#180: Strategies For Success When Your Entire Industry Pivots

I actually love what I do here. It is so much fun. And I've been doing this now for 27 years. My bio is just a tiny old, but I started this Back when I was really young, left IBM and started this company just with little, you know, I had one child at the time. We had one child at the time and wanted more. We knew we needed something with flexibility. So we made that decision to jump into this together and hadn't looked back. It's been really, it's been fun. It's been different at times, especially now. We've gone through a lot of ups and downs with business. but absolutely have loved it.

All right, Richard, this is like the Newlywed Game, I think, because—

Do I need to go in a soundproof booth?

It's the same. Yeah, we'll decide whether you're gonna get the answer right even as we sit here. In fact, that's the best part, I think, is to have your wife sitting next to you to determine whether or not you're—

That's right, so I can hit you if it's not right.

Your answer.

She will hit me.

So Richard, what's not written in your bio that you would love for people to know about you?

Well, first I'll say something about hers is that she is truly the sweetest person I know. And that's not— That's nice. Yeah. That's not so I can earn points. I just want— I just wanted to say that.

Yeah, so I don't hit you as hard.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think the thing is the, the bio covers a lot of good things, but I think, I think it's very important to understand that the way we approach things is more like servants in our role. We try to serve our customers, we try to serve our partners in the business, and, and really that's a big push for me and has been in my career. Would you agree?

I agree. I think it helped both of us coming from IBM because we went through such strong training on customer service. And I think that helped in what we do now.

You're both ex-IBMers or former?

We're both ex-IBMers.

And that's where we met.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. So I know men had to wear the white, the proverbial white collar.

Yes, we did. White shirts, blue suits.

Yeah. Was there also that kind of a required attire for women then?

Oh, there was. Well, I mean, you just, suits were really important. I mean, we could wear dresses, but that was about it. They really wanted you to wear suits.

I still remember though, with men, casual Friday meant you got to wear a blue shirt rather than a white one.

You could wear a blue shirt.

One guy was wearing a blue shirt one day and everybody made fun of him and said, you're driving the bus today, aren't you?

I didn't know we would even cover, like hit IBM somehow during this discussion, but I'm in Maine. I'm on the central coast of Maine at the moment and right in this area of Camden, Rockport, There was a part of the IBM family, Watson and family were right up here. They spent a lot of time here, a lot of summers here, and interesting.

Yeah. It was a great company to work for. I absolutely loved it.

Well, probably the most important thing was the training.

Yeah.

Because somebody was asking me the other day, how come do you always kind of know how to approach each situation? And I said, we had it ingrained in us during that year at IBM. When we did the training, it was one full year of training. Yeah. All

right, Adam, this is a funny one. We had the phone mail police. So if your boss left you a message and you didn't return that call within an hour, you had to be called into his office.

Is that right?

Yes.

So what was, I mean, responsiveness is such a big deal, I think, in any kind of, you think about what great client experience looks like. I mean, I was an attorney for 18 years and the number one complaint, I'll ask you guys this, but I think we already gave it away. What do you think the number one complaint about attorneys is to this day? Failure to return their calls. So, you know, you got people that commit malpractice, you got people that are, you know, do negli— you know, just negligent on the job, all kinds of things. I mean, it's a very high-stress environment for lawyers, but the number one thing that gets them in trouble with the ethics boards are simply just simply not responding to people's calls or their emails and that kind of thing. So, I mean, today, do you think it's gotten better or worse? This, you know, how it is we close the open loops of communication with folks.

What's your experience?

You start, I'm gonna finish. 'Cause she's, I can tell she's got that thing going in her eye. So anyway, I would say in some ways, some people are much better than they used to be from a service standpoint, but there is still a huge gap. There's still a number of people that don't get how important it is to respond. We actually need to respond more immediately than we used to.

That's what I was gonna say. Our customers expect it more now than they ever have. The bad thing is we get clients on the weekends, at night, are looking for responses right away. So I feel like I'm online all the time.

But we also know that we're clearly a differentiator from a lot of our competitors that still believe you respond the way you did back in 1957.

We get it a lot where our clients say, I love that you're as responsive as you are.

Yeah, and more responsive than you used to be even.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. It's interesting that IBM was training that muscle, it seems, this idea of how it is that you Close those open loops with people. And

you think about it, that was 30 years ago.

Right. Well, I mean, think about this. When you speak about your IBM days, we're not talking about— it's the past tense for you two as employees there, but the company isn't in the past tense. And which is interesting because you think about the best companies in the world that are typically on this list, the Fortune 500 list. I just took a look at that list from 1955 when it was originated. And here's a trick question for you, Richard. How many companies were on the Fortune 500 list in 1955?

