Ep.83/ How To Get Speaking Engagements & What To Charge with Dorie Clark


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Ready to get more speaking engagements? What should you charge? And when do you start to charge? Should you pitch yourself directly or not? How can you pitch yourself so you really WOW the reader? 

Dorie Clark has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. She is a keynote speaker and teaches executive education at Columbia Business School. She is also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Long Game, Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of the year by Inc. magazine. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, she writes frequently for the Harvard Business Review. Learn more at dorieclark.com 

In this episode you will learn:

  • How to get speaking gigs

  • When to start charging & how much to charge

  • Why you should not pitch yourself directly… and if you do how to handle it

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In this episode you will learn:

  • How to get speaking gigs

  • When to start charging 

  • How much to charge

  • Why you should not pitch yourself directly… and if you do how to handle it

Quotes from our guest: 

  • “If you have a warm lead or a warm connection, that’s something different. So if you have a friend who spoke at the conference last year, if you know somebody who is on the committee that's picking the speakers or the advisory board of the organization that is sponsoring the conference and you want to put in a little nudge and say oh ‘hey can you can you put in a word for me’.”

  • “Make yourself discoverable to conference organizers. Make people want you and make people come to you. The metaphor that I use is ‘it's like dropping your handkerchief so that they will pick it up.’” 

  • “Speaking is a lagging indicator not a leading indicator. It is the last thing that will click into place in your business.” 

  • Clark says make sure you have “a bulletproof, social-proof filled bio” with “media you’ve been featured in, books you’ve written, social media following, educational affiliations, academic institutions you’ve guest lectured or written at.”

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DORIE’S LINKS:

Dorie’s Website

Dorie’s Book

Read Dorie’s article for the Harvard Business Review: Click Here


Kim (00:02):

Do you want to get more speaking gigs? Well, what should you charge and when do you actually start to charge? Should you pitch yourself directly or not? What do you put in your pitch to wow someone? These are all the questions that we're posing to Wall Street Journal, bestselling author and speaker Dorie Clark, and she drops nugget after nugget. Welcome to the exit interview with Kim Rittberg. Do you work for yourself and want to supercharge your business while still having fun? Well, this is your go-to podcast, part MBA Part Cheer Squad. Every week, I'll be joined by top business owners who share the secrets to their success. After I found myself working during childbirth true story, I quit my executive media job to bet on myself fighting the fear and imposter syndrome to eventually earn six awards, an in-demand speaking career and features in Fast Company and Business Insider. Now, I'm here to celebrate all you rock stars betting on yourself, and I want to help you win. Tune in every Wednesday to hear from remarkable founders and don't miss our Solo Friday episodes, a treasure trove of video and podcasting mini masterclasses with me. Exit the Grind, enter success on your own terms. Don't forget to subscribe today and grab my free video tips at my website, kimrittberg.com.

(01:23):

If you like this show, please drop a rating and a review and tell a friend because that's how we keep making these podcasts. I am excited about today's show because I've been speaking more and it's really been through content marketing, meaning I make content that's interesting or educational, maybe fun, but it's also marketing for my business. And basically that is what you need to do to get speaking engagements and to grow your business. And today I go deep with Dorie on how to start or expand your speaking, starting with marketing, but going way into that on pricing and all of that. If you want to know how to make amazing videos that moves your business, grab my free download. It's linked out in the show notes, or you can grab it at kimrittberg.com/newsletter. And Dorie Clark is here. It's so fun. Such a great conversation.

(02:06):

Dorie's been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers 50. She's a keynote speaker and teaches executive education at Columbia Business School. She's also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Long Game Entrepreneurial You, reinventing You and Standout, which was named the number one leadership book of the year by Inc. Magazine, a former presidential campaign spokeswoman. She writes frequently for the Harvard Business Review. Learn more at dorieclark.com, at D O R I E Clark so you don't mess up. And if you've been wanting to speak more but you don't know where to start or you've been speaking, but you're really looking to get paid, you got to listen to this episode. Tons of great advice, including how to get the gigs, when to start charging, how much to charge. And Dorie says you should not pitch yourself directly, but if you do, how to handle it. And as I mentioned before about content and putting yourself out there, I really love, and I want to emphasize something that Dorie and other experts have said, how you need to put yourself out there, bookers for engaged speaking engagements. They cannot find you if they don't know you're out there. So we talk a little bit about content marketing, but obviously that's the focus of my business. So I love hearing organically from super experts like Dorie, the importance of

Kim (03:13):

It. But let's get to it. Dorie, I'm really excited to be talking to you today. Thank you for joining me.

