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How To Reinvent Your Consulting Business

January 8, 2024
EPISODE 153
The Recognized Authority Podcast Cover

The podcast that helps experts & consultants on the journey to becoming a recognized authority in your field, so you can increase your impact, command premium fees, work less hours, and never have to suffer a bad-fit client again!.

Have you ever faced an unexpected disruption that turned your business upside down? That’s exactly what happened to consultant Diane S. Hopkins when the COVID pandemic caused many of her healthcare clients to freeze projects indefinitely. So how did she manage to pivot not just once, but several times over a 3 year period to totally reinvent her business? In this compelling episode of The Recognized Authority podcast, host Alastair McDermott interviews Diane about her rocky but ultimately triumphant journey through the pandemic, and how she iteratively transformed her consulting practice across adjacent industries, online offerings, international markets and even into passion projects along the way.

Tune in to hear:

  • Diane’s thoughts and emotional journey as she realized the pandemic wouldn’t end anytime soon
  • The innovative problem-solving process she used to generate rapid prototypes and pivot ideas
  • Examples of the different types of pivots Diane made over a 3 year period
  • Why writing a book acts like a “calling card on steroids” for consulting
  • How Diane finally found her way into the gift-giving passion project she’d always dreamed of
  • Advice for consultants facing sudden disruption in their industry

If you’ve ever faced a dramatic shift that threatened your business, you’ll find inspiration and actionable advice in Diane’s story of perseverance and reinvention.

Show Notes

Key Insights:

  • The pandemic caused an almost total freeze in Diane’s healthcare consulting business
  • Diane went through stages of denial, shock and realization that things wouldn’t improve quickly
  • She iteratively pivoted across 3 years through adjacent industries, online offerings, international markets and passion projects
  • Diane used innovative thinking tools like “What is, What if, What Wow, What Works” to generate pivot ideas
  • She advises tending your network, seeking silver linings, refreshing your expertise and more during disruptions

Strategies:

  • Pivot to adjacent industries and markets
  • Package your in-person services into online offerings
  • Consider international and non-industry markets
  • Volunteer to expand your network and skills
  • Use innovative thinking tools to stretch your perspective

 

Learn more about Diane here:

Guest Bio

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pandemic, book, pivot, calling, healthcare, business, talking, industry, work, give, authored, stay, disruption, clients, gift, people, authority, writing, consulting, helps

SPEAKERS
Alastair McDermott, Diane S. Hopkins, Voiceover

 

Diane S. Hopkins  00:00

Most of my business was generated by referrals, personal referrals, or through my my books that I’ve written, I will always tell you that, especially in professional consulting a book is a calling card on steroids.

 

Voiceover  00:12

Welcome to The Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Here’s your host, Alastair McDermott.

 

Alastair McDermott  00:22

Before we get into today’s interview, I just want to tell you about my daily email list. I have been writing daily for the last three weeks, and I’ve managed to stick to that cadence, I have a daily tip for experts who want to build authority. Give me two minutes a day. And I’ll help you to earn more by building authority. So you can command premium fees, work less hours and enjoy your work more. So don’t let an algorithm decide what you get to read, you can subscribe to my email at the recognized authority.com/email. So now, let me welcome my guests. Diane, welcome. I’m going to do something that I almost never do. I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself, Diane s. Hopkins, can you introduce yourself to the audience and tell them about where your business was before the pandemic?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  01:12

