barry: So diving into, I’m very curious in it of just what your business is now, how do you actually like what books have you written? How do you actually grow the business? So maybe we’ll start there, like as you’ve written books. and the audience, how about your own, and then we’ll dive into like what the business looked like today.

[00:13:18] Dorie Clark: So the first book that I wrote was a little bit of an accident. it was called Reinventing You, and it came out in, in 2013 from Harvard Business Review Press. And I had started writing for HBR, the reason I really had a lot of fire in me to do blogging and write articles was that I had wanted to write a book, but I kept getting turned down because the publisher said, sorry, you’re not famous enough, you know, the magic words, you don’t have a platform.

[00:13:50] Dorie Clark: And so I realized I, okay, I needed to go out and get one. I needed some build a platform. So in the process of starting to write for HBR. I was writing lots of things. I was writing basically any article that I thought that they would publish that was, you know, reasonably within my wheelhouse of expertise.

[00:14:09] Dorie Clark: And I had written one about professional reinvention, which was kind of inspired by, by my own experience. I had had a lot of careers in my twenties, you know, lots of stuff that didn’t work out. And so I wrote this article about professional reinvention. And it got popular and so they actually reached out and asked me if I would take the short blog article and turn it into a longer piece for the magazine.

[00:14:35] Dorie Clark: It was actually really validating because I had had three different book proposals, in the previous two years. I’ll turn down because this, you know, for, for different reasons, but mostly because I wasn’t famous. The minute, literally the minute I wrote this piece for the print edition of Harvard Business Review, three different literary agents reached out to me and said, Hey, are you thinking about a book?

[00:14:58] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:14:58] Dorie Clark: And it was, it was amazing because I thought, Oh, this is what it feels like when things are working. Right. And I’ve had enough failure that I actually know. The difference.

[00:15:08] Nathan Barry: This feels very different. Yeah. I like that. Okay. So laddering up the books, how many books have you written?

[00:15:13] Dorie Clark: So I’ve written four.

[00:15:15] Dorie Clark: the second one stand out was my trying to answer the problem. How do you get to be known in your field? How do you get to be thought leader. How do you get to be a recognized expert in what you’re doing? And then there was entrepreneurial you, which is okay, great. People respect what you’re saying.

[00:15:31] Dorie Clark: Now, how do you make money from it? And then finally, my most recent one is called the long game. How to be a long term thinker in a short term world. And that’s really a book about trying to answer some of the modern problems that plague us. You know, how do we, how do we actually take the steps now to create the life that we want in the longterm?

[00:15:50] Dorie Clark: How do we create an interesting life? How do we be more thoughtful in our choices so that we are more likely to get the outcome we want?

[00:15:59] Nathan Barry: You have done more of what we see in the greater world, what I’ve done or many others done of layering on much more of the economic side beyond the books. So what does the business look like today?

[00:16:13] Dorie Clark: Yeah, the books, as you say, are kind of a driver. They’re sort of a tip of the spear of intellectual property so that people know what I can do and know what I’m about. But there’s a variety of different pieces. I do keynote speaking, so oftentimes companies will invite me to come in and give talks, especially about two of my books, about the long game and strategy issues and about reinvention and how employees can reinvent themselves at the company.

[00:16:40] Dorie Clark: Also I run an online course in community called Recognized Expert. In a lot of ways. It is exemplifying what I talk about in my book, stand out. So the books really are kind of tied into the IP. the goal for that it is for creators, for professional service providers, basically anyone who is. Good at what they do.

[00:17:02] Dorie Clark: They’re a smart person, but they don’t have the reach that they want to, and they want to try to crack the code on that. So recognize expert is a course in community, helping them figure out how to do that and how to get their ideas more widely heard. I also run, since 2017, I’ve been running an annual mastermind that I do.

[00:17:21] Dorie Clark: I also do a lot of like in person or it’s, it is twice a year we meet in person and then we have virtual sessions in between. I do a little bit of business school teaching for 10 years. I taught at Duke and I, now primarily work with Columbia business school and, you know, there’s, there’s book royalties.

[00:17:41] Dorie Clark: There’s other things in there.

[00:17:43] Nathan Barry: If you’re open to talking about it, I’d be really curious, like in the, for the last few years, what’s, what’s annual revenue for the collective creator business? Thanks.

[00:17:50] Dorie Clark: Yeah, so I was looking this up on my accounting software before we gave just so I can be prepared. So this year, so far, like to date, I’ve brought in about 1.

[00:18:02] Dorie Clark: 3 million

[00:18:03] Nathan Barry: as like

[00:18:04] Dorie Clark: the

[00:18:04] Nathan Barry: first three quarters of the year, basically.

[00:18:05] Dorie Clark: Yeah, exactly. So it’ll, it’ll probably be. You know, I don’t know, 1. 6 or 7 by the end of the year. I like to keep things very lean. So I am the only full time employee that my company has. I, yeah, I’m all about margins, Nathan.

[00:18:19] Nathan Barry: Oh yeah. Hey, you’ve got to put that all that business school experience to use.

[00:18:24] Nathan Barry: That’s right.

[00:18:25] Dorie Clark: so I have a. Part time chief of staff and he has, he has a very part time, like five hours a week assistant that works under him. but that’s, that’s the infrastructure. so we keep it very light. Last year, actually, I had a lot of, I’ll call it extraordinary income, because I had a big licensing deal.

[00:18:46] Dorie Clark: So I brought in, it’s, it’s so, it’s so sad because it was just, just a tiny, tiny bit shy, but it was, it was like, 2. 968 million. Like, Oh, I couldn’t quite, couldn’t quite crack it. You’re like quick, somebody book me for some consulting or something. Exactly. I had that. I donate some blood or something.

