There's a moment in every professional's life when success starts to feel heavy. You've checked all the boxes, hit all the milestones, and yet something's still missing. That's when Dory Clark's message really starts to land. She's recognized as the number one communication coach in the world, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author, and teaches executive education at Columbia Business School.

Dori is also a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and consults for top-tier clients like Google, Microsoft, and the World Bank.

But beyond these accolades, Dory has spent years helping high-achieving professionals rethink what it means to succeed and teaching them how to think long term in a short term world.

In this conversation, we explore what it means to slow down without losing momentum, to enjoy success without guilt, and to redefine progress on your own terms.

I know you're going to love this episode.

Let's jump in.

You're known for all of the incredible professional accolades that you have,

but I think a lot of people would be surprised to know your affinity for music.

So can you tell us about that?

I think it's just such a unique thing about you.

Yeah. Thank you, Kwame. Well, I think, you know, like most of us, I started out writing extremely

angsty songs on the guitar when I was a teenager. And I said that aside for a while. But about 10 years ago,

or nine years ago, I got it in my head really quite suddenly

that I wanted to learn how to write musical theater. I had gone to a show and it just really

hit me and I woke up the next morning. I'm like, I need to learn how to do this. And I had not

done musical theater as the teenager or anything. I grew up in a very small town. We didn't even have a theater program because my school was so small. So it wasn't something that I had really been exposed to very much. So I had to start from scratch. I really had no idea whatsoever how to do it. But you know, you can you can learn a lot in nine years. And I think for me,

that's the that's the big lesson that, you know, they say that we always overestimate what we can

do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year. That is exponentially more true of 10 years.

So I have gone from really not knowing anything to actually, you know, being, I would say

fairly good, you know, better than most amateurs anyway at writing musical theater. And so

I was just sharing one of my shows just had a reading in Malmo, Sweden. Earlier this year,

a second show had a festival presentation in Waco, Texas. And my third show,

...