Well, me too, thanks for having me. I have a long career in combining marketing, innovation strategy and customer experience strategy primarily in the healthcare industry. And I switched from traditional employment status to consulting status when I moved back from Indiana to Pennsylvania to care for a sick father. And that’s when I had the, you know, the energy and the impetus to start my consulting company. And things were booming. I had wonderful clients and wonderful steady work in an industry that we know is never going away. Healthcare’s never gonna go away. And then the pandemic came and changed everything, as you mentioned, yesterday, turned it upside down. And some, you know, in the beginning, as we all did, the pandemic was, you know, we were looking at it saying, What is this? What does this mean? What does it mean for me personally, and what does it mean for me professionally, and oh, maybe it’s not going to take that long, oh, maybe things will be normal in a couple of months. Well, a couple months continued and continued. And my primary client base, which was healthcare, they were dealing with unprecedented pressures. And they knew that they still needed help with patient satisfaction and patient engagement and innovation, innovative problem solving. But they couldn’t possibly deal with that, while they were trying to keep the doors open and the lights on. They had staffing shortages, they had burnout, they had financial constraints. And so the typical work that I was quite happy doing and quite busy with pretty much froze, I stayed in touch with my clients, and even new clients who said, Oh, my gosh, we need you. We need this help. But we just can’t do it now. And again, maybe in six months, maybe nine months, maybe in a year. And so that’s been the volatility and the kind of shot that the pandemic allowed me to see.

 

Alastair McDermott  03:24

Yeah, I can only imagine what that felt like. I mean, the kind of the pressure and the slow squeeze as as you realize, okay, this is not going away anytime soon. Like, how did you feel at the time?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  03:37

Well, I think the beginning was, this is no big deal, then it went to this isn’t going away. And then it went to you know, this is pretty shocking, because I don’t see an end. So I guess those were the stages.

 

Alastair McDermott  03:51

Yeah. So what did you like? Can you tell me what you tried to do to replace the lost income and the lost revenue? Like, did you go through different stages? How did you progress with that,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  04:04

I would say I pivoted in phases. So my first pivot phase was to move from traditional providers, health care providers, medical groups, health systems, hospitals, to adjacent businesses in healthcare. So manufacturers, device manufacturers, medical supply companies. And that was really great. That really helped keep things going. My next pivot was I had to prepare myself to pivot from on site in person face to face to online and virtual. And that wasn’t too hard. It took some, you know, rolling up your sleeves to do your delivery differently. But that was a good pivot to have for forever in terms of how I work and how I connect and how I teach. The next one was to look outside of my industry and And outside of my country. And so I started to work with a company in Paris, that was a customer experience, consulting company, but they didn’t have background in health care. And they needed me for that. So that was my next kind of circle of pivoting to outside the country and outside healthcare delivery to consulting company. And I also pivoted to during some of the downtime, offering my work as a volunteer for some charitable organizations that would expand my horizons outside of my typical industry, with some religious groups and government groups. So I’m still learning and I’m still offering, I’m still contributing. So that was kind of the different phases of pivoting.

 

Alastair McDermott  05:45

How like over what kind of period of time was that over? Like, was that over a year? Was that over six months? a month? That was three? Okay. So this was not a this was not a quick thing that like it happened at quite a slow pace.

 

Diane S. Hopkins  05:59

Yeah, I mean, I, I had to pivot as clients would say, we have to freeze or contract or, you know, different things, I would have to pivot right then and figure out, okay, I’m not gonna wait six months to figure out what to do.

 

Alastair McDermott  06:15

How did you like? Where did you get the ideas for what you were trying? When you were doing this? Like, how did you? Like, what kind of logic did you go through? Or how did you brainstorm, like, where to go?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  06:25

Luckily, one of my background, one of my backgrounds is innovation, and innovative problem solving. So what I’ve been teaching and what I’ve been applying in business, I applied myself. And so I use a variety of innovation or innovative thinking tools to figure out okay, what do you do next? And there’s a million of these tools. And so I just started to apply them. And they’re, they’re pretty intuitive to me now. So it didn’t take a lot of time for me to figure out how to apply them.

 

Alastair McDermott  06:54

Can you? Like, is there any? I know that that’s a huge topic to get into? Could you give us the Cliff Notes of any of that?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  07:03

Well, you know, one quick example is to stretch is called stretch thinking. And think about things that you have pushed in the background, you know, they haven’t been a priority, and bring them forward and take a good look at them a fresh look at them. And so the idea of, hey, let’s What if I didn’t work in healthcare, which I’d never thought of, it was never a priority for me. And so what if there’s this this tool I use called, What is What if what Laos what works? Very simple four steps. And the what is, is, Hey, what is not good? What I’ve been doing is not working. What if, is where I spent a lot of time in ideation and brainstorming about what if? And then what wow, is kind of a higher level crazy. What if? What would be you know, unexpected, completely? And then what works? What can I feasibly do? What connections do I have? What can I get started on next week?

