The Expert Inside You with Dr. D. Anthony Miles

D. Anthony Miles, Ph.D. is an entrepreneur, award-winning researcher, award- winning professor, statistician, legal expert witness, business expert and best- selling author. Dr. Miles is a nationally known startup and marketing expert. He is also a forensic marketing expert. He has appeared in the national media for his expertise. He is CEO and Founder, of Miles Development Industries Corporation®, a consulting practice and venture capital acquisition firm. He is also host and executive producer of Game On Business Talk® Radio Show. He was a Visiting Professor. He has presented his research at conferences around the country. Most notably he has presented at Stanford University. He was invited to Harvard University by the Harvard Business School (HBS).

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

The importance of having a good mentor
Is a doctoral degree right for you?
The Holy Trinity of post-doctoral activity
The benefits of scraping your dissertation’s butt over the bar
How to FAIL your dissertation defense
Becoming an expert by choosing your niche
Everyone judges a book by its cover…twist it to your advantage
Expanding your authority by publishing books and making media appearances
Becoming a doctor conveys instant credibility

In this episode…

So you’ve finally got that shiny, new doctoral degree. What’s next?

In this episode of An Unconventional Life, Dr. D. Anthony Miles and Dr. Russell Strickland swap war stories about what it takes to be successful in the doctoral degree process and after graduation. How do you best showcase your expertise and leverage it into the career of your dreams? Dr. Miles reveals how to position yourself as an expert to attorneys so that you can generate revenue as a professional expert witness. He also discusses his experiences in writing and publishing a book for the popular press and how to start getting calls from media outlets for interviews on blogs, podcasts, radio, and television.

Dr. Miles is dropping gold in this episode about how to build a career as a professional expert and have the time of your life doing it!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Dissertation Done, America’s #1 authority in dissertation completion for working professionals.

Founded by Dr. Russell Strickland, Dissertation Done serves people in two ways:

If you’re struggling with your dissertation, getting ready to start your dissertation, or just plain wanting to get your dissertation done as soon as possible, go to www.dissertationdone.com/done and Let’s Get Your Dissertation Done
If you’re busy living your Unconventional Life and have a message that you want to share, maybe you should join our Expand Your Authority Program to become a published author. Go to www.dissertationdone.com/book and let me know that you’d like to talk about Expanding Your Authority.

Visit www.dissertationdone.com to learn more about our other services and leave a message or call them at 888-80-DR-NOW (888-803-7669) to schedule your free 30 to 45-minute phone consultation.

Episode Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is here for your reading convenience. It was created by machines and may (a-hem) contain some errors. If you email us about these errors, the machines will undoubtedly find out. I hope they won’t get angry.

Intro [00:00:03]

Welcome to An Unconventional Life, a podcast where we share stories about the crazy one percent out there who ends their doctoral degrees and then went on to use them in crazy, cool, unique and unconventional ways. Here’s your host, astrophysicist turned teacher, author, dissertation coach, and more, Dr Russell Strickland.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:00:28]

Hello, this is Dr. Russell Strickland, and I’m your host of an unconventional live podcast today, I have with me Dr. D. Anthony Miles and Dr. Miles is a entrepreneur, award winning researcher, award winning professor, statistician, legal expert, witness, business expert and best selling author. He’s been featured in places like Fox News, ABC, CBS, Forbes, The Huffington Post and more. I can’t wait to jump into our conversation here with with Dr. Miles. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:01:00]

Thank you so much for having Dr. Strickland, this is such a pleasure.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:01:03]

Oh, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. Want to let everybody know that today’s episode is brought to you by Dissertation. Done. And we here at Dissertation Done like to help students in or people in general and a couple of different ways. First of all, if you’re an adult doctoral student who is approaching the dissertation and knows that you need that extra edge to move forward through this process proactively, maybe you are struggling through this process right now. You’re about ready to quit and give up on the whole thing. If any of those as you reach out to us at DissertationDone.com/done. That’s DissertationDone.com/done. And we’ll set up a conversation, see if you might be a good fit for our Fast-Track Your Dissertation coaching program, where we get you from here to graduation in less time than you would have thought possible. Now if you are out there already graduated or running an expert business of any kind and you would like to level that and Expand Your Authority, we our Expand Your Authority program does this just that. We take folks from a blank page to being a published author in just a very few months and no better way to get your name out there and to build your credibility than having a first name doctor and be a published author who literally wrote the book on your area of expertise. So with that in mind, I want to go over to Dr. Miles and welcome you once again. Tell me, Dr. Miles, when you decided to go back after you already been involved in your career for a while, you decided to go back and get your doctoral degree. What motivated that decision?