I would say 500.

There you go. Good man.

You can't get one past me, Adam.

Not that one anyway. Right. And here's less of a trick question, I suppose. How many of those companies do you think are around as a percentage today? I'll take an approximate.

I would say approximately 10%.

I'd say 5%.

Yeah. It's about 12%, which is remarkably close. And the longevity, like the average lifespan of a company of that magnitude in 1955 was about 60 years. So an IBM-like company. And today that number's like 18 years. So the shelf life for these, even these sort of prolific organizations has gone down. And who knows, maybe, you think about IBM still being around, still Big Blue is still out there, a blue-chip company doing cutting-edge things. Maybe it's in part because of the fact that they did require this impeccable communication.

Probably so.

Yeah, I'd say you're right.

And they spent the money on training, I think was a big deal.

They don't do that now though. That is true.

Cut back the training budget. Is that what you— Yep. Interesting. Well, I know that so many things have changed. And obviously when we're shooting this episode, we're right in the middle. I mean, I don't know where the middle of the pandemic is anymore. It's like you swim into the middle of the English Channel and you think, okay, I only got another 8 miles to go or something. It's like, we're nowhere near the middle. Who knows where the middle is anymore?

That's right. Who knows where the middle is?

Right. So it's a question of, you know, What are we doing in the position we're in? And I'd love to get a sense, maybe because perhaps some people in our community don't exactly know from the bios even exactly what you guys are up to, what your company does. So maybe share a little bit about the business that you're in, and then take us right into the belly of the beast. So you've been doing this for 27 years. Is this the worst pivot that you've seen? Is this the worst sort of market disruption you've seen in 27 years? And if not, take us through perhaps a couple of those other blips on the screen, on the radar screen you remember, and then take us right to today. And you guys can divide and conquer. that any way you like. I'm going to

leave it to you to start if you want to define, define what we do.

Go ahead, you go first on that and then I'll jump in.

Really? Are you going to slap my leg? Yeah. Okay.

So you guys are watching this get all worked out in real time. We're not even going to edit this out. It's perfect.

Okay. So anyway, what we do for a living is we connect speakers with organizations who plan meetings. That's what we do. But I would tell you that it sounds like a very simple thing to do. But we've had to pivot many times over the 27 years. You've had 9/11, you've had the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, but this is by far the most difficult pivot. Now, the thing I would tell you, and then I'll let Ang jump in, is that when we pivot, we pivot every single day, not just when there's a big challenge. In fact, I was telling people we would still be making changes like we've had to make even if we never had the pandemic. So I think that's an important thing, and I'm going to throw it to you.

No, I think so too. And I think that we've done a good job of staying ahead of the curve as far as what changes are coming and how to stay on top of things. And I think we've had to, you know, Richard, when you joined the company, it was right before 9/11.

Yeah, just a few months before.

Just a few months before. So with 4 little kids, he decided to quit his Yeah, it was

a lot of day job

to quit. It was a big one. And so it was a big risk, but we had to change quickly. And you think about, even when I started, there was no internet. So that was a big thing to overcome. So I had to, a lot of times I would go to the library and do research to find speakers. Once the internet came along, it was a lot easier, but then we had to develop a website. So we've kind of gone through big pivots year after year. It seems like every year there's something big to pivot to. And it's really, you know, it's funny, we looked at it recently and this, like you mentioned, this is one of the hardest things we've been through.

Yes.

But it's also been kind of fun because we've learned some new things. I mean, virtual has been great and I'm not sure that we would have tackled this so quickly if we hadn't had the pandemic.

Oh yeah, you're right.

But we've jumped in and we've learned a lot and pivoted quickly and had some great success.

Well, we've also understood that you don't just take what we used to do And do that exact same thing virtually. Now we need to pick out all different kinds of areas of business. And that's really important.

Say a little bit more about that, because I know in our community, the work that we do, which in part is my modeling what paid speaking looks like to people who want to become paid speakers or people that want to get on a TEDx stage, that kind of thing. So when you say that you've got to approach the virtual speaking thing differently, I think that's something people aren't quite getting yet. You know, they're used to doing a keynote. Maybe they practice that keynote 1,000 times and have delivered it all over the world, you know, and yet when you get in front of this little camera and you're on Zoom, it's entirely different environment. So

very different.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of things that you have to think about. I mean, first of all, it's making sure that you understand that you create the venue, not the client, when you're in a virtual world. So therefore you have to develop your home studio if you're a speaker. Also, it's really important to look at continuing education. as an option for your clients. So you're not just going to do a keynote, you're looking to provide information and education over a long period of time.

