More Content, More Content, More Content with Dr. Todd Dewett
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:23:11] That’s that’s awesome. So how did you what was the first thing you did once the safety net stopped? I’m sure you had a little bit of a runway to to start having success in that business. But what’s the first thing you did? Because I know there are a lot of our students who want to do that same thing, and you don’t know how to take that same leap.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:23:29] I appreciate the question very much. I don’t know that there’s a simple or universal answer at all to that question. What I did was double down on the things that were working for me and financially. Prepare me. Start with that. So finance is forever small, non rich person going to try the entrepreneurial thing. You should really get financially conservative fast food for me, just as one example was cut out, these expenses sell the overpriced, unbelievable Camaro I was driving and purchase a Prius, which I loved and was so smart financially, which I kept for three or four years until I really started making more traction. So that’s important, number one. Number two, in terms of the business, get real serious about dedicating your calendar to content creation of some sort. That’s a website. That’s a book. That’s video. If you’re speaker like me, that’s better. Social media presence, content creation across all those things needs to become a very regular thing that you embrace. Hard core, you say? Yes, when people just like you call and say, would you be on the podcast? And I do these all the time, you should do that. You should really, really do that. And this was the very early days for me of working with online courses. I was maybe maybe one or maybe one year into working with what became LinkedIn learning as a part of LinkedIn, making online courses with them. And I immediately just started trying to network hard with my contacts there to signal my interest about other topics and wanting to grow with them. And we we did. I ended up making more courses from almost anyone has there. So that’s what I did, in short.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:05] Yeah, so the nice thing about the courses is that provides a that’s a scalable and residual income. That’s something that you can create a mechanism to sell for you. You don’t have to necessarily sell it yourself and then you don’t have to touch it. It’s something you don’t have to deliver as a speaker. You have to deliver speech speeches to a live audience. You have to deliver those talks as a coach. You have to spend time with your clients as a consultant. You have to go to your clients and help them solve problems. But with courses, you do it once. And if you’re lucky, you know, hundreds, thousands, millions of people might decide that they would want to purchase that course. So that’s how you scale as a one person show.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:25:46] You have to do that these days. If I was going to say something simple to anyone listening who wants to earn a partial or full living from being some sort of an expert, if you don’t have a course today, you’re not you’re not worth it. Ten years ago was the end of the time where you could say, I’ve got the I’ve got the website and check out my little demo video here. Clearly an expert. I got a couple of testimonials. Know the client list there. That’s good. And it’s still required, but you have to have courses. Courses are the new book. It used to be the book proved to people somehow that you are an expert. That’s still true today. But the thing that’s more true is video. Video is absolutely emotionally compelling to people. And if you don’t ever get lucky, as I did, to become a part of a major console, a major platform like LinkedIn, there’s nothing stopping you. There’s another platform which I’m about to engage as well. I’ve got a handful of LinkedIn learning instructors that are kind of on my level. I’ve worked I’ve worked next to over the years who are now also on Udemy, which is a hey, anyone can give or take can upload their content to their platform. And then and then they bring they create a community around that drawing some demand. So you don’t do the whole thing yourself. There’s no excuse anymore. With the increasingly lower cost of video production. You’re an expert proof that build a course.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:27:04] Yeah, well, the platforms for four courses, I guess they’re they’re good for distribution, but often they they commodifies the courses as well. I agree 100 percent on the content creation that you’ve got to figure out what what your style is better if you can figure out what your audience’s style is and give them what they want. But at least you have to figure out something that’s workable for you and make sure it’s talking to someone just just very recently about this. Make sure you create content so that if someone finds you and they think they’re connected with you, they can binge you. That they can go through and read one hundred blog post. If that’s what they want to do, they can go through and watch all of your little YouTube videos, whatever it might be. The podcast that we have here, people start to dove deeper and deeper in and they think they know you and they think they have a relationship with you. It’s a celebrity of sorts. You might be a celebrity to five people or 500 people, not like a movie star who, you know, millions, hundreds of millions of people know. But those few people, it’s the same relationship. It’s the same dynamic. And if you’re a celebrity in your customers eyes. That’s that’s the game, that’s that’s when things get started to turn and get easy for you
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:28:12] I couldn’t agree more. Yeah, I’m just I’m very, very, very lucky, very blessed to work with LinkedIn. They have an amazing platform and they work really hard to give the opportunity to binge, like you were saying to all the people. So people find one of my courses and then they go, what? He’s got thirty five. Are you kidding me? And then, you know, and then I get an email and I just watch ten year courses. I feel like. I know.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:28:28] Yeah that’s it. And to an extent they do. You don’t know them. Not really. But that also when you get to know your clients really well, the nice thing is that you do get to know them some too. I spent a lot of time with our students on the phone for intake and things like this, and I can often cold read them like I was some guy in a in a magic show or something like that. While you’re experiencing this, this and this and this. And I’m like, how did you know that I’ve done this before?