Dorie (03:19):

Hey, Kim, good to be here.

Kim (03:20):

Alright, we are talking all about speaking gigs. From sort of a top level perspective, what's the first step someone should be doing to try to get speaking gigs?

Dorie (03:29):

So what I often tell people, and this disappoints them profoundly, is that oftentimes the things that you think make the most sense to get speaking engagements like I need to get a speaking agent, or I need to just reach out to those conference organizers and tell them to book me. Those are precisely the wrong things to be focused on because ultimately it's different if you are willing to speak for no money. But if you were trying to get paid to speak, what you actually need to do, and it's very counterintuitive, is to make people want you and make people come to you rather than you reaching out to them. Because the more you reach out to them, the more desperate you will look and the less likely you will be to be effective.

Kim (04:20):

So, okay, I have so many follow-up questions from that because that was great advice. So I'm a big fan obviously of content marketing. It's my business. For those of you who don't know what that means, that means making content that works as marketing, but it feels like content. So it's not an ad. So basically you're saying double down, triple down, continue to make a lot of content that showcases you as the expert, as someone worthy of being on a stage, as someone worthy of being on a panel. So post a lot of blog articles, post videos, be out there and put yourself out there a lot, basically,

Dorie (04:49):

That's precisely, you have to make yourself discoverable to conference organizers. The metaphor that I use is it's like dropping your handkerchief so that they will pick it up. The thing that a conference organizer doesn't want is someone who feels needy and desperate and is pinging them and they're like, who is this person? I haven't heard of this person. Why are they plaguing me? They want to feel that they are finding you and choosing you. And that essentially involves creating a kind of echo chamber strategy where you think about who that organizer is and you say, well, who do they listen to? Who do they respect? What do they read? What shows do they subscribe to? What podcasts do they tune into? And then try to put yourself in all of those environments as many as possible so that they will keep coming upon you and say, oh, wow, this person's everywhere and this person has really interesting things to say to me and to our audience.

Kim (05:47):

So I love some of that advice. And then some of that I think is dispiriting to us. Like, oh, it takes the power out of my hands. I love it. Like, yeah, just keep marketing yourself and it'll happen. But I think to some people it feels like a lack of control because at least when you're pitching, you pitch for clients or you pitch for press, you're like, I feel in control because I'm able to craft my pitch. I'm able to find the email. So knowing that, would you recommend asking people who have ins there or if you're speaking, let's say you're posting a lot on LinkedIn, or let's say you spoke at a panel and you knew there were some people there who could book you on things, if they've already seen you somewhere, is then a good time to reach out, like, Hey, I know we were at this same conference together, I wanted to share with you my speaker reel, or I love teaching people about X. Do you have any panels or workshops that you're looking to book for? Is that something that is more proactive that someone could do?

Dorie (06:38):

So I think the main thing that I want to caution people against is just slamming up against the wall of cold pitching. I mean, again, even that can work. There are smart people, grant Baldwin, notably, who advises people about getting booked to speak, but he talks about in his early days, literally his strategy was around cold pitching. I mean, it was literally something like one in a hundred, one in a thousand. If you're okay with those odds, then God bless, but I don't think that's a great use of most professionals time. But you're absolutely right. If you have a warm lead or a warm connection, that's something different. And so if you have a friend who spoke at the conference last year, if you know somebody who is on the committee that's picking the speakers or the advisory board of the organization that is sponsoring the conference and you want to put in a little nudge and say, oh, hey, can you put in a word for me?