And I think another part of it too is you're speaking to individuals, so you're not looking at as a whole group anymore. You're speaking as to an individual, and it's almost like you're on TV instead of being in a keynote, doing a keynote.

You're talking to that guy on the couch. And you're saying, get up off the couch and do your deal. All right.

So how is it?

I think it's also more casual.

Yeah. Well, there's no lights. There's no stage differentiating the person that's in the audience member from the presenter or the expert, so to speak. There's a sort of leveled playing field of sorts that you're collaborating and in conversation, which is very different than being sort of the font of knowledge and expert with the wisdom of, you know, the pearls to share and all that kind of thing. It's different, right? It's a different environment.

Yeah, absolutely. I would agree.

So are you excited?

One other thing I was gonna say too is the sessions are a lot shorter. So instead of your standard 60-minute keynote, most of these are 30 minutes and then they're wanting more Q&A.

Right.

But, and I agree with that, but I also go back to what Adam was saying because everybody kind of puts that speaker who goes on stage on a pedestal.

On a pedestal, exactly.

You guys are like the guy, oh, I want 2 minutes with that speaker. And that's one of the big things. Now it's kind of like, well, he's just on Zoom like I am. And so it is more of an even thing. And so you have to understand how you work within that environment. Even celebrities have to understand that as well.

Exactly. So that's a paradigm shift. It's a different, just a different dynamic. You work with a lot of speakers and kind of coach them or mentor them as well to give them guidance. So what are some of the things that you've been sharing with your folks about best practices in this kind of a new age that we're in?

For me, as best practices, I'm telling our speakers to get out there and do as much as they possibly can. If you can get on Instagram Live or Facebook Live, whatever you can do to practice and practice and practice and get feedback on it.

Yeah, no doubt about that. So the social media piece that you're talking about, posting things and that kind of thing,

just to get comfortable with it. The more you do it, the easier it is, and the feedback that you get from your audience.

But also build your presentations around the fact that you're now in a virtual environment. Incorporate Q&A in it, incorporate polling in it, breakout rooms, other things that keep the audience engaged. And you wouldn't even have to do that in a normal circumstance, but now you have to do it.

The best sessions I've seen have been the ones that are very interactive.

Oh, absolutely. And, and we've also had to coach people on getting the equipment for their professional studio. A lot of people hope that all they need to do is just have their computer ready, make sure they have a camera on it, got a microphone, do their thing. Now they've got to have lights, they've got to have microphones, they've got to have green screen, everything in the ring, the light ring.

Yes.

Let's talk about some of the things that have changed, for example, the engagement piece of it. I mean, to me, engagement's always sort of a non-negotiable part of public speaking, that if you're not engaging people, they're drifting off or they're multi— you know, checking their Facebook page instead of, you know, sort of leaning into the content you're sharing. But right now, more than More than I think ever before, that process of sharing information has got to be condensed. I think you were alluding to that, that the overall time of the presentation might've shrunk from 60 minutes to 30, but the individual modules, the things that you might share, the stories you might share have also gotten to shrink. In fact, Nick Morgan was on our show a couple of weeks ago and we were just debating, is it 5 minutes before you put people into a process or some kind of an interactive exercise, or is it 10 on the outside? Do you have a thought around that component as well? How long a speaker should kind of go on doing their thing, sharing their story or their slides before they actually turn it around and make it about the people that are there with them?

I think it's a little bit difficult because I've got certain clients that want to have a prerecorded session with the speakers. So then you aren't able to have that interactive part. So you really have to have 2 speeches that you do. One that's that pre-recorded that can be as exciting as it can be but be pre-recorded. The other one that's live, you can really go from the beginning. I mean, I've seen speakers start out and as soon as they get on and they're saying, oh look, I see Susie's on from Rhode Island, and I, you know, and hey, raise your hand if you've ever been to Disney World, you know. And so they're starting out with it being interactive. So I think just Even if you do your opening and jump right in and have some interactivity is great.

But you bring up a great point, and that's the difference between a live and a prerecorded. And we're seeing probably about 60% of the presentations that organizations contract are live, and the other 40% are prerecorded. So prerecorded, you better have visuals, you know, multimedia video, etc., that gets people's attention and keeps their attention. And it can't be really long. I'd say no more than 30 minutes.

Right. And one complaint we hear is when people use slides and then they're up in the corner.

Well, the person's up in the corner, not the slide.

Yeah. So the slide's on and the person up, they don't, they don't like to see it that way.

What's the specific feedback that you've gotten about that? People would prefer to have no slides and be looking at that person. And that's for live or prerecorded or both?