[00:19:05] Nathan Barry: I had that with, yeah, ConvertKit, now Kit, where in a year we went from 2000 in monthly recurring revenue.

[00:19:13] Nathan Barry: To 98, 800 and I was like, Oh,

[00:19:17] Dorie Clark: we’re so close. Hey mom, mom, do you need any kind of,

[00:19:21] Nathan Barry: you want to like 1, 200? Yeah. Yeah. I want to get into the licensing. maybe looking at 2024 so far, if you have some of that breakdown, like how does it split out between royalties speaking? and the, the courses.

[00:19:38] Dorie Clark: Yeah. So for me, in terms of, in terms of this year, I have, and I’m doing, I’m doing math in my head right now.

[00:19:50] Dorie Clark: we’re going broad numbers. Yeah, exactly. In general. I, one of the goals that I’ve had for myself over the past, say five or six years is that we all have things in our business that we do that are just kind of like, okay, keep, you know, admin, keeping it going, the things you have to do. But whenever there was discretionary effort, whenever there’s, you know, the ability to choose where you’re focusing, I always wanted to focus my attention on things that could lead to long term passive income.

[00:20:19] Dorie Clark: That was really a goal for me because in 2015, which was the year that Stand Out came out, I gave 74 talks that year

[00:20:27] Nathan Barry: and, you know, so it’s like 1. 5 a week. Yup. And that’s the exact math I was just doing. I’m like, yeah, that’s a lot. And I’m guessing they weren’t all within, you know, a few hour drive or train ride of home.

[00:20:39] Dorie Clark: Tragically they were not. So I was, I was living in New York city at the time and I just like, it was, it was Christmas time and I was home. And of course I was sick because I had just gotten off a plane and I was just sitting there. I’m like, how many nights have I even spent in my apartment? Like why am I living in the most expensive city in America?

[00:20:59] Dorie Clark: And so I, I just, I decided it was unsustainable and as it happened, something that again is a combination of both strategy and luck. I predicted two possibilities that I wanted to try to mitigate against. One was, you know, I’m sitting there with some terrible cold and I thought to myself, Alright, if I actually got really sick somehow, like if there was a real problem, I’m making a lot of my money from doing this.

[00:21:25] Dorie Clark: I have to be smarter about that. Was it

[00:21:27] Nathan Barry: like 70 percent of your revenue or more from speaking?

[00:21:29] Dorie Clark: I think it probably was at the time, yeah. And I, I realized, okay, that, that would just evaporate. So I need to do something different. I also recognize, I mean, speaking is always the first thing when there’s a recession that gets cut.

[00:21:42] Dorie Clark: Yeah. You know, Oh, we’re not going to have the conference. We’re not going to have the speakers. And so it can go away so easily. clearly I did not predict an international pandemic, but the net effect was the same. And so 2016, 17, 18. I started investing a lot of energy in, in creating online courses. And so I did all of these things as kind of a backstop against that economic uncertainty.

[00:22:07] Dorie Clark: Right now I am getting from, you know, all the various online courses that I’m doing probably an average of about 700 or 800, 000 a year in royalty revenue. that is not counting my own course. I’m not optimizing for high dollar launches. I’m optimizing for.

[00:22:31] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:22:31] Dorie Clark: And ones that will yield the right people.

[00:22:34] Dorie Clark: I’m largely marketing to my list of people who vibe with me and are good people. And so typically when I’ll do a launch, it’ll be in the ballpark of about 150, 000 per launch, almost all of which is relatively automated. That’s awesome. How many subscribers do you have on the list now? It is about 65, 000.

[00:22:51] Nathan Barry: If there’s a business creator. Or I guess in any niche, but we’re primarily talking about business, they wanted to go down this path of saying, Hey, I really want to take my expertise and credibility and I’ve worked so hard to build up the credibility and leverage things one into the next and go to, you know, one of these platforms and get into LinkedIn learning or something like that.

[00:23:11] Nathan Barry: How would you go about doing that?

[00:23:13] Dorie Clark: For anything, a warm introduction is always the best, of course. So if, you know, somebody who. Who has done it, I’m asking them for a connection is great. It’s important to scour the catalog and really look for where the holes are and try to come up with something and say, well, you have this and this, but what I’m not seeing is this other thing.

[00:23:33] Dorie Clark: And I am uniquely qualified to cover this other thing and here is why it would be valuable to your audience. It’s also, I think, important. To make sure, and this is true with, with any organization that you’re trying to penetrate, to understand who their customers are. I, I have basically over the past decade run experiments with so many online learning courses, like online learning companies, and.

[00:23:59] Dorie Clark: I mean, I can think there’s a course that I did with one organization, 10 years ago and I do still earn royalties from it, which is great. the less great part is that over the course of a decade, it’s brought in about 10, 000. So, I mean, that’s nice. but it’s not what

[00:24:17] Nathan Barry: you’re hoping for when you put the time in.

[00:24:18] Dorie Clark: Yeah, exactly. And not every experiment is going to work. So you really need to have volume to be able to see what is going to be effective for you. Recognize Expert, the online course and community that I run. Flagship. It’s, it’s not inexpensive. It’s a 2, 500 course. people do get one time. It’s one time.

[00:24:38] Dorie Clark: I know you’re a big subscription revenue guy.

[00:24:41] Nathan Barry: well, I think about this a lot of like where, you know, I have kit on the subscription revenue side, but then, you know, for training and content, I want to do like, I shouldn’t be one time. Should it be recurring?