(07:34):

Those are great things to do. Now, obviously you need to be prepared with your materials. An interesting thing about speaking is that unlike a lot of other things in the corporate world, it almost always is a committee decision. And so you have to have things that are very shareable because they have to convince 10 people that you're a good choice. So you want to ideally have either a speaker reel or at least some kind of video online that shows you speaking so that they know you'll be okay. You want to have some kind of, it could be a speaker one sheet, which is the little term of art, or at least just some kind of listing on your website or elsewhere that says, here's what I talk about. Here's the topics, here's what people get out of it. Those are the things that people will want.

(08:18):

So you certainly can do those things. But I mean, probably the most crucial thing that I've discovered, and I run an online community called Recognized Expert, where I have hundreds of people over the years who have been through the program, and I know starting with myself, but also with these folks from SAD experience. You want to be doing all these things. You're like, I want to build my speaking business this year. And the truth is, I think we do have to a certain extent, make peace with it. There are some examples where, again, if you have the warm lead, you can be very hyper targeted about it. The idea of I'm going to focus on growing my speaking business. It's a little bit illusory because it is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. It is the last thing that will click into place in your business.

(09:03):

You need to get the ducks in a row around content marketing. To your point, Kim, in place first. And the good news is that once your content marketing is dialed in, it's going to improve every metric of your business. It's not just going to improve your speaking increase, it's going to improve your consulting, your coaching, whatever the heck you do, you're going to be getting a lot more interest in everything because people will be drawn to you. It's hard. People say, oh, but if I had an agent to represent me, the agents don't work for you. The agents work for the buyer, and the buyer wants somebody who's probably more famous than you, so you have to make yourself famous. That is what I've learned, and it is annoying. It's just really, really annoying. But that is the truth.

Kim (09:52):

So I had several follow-ups from that, so much knowledge and wonderful advice from there. So first of all, I used to work in tv, and so people always talk about speaker agencies, and from my experience in tv I'm like, I'll tell you, an agent will only help you when you're already needing gigs. And then they'll take the percent and they will help you make better negotiation. They'll help negotiate better. They will start building you more once you're known. So you always have to get those first things on yourself by yourself, whether you're a TV presenter, a host, an actor, a speaker. So I think that's the one part of this that I personally actually just did know from my experience, and people ask me how I started getting speaking gigs. I'm like, I put myself everywhere. And they're like, coincidence? I'm like, no, I'm a content marketer.

(10:34):

I content market all the time. But to your point about building that material and it being a lagging indicator, I think you're right. It's like it comes later. You're already a successful person. People want to hear from successful people who bring value to their audiences, and that's how it happens. So to your last point about making yourself famous, I think that to some people it's like, oh, well, I only have X thousands of followers on LinkedIn or Instagram. It's like, does that mean I can't speak? So what are some other ways that people can really be perceived as desirable and valuable if they don't have a huge social following?

Dorie (11:11):

And I think you raise a good point, Kim, because in our society, because it is so easy to measure social media followings, everybody can just look it up, then that becomes a kind of default mechanism. But it's kind of the dumb mechanism. It's just like the simplest, easiest, and sometimes least meaningful metric. So what I like to advise folks in my recognized expert program is that ultimately what you need to do in order to make yourself a valuable speaker or whatever you're attempting to do, is to create a sort of bulletproof social proof filled bio. And what I mean by this is that everyone is feeling psychologically overwhelmed days. They're looking for heuristics, they're looking for shortcuts to be able to tell them who is a legitimate in credible person. And if you can have a bio that is filled with signals that you are credible, then this is going to go a very long way in helping you get booked for things.

(12:12):

And so I like to tell people to try to hit it in multiple categories. So one category, I mean, it could be social media following, that's one, but it's certainly not the only one. It could be places you've spoken before. It could be consulting clients or coaching clients had, it could be places that you have worked depending on your background in some cases like, oh, he's ex McKinsey, or she's Google. Those things kind of matter. There's media that you've been featured in, there's books that you have written, there's educational affiliations, whether it is, oh, you have a doctorate from such and such school, or you have guest lectured at, or you have taught at various universities. Those things can matter. It can be places that you've written articles for. There's a whole variety of categories, and if you can sort of max out in multiple categories, it's a really comprehensive way of showing like, oh, okay, this person has broad based legitimacy.