In both. In both. But, but a lot of times you run into that worse probably in a prerecorded situation. Because you don't have that interaction going back and forth. But the problem is, is that I think people want to see the speaker as close to them as possible. They don't want them to be a little tiny image in the corner.

Right.

So there is some software, and I know, Adam, you're probably aware of it, that, that allows you to kind of have the PowerPoint in the corner like you're doing a news show.

Right.

Exactly.

And I think that they enjoy that more, but I think when they're seeing you on the computer screen, they're expecting it to be more like TV.

Yes, that makes sense. And if you look at some of the late-night TV hosts, they're doing the same thing, right? They're right there.

Jimmy Fallon.

Yeah, exactly. And yet they've got their graphics that are kind of, you know, off to the right or off to the left or whatever it is, like the thought bubbles and things like that.

Exactly.

Yes.

I would love to have thought bubbles.

I know.

Wouldn't that be kind of cool, right? You create your own thought bubbles as opposed to the ones that just bubble up on their own.

That's right.

That would be dangerous, perhaps.

That would be.

So these are certainly times of really Pandemic change. And you've been through that before. 9/11, people didn't fly for 9 or 12 months. I mean, so you guys were in this business at that point. Tell us a little bit about what the wisdom, if there was something you learned in that process of coming through that crisis, out the other end. I'm not strictly looking for the, it'll be all right kind of thing, even though we know when the market returned, it was all right. In fact—

Yes, it was.

I mean, it returned with greater velocity than before it ended. Were there other lessons, other things that you took away from that, that helped you to develop business resilience? Because here you are, I don't know, it's 19 years later or 18 years later, right?

I think that the one thing that really stuck with us is we just don't ever stop working. So—

No, we don't. 7 by 24.

Here's your resilience recipe. Just don't stop working.

Don't stop.

24/7, it's okay.

I think a lot of people kind of took a break during the pandemic at the beginning and just stayed home. We, I mean, we just didn't. We, we still worked constantly. We still followed up with people. We still put stuff out. We were learning. We were using that time to create some new—

You know what's great, Angela, is defining the work, right? Because as you said, kept working, but what did— what is work?

But work was a little bit different. It looked a little bit different.

Because a lot of people are super busy. I don't know how productive a lot of people who are so busy are being, but they're busy. So is it— are you talking about staying busy, staying active? Are you talking about more targeted leveraged activities?

Absolutely. More targeted leveraged activities. And one of the things that I would point out that 9/11 really taught us was to be more creative in the things that we came up with, the ways that we marketed. Obviously, that would be different than the way we market today, but we had to think outside the box and 9/11 started us thinking outside the box, and that is what we have to do now. Right. So that's a lot of that's translated to this, but yes, we don't stop working and we continue to pursue things. And that is kind of resilience over a period of time, but it's not just going after things over and over again, but it's coming up with more and more ideas. So I think the first things that we thought of when this started were not the greatest ideas necessarily in the world, but we've developed those over time because we just keep after it.

Right. So you don't have the solutions. That's right. When everything was kind of coming apart at the seams, or it seemed like it was, and you went into sort of— it was your instinct, or perhaps it's been your training, even your experience that led you to go, all right, let's go internal now. Let's think about what we could be doing differently, as opposed to sort of reacting to any number of other things that were happening around you. Is that accurate? Is that fair?

Yeah, absolutely.

This is very different than anything we had been through before, because when we went through 9/11 and the You know, the market shut down. We had certain clients that were still going strong. So there were certain industries that were not doing anything, but then there were other industries that were still booking events. The associations through the market crash still kept going strong. So

meaning the 2008, the financial crisis? Yeah,

right.

Yeah, there's still— yeah, there still was

there. Yeah, the associations were still going strong.

Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right.

Yeah, there was a lot— there was business to still be had. This was different because Everybody shut down.

Everybody shut down.

But one of the things I think that is very important through this process, so many people that we talked to during this period of time did go into this incredible panic, not even focusing on what they needed to do or what they were going to do 2 months from now or a month from now. It was all about, oh my gosh, what's happening to me right now? How is my life being impacted? And they couldn't focus outside of themselves. So it's very important for us to be very calm and be good solution providers and think out— just lost mine. I'll go

