How to be a Remarkable Keynote Speaker and Grow Your Business by Selling from the Stage

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All right, all right, all right, welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Steve Lowell.

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He is a keynote speaker, a public speaker, who also taught thousands of other professionals how to speak from the stage.

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Welcome to the show, hey Eric.

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Thanks for inviting me.

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Happy to be here.

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We really appreciate you making the time.

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So why don't you start off by sharing a minute or two more about who you are and what you do, because I think it's pretty remarkable that you've spoken thousands of times from the stage.

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Sure.

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Okay, the reality is I've actually been on stage in front of a live audience since the age of six, so that's 55 years ago.

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So that's a long time ago.

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And as a child I was actually a musician.

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I was a guitar player and by the time I was in my early teens I had my own band, but I was never the singer, I was just a guitar player and I was the front man, like I was the guy out front doing all the audience stuff.

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And then by the time we were in our late teens, we had traveled the country and we'd have done all right.

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But it was time to move on.

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Because in the music business, eric, I don't know if you, but there's this old adage that kind of says you're either eating steak or you're eating Kraft dinner, and there's not much in between.

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And we were eating Kraft dinner and steak was nowhere to be seen.

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And so what happened was I was fascinated by Zig Ziglar.

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I saw a videotape by Zig Ziglar and I was fascinated by this guy.

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He's on the stage, he's having a whole lot of fun, he's got no equipment to haul around, he's got no band mates that are doing drugs, his audience isn't drunk and all he's got to do is say stuff, and that's a great job right there.

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So I started to learn how to become a professional speaker.

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I studied with the Dale Carnegie Training Organization way back then, so I started to go out on my own and I've been doing that ever since, training speakers all around the world ever since then, and growing my business and marketing has always been a very interesting part of that process, which we're going to talk about, I'm sure, and so that's how I got into the speaking business.

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In fact, what I tell people, eric, is this, and this isn't too far from the truth when I finished my music business, it got down to the point where I was just doing a solo show, just me and my guitar, and I was doing some singing and people would come up to me and they'd hear me sing.

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And they'd come up to me and they'd say, steve, maybe you should just say the words and, and.

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So that was a pretty good hint that I wasn't going to make it in the music business.

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So I turned to speaking and I've been doing it all my life.

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That's awesome.

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I also have a great love for music, but have no talent for performing it myself, so I know that.

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I know that that vibes, but I think what you've accomplished is great, and I think it's also great that you can speak to audiences who aren't drunk.

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That's probably a super helpful.

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Now I can do both, so why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the marketing you've done that you're most proud of.

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I discovered that one thing that I could do is that I can get in front of an audience and I can get them to want to hire me, and so I thought, okay, that's marketing, I can do that.

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So I spent most of my career not doing a lot of outbound marketing.

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We did some, but most of the marketing that I was doing was to get me on a platform so that I could market from the platform to these audiences and grow my businesses that way, and I did that forever, and my wife and I have traveled the world doing that up till COVID and interest, and so that's the marketing that worked is I learned how to find the stages, get on those stages and turn those stages into into a business opportunities.

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Because what I found about the principles of marketing the way they applied there is this I learned that whenever you market yourself and that includes getting in front of an audience and speaking you're either positioning yourself in one of two ways, and really there are only two.

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You're either positioning yourself as somebody they need or somebody they don't, and marketing is very, very similar to that.

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We're inundated with all kinds of marketing messages, and so when I look at billboards, I look at email ads and I look at all the things that we get bombarded with every single day.

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What I've noticed is that every one of them are positioning themselves in that moment either as somebody I need or somebody I don't, and that happens in the blink of an eye.

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Oh, that sounds interesting.

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Maybe I need that, and 98% of it I just brush off.

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And speaking is the same way Whenever you get in front of an audience.

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We need to know how to position ourselves as somebody they need instead of somebody they don't, and so that was very successful for me.

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I learned how to do that, and that's part of what I teach people to do now.

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That's great, and I do agree that with speaking, there's different business models.

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Some people like to speak just to get paid for that time, but a lot of people like to speak so they can sell from the stage, and that is that.

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Speaking itself is one of the best forms of marketing.

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Is that what you're saying?

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Oh, a hundred percent, and so if we can dig down into that just a little bit, so yeah, we take the speaking world in terms of monetization, and we take that world and we break it up into two very broad categories, which you have done.

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One category is going to be the paid speaker.

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You go, you speak, you get paid.

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You go to the next one and there's marketing involved there and the marketing that's involved, there is really sales.

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You have to market to the event planners, you have to market to the speakers bureaus, you have to market to the speaker agents.