Kim (13:10):

I think that's super helpful. And people come to me and ask me, I'm like, I don't have a huge social following, but I was an executive in media. I went to Penn, a well-respected school, I guess lecture at Syracuse sometimes. I've been featured in Fast Company. It's like I don't have a huge social following, but I bring a lot of value when I show up. I teach people, I really show up to teach. It's not an ad for me. It's like help grow yourself. But I think that that's a really great way of breaking it down. Here's the sections. You can build yourself up. You don't need a hundred thousand followers if you can prove yourself in those points. So many people, of course want to be paid for speaking gigs. How do you see the free speaking gigs versus paid speaking gigs? How long should you be speaking for free? How do you weigh all those things?

Dorie (13:52):

Yeah, I mean this is certainly a sort of art, not a science. So you do have to feel your way into it. I would say in general, a few things to keep in mind. One is that there are certain types of organizations that literally can't pay you, and also certain use cases that really are not paid. If that's the case, just be realistic about that. And if you want to do it, do it. And if you don't, you, I got my start speaking for Chamber of Commerce mixers, you're not going to get $5,000 speaking at your local chamber of commerce. They don't pay anyone. Part of it is just like, where are you speaking? What are the types of things? If you're speaking to a large corporation, obviously they do have money, they do pay, but the use case might be you get invited in to give a lunchtime presentation to their summer interns.

(14:47):

Normally you would say, and this is a pretty good rule of thumb, I mean, don't do a free gig for a corporation that could afford to pay you. That's true. I mean, I wouldn't do that. But if you're just starting and it really matters to you that you can say, I spoke at and t, or I spoke at Google, or I spoke at Nike or something on your resume, then giving a talk for free to their summer interns is actually a hundred percent worth it for you. So it's thinking about what you can get out of that value exchange.

Kim (15:19):

So I do have a question about that because I'll be honest, I've been invited to speak at a few things recently that I was like, you expect me to fly aware for free to speak? And I liken it to the idea of free internships. They're like, well, you're so lucky to get the experience, or will you obviously want to be in front of this client base? I'm like, I'm still, it's days off of work. It's actually travel. We all live by the same US dollar I the same. It still costs me money to eat dinner and pay my rent. And so I guess when do you decide that? Do you try to say, okay, if it's a company I know has money, if it's a traveling thing, how do you parse it? And then I guess my other question is how do you negotiate? It basically been like, oh, well, what's your fee? And they're like, oh, we're not paying speakers. I said, oh, well, I generally get X. And I just see what they say. I try to do it over the phone so I can hear their reaction. But I was surprised to hear these big conferences that expect people to travel for free and not get paid. So I guess what is your perspective on things like that?

Dorie (16:21):

Yeah, I mean, obviously I would love to live in a world where everybody gets paid for their talent and their contribution, but anything, people sort of know what their value is in the marketplace. I mean, I've written for over a decade for Harvard Business Review, have I ever gotten paid for these articles? No, zero. Because they know that in the marketplace it is a good thing for people to be able to write for them. So that's just how it is. And so we all have to be smart about saying, alright, is this a thing where I still get enough value to make that exchange worthwhile for myself? And if the answer is yes, great, and if not free country, we can move on. But there's a lot of different examples of that. So I think that really where you can start to stand up for your fees is the place where you get an invitation and maybe you even feel a little conflicted about it, but you say, oh gosh, I just couldn't do it.

(17:20):

I will tell you, the very first time that I ever got paid for a talk, I got meaningfully more than a hundred bucks or something. I got $5,000 for keynote talk that I gave, and I was invited by this organization. It was early in my career, so I didn't really understand how these things worked. And they were like, oh, we're an association. We're a nonprofit. I asked, what's your budget? They're like, we don't really have a budget. Now, of course, this was for a conference for 3000 people. Of course, they have a budget. They're just lying. They're just flat out lying. Of course they have a budget, but they were poor mouthing it. And I just felt bad. I'm like, oh gosh, wow. It actually would be really cool to speak for 3000 people. I mean, yeah, that would be a great experience for me.