 

Alastair McDermott  08:10

Firstly, that’s, that’s, that’s something I’m going to use myself. I like that framework. What is what if What was what works? Very cool. Okay, so you’re still in this kind of iterative process of pivoting and changing. And so can you tell us how you finally got to where you are now? And do you feel settled now? Where do you feel like you’re still in process of of, kind of iterating

 

Diane S. Hopkins  08:40

it’s absolutely a work in progress, no settling yet. I do have a kind of a framework that I’m settled with, though about 1/3 of my future pursuits will be in traditional health care. As they’re starting to come back and you’re starting, you know, most of my business was generated by referrals, personal referrals, or through my my books that I’ve written, I will always tell you that, especially in professional consulting, a book is a calling card on steroids. And so about 1/3 of my future work will be in that traditional healthcare where I love it, I’m passionate about it. I’ve got deep experience in it. 1/3 will be about going outside of healthcare and applying all the tools and lessons that came out of my healthcare experience, design work, that absolutely translate to other industries. And then the last third will be you know, I’ve got three books that came out co authored or authored by myself during this pandemic period. So they didn’t get the attention they normally would have because of all the distractions so that time will be spent promoting the books that you that are already out and one that comes out in three weeks.

 

Alastair McDermott  09:53

Let’s talk about that for a minute. You said a book is a calling card on steroids. Can you dig into that a little bit more because, like I know that a lot of people listen to this are people who can write a book and are thinking about it or have thought about it, but it is a huge commitment of time. Can you talk a little bit more about why you call it that like, like saying it’s calling card on steroids? Well,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  10:14

there’s this differentiation side of it that, you know, when you’re trying to build business or reach out to a new client. There’s other people doing that, too. And they’re reaching out as well. And if you reach out with a book, instead of just a resume and a falling card, your credibility goes up immediately, you’re just the ability to get their attention goes up. And so there’s this differentiation competitive side of it, that you stand out, you’re able to stand out, if all goes well, and they start to read your book, and they identify with how that connects to their their needs, then you’re, you know, you’re accelerating your relevancy right there. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, once you have a book that tends to open doors for interviews like this, or speaking engagements or other things, which gets you more exposure, and so awareness building. So you know, that’s why we say if I send you my calling card, and you know, a fact sheet, okay, but if I send you my calling card, my book, and my other thought leadership articles, I hope it really helps your business stand out.

 

Alastair McDermott  11:23

Yeah, I mean, we even have the phrase, he wrote the book, and he wrote the book on it. It’s like, it’s an, I know that this is a bit of an overused cliche, but the word author is the base of authority. So yeah, I think, yeah, it’s, you know, that maybe I am the person who tends to overuse that, but I think it is, it’s, it’s such like having a physical book, I was at a business event, for the first time, actually, probably since the pandemic, I was at a business event recently. And I had copies of my book, because I was given the table by the organizers, they asked me to come in and give a talk. And they gave me a table. So I put some copies of my book on the table. And there was a government minister, actually, the Minister for enterprise of Ireland was at this event. And I gave him a copy of my book. And so he took a photo of it got a photo with me with the book. And then he walked around holding my book for the rest of the event. It was it was amazing. It was like, it was and I was just like, it’s the power of of a book, like people. There’s something I think that people see it as, and they see it as something that’s that has value intrinsically, you know, inherently, it just has value by by being a book. And, yeah, so I saw that with, you know, with this politician wandering around with my book. And I think at the start, he was, he was horrified by the title 33 ways not to screw up. And I’m sure that he processed the title through his politicians brain. And I actually gave him the workbook to cover the book, and he took the photo. Because I, you know, I’m sure a politician doesn’t want to be in a photo online with screw up on the so anyway. But um, yeah, so I love talking to authors about books, like, Do you Do you know, like, Can Can you assign revenue that’s coming in from consulting clients, or high ticket clients to the book directly? Oh,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  13:23

for sure. I don’t. So far, although this is going to change, I think. But so far, the book is not the the revenue generator itself is you, as you well know. But it becomes the door opening, and it depends on the year, but I would say at least 50% of my income was related to book door opening, you know, the book open different doors.

