Dorie Clark, a marketing strategy consultant, answers a burning question: how do people make money off of what they know? She outlines the options for experts who want to monetize their knowledge. Clark explains, using herself and other successful solopreneurs as examples, how to earn revenue from public speaking, podcasting, e-books, and online courses. She also goes over what to charge and when to get an assistant. Clark teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and is the author of the new book Entrepreneurial You.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast, from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.
Back in 2001, Dorie Clark was working as a print journalist. But her career in the newspaper industry was a short one. She got laid off a year in.
DORIE CLARK: I was astonished that this had happened to me. They gave me, Sarah, four days’ severance pay.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Clark realized relying on one job was risky, and that if she was going to be successful, she needed to diversify. Today, Clark earns real money doing all kinds of jobs: consulting on marketing strategy, coaching, speaking, teaching online and as an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
She’s also written three books. The latest is called Entrepreneurial You.
In it she argues that entrepreneurship is a mindset: being adaptable and determined—to monetize your expertise.
Dorie, thank you for being here today.
DORIE CLARK: Sarah, I’m so happy to be back.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Why do people sort of take this path? I know entrepreneurs, right, they want to make money; they want to build their own business. But if your goal is to just be a solopreneur, why are you in this game? What’s motivating these people?
DORIE CLARK: Well, in a lot of cases, folks who are working for themselves, are solopreneur, they are experts at their craft. It’s about, how do you get paid for it in a commoditized economy? How do you make sure that you actually are able to have a successful, thriving business? We all know plenty of people that are smart, that are talented, that deserve to be paid well; and yet, somehow, they’re either struggling, or they’re not achieving the level of success that they really should be by all rights. And I wanted to write Entrepreneurial You as a, as a manual, as a guidebook to help people figure out how to crack that code and really have the level of success that they deserve.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: How do you get started with this transition?
DORIE CLARK: Well, ultimately in Entrepreneurial You, I lay out a three-step process. The first part is building trust. It’s about building trust with your clients, whether it’s through the years of service that you’ve provided in the community. It could be through creating content with people in a generous way. You know, maybe you’re here blogging or giving speeches so people see your ideas and say, Oh, wow, you know, she really has some good ideas there.
The second part is what I call going deep. And essentially, this is the place where a lot of people start, and the problem though, is that it’s also where a lot of people stop, and that is doing the kind of in-depth, one-on-one, deep-dive coaching, consulting—whatever it is. You can make a good living this way. You can make a six-figure living being a coach, being a consultant. You know, you drive around, you have meetings with your clients, you usher them through the process. That’s great. But the problem is that if you stop there, you’re never really able to scale fully. It’s always trading time for dollars.
And so what I did in Entrepreneurial You was I interviewed more than 50 very successful, six-, seven-, even eight-figure entrepreneurs to try to help crack the code on how you can scale, how once you’ve built the trust and built the expertise that comes with really knowing your audience and their needs that you can take it to the next level by introducing new ways to reach your customers, whether that is with starting mastermind groups or creating an online course or building membership communities or starting a podcast. There’s a whole smorgasbord of different ways that you can do it. And I try to give people those options and the tools to do it.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So how do you find time to do the work for which you get paid if you are podcasting, blogging, vlogging, flying around doing speaking gigs? How do you do that?
DORIE CLARK: The premise of your question is that essentially blogging or podcasting is a method of lead generation. That itself is not the driver of your income and I will see in some cases and certainly at first that is going to be the case. You know, you do a podcast. You know, if you’ve done two episodes, and 10 people listened to it, yeah, no one is going to be sponsoring for that. However, there are some interesting ways to think about this.
One of the stories that I actually like best in Entrepreneurial You is about a woman who is not a household name by any stretch. Her name is Fei Wu. She lives outside Boston. Fei used to work in advertising. She now is a freelancer. She does branding and design—things like that—and she has built a business on the back of her podcast, not because so many people listen to her podcast. It actually has fairly modest download numbers.
But what she did that was fascinating was that she used the podcast as a way of getting to know the people she wanted to get to know. And, amazingly, more than 25 percent of the people who have been guests on her podcast actually hired her for consulting services as a result, not because she was pitching them hard, not because she said, Oh, this is a quid pro quo. Now you have to hire me. But she was able to use the podcast as an entry point to a relationship, which she then cultivated over time, developed it, added value in free ways, you know, offering things like suggestions about ways that people could improve their websites. And then a lot of those people wrote back and said, That’s amazing, Fei. Could you do that for me? And she’s built a very successful business.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That all sounds sort of very authentic and real and not icky. Except that I think a lot of people hesitate to try to do that kind of thing because it ends up feeling icky like, Oh, I’m networking; I’m gross. So, how do you know where you are on the spectrum of, I’m being a sleaze ball versus I’m just trying to help people.