(18:01):

And I was so torn, but I was incredibly, incredibly busy. I could have done it theoretically, but I just knew that the travel would've been so hard, it would've broken me. And so I wrote back and I'm like, gosh, guys, I'm so sorry. The travel is just too hard around it. I wouldn't be at my best. I can't do it. I can't make it work. And within five minutes, they wrote back and they're like, well, could you do it for $5,000? And I mean, I didn't even think I was negotiating. I just thought I was turning them down. And so anyway, okay, number one, it made me not respect them at all because they had just so lied to me. But second of all, I thought getting paid $5,000 was kind of cool. So I said yes, but it taught me a very, very valuable lesson, which is you just raise your price based on your own convenience factor.

(18:47):

I have another friend who was able to get a new milestone price for himself. I think he got $30,000 for a talk. And the reason he got $30,000 was much more than he normally was paid, but they asked him to go on short notice to South Africa, and it was some incredibly challenging thing where he had to come back for his brother's wedding, so he would've been South Africa and then back, and then the next day there's a wedding. I mean, just something terrible. And so he didn't really want to do it, and so he's like, okay, fine, $30,000. And they were like, okay. And he's like, oh, dear God. But at that price, it actually was worth it.

Kim (19:28):

Right. No, I like that. I think that's great. And I also think to your point about factoring in the value, are your ideal clients there? Could you get a lot of business from it? If someone's hiring you to speak and you don't necessarily feel really confident, you're going to business off of it. And it's a schlep, but it's the most New York thing I ever said out loud, and it's a schlep and it's not a good timing for you then. I like that. And then pricing, how do you recommend people figure areas of pricing? I've seen somewhere that, I don't know if this is true, the average fee is like 7,500 or something like that for bigger speeches. Are there different brackets? How do you price it once you're pricing it?

Dorie (20:04):

I actually wrote an article, which if you have show notes and want to link to it. Speaking of the Harvard Business Review, I wrote this article for the Harvard Business Review about how to know what to charge for speeches. It was a few years old, so maybe we can add in a little bit for inflation. But I think in general, it gives you a sense, which is, it's just useful to know which bracket you fall into. So obviously if you are extremely new, you've practically never spoken, don't really worry about money at first, worry about making sure you can do it, and so do a bunch for free. At first, you can get comfortable and feel okay about it, and if they give you a hundred bucks, amazing. But that's not really the goal. But then once you start to be like, okay, I've got my act together. I know what I talk about. I know I do a job, then you're sort of like a super newbie speaker. And really, I think the key thing is that you can raise your prices based in sort of lockstep with your rising credibility and your rising social proof. So

(21:01):

You're a new speaker, you're good, but you're sort of unknown. Let's say you get between 1,020 $500 is an honorarium, and then if you're a new speaker, but you're starting to get a name for yourself, maybe you've just published your first book or maybe you've been writing for some high profile publications or something like that, maybe you can get up to $5,000. The way that you can think about it is that every time you sort of amass a new laurel, that gives you more credibility in the marketplace. Like, oh, and her newest book just came out, or, oh, she just won this award or whatever it is. Then you can think about ratcheting up your prices a little bit more. Typically it goes in increments of $2,500 increases early on. And then as you get bigger, as the fees get higher, let's call it over $20,000, let's say, or over 15 maybe, then you would raise it in $5,000 increments.

Kim (21:56):

Great. A lot of opportunities come from corporate workshops or an offsite. What do you do for pricing on things like that for someone who's sort of in that earlier level of experience?