 

Alastair McDermott  13:52

That’s incredible. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

 

Diane S. Hopkins  13:55

You mentioned earlier about, you know, the time and sweat and tears to make a book with me. And I think maybe with you, too, when I have enough topic and enough subject matter inside me that I either observed or actually worked on. I cannot wait to get it out on paper, I need to get it out and organize it and, and create this new tool or this, this, this new collection of of insights. And it doesn’t take me you know, three years to do. I have to get it out. And so I’m pretty quick I you know, I started my career News Radio in Philadelphia. And when you’re doing news radio, you have to take very complex things and get them down to 20 seconds. So that has served me well to my life. And so the energy to get the book out the research that has to go with it, that’s the what takes the time. But the the observations and the insights based on real life come out pretty quick.

 

Alastair McDermott  14:55

Yeah, and the other thing, like I mentioned at the start of this show, that I’m writing a day In the email, and I find that the process of writing, just writing regularly really helps me to hone my thinking and develop my thinking on the topic. So I think that there’s a benefit there that it’s not just like the sunk cost of writing and creating the book, but there is a benefit there, of having the writing process ongoing. So that’s something else I think about as well. Okay, so let’s, let’s talk about how you where you ended up? And how did you get into gift giving? And how can you describe the whole thing because I don’t really understand it myself. And I’m sure that people who are listening to this are wondering what I’m talking about. Now. Let’s not

 

Diane S. Hopkins  15:41

launch quite yet. But another one of my pivot phases was, you know, there’s other things in life I love, or I’m excited about, or I enjoy, how might I find an intersection between those things and my professional experience. And one thing I’ve always loved since being a little girl was giving gifts, finding gifts and giving people gifts. And at some point in my, you know, ideation phase of what wow, I thought, you know, I love to do this. And so I started to just kind of poke around and see what was available. And I couldn’t find a book that was well rounded about this whole thing. Why don’t we give how do we give ideas on giving changes in giving all the cultural changes and country to change different traditions in countries. And so the more I dug, the more excited I got about it. And I went deeply into the research phase. I also do informal research with contacts, colleagues, family, friends, just to get attitudes about, you know, not scientific research, but you know, incidental research on topics. And the more I did, the more I loved, it was a fun, it was exciting. And so that also led to me developing an online course, about how to be a better gift giver. And so, in about a month, this will launch and it’s called the gifted gift giver. And I’m connecting with some people that are experts in pieces of this like, actually in London, an expert in gift wrapping. And so I’m connecting to a whole new world, it’s so much fun, and it was me taking something else I loved in my life or I had fun with and seeing how it might connect with my experience.

 

Alastair McDermott  17:32

That’s really interesting. And is this. So is this aspect is this consumer facing as opposed to the kind of like the the business to business consulting you’ve done in the past? Yes,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  17:41

it’s consumer facing there is an aspect to gift giving about corporate gift giving. And I am connecting with a company that specializes in corporate gift giving, because a lot of the principles of how and why apply to personal or corporate, so mostly consumer, but there’s a corporate side. Okay,

 

Alastair McDermott  18:01

so how does your business look today, compared to like, in terms of the in terms of the service offerings, the verticals that you’re working in, compared to what it was post pandemic? Can you kind of give me an overview of the of that?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  18:15

Well, what I do is the same, you know, the offering in terms of advisory work, consulting, work, assessment of the maturity of your customer experience, strategy, and training to build internal expertise within a company, small or large. That’s the same. The My time is more about finding new clients outside of healthcare, because healthcare is still teetering on recovery. And then more of my time, is on thought leadership and content development, whether it be on things like the new co authored book with the company in Paris, called out care, the competition, that’s new content that’s taken us the last year and a half to finalize, or the newer one, the new content related to gift.