[00:24:51] Dorie Clark: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a struggle because I, Yeah.

[00:24:55] Dorie Clark: I see the value, of course, in recurring, subscription revenue. If you have a course that is a very tightly focused course, you know, here’s, here’s how to, you know, write a blog post or here’s how to, you know, use this photo editing software. There’s a very clear, quick outcome, but Recognize Expert is so big, it’s, it’s kind of an amorphous thing and it’s, it’s a process, you know, I warn people up front, this is one of my filtering mechanisms.

[00:25:20] Dorie Clark: If you, if you sign up for this, if you, if you work hard and you do all the work, it will take two to three years of effort before you see any results. Right. And it’ll probably take about You could say we’re playing the long game here. We are so playing the long game. And it’ll probably take about five years to actually see really meaningful results.

[00:25:37] Dorie Clark: I mean, the good news is that if you make this effort for five years, You’re going to put a kind of enormous moat between yourself and the competition. So in five years, you can actually really see results. And what’s exciting is that because I’ve been running the course for eight now, we actually have these amazing success stories and case studies, which I love.

[00:25:55] Dorie Clark: But, but it is, it is a process. And so I think it actually. It might’ve failed if I had done it the other way, because who wants to keep paying subscription revenue monthly or quarterly if you’re not, if you’re like, I’m doing it, I’m not seeing any progress. I want people to understand up front, this is a journey and we are here for you.

[00:26:17] Dorie Clark: I mean, there’s people who literally joined in the original pilot cohort of 40 people in 2016 that are still incredibly active members. And that’s what I want is for people to say, okay. I am, I am on a pathway of getting my ideas out there. And that is, that is like, that is a work of a lifetime. That is, that is the impact you want to have in the world.

[00:26:38] Dorie Clark: And we want to be there for those people.

[00:26:40] Nathan Barry: Yeah. What I love about that is. For the people who put in the work, you have over delivered and the value so, so much.

[00:26:48] Dorie Clark: Yeah, it’s what I also do like about it. I mean, there’s, there’s economic things, you know, that, that you might want to change. but what I like about it in general is that it also makes it very referable because Let’s see somebody joined in 2017 and if if they’ve continued if they’re still involved literally now for you know Seven years they’ve been getting value out of this community.

[00:27:14] Dorie Clark: We do month live monthly webinars We do all this stuff They they have forgotten the pain of have ever having paid for it and it just feels like an incredibly Nurturing, giving community, you know, which is, which is what it is, but they’ve, they’ve been getting so much value for so long. It’s very easy for, for them to feel good telling other people about it.

[00:27:35] Dorie Clark: So that actually really helps the, the virality and helps the quality of people in

[00:27:39] Nathan Barry: the community. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m thinking about what I’m launching next, which is a course on critter flywheels that I’ve talked about. Yeah, I want to take that course. And so I’m thinking about the pricing on it.

[00:27:51] Nathan Barry: Because I know that the group coaching aspect is really, really important. And so talking to their friends like Dan Martell and others who have these group coaching programs. What I’m thinking about is the course at 2, 500, but then charging quite a bit more, you know, maybe 8, 000 a year or something. So you’re getting into the, you know, 600 a month territory for the group coaching aspect of it to make it really worth my time and filter it to people who are really.

[00:28:17] Dorie Clark: And how would you do group, group coaching? I mean, I’m, I’m assuming you wouldn’t do it all yourself or would it be a very big group?

[00:28:24] Nathan Barry: I think it’d be a fairly big group, you know, probably twice monthly calls that people come to live. Okay. We have the studio in Boise set up where I can like, you know, live stream from in front of the whiteboard and like sketch out flywheels and all of that, but I’m really thinking about how to balance this of the one time payment versus the recurring because, you know, I’m providing a lot of recurring value and I want to keep adding to it, but I don’t want to get into the situation that I think you’re talking about that you avoided so well of like, maybe people dropping off out of the community because they only stayed for a year or two years.

[00:29:00] Nathan Barry: Like you want it to be something that really compounds. You don’t want the pricing to get away in the way of the compounding.

[00:29:05] Dorie Clark: Yeah.

[00:29:05] Nathan Barry: I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts on it as you’ve explored lots of different models?

[00:29:08] Dorie Clark: I, I like where you’re going with it. In fact, I haven’t implemented this yet, but something that I have on my agenda to at least test in early next year is sort of something similar to your, what you’re describing.

[00:29:23] Dorie Clark: my idea is to, I would call it the, the recognized expert like coaching club or something like that. So right now when people sign up for recognized experts, so it’s, it’s 2, 500 lifetime access. They get the course material, which is fairly substantial. They get our access to lifetime access to our online community, which is very active and very vibrant.

[00:29:45] Dorie Clark: and then we have live monthly webinars, which usually have. a guest expert or like a topic that’s of interest to everybody. What it doesn’t have is coaching. And the only other alternative that I offer is I have, you know, it’s 10 X more, it’s a 25, 000 program where it’s a year long mastermind and not everybody qualifies for it.

[00:30:08] Dorie Clark: It’s, it’s for people who are already mid six figure entrepreneurs looking to hit seven figures. So I think that there’s a lot of people that would be interested. In more coaching and more attention to their business, but aren’t interested in that or can’t quite afford it or whatever. So I’ve thought about, and I’m, I’m planning to float the idea of having an add on so that.

[00:30:28] Dorie Clark: Nobody ever feels like somehow we’re, we’re taking away from what the course was and what they bought, but that they can clearly see, Oh, there’s an extra thing that I could buy on a monthly basis that actually would be different and added value of

[00:30:43] Nathan Barry: coaching calls. I’m curious about one of your favorite ways to spend money or something, and I’ll share one first.