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:02:30]

Oh, that’s a great question, Dr. Strickland. Originally, I want to go to law school and I want to study venture capital and I want to study corporate law. OK, you know what made me decide not to do that? I said, OK, law school is OK. But when somebody calls you doctor is just a different a different appeal. So I said, OK, I can go to law school if I wanted to, but I said I should go for a doctorate. And the reason that I really want to go to my doctor is build a credibility of my field because I want to start my own consulting practice. I saw a niche in the marketplace and I said, I think I can build my expertise around that area. And that’s what I chose to pursue my doctorate. I was going to go to law school. I just made a shift. So what happened with me.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:03:17]

Now when you said that you saw an area that you could leverage or exploit for your career? Tell me a little bit more about that.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:03:26]

Yes, entrepreneurship is relatively new field. Some people say it’s not entrepreneurship. This was my field of study and this is a derivative of economics. And I it’s not that many people that have a Ph.D. in entrepreneurship. So I saw a niche right there. I can be myself around. So I said, OK, viewers. Exactly. And I was always entrepreneur. I was I played in a rock and roll band while I was an undergrad and we’re supposed to get a record to fill. My hair was longer and I grew up in MTV era. Then it got to be my mom and pop parents said I started to get a job and come back to the real world.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:04:04]

When people could understand why the M in MTV stood for music. Like now… MTV? Why is it Music Television? What does that mean?

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:04:14]

Yes, not even that anymore, I’m talking nineteen eighty one that MTV is our YouTube channel right now.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:04:22]

Yeah, that’s right. Well so so you decided to go into the doctoral degree program. What was that experience like for you? Did you did you encounter any bumps along the way? We were talking a little bit about war stories before we started the episode today.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:04:37]

Oh, absolutely. I had a, they put me through an interview process and they did a pre interview and a lady did interview me, was the director, the doctoral program. And I didn’t know she was trying to test me. She made a comment about, well, you know, if you pursue this degree, don’t expect to get a job with it or something like that. And I thought that somebody tell a prospective student not to pursue a field of study. And then I had to take a test, I guess, to see if I knew how to write. And my interview, I think, went well because I showed them a portfolio of my work. I had done research on Wal-Mart. I had done international research on Wal-Mart penetrating markets, have had done research on Kmart. I’d done research on Stamps.com. And I brought in all that to my interview that I want to show them to my portfolio work. And they are pretty. I think they were impressed because nobody ever done that before. I just took it a step further. And then when I got into the program, they made me take a writing test, I guess, to see if I knew how to put words together. I guess I did OK. And I was I started my program and it was the first professor that I had. He ended up being my mentor. Dr. Reginal Trailor. Yes. And he passed away before I graduated. I still am touched by he was a great man, just a mathematician from Houston, and he really touched my soul. And sometimes when you’re on a doctor program, you just meet people that touch your soul. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Great man. He would have been my chair had he lived. Would have been my chair.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:06:20]

A great mentor is is just it is a game changer. I know. Yeah. I’ve heard this before. I went to graduate school originally as a traditional graduate student. So straight out of college I was going to be a research professor in astronomy and astrophysics and oh my my advisor there he was he was the guy who literally wrote the book on what I was studying at the time. We were studying cosmology, which is kind of the way the universe from the Big Bang on all that kind of stuff. And and we’re working with him. It was such a tremendous experience that he was somebody who was really a celebrity rock star in that field. And he also passed very unexpectedly while I was there not long before I was set to graduate. Now, he died in a plane crash, and that was a huge loss for the community, to the university, and obviously to me personally, professionally as well. Yeah, those are it’s great to have that time with them. You can to appreciate the time you have because you never know how long it’s going to be.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:07:24]

Oh, I remember the last time I saw Dr. Trailor. We were at a conference together in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he never told me this, but he spoke highly of each other, people I never knew. He he thought highly of me. He was a really fair even guy. And you know what I that’s such about? I saw what I did, my dissertation. I actually almost dedicated a page to him. He was a great guy and he didn’t he was a no nonsense type. I like, you know, how he tells you if the sun is out. Yeah. And I totally identify what you just said about your mentor. I get it. Wow.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:07:59]

Yeah. I had another person that helped me in the dissertation phase before. I know what I know now. As a dissertation coach, I got stuck on how I was going to collect my data and my committee. Let me get to the point where I got stuck on how I was going to collect my data which which shouldn’t be the case. But I’m a person that was working with at the time, Dr. Gary Sutter, who has since passed as well. He he was a dean at a school that I was adjunct teaching or and I just told him about this just we got along really well. So I was just kind of bitching at him about what was going on in my dissertation process. And he said, well, you know what, you can. We I can get you in touch with our students and I can facilitate you being able reach our students and have them participate in your study, and that was the thing.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:08:48]

Oh, that’s awesome.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:08:50]

Eventually, I would have done something, but I don’t know when and I don’t know how delayed I would have been and how frustrated and everything else I would have been about it. But he just is a little thing for him was such a big deal for me.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:09:04]

That’s what I call a mentor, pulls you up on the wing and says, no, son, you don’t do it like this, you do it like that. I’ll call them. Absolutely. That’s a wonderful story. Wow.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:09:15]

So then, as you were mentioning before, it’s not it doesn’t always work out that way. Right. You got some more stories to tell, too. Is that right?