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:28:58] Take my word for it. I’ve done this before.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:28:59] Yeah, but but but if I was better trained, I’d have a better answer that would probably leave a little lead a little bit more quickly to Assael because it is like magic at some point when you can get inside of your your customer clients heads and really understand what they’re saying. One of the great marketers I’ve read about, and I forget his name, I’m sorry about that. I should have my reference down here. But he said you need to join the conversation that’s already going on inside your customer or clients. And so if you can figure out how to do that and you’re telling them how you handle things, then that’s where they really feel like they have a relationship with you before you have invested any specific personal one on one time with it, pretty wide scale. So anyway, tell me a little bit about the the book. I actually have ideas about something kind of similar in my space, and I’d love to hear about Live Hard.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:29:49] So the latest is Live Hard. And I got to mention, to answer your question, the one that came right before, would you show your ink? And the reason I have to mention that is because I’m a storyteller. I do it sometimes in blog form, sometimes right here with you on a podcast, sometimes on stage sometimes. And of course. Well, I was thinking about that one day right after the transition I had made with the big risk leaving the professor role. And I knew I needed to write a next book. I only had one little book out at the time. I knew I had to start producing, like I said, more content, more content, more content. And I had lots of ideas. But when I settled on was, wait a minute, why don’t I just make a book out of 20 of the stories that I have been telling in some form or another for many years, some of the stories were relatively new, some very old, meaning 10, ten years plus older. And I just thought about it and there are risks. So you give away those stories. That’s what you sell for a blah blah. I thought through it and I decided it was not a big risk and I was going to do it. And I came up with a catchy title that a lot of people enjoy. And I wrote that book and it was a hit, not a classic bestseller, but I sold thousands of thousands of those things, a lot of them to speaking clients in particular. And it’s just been fun to watch people go home, pick the stories with them because a subset of them become a keynote and then call me later or write me notes later about which one they love and why. Then you can never guess because different things speak to different people. But I was blown away that that my stories I was just talking about, just like this could be a book and boy, was I correct. And then I wrote a couple of books since then and realized it’s time for another story book. And I looked at my collection of ideas and said to myself, OK, show your ink was about leadership and authenticity and relationship-related issues. What’s the next thing? The next thing for me was going back a little bit where I started at A&M first first falling in love with creativity and innovation as topics of study. And so I wanted Live Hard to be another catchy title. Right. I wanted to live hard to be about living fully taking principled risks, embracing creativity and innovation in your career at work. And I love that. And I said, do I have enough stories and do they fit in? The answer is yes. From addressing diversity to taking risks and learning from mistakes to speaking up in the face of bureaucracy to all those related types of issues. We face it in careers that are change-agent focused. Have a good story in this new book, so I’m pretty excited about it.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:32:08] Yeah, I think that’s that’s awesome. One of the things that that you said spoke to me when you were saying, is it a risk to take these stories that I’m using over here and put them into a book? Because the book is for most people who are working in the expert space, a book is a relatively low value item from a revenue standpoint. It’s a gateway drug, so to speak. That’s how you get more people in. But it in and of itself, you know, am I giving away my best stuff for relatively free? And one of the when I first started in business, one of the authors that I read pretty much everything he wrote, he was a public speaker and he was a consultant. And he wrote a lot of books. And he said that he’s just now getting used to the fact that people would pay him ten dollars for his book and then turn around and ten thousand dollars to read it to them, which is what how he characterized his consulting work, because, you know, they say, oh, we’re having this. Here is like that’s chapter two of my book. Well, what do we do about it? Well, you do this. This is.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:33:15] Definitely true. I feel very much like that.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:33:17] People do the different modalities of delivery. And you’re saying video speaks to people is because it’s a different modality of delivery than the flat word on a page than a word that an audio without the accompanying video people do resonate more with. They get more out of certain modes of delivery than others. And that’s why you can charge more time, more for your personal time than you can for your for your book or for a video. It’s simply because not only is that time more valuable to you, so that’s why you want to charge more for it. But it’s more valuable to them, which is why they’ll actually pay more for it.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:33:55] Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. You know, your listeners should should should take this seriously. There’s plenty of research in different areas over the years about communication and what it means to make an impact and connect with someone or connect with an audience. And this is very true. You can be a world class expert, but a mediocre communicator and you’ll get rated mediocre, maybe even worse sometimes. Or you could be an OK expert and a great communicator and be rated very highly by an audience. Now, there’s pros and cons to that reality, but it’s terribly useful and should be pushing people who want to be in the expert space to be the best communicators they can be at least 50 percent or more of what people get out of communication when there’s a live person, or at least audio and video comes from all the nonverbal is not the words, which is why video always trumps a book in which I live. Stage always trumps video for sure.