find it. I'll finish that thought. You've got to go find this earbud. Yeah, we had to think outside the box and do things different. But all of a sudden now we see this huge increase of business, and I think it is because we spent those first few months Still working as hard as we could and figuring out what to do. So now, I mean, we have seen a huge uptick on the business coming in now on clients doing virtual events. The other great thing we're seeing is clients are now ready to spend the money on the virtual events, whereas at first they really didn't want to spend much money on virtual, but now they're good.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode. of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. So we're at part 2 now of our conversation with Angela and Richard Sheldrake. And I say part 2 because right in the middle of Part 1, we had a technology glitch. I feel like it's just important to bring that up, not just to be transparent about the fact that that's the case, but so many things in our world, they can just turn on a dime. They can change in an instant. You can have a challenge in technology so quickly, like the battery just runs out of juice, so many things, or the camera for whatever reason is not working properly. What do you do in those moments? I mean, do you have a fit? Do you lose your cool or allow that anxiety to just reach another level and then you're ready Breaking out with a rash. I mean, there's so many things happening, coming at us moment to moment. So in any event, I'm so happy that we're back together. We blended our schedules, figured it out again, and we get to continue this conversation. So welcome back.

Thanks.

We're excited to be here. And it is, it's funny that you say that because it is so true with technology now and the events that we're doing. You just never know what's gonna happen.

Yep.

Yeah.

I mean, and part of it is you just go with it. You make the best of it.

Right, the things we would expect or be able to sort of manage ahead of time, When it came to standing on a stage where you did a mic check the day before you were in and you checked your slides. I mean, there's a whole myriad of things that you would just be ready to check. And now in virtual events, there are a whole series of things that are anticipated and some unanticipated glitches or problems. Like with Zoom, I think just 2 days ago, Zoom went out for like 4 hours. I mean, like 4 hours.

Yes, it did.

Yes, it did. That affected us. Yes.

I think that kind of impact would affect every single person in the country pretty much,

right?

Because everybody's got Zoom meetings, even if you don't have a presentation that you're part of still.

So why don't we use that as an example? Did you guys have some meetings going on where you had clients and, and speakers and, you know, folks that were affected by the Zoom outage?

Yeah, I mean, you can talk about even— you had a personal meeting.

I had a couple of personal meetings to talk about their big Zoom meetings. So It was kind of— it was a difficult one because I couldn't get on. And, you know, here we were talking about how they were going to run their entire event on Zoom. And I just kept saying, this is the only time it's happened. And, you know, things are going to happen. So just like, like we just mentioned, things are going to happen and you just have to make the best of it. And it doesn't matter what platform you use or what technology you use. There's always a chance that there could be a problem.

One of the things that I think I would toss in about it, because Because here recently we've found out a couple of the platform providers, not Zoom, but some, you know, people that just manage the platforms have had huge outages where they had major events that they had to cancel. And one of the things that we can all think about in this day and time is because it is virtual, I think we need to be more flexible.

Right.

And more accommodating of a situation because of that and understand that if a meeting doesn't happen, Maybe you're going to have 1,000 attendees that are supposed to be at this meeting. If it doesn't happen, to be okay that you can move it to 2 weeks from now or whatever, because those 1,000 people can come back together again. It's not like they're flying into Las Vegas or Los Angeles or London. They are just having to come back to their desk in 2 weeks to be part of that event. I think if we can get our mindset to say that it's not so disastrous, we can put up with these glitches and these Well,

and I had this happen. I had a very large, I think maybe 10,000-person audience recently that their platform went down. But you know what they did? They had kind of planned and had a backup. And so they told everybody, we're moving to Zoom. And so they sent out the Zoom link to everybody and they switched to Zoom and finished up on Zoom the rest of that day. So they did it, you know, but they had anticipated and had a backup and knew what they were doing. But you know, right now you've got speakers That are having to be their own tech people, which they've never had to do before. And so that's causing a lot more challenges because in the past they had the tech team from the company. Now they are their own tech team, or they may have a spouse or a son or daughter that's running it.

You just became their AV lead.

Yes. So it's different. So no longer do they have the big tech team from the company. So, so you just have to be flexible.

Well, I was just thinking about when they, you know, when we were watching Blake Shelton with his being remote for the television show and they had sent all this equipment to Blake Shelton.

And he doesn't know how to put it together, right?

Yeah, he didn't know how to put it together.

He's in Montana or something, right? And so he's asking people to follow the voice.

Yep. Yeah. And so there's, you know, I was just on the phone with a speaker a second ago and he said, we just got my studio where it's working. But he had to do it. It was his situation. But I think because of all that, even though people are getting better and better at these virtual events, and the virtual events are so much better than they were in March.

Oh, definitely.