[00:30:51] Nathan Barry: And that is. The VIP tour guide at Disneyland. Yes. It’s like 4, 000 for a day. So it’s, it’s pretty expensive, but you like cut all the lines, have Valley parking. You, you know, you end up having this ridiculous, experience at Disneyland. And I’ve done it, I guess, three different times. Now what’s the family twice with friends and it is the best time.

[00:31:18] Nathan Barry: And it’s one of those things that I’m like. On one hand, there’s a ridiculous amount of money spent on the other, I’m like, it’s only a few days worth of revenue for, you know, or cash flow from the business. So I’m curious, what’s something that you have just absolutely loved like splurging on?

[00:31:31] Dorie Clark: Oh, I love that.

[00:31:32] Dorie Clark: That’s great. so I’ll answer it two ways. One is, I think this is a really important question in conversation. Because there’s often a lag in our self perception and it, it kind of takes a while to catch up sometimes. And so I was already making over a million dollars a year before I actually decided that I was allowed, I say in quotation marks, to fly business class.

[00:32:00] Dorie Clark: Right. Because, you know, I had grown up never doing that. And just the idea of, oh, wow, well, it’s. Double or it’s more than double. That seems so wasteful. And I really had to wrap my head around it as a thing that I was able to do and feel comfortable and not, not feel bad about. So now I’ve implemented a rule for myself that I’m always flying business class.

[00:32:24] Dorie Clark: Just, you know, because I do travel a lot and travel is. lousy and unpredictable and whatever. So if you can make it even slightly marginally nicer, it’s better. so that’s, you know, a fairly common splurge, but it was something that, that took a while for me to like really assimilate as part of my identity.

[00:32:42] Dorie Clark: This is, a kind of big ticket splurge that I wouldn’t necessarily Recommend, because it’s complicated, but I’m now juggling three properties and it’s, it was going to be two, which is much more manageable, but after COVID and all the Mishigas, I decided in being in New York, shut up in my apartment, I decided that I would buy a place in Florida.

[00:33:09] Dorie Clark: And so I bought a place in Miami, which is, which is, you know, pretty cool and, and fun to have friends at, and I relocated there. So I’m, I, but I still have the place in New York. I’m kind of using it as a, a pied à terre because I have, you know, theater that I like to see and friends that I like to see.

[00:33:29] Dorie Clark: And then I met my fiance who lives in Boston. And so now we are juggling three residences up and down the East Coast, which is a little bit unsustainable. I think we’re going to have to figure something better out. But for right now, the, the big, the big splurge is like, an excess of real estate. Yeah.

[00:33:47] Nathan Barry: Places to live in each of your favorite cities. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what I’m curious about, like, as you’re going forward in the business, you, you’ve built a lot of amazing things. Yeah. Like, what are you trying to figure out next? What are, is there anything that I can help with or that we can brainstorm?

[00:34:04] Dorie Clark: I appreciate it, Nathan. And, you know, honestly, I want to say just as, as someone who, you know, didn’t really know you well, but, you know, we just spent a few days together, so I, I love that. I, I’ve, I’ve been like, a fan of the strategy of Kit. I, you know, haven’t, haven’t written a book about strategy. I’m like, Ooh, you know, game, game sees game here.

[00:34:28] Nathan Barry: It’s, Oh yeah. We could probably get on a whiteboard and like plan out, you know, competitive strategy in so many ways.

[00:34:34] Dorie Clark: I totally love it because I think the idea about, The creator network and paid referrals and especially, the sponsorships and the ad network and just enabling people to be able to monetize things, that they, that they would have been too hard for an individual is really, really clever.

[00:34:55] Dorie Clark: So just as an example for me, something that I’ve personally found useful. So thank you. I, you know, probably like a lot of people, I always wanted to spend a lot of time and care with my email list and. You know, staying in touch with, with my audience. And I, I did my best, but it’s true that when you are not being paid for something, When it is the, the sort of, important but not urgent kind of thing, it slips sometimes.

[00:35:24] Dorie Clark: And so I wouldn’t necessarily write emails as frequently as I wanted to and, you know, then I’d catch up and do some, but it was a struggle. And so now the fact that I am able, you know, on, you know, basically a weekly basis, let’s say at this point, to have a paid sponsorship in my newsletter gives me. just enough incentive that it, it has now been able to move to the front of the plate because it’s like, Oh, I made a commitment.

[00:35:54] Dorie Clark: I have this obligation. I said, I’m going to send an email on Tuesday. I’d better send an email on Tuesday. And it’s created, I think, a positive forcing function because what we want to be doing is creating high value content that nurtures our audience, which, you know, I argue, and I think, I think you’d probably agree, makes them more likely to buy things from us down the line because we’ve really demonstrated the value.

[00:36:19] Dorie Clark: So the fact that you’ve created that possibility, you know, I mean, I couldn’t have gone out as an individual and like, you know, cold called a bunch of companies, Hey, do you want to sponsor my newsletter? But you guys have made it easy. And that is so helpful, and it’s, it’s helped me prioritize the things that I want to be prioritizing anyway.

[00:36:37] Dorie Clark: So that is really great. what this leads to is that now that I am getting married imminently, Congratulations. Thank you so much. You know, this is, for me, I consider it this, you know, Like, you know, beacon of hope for the world because I, this is my first marriage, I’m 45. I had to wait a long time. So now I’m like very excited.