DORIE CLARK: Well let me give you one more example: Pat Flynn. Years ago, in 2008, he worked at an architecture firm, and he was trying to pass this exam for LEED certification, which folks may know, is, it’s a form of green building certification. It’s a complicated test. It’s tough to pass. And so, he had started originally blogging about his efforts to learn the material, and just, you know, sharing it in a way to be helpful with folks. And so, he was blogging for free. He ended up passing the exam, and eventually he created an e-book, which he sold on his website for 20 or 30 bucks. And it was literally just all of his blog posts put together into a book, nothing new.
So, he puts it out there. Within the first couple of months, he’s bringing in literally more money from it than he was from his architecture job. He got his first month $7,000 from the e-book, which was amazing. And so, he was so fascinated about this process. He said, Oh, my gosh, you know, this is working better than I thought. He actually surveyed the people who bought his book: Well, why, why did you buy it? For close to a third of them, they said, Well, we’ve already passed the test, but we read your free blog posts, and we were so grateful to you. You didn’t have anything for sale up until now. We bought the book as a way of saying thank you. That’s what we’re aiming for, is to give so much value that people literally want to thank you with a purchase afterwards. That spoke to me.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I want to ask you a little bit specifically about public speaking because I think that’s where a lot of people feel like the real money is. Are people, sort of, making the right assumption about that?
DORIE CLARK: Well, it’s absolutely true that that professional speaking is and can be lucrative. However, there is there’s a lot of steps to get there. So, one of the things that I think is most important to understand about paid professional speaking is that it is what I would call a lagging indicator of your success. A lot of times people think that, Oh, I’m going to just gin up some speaking business, and they assume that they can go at it head on and get the business.
What I would recommend to most people is focus on building the other facets of your platform, the other ways that you are visible in the world, and then let the speaking opportunities come to you. That way you are in a much stronger negotiating position, and you can command the fees that you hear about, you know, $10,000, $20,000, $25,000, $30,000 plus, but you have to have created a sufficient platform in name recognition so that people will come to you for it. That’s why I actually suggest ways that you can begin to do that, whether that’s writing a book or blogging or podcasting or using other methods so that people will have heard of you and seek you out.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: When should you insist on being paid, and when should you take a free gig?
DORIE CLARK: It’s so rare that people will come at you straight and just say, Oh, Sarah, our budget is $5,000. Can you do it? I think everybody wants to weasel out of it as much as they can. the first time I actually got real money, it was just for the launch of my first book, Reinventing You, and I had reached a point where in this pre-launch period, I was so busy, so unspeakably busy. I got an email that came in to me and said, Oh, hi, Dorie. We have this conference, and we’re we’d like you to be the keynote speaker for it. And here’s the timing and the location. And it sounded like a really cool opportunity actually would have been pretty good exposure.
But I just, I was so pushed to the wall with my schedule. I wrote back and I said, Well, it sounds interesting, you know, what’s, you know, what’s your budget? And they said, Oh, well, you know, we’re a nonprofit, and so we don’t really have a budget
I wrote back and said, You know, I’m so sorry. I just really am so busy, I can’t possibly do it for free. And so, they wrote back five minutes later, and they said, Oh, well, could you do it for $5,000? And I thought, my god, that is the difference? You can go in one second from zero to $5,000? And it really showed me that that yes, it’s important to ask and sometimes, you know, to really insist.
So, if you are willing to do something for free, I think it’s always important for people to make a list for yourself of your criteria. If it’s something that you would genuinely be sad to miss the opportunity for, you then, maybe you have a little bit more leeway. But you can try to find ways to be compensated in other ways. Perhaps you can ask up front, would they provide a testimonial for you? Are they filming it? And will they give you a copy of the tape to use? It’s very important if you’re starting a speaking career to have good footage of yourself speaking. So that could be valuable. Maybe they would be willing to make introductions to some of their members or clients that could potentially be good clients for you. Maybe they’d be willing to pay your expenses in the expenses of your family so you could have a family vacation. So, there’s ways that you can play around with it.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: The whole idea of talking this much in this openly about money and my time is worth this much. And this person should pay me more and, you know, let’s all just talk about what our budgets are. This makes me slightly uncomfortable. Is that something that you run into with people you’ve interviewed? Did they have to get over this kind of like Puritan feeling of, Oh, we mustn’t talk about money?