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You have to market in that space, and that means they're going to check out your website.

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It's got to be a kick-ass website.

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There has to be videos on there that are top-notch, there've got to be recommendations and referrals and, as testimonials and samples, the marketing is massive on that side, so the investment in that business is substantial.

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Then there's this other side, and you refer to it as selling from the stage, and that's how I refer to it, and in that site there is marketing too, but the marketing is.

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But the marketing is different, because the marketing is basically get me in front of your audience and I'll sell, and so I don't have to really market.

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I have to invest in the marketing on that side like I did on the other.

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So years ago I was playing in this space where I was being paid to speak, and then I moved away from that and now I'm in this other space where I don't get paid to speak anymore, and so I will speak at places, and not only will I not get paid to speak, but oftentimes, eric, I will pay to get on those stages.

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We've paid as much as $50,000 to get on a stage in front of the right audience for 20 minutes, because I know I'm going to make multiple times that in the revenue that I can sell.

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And so where the marketing comes in, there is getting the reputation of being somebody who can get on the platform and generate business.

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And then what I can often do is take some of the business that I generate and I can give a commission to the organizer of the event, and there are so many advantages to that side because there's so much revenue to be earned.

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The audiences are so much more receiving because usually they're driven by passion and love of their craft and we're over here on the paid side.

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A lot of them are corporates and associations and they're being paid to be there.

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But on the speak to sell side, the audiences are engaged and they're passionate and they're fun and it's just such a much easier space to play.

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And one of the big misconceptions is that you need to be able to present a high stress, a high impact, high pressure offer and you don't.

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If you market yourself properly on that platform, then the business just comes to you.

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Some of the best companies that I've worked for have taken this as far as, in terms of selling from the stage, that they wouldn't actually go to a conference or trade show unless they had a platform, a chance to speak in front of the group, because otherwise the ROI wouldn't be there.

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But when they had a chance to speak in front of the group and to win their hearts and minds sell from the stage, if you will that's when they got the best results.

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So I think quite a lot of people take this approach right.

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Yeah, I actually come from the professional speaking world, so I'm the past president of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and I'm the past president of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and I'm the past president of something called the Global Speakers Federation, and so in that world of professional speakers, I am like a bad guy Because you're not even allowed to say the words sell from the stage.

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It's taboo, it's oh.

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You never do it, and for years, I was like the bad guy because I was doing everything that everybody else frowned upon.

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But that's changing, and so what we're seeing now is a lot more, especially since COVID, eric, because a lot of these people who were, they were booked out for a year and a half in advance, and that's how they made their living from stage to stage.

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And on March 20th 2020, every single one of them was unemployed because every event in the world got shut down for two years and so they had nowhere to go.

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So a lot of them have learned to come to the dark side a little bit and learn how to generate revenue by doing that.

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But my advice to people listening to this if you're even thinking about getting into the speaking world, is, really consider learning how to generate business through speaking more than trying to earn a speaker's fee.

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It's very limited, the barriers of entry are excessively high, it's very risky, it's exhausting, it's not as glamorous as a lot of people think it is, but on the other side, if you can learn to generate business when you're speaking, then you can focus your marketing on getting on those stages and that's where you're really going to be able to shine if you develop the skills to do that.

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As a marketing leader, it's almost always been my job at the companies I've been at to get the CEO and the executives of the company speaking slots at events.

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Often I've had a person on the team whose job it is to help write these speaker proposals and to pitch events on having our executives speak at them, and it's something that can be achieved but it takes some elbow grease.

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But also I've noticed that most really good executives they want that.

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They want to speak.

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I worked for one CEO and when we were talking about PR, I said what's your benchmark of success for PR?

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He's like I want you to get me a speaking slot at Davos and I was like I'll get right on it.

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It's like game high.

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But I think that most executives do realize this and want to speak, but the process of getting them the speaking slots is often requires some work.

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So have you seen, have you experienced that?

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A hundred percent.

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Oh yeah, of course, speaking spots at large events are coveted real estate and it's definitely enormous amounts of work and it's all marketing and positioning to get on those stages.

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But there is one way that helps you rise to the top pretty quickly at most events and that is sponsorship.

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Sponsor the event, sponsor something, and you say part of the package is I get 15 minutes on the stage, that's part of the sponsor package.

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And with all the money we spend on paying staff and completing all of those speaker proposals and all the collateral that we have to send out and all the time on the follow-ups and the calls and the emails and the meetings, like all of that, take some of that money.

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Sponsor lunch, sponsor a breakout session, sponsor something at the event in exchange for 15 minutes on the stage, and that's the easiest way to get on those stages.