But I think if people understand that we're humans that are involved in this, and that it's not as life or death as it's been, that there's a lot, I think we can deal with this a lot. And you can deal with outages and downtimes and bumps and bruises. I mean,

isn't that the thing about human beings, the condition of us on this, that we often catastrophize things, that we sort of make things disastrous in a lot of ways, right? Almost by default, like that's our default reaction to create sort of an irrational response to something. And I say irrationally because nobody is dying. Nobody has died. Right. And obviously from a standpoint of what's awful or a catastrophe or disastrous, when you analyze it, a Zoom outage or a meeting being postponed or having to switch platforms or any of those kind of things, or even postponing a podcast. I mean, it's a really tiny blip on the screen of life. You're

absolutely right. And

I think you just have to keep things in perspective.

Yeah.

I do.

So is it possible that as a result of the massive change that moved, let's just using this industry to move our face-to-face speaking to face-to-face, but virtual on Zoom or some other platform, are there benefits that you guys can start to see that are emerging out of what was and is a crisis?

Oh, definitely. Go ahead.

I would say, first of all, Well, it's more personal now to me. Virtual is more personal. We get— Adam, we get to sit here and we're talking with you. We're having this great conversation with you. It could be on the phone and it's not nearly as personal. I don't get to see the room that you're in and all those kinds of things. It's great. I think that I have met more clients in the last 6 months face-to-face than I ever saw in the last 10 years because of this technology.

Oh, me too.

So to me, that is hugely significant. As far as what's going on. So I think that is a great benefit. I also feel like that we've discovered ways in which we can tackle the whole meeting industry that we didn't know before because of this virtual space. So I think our minds have expanded and the abilities of what we can do here is much greater as well. So I mean, there is a huge amount of benefits I see from what's going on.

I do too. And I think going forward, I I think we will always see the hybrid, even when we move back to in-person meetings. I think we'll have a hybrid where you'll have the virtual as well, because people are realizing if you have an event where you're bringing in and you have, say it's a global company or you have multiple locations, there's only so many people that you can bring in because somebody has to stay back and run the office. But now you can have those people come in, the other people that are still at the office or they're international, they can log in and watch this event. So I think you're going to have that where you're going to see more of the combination in the future so that more people can attend, because I think they're realizing that so many more people are able to attend when it's virtual than when it's in person.

Oh, no doubt. No doubt.

Right. So among those benefits are inclusiveness, this inclusivity that whereas previously it might be that somebody, like you said, has to stay home and man the phones, the sales team or the client care team wouldn't get access to something that might be going on. And now there's that added, well, the ability to just bring everybody in and not sort of leave anybody behind, which is big. And it sounded too, like you were saying, that there's a lot of personal growth that's coming out of this as well. That, that concept of how to be flexible in the midst of things you can't control or the glitches of life, that's its own benefit, separate and apart from what we do for work or for pleasure.

I agree. Right. And I think also you're gonna see speakers, because they've gotten so good at this, I think that when they go to an event and it's in person and they do a keynote, they're gonna have more of the follow-on programs that they can offer virtually. So, you know, now you can say, you know, for the next 3 months on Mondays, I'm gonna, you know, send a, you know, 30-second clip, you know, just as a reminder of what you should do this week or something like that. So I think you will see more ongoing training from speakers.

Oh, there's no doubt about that. No doubt.

Because they can do that now.

Yeah.

But, you know, one little thing that's totally an aside, I think speakers are gonna be a lot nicer to the AV As well when they're on site because they've been the AV team.

They can commiserate. They've got compassion for what it's like.

When they come back again, they are going to hug the AV team.

I was always big to bring coffee to the AV team, man, because—

Yes, lots of hugs for the AV team.

The speakers so often, and I can speak for me as well, that took them for granted. The guys who were running all the lines and figuring out exactly how the sound is took those people for granted. That's not happening anymore, which is great.

Yeah, there's, there's, I mean, to me, I'm only hearing benefits. So even in the midst of what took, took the industry to, to its knees for at least a few minutes, I think, when hundreds of events that have to be canceled and deposits that have to be dealt with and speaker payments and just any myriad of other things that were going on, it was, it was ugly for a hot second.

It was ugly for a while. Yeah.

But it's good now. No. And now I think what we see is that that change has created new opportunities. Like you said, when we come back, well, we will be back in the room with people again. But to me, the benefit of a speaker that now has the ability to be in conversation as opposed to a talking head, that speaker that knows how to facilitate as opposed to just weave stories, that same speaker that might have facilitation continuity, follow-up continuity for that group so that it's not just something they, they walk away thinking, wow, that was great. But then 2 weeks later, they don't remember any of it. That these are tremendous benefits, long-tail benefits to the industry and to everybody involved.

Absolutely.