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:09:24]

Oh, yeah, definitely. Let me say this, Dr. Strickland, I think you agree with me on this, the dissertation getting a Ph.D., it’s not for everybody. Let’s put that out there, OK? The dissertation is like this. Having a doctorate just like this, many call a few are chosen. OK, some people just don’t have a knack to get a Ph.D. And I don’t mean that to say if it’s relative to intelligence, it’s really not about intelligence. It’s about perseverance. They follow instructions. Can you do the job assigned to you? OK, and if you can’t do that, you’ve got to have a long day at the office and some people just can’t do that. And I would say I have a lot of people that started with me but didn’t end up with me. Right. You know what I mean?

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:10:13]

Well, yeah. So that it’s hard to pin these numbers down. Excuse me. It’s hard to pin these numbers down. But what you have here is about 50 percent of folks who started doctoral program finish. A lot of folks I talked to less. Yeah, they’re overworked. They say it’s worse than that. So, yeah. So I call that the dissertation coin flip because it’s kind of 50 50 is whether you get through it or not. And that’s scary when you think about these are people who earned a master’s degree, who were very qualified and who had the the gumption to apply to a doctoral program. Most people are even going to bother to do that. So when you think that you think you’re good enough and still only about half the people finish, that’s that’s a scary proposition. And it might be less than that.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:10:56]

So, yes, the dissertation brings truth. You as a scholar and a lot of people get exposed about the truth. I’ve seen people going to a doctor program for one semester and get kicked out of the university I graduated from. Yeah. And again, everybody is not meant to be Dr. Strickland or Dr. Miles. And it’s a dissertation. I said this out, a keynote speaking event. And I was talking to some students at a conference. I said the dissertation is the difference between a student and a scholar. You have to make the transition from being a student to a scholar. And some people cannot do that. Can you work independently? You have to ask somebody, tell you what to do. And some people, they just can’t make that transition. And then you have the other group of people who are just happy to be in a doctor program and tell people that working on a doctorate and they don’t graduate. Yeah, they just yeah. You know, I’m getting my working on my doctorate, and that goes on for ten, fifteen years.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:11:54]

And you can be, quote, working for a long time, like you said.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:11:58]

Yeah, but I was street cred because I’m working on it. Right. Right.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:12:02]

But but I think you hit on the point that’s really important earlier. And it’s. In my experience, the students that I’ve worked with, people that in that. It is about perseverance, it’s about showing up, doing the things you need to do, getting it wrong and submitting it so you can get beat up and you dust yourself off, pick yourself up and go get it wrong again. But each time you get it wrong, it’s going to be closer to you. Getting it right and getting it right is not a black and white thing. It’s when your committee approves it, when they’re happy with it, that’s when you got it quote. Right. But you can get it wrong a lot of times before you get it right. And again, I’m using that word kind of facetiously, but that’s the important part, is to be able to keep getting back up again and again.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:12:49]

I totally agree. And I take that a step further. Dr. Strickland, when you type A personality, you know, you you’re the oldest in your family like I am. I’m the guy to successful. And when you tell me to do something three or four times, that messes me up in here. I’m used to getting it right. The first time you got to like my uncle used to tell him because my uncle was my mentor. My uncle was a statistician. I work for the government. He helped me my dissertation as well. And he used to always tell me, lose that ego. Your ego is not your amigo. OK, like it. That’s very cool. Absolute. Yes. You can’t learn to know everything at the same time. Right. And we get people that have a master’s degree. They think they’re primadonnas. What. Like I was I had to tone it down a bit. He says you don’t know everything. You’re never going to do this again. And so when you getting guidance, soak up some of that guidance from your mentor, which is your chair. Now, here’s the other caveat too, you might have a chair, but they might not be a mentor.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:13:50]

Yeah, that’s true, that’s true, I think what you were saying just a minute ago, though, is important the the further you go in education. The less you think you know, and that doesn’t mean you the less you know, you know more. But yes, as an as a high school student, you’re just sure that you know everything. And as a college graduate, you’re still pretty sure you know everything. When you get your master’s degree, you’re starting to figure out, I don’t know everything. And when you get your doctorate degree, you’re basically at the point where you realize, hey, I basically know nothing like in the ocean of stuff out there. There is to know I know a little bit is a lot more than a lot of other people. And there’s just so much.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:14:32]