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It's a much better use of sponsorship dollars than some of the branding options, like signage, that are available to you, because you actually get to get your message out.

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When we talk about selling from the stage, there's definitely a certain finesse to that, because a lot of people don't want you to be just doing a sales pitch.

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I was at an event two weeks ago where literally someone from a relatively big company I won't call them out by name, but literally read a sales script and it was just painful to watch.

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So I think there's an art and finesse to doing it versus doing like a hundred percent thought leadership.

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At the other end of the spectrum you have reading a sales script from a teleprompter.

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Where on that spectrum do you recommend people fall to to get results on selling from the stage?

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How do you execute on that finesse?

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I guess I'd have to say in the middle if I'd have to pick a spot.

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But here's the understanding that speakers need to have to sell from the stage.

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It's not about a sales pitch at all, it's about positioning.

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And, just like marketing, it's about positioning and what you have to do is know how to have a message.

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First of all, craft a message that has a very specific outcome, and that outcome is you need the audience members to go, I need that one, I need to talk to that person.

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That's the outcome.

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In order to get to that outcome, the response that drives that outcome is generally this it's generally something like I've never heard it like that before, or no wonder I've got this problem, or oh, I finally get it.

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That's what we have to get the audience to respond to.

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That's the response we want.

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So, knowing that the outcome is I want to work with that one or talk to that one, and the response that drives that outcome is oh, I've never heard it like that before.

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We have to build tactically the presentation so that it arrives at that response and that outcome.

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And reading a sales pitch and doing a high pressure sales offer just doesn't work anymore, and it used to, and there are some people who can still do it.

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I can do it.

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I do it.

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I don't do it very often.

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Usually, what happens is because I know how to get to that outcome now.

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So what we need to do is understand that when we craft this presentation, we need to know the outcome, and the outcome is going to be I want to work with you, not necessarily buy now or reach into my pocket and get my wallet out.

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It's I want to talk to you.

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And what drives that outcome is I never thought of it, I've never heard it like that, I've never seen it like that.

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No wonder like we need to get the audience to have this change of perspective on something.

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So then we craft the talk to reach that objective, and then we have to learn how to deliver it.

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And so the concept that I teach people and I'll share with you and your audiences is this we need to get past their intellect and into their imagination, because what happens is we need the audience not just to know about our stuff, whatever we're selling.

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We need to get them to imagine how it's going to affect their lives or their business or whatever it is that the product addresses.

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And in order to do that.

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It's a heck of a lot more than thought leadership.

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It's a lot more than information, it's a lot more than a sales pitch, and so this is where most people fall short is the thought leaders will come up and they'll say I'm going to explain my concept to you, and they spend too much time explaining the concept, and there is no compelling the audience to act.

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Or the experts, they will say let me teach you what I know.

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And there is no, they don't compel the audience to act.

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And so we need to know what is the desired outcome that we're after.

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How do we craft our presentation tactically to get to that outcome?

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outcome that we're after.

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How do we craft our presentation tactically to get to that outcome?

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I like this a lot.

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People need to see the expert in the speaker.

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They need to capture the imagination.

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It's not about a sales pitch, like you said.

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It's really just about I want to work with that person that's speaking because they're brilliant.

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They made me think about a different and I think capturing people's imagination like that is threading the needle that gets people really excited, right.

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Yep, a hundred percent, and it's all about that change in perspective.

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So I'll give you a quick example.

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When I'm in front of an audience this is something I always do, and I do it all over the world and I'll ask the audience this question.

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It's one of the first things I'll do.

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I'll say put up your hand if you or somebody is in the market for a tennis instructor, okay.

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And so let me ask you, eric, are you or is anybody in the market for a tennis instructor?

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No, okay, and this is what happens in the audience.

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Nobody's hand ever goes up.

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Once in a while, one hand goes up.

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So what I'll do is I'll tell the audience let's say I don't know, it was a hundred people.

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I'll say something like this I'm going to bet that at least 30 of you are in the market for a tennis instructor right now, or somebody who is.

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And I'm going to bet, eric, that somebody who's in the market for a tennis instructor.

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And so you're wondering okay, how are you going to prove that?

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So then I tell about this guy named Brian.

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Brian came to me, I don't know about 18 years ago, and he says Steve, I'm going to all the networking events.

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I'm shaking all the hands, meeting all the people making all the phone calls, and he says I'm just not getting the business that I need.

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And I said, brian, what do you do?

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He said I'm a tennis instructor.

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So we see what the market is for tennis instructors.