 

Alastair McDermott  19:10

Okay, so I’m interested in what you would do differently. Now, if you knew what was coming ahead of you back in with the pandemic, like what what decisions which would would you like to have made beforehand? Now knowing what you know?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  19:27

Well, two thoughts come to mind. First would be I would have diversified industries ahead of time. I have done a little work with other industries in manufacturing and insurance, but it was just through connections and it was not a top priority. I would have absolutely made that diversification and priority. Second, I might, although it would have been it would have been risky to figure out which were which company to go to. I might have given up the consulting and gone and gotten to the safety of a business safety of a regular job that I’ve had many, many years. But again, it would have been risky to know which business would have been safe.

 

Alastair McDermott  20:11

Yeah, and so many of them had layoffs. And you might have ended up working in somebody who was in the same sector. So you know, if that would have been the case, I will tell

 

Diane S. Hopkins  20:19

you my observation of all my colleagues and friends who went through the pandemic, and their professional, the only category of people that had stayed stability. And you know, we’re very little worry, we’re government work? No, it might, in my experience, that was the only place that had less Disrupt. Yeah, yeah.

 

Alastair McDermott  20:46

Interesting. So what advice would you have for people who are facing disruption, like just people facing disruption now from Ai, for example, there’s a myriad other things that are happening out there, what advice would you have for people who are facing disruption in their industry, or in their skills?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  21:09

Personally, I, for someone’s personal benefit for their own business. One, I would say, always tend well to your network. So stay in touch with people that maybe can’t give you business now, but they’re your fans, you know, they’ve worked with you in the past, they know you, they trust you, they know you’re credible, stay in touch with them attend to that network. And then I like to say, and others have called me a net Weaver, don’t just network, see how you can cause relationships to happen across your network, what I call net leaving, because great things will happen. That’s how you and I met actually. And so make sure that that tending to the network and working to net weed that you continue to do that and give time toward that. Look for silver linings. One odd silver lining from this whole disruption was I was able to have more time to take care of an ailing mother that I wouldn’t have had before. And, you know, so take advantage of the disruption to your personal advantage and to your family’s advantage whenever you can, and value that. Look at your expertise, your content, and see what you can do to refresh it. During that time. You know, the gift of time, even though it takes away some income, take advantage of that gift of time to reposition and reimagine and reframe what you’ve done and what you’ve done well, so that when you come out of the disruption, you’ve got some fresh material and fresh insights. explore other things you’re passionate about, like I did with the gift giving and see if there’s an intersection there, you may never have imagined an intersection with your hobby or with, you know, a family business or whatever it might be. But give that a shot, take a look at it and just see what might come out. Great

 

Alastair McDermott  23:01

advice. Okay, so let’s say so, just to recap on on some of this. You were in an industry, you had a vertical specialization in the healthcare industry. And what you were selling was less important than the urgent firefighting that they had to do. And that’s what was disrupted. Yeah,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  23:24

they were just they were desperate to stay focused on day to day, and even though, you know, patient experience, impacts quality and safety and all those things. They just didn’t have the capacity to attend to it.

 

Alastair McDermott  23:39

Yeah, so maybe calling it a luxury would be wrong. But it certainly was a

 

Diane S. Hopkins  23:45

luxury. No core

 

Alastair McDermott  23:47

activity. Yeah,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  23:48

non completely foundationally core.