DORIE CLARK: You know, I’m so glad you bring it up because nobody wants to talk about money. It’s weird. It’s strange. It’s awkward. But, here’s the thing: I actually think that this is so important. The truth is, people have always talked about money, but they only talk about money with their friends: Oh, hey, Sarah, I saw you spoke at that conference last year. Hey, how much that they pay you? You’re not putting it on a blog. You’re not putting it out there. You’re not telling the world what you would tell your close friend. Well, guess what? If the existing power structure is a tight-knit group of people, those are the only people that have information, and everybody else is left guessing in the dark about how much things are really worth, about what the actual steps are by which people make money and are able to earn a living and are able to monetize.
Entrepreneurship is about the discipline, the self-discipline, of being willing to apply yourself and execute, and not everyone can do that. But if you at least have equal access to information about how the game is played—that’s what I wanted to provide in Entrepreneurial You so that people can take that and run with it and max it out.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, how do you decide how much to charge? The whole thing is still such a black box.
DORIE CLARK: So, this is why, first of all, your network is so important, because you need to be able to have people around you that you can ask and get honest information about what are the going market rates so that you can determine how you can position yourself within it.
How do you determine how you price yourself? Well, ultimately the starting point is, what does your reputation, what is your platform dictate is possible? When you’re when you’re starting out, some people would say, Oh, well, you’re not charging a lot because you don’t have a lot of experience. That’s kind of true but also kind of not true. What it really is that you don’t yet have a lot of credibility in your field. If you want to drive prices, the best way to do it is to drive your credibility, to drive your platform. If you are known by more people, and you are respected by more people, that dictates higher prices, because essentially what people are buying is a guarantee.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Do you ever sort of think about pricing differently, or do you encourage people to think about pricing their time differently for different clients?
DORIE CLARK: Absolutely. I would, and I do. And, in fact, oftentimes the best answer is to either charge a lot or to charge nothing. And the reason for that is that you set price anchors in people’s minds. And so, if there are some clients that you’re working with, and, you know, Oh, for you I’ll charge $20 an hour. Then oftentimes they start to think of you as the $20-an-hour person, when really, it’s actually more advantageous—you know, we’re assuming that you’re making enough of a living so that so that this isn’t a problem; you know, you’re not like, Oh, my gosh, I need to pay the bills. But once you get to the place where you’re making a sufficient living, it’s actually a lot better for you positioning wise for you to be the $500- or $1,000-an-hour person who is doing them the favor of working for free. That that entails a level of respect that often pays bigger dividends than, Oh, yeah, it’s worth 20 bucks.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL One of those sorts of newer forms of content I’m seeing everywhere, and you talk about it in the book, is the online course. What is going on with this proliferation of online courses?
DORIE CLARK: Well, you’re absolutely right. Online courses are a growing trend. From the instructor’s perspective, the ability to spread the word to make a difference and to reach more people without a greater incremental cost is enormous.
I’ve launched my own course, and it’s been amazing. I announced it on my email list, and it was it was actually incredible. Within 45 minutes, it completely sold out, 40 slots, $500 apiece. To see in your inbox close to $25,000 in 45 minutes, and then being able to nurture the course through the process of launching. About 150 people have now been through the full course, the fully developed course. So, it’s actually a great way to connect with people.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What are the do’s and don’ts of doing something like this to make sure that people show up and you didn’t just put all that time and effort into a dud?
DORIE CLARK: Well, I think one of the most important things to keep in mind is that in doing the pilot, I had not developed the course at that point beyond an outline. So, I think a mistake that a lot of people make—the old-school model is, Oh, let me cook something up for years in my garage, and then I will unveil my perfection to the world. And so often that happens, and no one cares. No one listens. And it is so sad because it’s so much wasted effort.
Instead, the newer model, which I think is far more effective, is to co-create with your audience by saying, Hey, I’m going to run a pilot. First of all, you can test. If no one had signed up, that would have been sad. But let me tell you, it’s a lot less sad than if I had spent thousands of hours creating something and then no one signed up. You can cut it off right at the pass there and say, Oh, no one’s interested in this. OK, well, let me go back to the survey and find something else that they’d be more interested in. So, it allows you to more closely align and find your product market fit.
But in terms of the course itself, you know, a lot of people watch maybe one episode, one lecture and then drop off. And so, what happens is that if you really want the course to stick and be effective and, frankly, for people to feel that it is worth the investment, you need to build a community around it. So, we have a very active Facebook group. I am, you know, doing a series of live webinars with people. I am engaging with them.
And so, it becomes something that’s not just, oh, this thing that I watch like you could watch a YouTube video. It becomes something that they’re part of, and those relationships solidify the knowledge. And it makes it valuable because it’s not just something that they’ve learned. It’s something that has become a part of who they are and the relationships they’ve built as a result.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: one of the reasons people would go into this kind of life is to have control over their time. But if all goes really well, you’ll be so busy that it might actually feel like you would have more free time back in your old corporate job where there are more people carry the load. So, what do you do when you get to that point where you start, hopefully, to have all these sort of opportunities rolling in?