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Whenever he says that he's positioning himself as somebody they don't need instead of somebody they do.

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So we taught Brian a few fundamental principles.

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We taught him about that, about positioning.

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And so if you saw Brian today and you said Brian, what do you do, he would say something like this.

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He'd say you know how sometimes kids have so much energy and they're bouncing off the walls, they're running around, they're making all kinds of noise and the parents get so frustrated because they got no idea what to do with these kids.

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He'd say what I do is I take kids of any age, I bring them on a tennis court, I absolutely exhaust them and then I hand them back to their parents.

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And then I asked the audience put up your hand If you just might know somebody who might be in the market for a tennis instructor.

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And then all of a sudden, half the hands in the room go up.

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And so is it possible that there might be somebody in your life who just might be in the market for a tennis instructor.

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What that does, that little example.

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What it does, eric, is it changes the audience's perspective.

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It changes their perspective on the nature of their world, the nature of their condition.

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It helps them look at their problem from a different perspective, a different understanding.

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And when we can do that, when we can shake their beliefs, we can rattle their paradigms, we can make them question that which they believe to be true.

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That's when they go.

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I need to talk to that one, and so that's what we need to try and do, if I can, just if I.

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If I said to you okay, but what if I told you that to try and do?

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If I said to you okay, but what if I told you that Brian was the best tennis instructor in the world?

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That's not going to change your answer.

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What if I told you that he was trained by the top tennis players in the whole world?

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That's not going to change your answer.

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You're not in the market.

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But if I change your perspective on it now, you all of a sudden might be in the market In a matter of a couple of seconds.

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I can take the audience from.

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I'm not interested to tell me more.

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That's the purpose of marketing.

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The purpose of marketing is to position yourself as somebody they need instead of somebody they don't.

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Exactly.

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I love it.

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That's fantastic.

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You've trained thousands of people to be a speaker, of people to be a speaker.

00:19:36.118 --> 00:19:39.714
In addition to what you just shared, what else do you teach people in order to be a great keynote speaker, a great public speaker?

00:19:41.518 --> 00:19:44.286
You're asking me to describe the universe and all that is in it.

00:19:44.286 --> 00:19:45.196
Sure.

00:19:45.598 --> 00:19:46.060
Let's have it.

00:19:46.494 --> 00:19:47.257
Yeah, so let's have it.

00:19:47.257 --> 00:19:48.781
Yeah, okay, yeah, because we got a few minutes left.

00:19:48.781 --> 00:19:51.494
So the thing is, eric, that everybody's different, right.

00:19:51.494 --> 00:19:56.585
So what happens is when people come to me, and it's usually because they have a specific outcome.

00:19:56.585 --> 00:20:00.421
So some people want to generate business and then some people don't.

00:20:00.421 --> 00:20:03.244
Some people just want to evangelize a cause.

00:20:03.244 --> 00:20:05.403
They want to get buy-in for something.

00:20:05.403 --> 00:20:07.201
Some people just want to share their story.

00:20:07.201 --> 00:20:14.298
Some people are survivors and want to share lessons with the world.

00:20:14.358 --> 00:20:18.737
So they all have different objectives, and so the first thing we do is find out what is it you really want to achieve?

00:20:18.737 --> 00:20:23.126
And then from there, we find out okay, what have you already got in place?

00:20:23.126 --> 00:20:24.718
Do you have stories?

00:20:24.718 --> 00:20:25.559
Do you have skills?

00:20:25.559 --> 00:20:26.762
Do you have any speaking experience?

00:20:26.762 --> 00:20:27.464
Where are you?

00:20:27.464 --> 00:20:36.625
So we find out where the person is, and then we curate what they have at their disposal, and so it's about what skills do they already have, what knowledge, what ideas.

00:20:36.625 --> 00:20:43.568
So there's a lot that goes into determining the direction of building the speech for this person, for every person.

00:20:44.194 --> 00:20:49.528
Once we establish all that, I walk them through how to craft a presentation or a speech that is unique to them.

00:20:49.528 --> 00:20:57.282
I call it your signature talk and then, with our higher end clients, we put them through platform skills training.

00:20:57.282 --> 00:21:06.019
So teach them how to use body language, teach them how to use their voice, teach them how to use the real estate on the stage, teach them how to engage an audience, teach them how to use humor, teach them how to do all the things that speakers are expected to do.

00:21:06.019 --> 00:21:19.048
But everybody's different, and so we have programs for one-on-one high-end stuff that's really expensive, and then we have programs for people who are just entering into this world that are not expensive and kind of everything in between.

00:21:19.048 --> 00:21:24.426
So we basically, to answer your question we teach them what they need to know to get where they want to go.

