In this episode of our retirement podcast, we talk with Dorie Clark, about her latest book Entrepreneurial You. Dorie is a highly successful entrepreneur and she shares her story of transitioning from journalism and her observations on why entrepreneurship is an attractive option for some people as a Second Act Career.

How Can You Leverage Your Skillset as an Entrepreneur in your Second Act?

She gives us her take on what it takes to succeed and practical tips on where to start. If you’ve ever thought about starting your own business after your primary career, you’ll benefit from hearing Dorie’s story, her valuable advice and wisdom.

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Bio

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. Recognized as a “branding expert” by the Associated Press, Fortune, and Inc. magazine, she is the author of Entrepreneurial You (Harvard Business Review Press,), Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine and one of the Top 10 Business Books of the Year by Forbes. It was also a Washington Post bestseller. Her books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Arabic, French, Polish, Korean, and Thai.

Clark, whom the New York Times described as an “expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives,” consults and speaks for a diverse range of clients, including Google, the World Bank, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Yale University.

A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, Clark is an adjunct professor of business administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a Visiting Professor for IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. She has guest lectured at universities including Harvard Business School, the Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Georgetown, NYU, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the University of Michigan.

Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review Guide to Getting the Right Job and the Harvard Business Review Guide to Networking, and she is quoted frequently in the worldwide media, including NPR, the BBC, and MSNBC. She is also a regular commentator on Canada’s CTV and was named one of Inc. magazine’s “100 Great Leadership Speakers for Your Next Conference.”

A former New England Press Association award-winning journalist, Clark directed the environmental documentary film The Work of 1000, and was a producer for a multiple-Grammy-winning jazz album. 

At age 14, Clark entered Mary Baldwin College’s Program for the Exceptionally Gifted. At 18, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College, and two years later received a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. You can download her Entrepreneurial You self-assessment at dorieclark.com/entrepreneur.

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Wise Quotes

On Paying Attention to The Market

"When it comes to challenges that entrepreneurs need to overcome, I think in a lot of ways it varies over time. The first one that you have to overcome, especially when you're in that transitional mode, is the product-market fit. Meaning basically just figuring out, What is it I actually am selling? -  and Do people want it? It sounds so obvious in some ways, but it can really take a while. When I first started my consulting business, I actually, my original vision is that I was going to do political consulting. That was how I started... I had business cards made up, "Dorie Clark, Political Consultant" because I thought, "I can consult around," I worked in campaigns so "I can consult around this.