[00:36:58] Dorie Clark: I’m like, good. I finally found someone really good. Yeah. So I want to, I want to lean into that and I want to be able to. You know, of course, still continue working with people and doing great things. But I also do want to take some of the, you know, take my foot off the accelerator a little bit and just stop being so excessive with the level of work that I do.

[00:37:21] Dorie Clark: And so it, it’s a continued reminder for me that I want to be continuing to be thoughtful about, more, you know, passive income, evergreen email sequences, and especially Really being thoughtful about setting that up so that I can hopefully create a system so that in an automated way, people are led through a process of meeting me, seeing what I’m about, being introduced to my work and hopefully deciding over time as they experience that value, that they would like to go deeper with some of the content that the paid content that I have.

[00:37:54] Nathan Barry: Okay. So the big thing is how to maintain similar level results that you have now, but with a lot less time invested. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. What have you seen in terms of best practices? Like, well, I mean, the first thing on you’ve written an incredible amount of content, you know, like even as we’re talking early on, it’s, you know, 200 plus articles contributed to Forbes and, and all of that.

[00:38:18] Nathan Barry: And I think about the newsletter, a lot of people will recycle content on social media, but they won’t do it in their newsletter when a lot of new people are coming to your newsletter all the time. And so do you send a newsletter once a week? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:33] Dorie Clark: I actually, nowadays I’m up to twice a week.

[00:38:36] Nathan Barry: Okay, twice a week.

[00:38:38] Nathan Barry: The first thing that I would do is I would have one time a week be set live. So that’s a broadcast. Yes. And that, you know, everyone’s receiving the same email at the same time. And then the other one I would have be a sequence. So say we’re sending Tuesday, Thursday. Tuesday is the broadcast. Thursday is email.

[00:38:57] Nathan Barry: The email sequence has time to when someone joined

[00:39:00] Dorie Clark: I’m so excited because that’s actually what I’m doing.

[00:39:02] Nathan Barry: Oh, perfect. Yes. I love it Because then it’s you get to put all of your greatest hits and you know build out this whole library and for everyone else They’re like, yeah, I get the twice a week newsletter and you get the benefit of the evergreen content greatest hits time to when someone subscribed tweaked optimized all of that But you don’t have to give up the real time nature of like, Hey, I’m going to be back up in New York city and I’m hosting this event or, actually everybody’s like new book coming out, you know, and those kinds of things that you’d want to emphasize.

[00:39:36] Dorie Clark: Can I ask a point of information question? So one thing that I’ve struggled to wrap my head around. So we have, we have the welcome sequence and then when people are done with that, they enter the newsletter sequence. So, the way I’ve structured it now, and I’m not sure if this is the, the best way, is that I’ve, I’ve basically created a ton of what I, what I’ll call modules, and basically each module is four newsletters, and I’ll say three of them in the automated sequence will be pure educational value emails, and then the fourth one will be a sort of light newsletter.

[00:40:13] Dorie Clark: Thank you. pitch around something that I offer in a course or something like that. And so there’s a number of those. We have like newsletter one, newsletter two, newsletter three. And then periodically I will then have something that is a more sort of straight up sales sequence. And what I mean by that, there’s still lots of storytelling and sort of engage the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is

[00:40:34] Nathan Barry: building to a very specific,

[00:40:36] Dorie Clark: yeah, it’s, it’s like four emails and they’re all about, let’s say my writing for high profile publications course.

[00:40:42] Dorie Clark: So they’re educational, educational, but they’re sort of pivoting to, Hey, buy this thing, which is 995. So I have those, it’s not a big deal if you’re in the sort of regular, like a newsletter one sequence, because You know, it’s not like you’re building momentum on it. So it would be totally fine to be like, okay, Tuesday you get a live broadcast and Thursday you’re getting that sequence.

[00:41:08] Dorie Clark: But if you’re, if you’re in the sequence where you’re sort of building to the emotional climax of why you really need writing for high profile publications. I kind of don’t want to interrupt that with the broadcast. I’m not quite sure how to. How to do that or how to structure

[00:41:24] Nathan Barry: that to have advice. Yeah, that’s interesting.

[00:41:27] Nathan Barry: You could automate both emails, but you do tend to lose. I find myself wanting the, the ability for the live broadcast. Yeah. I want to say like this podcast episode came out or this other thing, you know, and it’s like attention right there, for everyone, but you automate both. And that gives you a lot of flexibility.

[00:41:47] Nathan Barry: If you follow someone like Brennan Dunn, who we’ve been hanging out with, by a few days. He’s very good at building the system where you can like interject, you know, use a snippet inside of kit. And then when there’s content in the snippet, it automatically takes over the beginning, you know, of the, the automated email with that announcement, you know, things I would announce like new podcast episode, you know, convert kit rebrands to kit, right?

[00:42:11] Nathan Barry: Those are the things that I would. put in there, but then the rest of the email is still the same. Interesting. Yeah. So I would probably do that. I guess those would be the three things. One is don’t worry about interrupting and keep the, the broadcast sequence, cadence. Second is go all in. On the automation and where they can sort of give up the one off things and just set a special Friday broadcast or something when that happens, three emails in a week is fine.

[00:42:42] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Or the third is go all in on the sequence and really emphasize like building this notification alert type system.

[00:42:52] Dorie Clark: Yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting. I hadn’t considered that.

[00:42:55] Nathan Barry: I guess going back to the idea of how you spend your time. Or what would free up time for you? What, what takes the most time in your business right now?

[00:43:04] Dorie Clark: The really good news actually is that there’s not, there’s not any individual activity that I’m doing that I feel like is sort of a time hog or an energy hog. I think in a lot of ways, it’s just, it’s the accretion of a lot of small things. And so one of the things that has been helpful to me actually over the last few days of conversation that we’ve been having as a group.