00:21:26.974 --> 00:21:31.577
I think a lot of people really want to be a speaker and they want to share their story.

00:21:31.577 --> 00:21:40.262
I think they everyone needs some components of what you were explaining, whether it's the platform training or whether it's how to build their signature talk.

00:21:40.262 --> 00:21:45.846
I think that a lot of people struggle because they don't know how to put those pieces together.

00:21:46.645 --> 00:21:47.767
Right, yeah, they don't.

00:21:47.767 --> 00:21:57.972
And sadly, there are a lot of things being taught out there that simply are outdated, old, tired, dusty and don't work anymore.

00:21:57.972 --> 00:22:05.481
And oftentimes I'll get clients come to me and I need to unteach them a lot of things they've been taught.

00:22:05.481 --> 00:22:12.905
And the reason this happens, eric, it's like this if you were going to learn to fly a plane, would you rather have somebody who's been a pilot teacher?

00:22:12.905 --> 00:22:16.354
Or somebody who's been a boat captain for 30 years, right?

00:22:16.354 --> 00:22:23.678
And so what happens is we get people come to us and they say I took speaker training from this person who was a former actor.

00:22:24.726 --> 00:22:26.249
Acting and speaking is not the same.

00:22:26.249 --> 00:22:28.012
Or I took speaking.

00:22:28.012 --> 00:22:33.336
You know, my last speaker coach was a teacher for 40 years and stood in front of an audience for 40 years.

00:22:33.336 --> 00:22:44.545
Or my last speaker coach came from Toastmasters, which is a big organization, and I'm a big fan of Toastmasters, but you're not going to take Toastmasters training and turn it into professional speaking.

00:22:44.545 --> 00:22:54.940
So the point is that what needs to happen is, if you're going to learn how to speak and generate revenue, you need to learn from somebody who speaks and generates revenue.

00:22:56.925 --> 00:22:57.990
Yeah, 100%.

00:22:57.990 --> 00:22:58.953
That makes a lot of sense.

00:22:58.953 --> 00:23:08.355
It's interesting that speaking is such a big part of marketing potentially for organizations.

00:23:08.355 --> 00:23:24.826
We talked about incorporating as part of your sponsorship package at trade shows and conferences, but also in like roadshow events and companies that I've had that have done roadshow events where people are speaking to smaller groups of people, perhaps 50 or 100 people at a time.

00:23:24.826 --> 00:23:27.588
But 80% of meetings are small meetings.

00:23:27.588 --> 00:23:39.307
But if you can get up in front of a small group of, say, 50 people and you can command the room and make a great talk, you can win a lot of new business and customers from that.

00:23:39.307 --> 00:23:47.054
It's not always about speaking in front of thousands of people, right, thousands of people is fun, but this is the lesson.

00:23:47.134 --> 00:23:49.666
You're a hundred percent and this is a lesson that I learned.

00:23:49.666 --> 00:23:54.435
I like having a lot of people and I'm never getting the a lot of people that I like.

00:23:54.435 --> 00:23:59.701
Like I see Tony Robbins up there and he's got like thousands of people and my ego says I want to do that.

00:23:59.701 --> 00:24:08.330
I've never been able to do that, but what I have learned is that you're right, that it's the size of the audience is almost irrelevant, because we did.

00:24:08.330 --> 00:24:34.666
I did a whole series of webinars during COVID, and in one of those webinars one person attended just one, and so it was a prerecorded thing that I had done, so of course, I let the recording go, and that one person ended up resulting in $200,000 of business from that single person, and so that really taught me a lesson that I always knew that we were able to generate big revenue from small audiences and we got quite good at that.

00:24:34.666 --> 00:24:45.153
But even in the virtual space, I understand now if I've got 10 targeted people in this audience, that is far more valuable than 5,000 non-targeted people.

00:24:46.173 --> 00:24:56.318
But I'm curious in all of the speaking you've done, what is one of the most interesting things that's happened while you've been speaking?

00:24:56.318 --> 00:24:58.601
Fun, bizarre, anything.

00:24:58.601 --> 00:24:59.260
I'm just curious.

00:24:59.641 --> 00:25:02.103
Sure, yeah, okay, there are many, but here's the first one that comes to mind.

00:25:02.103 --> 00:25:22.800
So in a lot of the bigger events where there's a stage, not thousands of people, but, let's say, three, 400 people, 500 people, something like that and a lot of those events, the stages are pieces put together, right, and then they put the pieces together and then there's a stage and a lot of those pieces are on wheels.