 

Alastair McDermott  23:51

Yeah. Okay. And so I know that maybe we’re mixing metaphors here. Now, I know that Perry Marshall uses the analogy of of bleeding neck, he talks about look for clients who have a bleeding neck, as in somebody who who desperately needs your help, and they make for the best lines, the best people to work with. And in your case, the problem was they didn’t desperately need what you had at the in the circumstances that they were in. We all

 

Diane S. Hopkins  24:20

had bleeding necks that’s here, when you have a bleeding neck, you will also have a bleeding budget. And so and when you’re having, you know, when your core nursing staff are leaving in droves, either because of burnout and and the stress of the pandemic or because they didn’t want to be vaccinated. You You You can hardly keep the doors open. So all these other things and that’s also affecting your ability to pay for anything

 

Alastair McDermott  24:50

else. Yeah, and by the way, Karina says great advice day on which appreciate a great podcast. So thanks for that, Karina. Okay, So what you did next was, you look to adjacent industries to see, can you sell the same service to people in the same same industry as in different industries, but just adjacent to where you are right now, the next thing you tried was taking your in person services and packaging them up in an online remote fashion. I know a lot of people do that. And it was it was a smart play. And in fact, that’s the reason why I had an incredibly busy 2020. Because I was in web design and online marketing. And so I had an incredibly busy time, when I know a lot, a lot of people who I was talking to her saying, oh, you know, I’m bored, we’ve got nothing to do right now. And I was thinking, like, I’m working 16 hours a day. So I had over 400 calls in 2020, and most of them in in a nine month period. And all of those were one hour calls, or most of them were one hour calls as well. So it wasn’t like it was a short thing. So very busy for me, because a lot of people were doing what you did, which was go online, then the next thing that you checked was you tried looking outside, more on outside the industry and outside your country. So you look to international markets. And he also looked further afield to different industries. And you also get some volunteering, that’s an interesting one, and a good way to get experience on network as well. So

 

Diane S. Hopkins  26:22

stay fresh, you know, stay fresh with what’s happening in other industries. And in most cases, it was very satisfying because they’re doing noble work.

 

Alastair McDermott  26:32

Yeah, that’s true. Like, I volunteer at my local rugby club, which is like an amateur sports club. And I’m the the payroll there. And I know that you know, just it really helps me stay connected. Because otherwise I’d be quite happy to sit in my office and just talk to people online. Because I don’t get out and about a whole lot. I don’t really like people all that much, despite liking talking to people on podcasts. But, ya know, I get to I get to network with people and meet a lot of people in the local community because of that. And and I’ve certainly gotten business from that. So yeah, I completely agree with you there. Your your innovation is very interesting in your framework, what is what if What was what works? And maybe sometime I’ll, I’ll invite you back and dig into that a bit more, because that might be, that might be an interesting one to dig into. And then

 

Diane S. Hopkins  27:27

30 or more innovation tools, we could do a whole series, that

 

Alastair McDermott  27:31

would be really cool. Yeah, it’s certainly something I think is important for everybody in the expert experts, services space. So then you were talking about the breakdown of your revenue. Let me see if I’ve got this right, a third from revenue from referrals. A third from your existing healthcare, and then a third was coming in from books. Is that is that approximately right? No, that

 

Diane S. Hopkins  27:51

was where I was spending my time. That wasn’t the money. Okay. Right. Yeah, that’s, that’s moving forward. That’s how I’m going to organize the business.

 

Alastair McDermott  28:00

Okay. Very interesting. Okay. So, so clearly, again, just this focus on the importance of long term content creation, I guess you could call it in terms of creating books. And by the way, the books when you’re writing the books, are you also doing any element of that in terms of like blogging it or posting bits on to LinkedIn?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  28:23

I wait for the the cake to be baked. Okay,

 

Alastair McDermott  28:27

okay. I know that. Who did I have on? I had somebody on who talked about the process of, you know, basically live blogging a book, and writing a book in public as a as a very effective way to get feedback, you are putting the unbaked ingredients out, but you are getting feedback as you go and building an audience. So that’s the opposite approach. Okay, so were there any mistakes that you made along the way? You know, while all this was going on, for you feel okay, that was, you know, I shouldn’t have done that, or I made a mistake there. Was there any mistake or failure that you can tell us about?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  29:04

I guess, not realizing how serious it was earlier. But again, whoever went through a pandemic before. So if I could fix something, I would have rallied the alarm a little earlier to try to to look at some new things because I kept thinking, and I must say, my clients could say, oh, we just need three months, you know, so I believe that.