[00:43:28] Dorie Clark: is to the point we were talking about earlier where your self identity kind of lags reality, sometimes I, I have been able successfully to dial back and do a little bit less and still have very strong results, but I have not let go of sort of the stress and guilt about not doing those things. And I think in some ways it’s really a question.

[00:43:57] Dorie Clark: of, of like right sizing the expectations and saying, you know, no Dory, you’re not, you’re actually not intending to do more than that. You’re doing what you’re intending. So it’s, it’s okay. I think, I think that actually alone will be helpful. But over the past few years, I’ve, I’ve been able to implement, I think, some useful parameters.

[00:44:17] Dorie Clark: I mean, starting in the fall of 2020, I started taking Fridays off. you know, the only asterisk was when I launched my book, The Long Game, but you know, that’s always an exception. but, but I’ve gone back to it and that’s cool. And more recently I’ve stopped taking meetings on Mondays. it doesn’t mean I won’t work, but I won’t have meetings and that’s been really enormously helpful.

[00:44:40] Dorie Clark: So I think constraints can be. Pretty good. I mean, how, how do you structure your work? Are you, are you like, you know, sort of Jack Dorsey discipline, like, you know, Wednesdays is operations day or like, how do, how do you handle it?

[00:44:51] Nathan Barry: Not quite to that level. So Mondays and Wednesdays are when I try to take most meetings.

[00:44:57] Nathan Barry: at Kit, we have a rule that Tuesdays and Fridays are focused work days. And so our expectation is that no one on the team schedules recurring meetings on those days. If you have to schedule a meeting on that day, it’s fine. Like we can get into that, but, no recurring meetings. And it’s not like you can’t talk to someone, you know, if we’re like figuring out a strategy thing, like great.

[00:45:25] Nathan Barry: That means that on Tuesday we actually have like hours of time that we can spend focus time on, on a strategy or pair programming or whatever else that we’re doing. So those two days really, dominant things of Mondays and Wednesdays with meetings. And then, yeah, the focus time on Tuesdays and Fridays, that, that kind of defines the whole week.

[00:45:45] Nathan Barry: Everything else is a little, scattershot, but it works well for me. And then I get into a cadence of usually Tuesdays or Friday afternoons. You can find me at my favorite coffee shop. Don’t find me there, but, because that’s where I’m like, which is my laptop thinking about like doing writing or, more of, of these like long form tasks where I’ll, I’ll quit Slack.

[00:46:11] Nathan Barry: Okay. Ignore the team, you know, all of that for a long period of time. Yeah. I think what you’re talking about of protecting your time, putting some of these arbitrary constraints on it is really, really helpful. Then you’re not making one off decisions. You’re just like, Oh, I actually don’t take meetings on Mondays.

[00:46:26] Nathan Barry: Yes. You know? And it’s sort of like this rule is identity and people are like, Oh yeah, I will, you know, they’ll, they’ll respect it immediately.

[00:46:35] Dorie Clark: Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly right. If you. If you basically just say like, my policy is dot, dot, dot, like, I mean, you know, who came up with your policy? You did, but, but it sounds official.

[00:46:46] Dorie Clark: So other people, usually are not going to push back. They’ll usually say, Oh, okay, great. We can, we can do this other thing.

[00:46:52] Nathan Barry: Yeah. One of the things that was helpful for me, cause I think you and I are very similar in that we’re just always pushing for what are we capable of? I could, I could write more, I could make more, you know, I grow the audience faster.

[00:47:05] Nathan Barry: And here at the mastermind. I was talking about this podcast and how to, how to grow it faster. And I had sort of two competing things going on. One was, you know, trying to grow this show as much as possible, have as much reach and influence as possible and all that. And then the second thing is, I don’t want to just attract any listener, right?

[00:47:28] Nathan Barry: This is a show where I’m very much talking to professional creators. And, and so I want the right people paying attention, but then I said two things, but I guess the third thing is I have a lot of constraints on it where. I have a full time job running a software company, and that is where the focus needs to be.

[00:47:45] Nathan Barry: So I was talking about, okay, what should I be doing to grow faster and all this? Yeah, so what did you come

[00:47:49] Dorie Clark: up with? I

[00:47:49] Nathan Barry: mean,

[00:47:49] Dorie Clark: I know you started with the tour, which was really interesting. Have you done paid ads for this? I have not. Yeah, are you considering it, or?

[00:47:58] Nathan Barry: Definitely considering it, but our mutual friend, Grant Baldwin, was in my little breakout group.

[00:48:04] Nathan Barry: And he was like, look, if the podcast was your whole focus and everything you’re doing, I would set, you know, I’d have a bunch of things that you’re doing, but within the constraints that you have and the rate that it’s growing, you know, it’s adding 500 to a thousand subscribers every month. Like, it’s just all that he’s like, what if crazy idea here, you’re already doing all the right things that you should be doing and you should just accept it and be content with that.

[00:48:26] Nathan Barry: And then focus more on how you make it easier to record. How do you remove the friction so that you can stay consistent and make sure that three years from now or five years from now, you’re still doing it. And it was so interesting cause it like switched from a business problem to an identity. Yes. Yes.

[00:48:44] Nathan Barry: And I was like, Oh, what would that be like to tell myself, Hey, you’re doing enough. Like this is at the right pace. And so it was just helpful. Cause he was like, Look, man, just keep doing what you’re doing and keep refining little systems and processes along the way.

[00:48:59] Dorie Clark: Yeah. I love that. I mean, out of curiosity, how do you conceptualize this show?

