Dorie Clark - Entrepreneurial You book review

In a nutshell (272 pages), This book looks to show, as the subtitle clearly says, monetize your expertise. Clark goes on an all-encompassing, meandering path to being rich and unencumbered by responsibility. Being an expert is sometimes acknowledged, sometimes taken for granted, and sometimes clearly ignored.

What I got out of it

The reason I read this book worked out for me. I wanted to learn an opinion on how to do more with my professional expertise. Clark does at times in the book touch on what you can do to make use of expertise. For that, this book is very useful, if not a little fanciful.

What was difficult

Clark is a charlatan. This is a shame because she has important advice to give, but she ruins her message by completely flip-flopping between a message of how necessary it is to be an expert in a field, but then she goes on about people, including herself who knew nothing about a field and just googled their way to a product that people more amateur than them would believe as an authority. Clark mentions that selling to 1% of a list of contacts emailed with an offer is average and it turns out that a 1% success rate is also what email scammers achieve.

Recommendation

If you are looking to become an expert in a field, find another book or go work in a field that seems promising and look for something hard to do that you can get good at. If you are an expert, and you believe you have some insights or wisdom that others can use to improve their revenue, careers or lives, then read a summary of this book to save on the MBA speak. If you’re considering the audiobook, listen to how Clark speaks in an interview first before buying.