00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:27.593
So they wheel those pieces in, stick them together and then they lock the wheels.

00:25:27.593 --> 00:25:30.519
So I got called out to speak.

00:25:30.519 --> 00:25:33.515
I got introduced to speak on one of those stages.

00:25:33.865 --> 00:26:00.972
I was the first speaker of the opening keynote and I walk out onto the stage and I stood with my right foot right on the crack, which I know now I don't do anymore but the wheels of those pieces were not locked and the stage separated and my foot went right through the gap and so I'm standing there you can't really see me very well, but I'm standing there with one foot through the gap and the other leg bent and I hadn't said anything yet.

00:26:00.972 --> 00:26:04.328
And this was one of the most magical moments, eric.

00:26:04.328 --> 00:26:10.210
This is where the universe just delivers in perfect timing, because what came to me was don't mind me.

00:26:10.210 --> 00:26:21.182
It's just a stage I'm going through and of course, that place erupted and it ended up being a really great talk because I won the audience over within two seconds and it almost looked like it was done on purpose.

00:26:21.182 --> 00:26:26.096
It was not done on purpose and fortunately something cool came to me and it worked out really well.

00:26:27.785 --> 00:26:28.326
That's great.

00:26:28.326 --> 00:26:39.939
What would you share as advice for people who want to go down this path, who want to figure out how to be a good keynote speaker, a good professional speaker?

00:26:39.939 --> 00:26:49.656
Obviously, they can get in touch with you and talk about the services that you have, but in addition to that, what else do people consider doing to get going doing this?

00:26:49.986 --> 00:26:53.055
Yeah, okay, cool, I do like that question and I do have an answer.

00:26:53.055 --> 00:27:00.153
And the answer is this you need to decide do you want to follow your passion or do you want to make money?

00:27:00.153 --> 00:27:05.711
Because oftentimes those two things diverge and sometimes they converge.

00:27:05.711 --> 00:27:18.396
But you know, if we talk to people who have a passion for you know, for helping a certain population get over a certain struggle, and that's very admirable, but chances of them monetizing that are next to nil.

00:27:18.396 --> 00:27:24.670
And so the question you need to answer yourself is do you want to follow your passion or do you want to generate revenue?

00:27:24.670 --> 00:27:32.099
And sometimes a choice has to be made, and usually not always, but usually people follow the path of.

00:27:32.099 --> 00:27:36.315
Some of them go down the passion path first I'm going to make it happen, I'm going to make it work.

00:27:36.315 --> 00:27:39.056
Then they find out that nobody's interested in paying them.

00:27:39.056 --> 00:27:42.894
Now people will listen to their message, but nobody will pay them for the message.

00:27:42.894 --> 00:27:45.625
Then they think, okay, we've got to do something that makes some money.

00:27:45.625 --> 00:27:48.651
So you need to first get your expectations in order.

00:27:48.651 --> 00:27:54.711
If you have something you are absolutely passionate about, you ought to ask the question is this actually monetizable?

00:27:54.711 --> 00:27:59.451
Is somebody actually going to pay me to do this, and many times the answer is no.

00:27:59.825 --> 00:28:04.128
And the reason I give that advice is because we hear this all the time Follow your passion, right?

00:28:04.128 --> 00:28:05.112
Have you heard that, eric?

00:28:05.112 --> 00:28:07.269
Follow your passion, find something you're passionate about.

00:28:07.269 --> 00:28:08.292
Follow your passion.

00:28:08.292 --> 00:28:09.691
That doesn't always hold true.

00:28:09.691 --> 00:28:19.445
Are you a father?

00:28:19.445 --> 00:28:19.626
Yep, yeah.

00:28:19.626 --> 00:28:20.167
And do you have a daughter?

00:28:20.167 --> 00:28:20.971
Two, and how old is your oldest daughter?

00:28:20.971 --> 00:28:21.172
17.

00:28:21.172 --> 00:28:21.372
17.

00:28:21.372 --> 00:28:25.204
Okay, your daughter's young man comes to your door to pick up your 17-year-old daughter to go on a date.

00:28:25.204 --> 00:28:32.846
Are you going to go to your daughter and say, now, kids follow your passion tonight, nope, your daughter.

00:28:32.846 --> 00:28:33.748
And say now, kids follow your passion tonight?

00:28:33.748 --> 00:28:33.948
Nope, nope.

00:28:33.948 --> 00:28:35.692
So following your passion isn't always the best advice, right?

00:28:35.692 --> 00:28:36.914
So that's what I think.

00:28:36.914 --> 00:28:41.152
If somebody is thinking of getting into the speaker world, get real about this.