[00:49:04] Dorie Clark: I mean, it’s, I mean, in part, I’m sure it’s lead gen for Kit, but what, what else? Like what are, what are the reasons behind this?

[00:49:12] Nathan Barry: Ben doing it. Yeah. There’s a few different things. First, I love the conversations. Like this is something. That I genuinely want to have these conversations for a very long time.

[00:49:22] Nathan Barry: Like the episode that we had a few weeks ago with Mark Manson, he was talking about, he’s like, I could talk about creator business all day, every day. And his producer’s like, yes, he could, you know, and we recorded for like three hours straight. And that’s how it turned into episodes. Cause we just couldn’t stop talking.

[00:49:38] Nathan Barry: And so I’m like that. I love it. We’ll do it for a long time. The second thing is I think of a lot about the flywheels around creating content. And with the constraints that I have on my time from kit, I don’t have as much time like I used to years ago to spend multiple hours a day writing. And so I need a forcing function to work on and iterate on ideas.

[00:50:03] Nathan Barry: And so sometimes I’ll say something that comes up in, you know, riffing off of something with a guest and it turns into something. And then a few weeks later I reference it again and it’s a little more refined. And then I might write about it or I might have an idea that I’m writing about that I want to turn into something.

[00:50:21] Nathan Barry: I’m like, is this going to work? I don’t know. And I’m not quite ready to publish it as an essay or something, but then I’ll use it in an episode. And if it resonates, I’m like, then we’ll go from there. So actually that’s a fun thing about some of these episodes that we do in front of a live audience because you can get the real time feedback of does it resonate?

[00:50:40] Nathan Barry: so it’s a lot of workshop and content because basically what we’ll see is the long form conversation, then cut down into shorter clips of some of the best moments. And then really looking back at those and saying, okay, what do I then want to flush out into an essay, a book chapter, a lesson in the course.

[00:50:59] Nathan Barry: that’s another thing is. With the coaching angle, I get to a lot of things where I get to, like, we map out a flywheel in real time and it’s like, okay, this was good. Or as far as something else, I’m like, all right, I’m going to go teach this as a lesson in the flywheels course. The last thing is. It’d be really easy to build a software company for creators and they get really disconnected from creators.

[00:51:21] Dorie Clark: Yeah.

[00:51:22] Nathan Barry: And so I get to hear in real time. Like what people are struggling with where they’re stuck. They’re like, Hey, I grew it to 200, 000 year revenue and it was climbing. And then the last two years has actually been shrinking, you know, it’s like, okay, well, let’s dive into that. And I can basically have all these conversations and stay really close to the problem.

[00:51:40] Nathan Barry: It was actually the fun thing about the Hut, the mastermind is the sheer number of people here using kit. It was awesome. But then also being able to hear the conversations and like, to be able to sit there. And I had this, like in my notepad, I had this section off to the side of like, just things that I overheard or like what people are struggling with in the creator economy.

[00:51:59] Dorie Clark: Sorry, engineering team, here’s some homework for you. Yeah, exactly. And

[00:52:02] Nathan Barry: so it just keeps me in the conversation and keeps things relevant. And then really is the core driver of my content flywheel.

[00:52:12] Dorie Clark: Yeah,

[00:52:12] Nathan Barry: that’s, that’s great. I love that. That’s the thing. Is there Any other content or things like that that you feel like, and I’ll open this up to anyone listening as well who wants to jump in in the comments, that you, like, you know, as you listen to the show that you would love to, to hear covered more?

[00:52:29] Dorie Clark: I really love what you’ve done with the show. I think, I think it’s, it’s so, so good. Interesting to go deep and really get into the nitty gritty of, people’s businesses. I mean, there was a theme in the mastermind this weekend where people were saying, create for the nerds. And I think for, for the right people who are very interested in the mechanics of business models, this, this is a great show.

[00:52:55] Dorie Clark: So I love that. I do have, a couple of, I made a list, I brought a list, Nathan, of, of my, my future wishes for Kit. These might be things that you’re already doing, but if I, if I can make my little dream punch list. Okay. So one thing that I think would be cool, I have noticed that there are some companies that advertise.

[00:53:17] Dorie Clark: And I think they should advertise on my newsletter because I would be a good fit. Like I use their stuff. I could give a really good testimonial, but there is not, as I know, as I understand it presently a way for me to raise my hand and say, Hey, this company I’m a fan of, I think you should consider me.

[00:53:37] Dorie Clark: And I think if there was some kind of a. A vehicle, I mean, you know, whatever, even, even a form that I could fill out. So you’re not like bothering them, but so that it could come to their attention. I think that could be cool. We

[00:53:47] Nathan Barry: have 12 creators on our sponsor network that would love to, you know, do a deal with you or that sort of thing.

[00:53:53] Dorie Clark: Yeah, exactly. And then they can, they can scan through and see if it’s a fit, but I think the ability to sort of hand raise and, you know, and sort of look at a comprehensive list of, of those people and, and. I think similarly, a thing that would be cool for me, and this, this is possible in sort of a bespoke, I email and ask for help kind of way.

[00:54:22] Dorie Clark: What I think would be really cool and would probably, you know, like blow it up is if there was a more systematized way. where somehow you guys were able to provide more guidance about the ROI of sparkly subscribers. Obviously some people have a big enough team that they have an analytics person who can look at it and your, your team, internally has been really nice when I’ve asked for help, but to have it be a little bit more understandable and plug and play where There could even, I’m like dreaming here, like, you know, some kind of a dashboard that explains everything and just like makes it super clear, like, Hey Dory, you know, this, this spark loop subscriber that you’ve paid for your spark loop subscribers are staying on just as long as your organic ones and they’re make their purchasing at, you know, such and such rate.