It follows that Zen proverb, You have to empty your cup any time you try to pursue anything, you have to empty your cup, allow somebody to pour something into your cup. And all of us, even myself, you even with me having a doctor now, I still try to empty my cup and always be always be willing to learn. Sometimes just because you know something in a particular field doesn’t mean, you know, something in this field. And as you always read, I read about three books every month. I’m a I’m a voracious reader and also practice learn about your craft and your your fields don’t always be well. I got my doctorate. That’s the end game. No, that’s right. That’s the beginning.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:15:15]

Yeah.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:15:20]

We have people that think they have a doctorate and they figure out why nobody’s checking for them because you haven’t done any research. Now I’m a doctor and I do research. It’s like being a heavyweight champion and you’d have to defend your title.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:15:32]

OK, I would. I would I would differ with you on that. I think that there are certainly academia and folks that that take that route and that’s fine. But there’s also the practitioner side of things where you had your doctoral degree, where you’ve learned to be a a critical thinker and and a lifelong learner. But you’re not out there publishing research in academic journals. You probably are doing research, but it’s just not something that’s going in those academic journals. It might be something for you. You’re leading your district, your school district, and there’s all sorts of research projects that you’re either overseeing or undertaking, but they’re not things they’re getting published. So I think there’s a practitioner side to that model as well.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:16:15]

Yeah. Let me let me clarify what I meant by Dr. Strickland. What I meant by that is how active are you, right? The Holy Trinity, when you have your do you have to do three things. There’s research, consulting and publications. Now, if you don’t publish present at conferences, if you don’t present a conference of speak at events, you know, always be active. That’s the point that I was trying to make. You don’t have to be you don’t have to be on a journal. How active are you in media interviews? Have you written any books? Some people don’t want to publish in academic journals because that’s a specific audience right now. A high level of research. Say you want to publish a book about a problem that you see that needs to be highlighted. So when I say publications, I mean the umbrella books, conferences, learning they’re having there.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:17:08]

I think we’re in agreement that that’s what we’re doing with now. When our students graduate, we’re encouraging them and other people to come to us so that we can get the book written. And you want to start a podcast. You want to have a YouTube channel. What sort of things do you want to do to produce and put things out into the world so that you can start to cultivate a following and an audience and people who will come to you when they have issues that you can help them with if you want to follow the expert model.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:17:37]

Absolutely. When you worked the Holy Trinity, that’s my uncle told me just before I graduate, that’s why I’m sharing it with you. I think your audience would get a lot out of this. Always be active in what you do. You may not want to present at a conference or speak somewhere. Somebody might let you be keynote speaker or something that you’re passionate about. If you want to be a legal expert witness, they want to call you to a case to be an expert witness on what. But your body of work defines you. So you want to build your body of work postgraduation. And it doesn’t necessarily just mean journal articles. And I love what you’re doing because I always say this. A book trumps a thousand journal articles. OK, it’s true.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:18:21]

I mean, when you can say, my name is Dr. So-and-so and I literally wrote the book on whatever I mean.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:18:29]

That’s exactly the general area, because it also holds the downside when you published journal articles, they have a sea of articles in a journal. That means if you do a search on it, on, say, Google, they won’t find it. The only way they find it, if you put it on your LinkedIn page or Facebook just said you did an article for when you write a book, it’s searchable by all the search engines and people say this guy wrote a book. How come I’ve never heard of him? Right. So that’s wonderful what you’re doing. I wish I’d met you when I was graduate. Nobody said down it’s all me or any of this. I had to learn it all through trial and error.

Dr. Russell Strickland [00:19:07]

And it’s all about what you want to do. That’s the other thing I think that’s so important with the doctoral degree. You mentioned your your philosophy and then the Holy Trinity, you guys that you had there, other folks do things a little differently. The point is that it’s OK because you have those options. Now, when you have a actual ability, you know, there’s a there’s a seat at almost any table for you. And that’s something that’s very hard to to get in any other way.

Dr. D. Anthony Miles [00:19:32]

A lot of times we graduate when we’re doctoral students, we have zero. We have you know, the dissertation is zero. So you have to build something. And I always tell students are graduating, try to do a conference once a year. You know, you don’t want to spend the money. But I thought a conference at your home town where you live sit the conference fee is just present on something right now. By the time you graduate, you have some modicum of a body of work, right. You call us to build your credibility, to have a body of work. And I love what you’re doing.

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