DORIE CLARK: It’s the question of, of really asking yourself, you know, once you do start to get some momentum in your business, what is the point of it? You know, why, why are you doing it? And how do you make sure that the success that you’re experiencing is aligned with your goals? There’s a guy that I profiled named Derrick Halpern, who’s a very successful online entrepreneur and his goal, he really wanted to build a big business. And so, at the time that I interviewed him, I think he’s grown even since then, he had scaled up from being a solopreneur to having 15 employees, just really going strong on building this business that perhaps one day will be saleable or a big payday.
Meanwhile, the other end of the spectrum, I profile a colleague of mine named Jenny Blake. She wanted to build a great lifestyle for herself. She wraps up work every day by 2 or 3. She has yoga every day. A couple of times she’s taken a month off and, you know, worked for Bali from remote. She’s able to build her business that way. And when you are an entrepreneur, you do have that freedom; you have the freedom to make that choice, which is so powerful. But if it really is about embracing that choice upfront and being clear about, here’s what I’m aiming at.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Do you think it’s helpful to have an assistant?
DORIE CLARK: I do think that it can be. So, when it comes to having help in the course of developing an entrepreneurial business, you know, especially a kind of small or solopreneur business, having some kind of an assistant or a VA, a virtual assistant, can be useful. I have used assistants for part time for most of the time that I’ve been in business, probably over 10 years.
The caveats here are the keys. Number one, you shouldn’t hire an assistant too soon. Meaning it’s important for you as the entrepreneur to at least know how everything is done so that you can then hire somebody who knows how to do it. And you know that they know how to do it. If everything is a black box to you, and you’re like, Oh, I just need someone to figure this out, you don’t know how to evaluate the quality of your hire; you don’t even know what to be looking for. So, if you invest upfront so that you learn how to do it, you can make that much smarter of a decision about who to bring into your life.
I have a VA. She’s wonderful. I have been working with her for four years. It’s 10 hours a week. I mean, it’s not it’s not a lot. She helps me a lot with social media with website updating and things like that, but it makes it makes a big difference I’m able to have a very robust, six-figure business, and people say, Oh, you know, how much help do you have? Well, I have I have 10 hours of help a week, but it really is useful.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: We’ve been mostly talking about the kind of idealized freedom of working for yourself and sort of juggling multiple revenue streams. But do you think that there are ideas here that people who aren’t ready to break free from the corporate life could still use?
DORIE CLARK: Oh, absolutely. If you do have a steady day job, even so, it is useful as a form of career insurance for you to be developing entrepreneurial sidelines of some sort. There’s a lot of things that you can experiment with. Maybe you could have a workshop one weekend about something that you know about. Maybe you did great on the GMATs, or whatever it is, and you start a workshop. And, you know, even if you’re getting people to pay you 25 bucks a head, just to have that practice, that validation to learn the skills and flex the muscles of doing it, I think, is enormously valuable.
And frankly, there’s a lot of stories of people who have used entrepreneurial side ventures to become better at their jobs and even get promoted. There’s a guy, Lenny Achan, went from being a nurse at his hospital to being the head of communications at his hospital on the strength of having created some apps. And his boss found out about it, saw his initiative, and said, Hey, will you head up social media for the hospital? And he did such a good job, he ultimately became the head of communications. So, it really can pay off, not just on the side, but also even with the main thing your day job that you’re doing.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: How do you prevent yourself from burning out?
DORIE CLARK: It really comes down to blocking out time and trying to develop clarity around it. And so, something that is a big thing for me is the concept of manager days versus maker days. This is a concept that was popularized by Paul Graham, who’s the founder of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley incubator.
And so, I structure my days deliberately so that probably two, two and half days a week are manager days. That is when I schedule in everything. All the meetings, all the podcasts, interviews. Anytime someone wants to talk to me, it’s on those days. Those days are very taxing. I’ll be honest, sometimes I will have 10 meetings in a day—that is not uncommon.
But, inversely, the other two days of the week are the maker days. They are empty. I have nothing. And so that is when I can get my real work done and catch up and go deep on things that are meaningful and really move the needle in a substantive way.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Dorie, thank you so much for talking with us today.
DORIE CLARK: Sarah, great talking to you. Take care.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s Dorie Clark. She’s a marketing strategy consultant and an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She’s also the author of the new book Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive.
Follow HBR on Twitter @HarvardBiz, and on Facebook and LinkedIn, too.
Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.
Source: HBR
How Successful Solopreneurs Make Money
