Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with great shows like the salesman podcast today will be focusing on how to be a long term thinker and a short term world and to drop these value bombs I've brought Dory Clark into EO fire studios.

Dory has been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world. She teaches at Duke University and her new book is called the long game and today we're talking about how to decide what to be bad at strategic patients setting aside 20% of your time how to optimize for interesting and so much more when we get back from thinking our sponsors turn your small ecommerce business into the next big thing with clavio clavio is the easy to use email and SMS platform that gives you

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Dory say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with I'm so glad to be here high

fire nation what I believe that I think most people disagree with is I think a lot of people say just casually offhand they say well it can't hurt to ask and one of my philosophies is that actually sometimes it can and I I

have developed over the years of philosophy that if you really want to build strong relationships with people especially as you're beginning to build relationships with higher higher profile folks I have a rule that you should not ask somebody for something you know a favor that involves political capital for at least a year

because otherwise oftentimes they might view you as trying to use them and I think it's a lot more important to build that relationship first so they understand that you're in it for the right reasons well you've definitely done that over the years which is why this is the

third time you've been on entrepreneurs on fire and we really have repeat guess but you are just such a bringer of value you have been for so long and today we're talking about how to be a long term thinker and a short term world and you have a

long term phrase Dory that goes a little something like deciding what to be bad at what do you mean by this absolutely well this is actually inspired by the work of Francis Fry

from Harvard Business School and and Morris they wrote about the concept in a book they did a few years ago called uncommon service where they were talking about the service industry they were trying to

question of why is it that so everybody wants to be great but obviously so many businesses out there are just meh they're just mediocre and what they discovered and I have really come to the conclusion that this

applies to all of us in our own lives and in our own businesses that the problem was that people were afraid to decide what to be bad at because if you truly want to be

exceptional you can't you know everybody's like oh yeah well I want to be great at these things and then I'll just be fine I'll be average at the other things that's not how it works if you want to be great at something you

actually need to be bad at something else commensurately and be willing to make that trade off and when you do that is where the power comes from

and I will say this actually fits right in with our little pre interview shower I was like so Dory like I know that you work

at Duke and you've been teaching there for a while like how's the basketball team going to be in your like you know what I just I don't I don't follow the team and I'm just like well you know what you

can't do everything like you can't follow the basketball team right books do this do that all over the world and see you've got to choose what you're going to be great at just like you have to decide what to be bad at

World tour ceremony and soon follid group performed with a range so we want to buy a different kind of

patient. I was, you know, I was this kind of eager kid. I always wanted to do things. I always had

kind of an entrepreneurial zeal. And it was so incredibly frustrating to have to wait that,

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