I think the speakers have had to completely redo so much of their talk because it's a different way to present. I think that they've been able to step back and put a new fresh spin on a lot of their presentations. Sometimes when you're busy and you're just going, going, going, you don't have time to stop and do that. So I think that's been good to be able to take that time and kind of focus on the presentation and how to make it more personal and add those things in. And I think that'll definitely be a benefit going forward.

Yeah. And I think they've had to uncover skills that they didn't know they had as well. You know, they— I've heard people talk to me about, you know what, I think maybe I could be an MC. Maybe I could do some of the things that I haven't done before. Maybe I can do more interactive type presentations. All these things were skills that were kind of hidden behind for them. Now they have to bring them out. In order to actually succeed in the virtual world. So that's definitely part of it.

I'd love it. You know, I didn't expect this would come out, but you're bringing up this skillset and I'd love it if you'd tell us what you think right now for people who are making that transition from either the way they used to present to this current method, or people just getting started even, that would love to know what the best practices are in terms of, let's say it's no longer, for the most part, a 60-minute or a 75-minute keynote. A lot of those keynotes have gone Gotten reduced down to sort of 45 minutes because people got this.

30 minutes, yes.

30 minutes, right? Zoom.

Maybe even 15.

That's right.

I tell you, the hardest thing in the world for me after having been speaking for more than 10 years was to do a TED Talk because the TED Talk was only 18 minutes. And some— you give me a whole day, give me half a day to work with people, that's easy, was easy compared to consolidate, create one through line, one key message that you only have 18 minutes or less to deliver. So yeah, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, it's sharpening those tools, What are some of the things that you're seeing that speakers have now discovered or are learning that is creating a more effective virtual keynote?

I think to me, it's making it more personal because you have to remember, and we touched on this before, that, I mean, you are, you're really talking to one other person. It's almost, you know, it's almost a one-on-one talk instead of to a big group when you're on, when you're doing this virtually. So you have to really change the way you think about it and make it more personal. And I think I think— oh no, but go ahead. What do you think?

No, I agree with you. I don't disagree with you at all. I think it's—

These guys are married 27 years, everybody.

I feel that vibe that he was disagreeing.

This is what a good relationship looks like after 27

years. I don't disagree. I think that is actually probably the case.

I don't necessarily agree with you, but I don't disagree with you.

Right. That's how I really thought that was coming along.

No, actually, I really do think I do agree with you. And I think it's interesting that it's about trying to establish that connection between you and who you think that one person is on the other side of the screen. And that one connection is what they have to focus on. And if you're speaking kind of across globally— Yeah, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. It has to be this one-to-one type, type deal.

It does.

And I think that's extremely important. So no, I totally agree with you.

Okay, that's great. And well, and I agree, Adam. I think having them at— you can't have your standard 60-minute keynote and that's what we've done in the past. You can't do it. The majority of them that I'm seeing are about 30 to 40 minutes and they want a longer Q&A. I mean, I think the Q&A has gotten to be such a bigger piece now because it's more interactive. And so they want just enough of a message to get that out there and kind of get you thinking, but then they want to elaborate in the Q&A. And so I would say it's really important to kind of polish your skills on that moderated Q&A and get really good at that and have really good thoughtful answers when you come back with your— when somebody asks you a question, don't just kind of spout it out, but really kind of think about what you want to say because the audience a lot of times now is coming back and saying that was their favorite part of the entire presentation was that Q&A because sometimes they don't know on the presentation if it's recorded or if it's live, but obviously in the Q&A they know it's live. And so they know that that's very personal to them. And so I think I think they're enjoying that even more. So I think that going forward, that is something we've all gotta, you know, just focus on is that live Q&A.

Did you notice while you were talking that I nodded a lot to make sure they knew I was agreeing with you?

It was great edification there, Richie. Excellent.

So what I would like to say too, on top of what she said, which is fabulous stuff, just letting you know, is that you have to get good at both your prerecorded presentation style as well as your live presentation style, because there is— the two are a little bit different. And so you have to make sure that you excel in both environments because you don't know what the clients can expect. Some will say we've got to have the whole thing live, so you got to be good at it. Or they may say we're going to do your session pre-recorded, then 15 minutes of Q&A you pop on for. You have to make sure that that pre-recorded piece just as solid as if you were live and in an interactive situation. So I think that's very important as well.

Yes.

So it has a lot to do with your energy. It has a lot to do with— because we are a company, among other things, trains people to do TEDx speaking and prepare keynotes and things. And for virtual speaking, you have to break through that proverbial fourth wall. You're looking into a camera, you're looking into a lens, it's not going to give you energy back. You can't really feel in that respect. But, and as you said, when you're doing it live on Zoom, depending on the technology, like our technology, we get to see and they get They get to see me when I'm doing it upfront, and then we have a layering of the slides. So they see the slides as opposed to just sharing a screen and only having slides that they're seeing. And that helps a little bit with that personal, that feeling of—

Yes, that helps a lot.