00:28:41.152 --> 00:28:44.287
If you follow your passion, that's great, that's terrific.

00:28:44.287 --> 00:28:47.817
But the next question is it something people will actually buy?

00:28:50.366 --> 00:28:52.453
You might want to follow the money, like you're saying.

00:28:55.066 --> 00:29:02.529
Find something you're really good at and follow that, and of course, that brings up a whole other thing, a bunch of other things.

00:29:02.529 --> 00:29:10.436
Right, you've got to be really good, you've got to be better than the others, or at least appear to be better than the others.

00:29:11.710 --> 00:29:13.086
Because there's a lot of competition out there.

00:29:13.086 --> 00:29:16.979
Right, there's thousands of people who want speaking slots, right.

00:29:18.242 --> 00:29:36.671
Yeah, especially since COVID, because what I found is people got so used to doing this right being on the screen and a lot of people started enjoying this and they learned wow, I can do this, I just need a camera and my computer and now I can be a speaker.

00:29:36.671 --> 00:29:46.532
And so they started speaking virtually at things like virtual summits and all kinds of opportunities to speak virtually, and a lot of them like it and they say okay, now I want to go on a stage.

00:29:46.532 --> 00:29:51.653
That's fine, but the problem is that they've never actually been trained to be on a stage.

00:29:51.653 --> 00:29:58.930
And the thing that frustrates me the most is this and this is going to ruffle some feathers, I know it probably is, but that's okay.

00:29:59.211 --> 00:30:05.875
Just because you like to speak doesn't mean you should, because I meet a lot of people who are hey, steve, I've never met a mic.

00:30:05.875 --> 00:30:07.887
I didn't like, and I'm a great speaker.

00:30:07.887 --> 00:30:13.508
I speak all the time and I'm a really good speaker and I see them speak and they're just awful.

00:30:13.508 --> 00:30:23.704
Some of them are great, but most of them are just awful when it comes to learning how to actually deliver a message tactically, strategically and monetize it at the end.

00:30:25.028 --> 00:30:30.036
It's a skill, it's not just something you can get up there and wing it necessarily.

00:30:30.076 --> 00:30:31.237
Yeah, yeah and winging.

00:30:31.237 --> 00:30:34.067
It is the number one error on the platform.

00:30:35.630 --> 00:30:42.510
So what do you think is going to happen with events now that we're a couple of years past COVID?

00:30:42.510 --> 00:30:46.365
Do you think they're going to come back and be as strong as they were before?

00:30:46.365 --> 00:30:47.625
Oh, 100%.

00:30:47.665 --> 00:30:48.386
They already are.

00:30:48.386 --> 00:30:57.451
And so what happened was, when COVID happened, of course all the events, everything stopped, and then they went to virtual events, which helped people keep going.

00:30:57.451 --> 00:31:10.179
And then, when COVID ended, they shifted to what we call hybrid events, where you have a live stage and you have a virtual audience, and that turned out to be extremely problematic from many fronts, from pretty much every front.

00:31:10.179 --> 00:31:12.461
They were much more expensive to produce.

00:31:12.461 --> 00:31:24.228
Speakers hate them because now you got to prepare for the live audience and for the camera and it was just a mess and really hard to produce and deliver a good quality hybrid event.

00:31:24.228 --> 00:31:30.489
And so now hybrid events have drifted off and now live events are back in full swing, probably stronger than ever.

00:31:30.489 --> 00:31:35.679
There is an enormous amount of opportunity for speakers if you know where to find those stages.

00:31:38.025 --> 00:31:43.712
Yeah, and you think, going forward, that live events are going to continue to go back and be?

00:31:43.712 --> 00:31:54.667
For a lot of B2B companies that I've worked with, it was 30 or 40 percent of how they won their business, and so COVID was a hard turn and I think that they are back.

00:31:54.667 --> 00:32:03.471
I think it took a year or two to get budgets for travel and sponsorships back, but it seems like it's coming back now.

00:32:03.471 --> 00:32:16.114
But do you think that trajectory just continues to grow or do you think that people balance doing maybe not hybrid for the reasons you're saying, but some amount of virtual events and in person?

00:32:16.734 --> 00:32:18.018
Oh, I think they're both here to stay.

00:32:18.018 --> 00:32:26.374
I definitely think they're both here to stay, but what happens now, I think, is organizations can use their own discernment now which way are they going to go?

00:32:26.374 --> 00:32:34.316
And they'll make a decision based on what they believe is going to be the best delivery mechanism for their audience and for their desired outcome.

00:32:34.316 --> 00:32:40.884
I'll put it this way Live events are no longer hindered by the existence of virtual events.