Dorie (22:07):

Yeah, so one thing that's always helpful I think, is to give clients multiple opportunities, multiple options that they can choose. So you can often increase the rates that you choose by saying, Hey, if you just want the speech, it's whatever, $5,000. But if you'd like to hammer home the learnings, then for 7,500, I can do the speech plus the next day at the conference, I can lead a special retreat for your senior leadership and we can do a special session or whatever it is, or, oh, and for $10,000, we can do that. Plus I'll do whatever X number of follow-up coaching sessions for the C e O or whomever. And people sort of look at that and they're like, oh, actually, that would be nice. We want to make sure that we're really reifying the learning. So yeah, why don't we go for that? Because the numbers might be big to you, but oftentimes, depending on the buyer, the difference between 5,000 and $10,000 to them may be fairly insignificant, so they might feel inclined to pick the higher number.

Kim (23:14):

And what about the companies that aren't necessarily the Googles, the Nikes, but the smaller companies, maybe media companies, things like that, having an offsite, are there places where you were saying before kind of 2,500, if you have some experience, it's kind of the bottom because you're thinking about it's a half day, even if you go somewhere for an hour or two, it's really almost two thirds of your day with the commute and the prep and whatever. So is that kind of where you would say even a company that's not so big, you'd start at like 2,500?

Dorie (23:40):

It's useful just to weigh the context of something, right? If you are being asked to speak at something where it is a special offsite retreat and you see that they're doing it at some lodge in Vail that they've flown everyone to, and you know that the rooms there start at $600 a night and they have 40 executives coming, I mean, just contextually you can be like, oh, this is important enough to them that they're throwing a lot of money at this. As compared to one of the hats that I used to wear is I used to run a nonprofit bicycling advocacy organization, and our annual budget was $150,000. So literally any expense over $200 was like, oh God, is this going to be okay? This is a really big deal. So you just have to understand the context of the world that you're operating in because the same service that you're doing for the bicycling organization, there's no way that the bicycling organization would pay anyone $2,500 for a workshop, just not ever going to happen, whereas the private equity firm, no problem in their sleep.

Kim (24:58):

Yeah, it's interesting what you were saying about the value in the context. I do think as people get busier, I am sure there's some very smart quote about this somewhere, but it's like you value your time differently. So I was asked to speak in an offsite, and it was a time for me, it was really busy. I was in between travel for work and I was like, yeah, this is the rate. And then they couldn't really swing it, and I was like, I'm really not going to do this for X dollars. No one here is going to hire me directly from this event anyway, so I'm not going to get other business. I can't take photos of it. It's a private offsite. So I really was thinking about it. I'm like, it doesn't really work for me at this moment in time. I think if I was slower, I could just do it. It's a half a day, it's in New York City. But it did help being that it was really a busy time, to your point about you turned down that gig that then became $5,000.

Dorie (25:44):

Yeah. Yeah. It's those moments that allow you to raise your fee and not feel bad about it, frankly, because we often get so in our heads about what should the fee be, and oh my God, if I ask for more money, then I'll be losing all this business, which may or may not actually be true, but we imagine that it's true. And so then you find a moment where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so burned out. I just can't do it. It's impossible. So you feel free in that moment because you literally don't care if you get it or not to ask for something more, and then when you get the feedback that they would be actually willing to do it, it is surprising and incredibly useful data.

Kim (26:23):

Right, of course. Of course. I want to loop back to one thing you said earlier about not pitching yourself. If you do want to pitch yourself, would you recommend getting a second email address and sending it from your assistant? Or if you're pitching yourself, you're pitching yourself?

Dorie (26:35):

Yeah, I mean, if someone has decided, now, again, if you have any kind of a warm link, then that's great. I mean, ideally you would have your colleague speak up on your behalf or recommend you on your behalf if you can't do that, the next best thing is, oh, I was just talking to my friend Kim, and Kim spoke at your conference last year. She was saying such wonderful things about your organization, and it really made me think that just in case it's of interest, because I know you're so focused on X, Y, Z topic, and I happen to speak about that in case it's a fit. Here's some information you can do that because there's a logical reason for you to be contacting them. But if we're literally just going cold, yeah, you look lame doing it yourself, that is the actual truth. And so having an assistant, whether that is an actual assistant that you have or as you suggest a putative assistant, that is probably the next best thing. I mean, I honestly think if you're a reasonably successful enough professional, there are other things you should be doing with your time. You should be writing an article and putting it in a high profile publication, not cold pitching people. That being said, some people will just want to do what they want to do. And so if that's the case, having someone else be the vehicle of the pitch, I think is the better. Move

Kim (27:59):

That Dorie, I'm just going to go through Dorie's website now, and I'm going to just email every single conference you've spoken. I'll be like, Dorie's my friend, so you should hire me.