[00:55:13] Dorie Clark: that would be very helpful. And also if there’s a way that somehow you guys can make the case, like I would be willing to invest to acquire more subscribers if somehow. It was clear to me that, like, in terms of advertising or sponsorship or something, that, like, oh, if you actually hit a hundred thousand subscribers, you’re going to be able to command, a significantly higher rate than, you know, then, I mean, maybe there’s break points, like, maybe it’s not true.

[00:55:39] Dorie Clark: Maybe there’s a steady CPM for, for all of it. I don’t know. There might be a situation where they, you know, companies like advertising with like really large things. So it’s, maybe there’s an incentive where, you know, If I was at 90, 000 subscribers, it would be so much better if I had 10, 000 more. And so therefore so much more worthwhile for me to invest.

[00:56:00] Dorie Clark: And I would be willing to do it if I really understood the case properly. So if your team were able to do things like that, that would be my dream wishlist for you.

[00:56:08] Nathan Barry: I like it. Attribution is something that we think about a lot. Yeah. And actually in the next, few weeks are releasing like the, the first stages of that, and then we’ll expand from there.

[00:56:19] Nathan Barry: So you can understand, you know, what activities are really working and going from there. A conversation that came up a lot of the mastermind is, The, you know, like organic versus paid subscribers and how do you test the quality, you know, and, and the pros and cons of each and something that a lot of people came to was to really ask for replies from your subscribers, you know, so ask questions and say, like, what’s your biggest frustration with learning this, you know, like whatever topic we’ve narrowly scoped to and then hit reply and let me know.

[00:56:53] Nathan Barry: And you really build up from there. And I think that’s really interesting. But that’s a way that you can see like, okay, do, do we have relevant people, paying for this?

[00:57:03] Dorie Clark: That’s interesting. So is there a way to like sort of automate that and put that in a table or is it literally just like, Oh, it would be

[00:57:12] Nathan Barry: manual.

[00:57:12] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Okay, cool. That’s where, you know, having a, an assistant, someone go through and, and check that. Like we, there was someone at the mastermind who was talking about, you All right. How do I really know I’m gearing up for this big book launch? How do I test if these are the right people? And it’s like, well, actually starting a conversation.

[00:57:29] Nathan Barry: That’s something that Justin Welch talked about with everything that he does on LinkedIn, where he’s on a daily basis, starting conversations and really engaging with everybody. And I just thought it was interesting, like, how Emanuel y still was.

[00:57:44] Dorie Clark: I, I thought that was amazing to hear. And the part, there was, there was even more mind blowing for me.

[00:57:49] Dorie Clark: So, I, I always, I always love it. Like a part, a part of me thrills to this, where I discover, That whatever I thought was hard or long. It’s like, no, no, it’s not hard or long compared to what other people are doing. So Justin since 2018, seven days a week has spent 45 minutes posting it and then commenting on LinkedIn like every single day and that dedication is just so impressive to me.

[00:58:18] Nathan Barry: Yeah, it was, it was fantastic to hear about. So from 7 45 to 8 30, every single morning, he. posts his content, replies to the people who are engaging, and then goes to his friends that he wants to help amplify. And replies to their content comes back to his replies to more. And like, it was such a simple set of tasks.

[00:58:41] Nathan Barry: And he’s like, this is what I do seven days a week. And someone was asking, like, could you do it five? And he’s like, yeah, I can do it five days a week, but we’re going with seven. And I just, I love the simplicity of it. I love the conversation that he has because people are like, just replying to me, you know, I just think that’s great.

[00:58:59] Nathan Barry: And so. Bringing back the newsletters, I think that soliciting replies is really good and really worth it where you can get, you know, the ideas and the frustrations and, and like keep your pulse on what your newsletter subscribers are struggling with and get the confidence, that, all right, I’m attracting the right people or, you know, I really not.

[00:59:21] Dorie Clark: Yeah. I think that’s, that’s a really interesting point. It’s, it’s true. I mean, So many people in Justin’s position would have outsourced this ages ago to a VA, and they would not, but they would not have taken the same level of care and attention. And so it’s just the, the value of going deep sometimes can be very powerful.

[00:59:40] Nathan Barry: Well, Dory, you’ve built an amazing business. it’s been fun to watch you from a distance. I guess eight years now. I think we first met in 2016 at social media marketing world.

[00:59:50] Dorie Clark: And I became a customer of ConvertKit Now Kit in, 2017. So, yeah,

[00:59:55] Nathan Barry: so yeah, for a long time. and then I think you’re one of our top users on Kit Commerce.

[01:00:02] Nathan Barry: As well, and have driven a lot of volume through, through that. So it’s been really fun to dive into your business. Where should people go to, to follow all the things that you’re up to?

[01:00:10] Dorie Clark: I appreciate it, Nathan. Thank you so much. I have, speaking, speaking of social proof, I have more than 800 free articles available on my website that people can check out that I’ve written for places like Harvard business review and fast company at doryclark.

[01:00:24] Dorie Clark: com. And, if people want to subscribe to my kit newsletter, I’ve got a Go to doryclark. com slash subscribe because it actually is true. The greatest care that I spend and take in my writing is in my newsletter. I, I write everything myself and I feel very particular about it as a former journalist.

[01:00:46] Dorie Clark: So that is really the, the place to, to go to, to get the 411. Sounds good. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Nathan.

[01:00:52] Nathan Barry: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Berry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show.

[01:01:07] Nathan Barry: Thank you so much for listening.