00:32:40.884 --> 00:32:46.695
I think they coexist and I think the growth trajectory on both is significant.

00:32:48.906 --> 00:32:49.609
That makes sense.

00:32:49.609 --> 00:32:57.951
I've heard a lot of people saying that they like the virtual events because they don't have to travel and that they'll scale.

00:32:57.951 --> 00:33:11.840
However, it's very interesting to me because, being in the events industry pre-COVID, people essentially said the economics of virtual events aren't there.

00:33:11.840 --> 00:33:15.730
All the economics are in favor of the live person events.

00:33:15.730 --> 00:33:18.696
They didn't even want to consider virtual events.

00:33:18.696 --> 00:33:32.487
But I think on the spectrum, where we've got to is that people now see it as an option, like you're saying, but maybe they still index going forward a lot more towards live events, because that's where you can monetize things a lot better.

00:33:32.968 --> 00:33:39.590
Yeah, 100%, and there's an enormous number of equations that pop into that and lots of reasons that drive that.

00:33:39.590 --> 00:33:41.054
But we do both.

00:33:41.054 --> 00:33:42.297
We do live events.

00:33:42.297 --> 00:33:43.419
I speak at live events.

00:33:43.419 --> 00:33:49.448
Sometimes I sponsor live events and go and speak on their stages and we hold a lot of our own virtual events right here.

00:33:49.448 --> 00:33:50.329
So we do both.

00:33:50.329 --> 00:33:54.719
But what we don't do is we don't hold a hybrid event.

00:33:54.719 --> 00:34:02.855
We don't rent hotel space, set up the stage, get the audience, get the sound crew, get the whole thing and put a camera there so it gets live streamed.

00:34:02.855 --> 00:34:04.510
We don't do that.

00:34:04.510 --> 00:34:05.788
It's just too much work.

00:34:05.788 --> 00:34:07.134
It doesn't work.

00:34:07.134 --> 00:34:19.510
And what we find is when we live stream an event, it directly affects the live attendance and, like you said, it's the live attendance where the action is, that's where the energy is, that's where the passion is, that's where all the good things happen.

00:34:19.510 --> 00:34:27.173
On a live event with a live audience, when we can join together and just be that way On a camera, it's not the same.

00:34:28.806 --> 00:34:32.556
Yeah, I think there's also just a much better connection with people in person.

00:34:32.556 --> 00:34:39.617
Like you're saying, you can connect with the audience more than you can on a virtual platform.

00:34:39.617 --> 00:34:45.197
All right, any final thoughts you'd like to share with the audience about speaking?

00:34:45.846 --> 00:34:48.733
Well, you know we'll never cover it all, but we've covered a lot of good things.

00:34:48.733 --> 00:34:54.286
Your questions were excellent, they were really well framed and really well targeted, and I think your audience got some good value out of this.

00:34:54.286 --> 00:35:05.248
But I think if I were to give one last piece of advice, I think it would be this this is a premise that I live by, that I've lived by my whole professional life, and this is one of the first principles I try and get speakers to understand.

00:35:05.248 --> 00:35:09.775
Okay, speaking is not about a transference of information.

00:35:09.775 --> 00:35:13.360
Speaking is about a transference of emotion.

00:35:13.360 --> 00:35:15.070
And let me explain that.

00:35:15.070 --> 00:35:19.175
If I want to transfer information, that means I want you to know what I know.

00:35:19.175 --> 00:35:22.054
If that's the case, I'll just give it to you on a PDF.

00:35:22.054 --> 00:35:23.329
You can go to the bathroom and read it.

00:35:23.329 --> 00:35:23.911
You don't need me.

00:35:23.911 --> 00:35:35.791
My job is to get you to feel about my message the way I feel about my message, and now we have communication, so it's a transfer of emotion more than it is a transference of information.

00:35:38.094 --> 00:35:38.496
I love it.

00:35:38.496 --> 00:35:39.358
Great advice.

00:35:39.358 --> 00:35:42.630
Thank you very much for being with us today, steve.

00:35:42.630 --> 00:35:45.365
I encourage everyone to share this episode with your friends.

00:35:45.365 --> 00:35:48.490
They should hear this great advice in these stories.

00:35:48.490 --> 00:35:54.989
I'm going to link to Steve's website in the show notes so you guys can easily get there.

00:35:54.989 --> 00:36:01.735
Connect with him if you'd like to learn more about how he can help you be a professional speaker or if you'd like to hire him as a speaker.

00:36:01.735 --> 00:36:04.103
Steve, thanks so much for being with us today.