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:46] Yeah. It’s when when you mention this, that this is one of the things that I try to talk to people about with regard to perfectionism, because people will want to make sure that their thing is is highly tuned and bright and shiny and perfect when in fact that’s an impossible goal, number one. And number two, you’re going to be wasting all of this time trying to get that thing to be just right when those people will notice that if you spent some of that time on figuring out how to get the message right and get it out in front of people, you would do much better yourself in terms of financially, you will make more money. But beyond that, you’ll also help more people. And that’s the point that a lot of folks don’t get. They might there are some people, particularly in academia, who think of money as dirty and we can have that conversation. But,.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:35:34] I remember them well.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:35:36] Yeah, but but but beyond that, you know, even if even if it’s not the money, that’s the scoreboard for you. If it’s doing good in the world, that’s the scoreboard for you. If it’s helping other people, that’s a scoreboard for you. Those things are aligned actually. You know, the more money people pay, they’re paying that money because it’s an indicator of how valuable you are to them and get stuff out to them early and you’re going to be more valuable to them.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:36:02] Made my day very much made my day because I do well and I know I do well. I feel great about doing well for other people. And since LinkedIn is a huge part of that, I get notes all the time from people, hey man, this terribly useful. This was helpful. I want to thank you. It’s feel so nice to know that there is legit purpose associated with what you’re doing. It’s actually helping people. And I want to I want to tell your audience something that they might not enjoy. But I’m a big fan of comedians and there’s a chapter dedicated to them and Live Hard and one of not all comedians, but lots of comedians work it out on the stage. They just do they don’t sit in a room alone going, I’m going to get this just right before I tell it for the first time. No, they got an idea and they go. And sometimes it’s just not good at all. And then they get feedback, think some more feedback, think some more, and then it gets better, et cetera, et cetera, until it’s either discarded or it’s great and makes their next comedy special. I feel exactly the same about most experts in those spaces. You’re on the money with what you said. Don’t sit around looking for perfection. Just remember, it’s always about progress, not perfection. And you will get more progress faster when you share earlier instead of later, because that’s the feedback that will make you think better, think faster, and it make your material and your approach better all the time.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:37:15] And it makes sense to because you can’t like my coach, my business coach. One of one of the things she likes to say is it’s hard to read the label from the inside of the bottle. You’ve got to get out there and get people telling you about what you’re doing, observing what you’re doing, what is it that’s going on. And, you know, if if you’re if if you don’t go out there and get data as a researcher, how are you going to learn anything? Well, it’s the same thing. What those comedians are doing. You know, when you say they’re working out on stage, that’s not some sort of lazy or lackadaisical process. If they’re any good at what they do, they’re collecting data. Oh, he didn’t laugh at that joke. Maybe I’m going to try to change it. Maybe I’ll try to do this. Maybe that joke is crap. But I’m I’m taking some notes on that because I heard what they had to say. And then I’ll go back and joke number three, kill joke number three is going in. The set that we’re not touching is. Is going in the set and that sort of thing that we need to do professionally as well.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:38:12] I agree and I would I’ll tell you, I just did it. And it was scary and fun and awesome. Did I delivered a TEDx the other day at Texas A&M University by coincidence, and it was material derived from Live Hard. And it was a 15 minute ish speech that I have never given before that I thought about, thought about, wrote about just a little bit and practiced five times before I got on stage with the cameras rolling and did it because I knew no one. I thought I could do a good job. It won’t be ten years later. It’ll be a much better story. Always is. No, three years later, five years to always a better story. Having said that, I knew I could do good and I knew because it’s TEDx that I was going to get it posted online and get lots of feedback. And that feedback would be an accelerant that would help me tweak it this way, tweak it that way and make it more useful faster.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:58] Yeah, exactly right. That yeah, a lot of people will save the big rooms for later in the process. But yeah, the quicker you can get data. It was on the calendar.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:39:06] I said you can do it or not. I’m not going to do all the stuff. Let’s do something new.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:11] And like you said, those derived from stories you already told. So even then that was material that you’d already tested. You already had data. You already knew a lot about that material.
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:39:21] No, this was hard just a few months ago. Right. I’ve just started to do speeches, just started to speeches related to it. This was the first big stage where any of that material was shared.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:34] So the stories were not stories that you had been sharing already that you were reading a compendium of new material. So have you have you learned anything yet from the from the feedback?
Dr. Todd Dewett [00:39:47] I haven’t got it. This was just a few days ago, which means a week or four, TEDx will get done processing everything and post those videos. So we’ll see.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:56] Awesome. That sounds very cool. What’s coming up next? What’s what’s what do you see on the horizon?