 

Alastair McDermott  29:32

Yeah, they they didn’t know either. And they’re, they’re trying to be optimistic. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And so I guess that’s the that’s the danger of optimism as well. So I am an optimist. I think I’m an optimistic realist, but I am an optimist. So I

 

Diane S. Hopkins  29:51

think I’m the same. And one thing you just reminded me that I forgot to mention was when you have this disruption and maybe some downtime in your Typical slow of client work and assignments, take advantage of, of training. I think I did four webinars a week, mostly in healthcare, but in non healthcare there, you know, you in your email box, you get invited to how many webinars, you know, a day. And so I just went at them and got smarter by each one, I took some, you know, other classes online. And so some of it, you’ll never use, but you’re getting smarter, you’re stimulating your thinking, and that one thing leads to another and you never know how that will benefit your

 

Alastair McDermott  30:37

great, great advice. And if I like I was talking to people during the pandemic, who did have that downtime. And like, I thought it was a perfect time to get into content creation, you know, buy some video equipment, some audio, like a decent microphone and and start, you know, start a YouTube channel or start experimenting, figuring out that kind of thing as well. I think that’s a great way to go. I don’t know if, if, if that kind of situation is gonna happen again, ever. But if it is, then I think that’s a good way to go with it. Okay, let’s talk about authority. What is the number one tip that you would give somebody who wants to build authority,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  31:14

right? As much as you can, wherever you’re comfortable. Take the thoughts on the concepts and the observations that you’ve got inside you and get them out. They’re not doing you any good sticking inside you and staying in your brain. And you net you may, you know, there are times when you have self doubt that is, is this effective? Is this valuable? You won’t know till you get it out and start sharing it. So commit to time to do that. And if you’re not a typical writer, and you’re worried about writing, partner up with someone who can get it out of you. Great,

 

Alastair McDermott  31:50

great advice. Is there a business book or resource that’s been important for you?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  31:56

Well, one of my mentors who I’ve had the pleasure to meet a few times and work with his company is Tom Peters, the wonderful business, you know, number one business author, and his latest book is called extreme humanism. So Tom has shaped much of my work and much of my thinking in my career. His current book is extreme humanism, I would definitely recommend that and I’d recommend any of his books to get you to stretch your thinking to be much more creative while staying at the same time.

 

Alastair McDermott  32:30

Love it. And what about fiction? Do you read any fiction? Or do you? Do you have a preferred TV or movies?

 

Diane S. Hopkins  32:37

I read mostly nonfiction. But my, I guess the thing most recently I’ve been on with Yellowstone. So

 

Alastair McDermott  32:44

yeah, that’s a great show. I’ve been enjoying that too. Awesome. Well, Dan, where can people find you if they want to learn more,

 

Diane S. Hopkins  32:51

go to experience e x p ers dotnet. And you can see mostly my health care stuff that you see the books, and you can contact me through there.

 

Alastair McDermott  33:03

Super, um, all of those links will be in the show notes in this episode. Diane Hopkins. So thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s great to chat to you. And like this is like, this is a really super interesting story. So I appreciate you coming on and kind of giving us the whole backstory and talking about the tough times that you had. This

 

Diane S. Hopkins  33:21

was great. And it’s my last show or appearance for this wonderful, crazy year we’ve been in. And so I wish you the best for profitable and exciting wanting 24. Awesome.

 

Alastair McDermott  33:32

Thank you. Thanks for listening, I know that you’ve got a choice of podcasts and shows that you can listen to. So I really do appreciate your time and your attention. If you did find this episode interesting. I would truly appreciate if you could take 30 seconds to rate the show in your podcast player or even leave a text review. It won’t take you long but it has a huge impact on the growth of the show. And it also helps to motivate me to continuing to do it. So it’s right where you’re listening to the show. You can also find a link in the show notes which will take you to rate and review. Thank you again. See you in the next one.

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