Dorie (28:08):

There we go.

Kim (28:09):

I work with clients where I help them make content and grow into thought leaders. And a lot of it, I help them pitch podcasts, and I do the same thing that you're recommending. If you know someone who is a guest, I recommend saying that I actually got a feature in Business Insider. I saw somebody feature someone I know. I was like, oh, this is my beat. It's like people who quit their jobs started their own business. I'm that person and it's going well, and I called pitched 'em, but I wrote in the subject, oh, friend of so-and-so, I really was their friend, but I got written up. And so I think to your point, you're not even saying This person is vouching for me, but rather we are friends. We're in the same vein, we're in the same, we pool of humans the same credibility level, and it's just a way to just get that email opened and considered.

Dorie (28:54):

Yeah, absolutely. And of course the caveat here is there's always the chance that the person is going to circle back to that original person and be like, so Kim, is she cool? So we need, yeah, we to always make sure that it's a legitimate thing because that would look really bad if they're like, wait, who's Kim?

Kim (29:14):

Right. No, I always, sorry, when I say that, I come from a, what do I like to say? A normal point of view where if you know that person and your colleagues or friends and you can say, Hey, I'm reaching out to that person. Of course, of course. I was joking that I'm going to scour do and just source all the conferences stories' been at, but I'm just kidding.

Dorie (29:32):

I know that that's what you mean, but people sometimes take the ball and run with it. Kim,

Kim (29:39):

I follow Kim on Instagram, so she's my, I'm like, no, don't do that.

Dorie (29:44):

That's right.

Kim (29:45):

Awesome.

Kim (29:45):

Dorie, is there anything else I didn't ask you that you want to add?

Dorie (29:49):

Oh my goodness. I think we've covered a lot of really good highlights here. I will just mention for folks who are especially interested in growing their speaking business, I mean at the start of our conversation before we hit record, you were mentioning Kim, that you very kindly had taken the time to read my book, entrepreneurial You, where I actually talk a lot about how people can build their speaking business and their practice there. And so for anyone who's interested, the book is Entrepreneurial. You and I have a free self-assessment that people can take related to this and how to develop multiple streams of income in their business, and folks can get it for free at dorieclark.com/entrepreneur.

Kim (30:27):

I know you had mentioned Recognize Expert. Are there other ways you recommend people get in touch with you or work with you that I can link out in the show notes?

Dorie (30:33):

Yeah, thank you. I mean, probably the best place, the compendium for all the information. I have more than 700 articles that I've written. I try to walk the dog, right, so I've done more than 700 articles over the years for places like Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, et cetera, and they can get it at dorieclark.com and check out the Recognize expert community on my website as well.

Kim (30:57):

Thank you so much. This was fantastic.

Dorie (30:59):

Thanks. Great speaking with you.

Kim (31:00):

And you can learn more about Dorie and check out the four books she's written at D O R I E clark.com, dorieclark.com, and you can grab a standout self-assessment workbook

Kim (31:10):

For free right there.

Kim (31:16):

Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to exit the grind and enter success on your own terms. This is the exit interview with Kim Rittberg. Don't forget to grab my free download, how to Grow Your Business with Amazing video@kimrittenberg.com and link out in the show notes. I love to hear your feedback. Make sure to submit to me what you learned from the show and how you are crushing it on your own terms. Connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn at Kim Rittberg, R I T T B E R G. And this show is edited by Jillian Grover and produced by Henry Street Media. I'm your host and executive producer, Kim Rittberg.

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