Personal. But when you're doing a prerecorded one, now you've got to literally imagine, as you said, I mean, it is a bit of like acting because—

It is.

You're imagining who's that person on the other side of this, that as you're looking into seeing them, And what you want is for your words to land and resonate and move them in some way, because that's— if one person's feeling it, the likelihood is others will feel it as well. And it's— It's true. It really is a wonderful— I think it's an area for growth that only will pay dividends going forward, no matter whether, as you said, whether there'll be events that'll just strictly be the way they were. And then there'll be these new events that are a bit of a hybrid. And then there'll be companies, I think, that just figure out that the economics of doing a virtual training and having virtual presentations will outweigh some of the costs of getting a venue and, you know, all that other kind of stuff that can be really daunting and expensive.

And I completely agree.

Well, and you can— and I know that we've discussed this a little bit earlier in part 1, but needless to say, you can actually upgrade the level of speaker that you have by moving it into the virtual space. So not only are you saving money But the same money could get you somebody that's a couple levels above what you could have afforded in person.

I'm seeing that a lot right now, 'cause I've got people, there's people that we have worked with for so many years and they've had these people on their wishlist and now they can have the people on their wishlist that they couldn't have before. So that's been fun for them.

Yeah. And they may not wanna leave that honestly, when we get 2 or 3 years down the road.

Right. We shall see. And I loved what you guys said about having those contingency plans. So people that are watching this now or listening to this, And knowing that you're kind of the chief cook and bottle washer, right? You're in charge of your AV and a lot of other things. It really is important to have those contingency plans worked out for when things happen, because there are multiple ways to sort of solve things, certainly if you're anticipating them. When it comes to how it is that we produce that level of continuing professional and personal resilience, we'll put it under that umbrella word for the moment, I'm a huge believer in rituals. To me, the power And the quality of our lives even is equal to the quality of the rituals that we have. And I don't mean that— I have spiritual rituals for sure, but this is not necessarily a spiritual or a religious thing when you use the word rituals. It's like, what are the things you do consciously versus you brush your teeth with your right hand because that's your habit to do it, but it doesn't mean you're consciously doing that. So do you guys have rituals that you've created for either the quality of your relationship or rituals specifically with respect to your own physical health or your business? What are some of those things? I'd love to take a couple minutes and chat about that.

You talk, you talk first and I'll agree with everything you say.

Okay.

See, that's a ritual right there. Richard agrees, he checks in, and he doesn't just agree with Angela, he makes sure he checks in to see if she'd like his agreement before he actually agrees. This is good stuff, folks.

It's working, isn't it?

It's like a relationship course happening right in the middle.

I think for both, I mean, because I mean, both of us, we are up early every day and we're at the office We get up early every day. It's just one of those things that's clockwork. I mean, we're up at the same time. We have our morning ritual, but we're here early. And a lot of times, we get home, we cook together, and we will go for a long walk with the dogs and then come back. A lot of times, we may return emails or work a little bit more and watch movies. So I think for us, and especially during this time, the time when it was very difficult, to keep that ritual going, to continue to get up early and every single day, no matter If the customers were not wanting to respond or not, you know, we still stuck with it and every day sat down and worked the same amount of hours. And I think it came back quicker for us because of those rituals that we did. I mean, what do you think? Do you think—

I totally agree. Totally agree. But I would also say too, part of our rituals a lot of times in the morning, because we're getting ready at the same time, is we'll have about 10 or 15 minutes of discussion every morning that really is about issues of the day to do with business. It has to do with what major things are we going to have to try to address today? What do we think we want to do about this? Or maybe if we're doing some kind of a podcast thing, what are we going to say today? You know, all those kinds of things is a normal thing that we will do every single morning when we're getting ready. So that is huge. And that's something that we do together. We do. And I know on the way to work, I always take that. It's only about 15 minutes. But I take that 15 minutes and always think through the major things that I have to work on with clients during that day. And it's important for me to already map out my day before I arrive here so that I can hit the ground running. So those are 2 things that I would speak to that we're involved in.

Yeah. And I would, once I get here, I have a, it's like a gratitude notebook. So I'll write down 3 things I'm grateful for. And then I'll try to, John Gordon has a great book on positive thoughts. And so I'll kind of read through that and sometimes jot that down as well. You know, and I try, I've been, this is what I've been trying to do recently, but just write a note to somebody that I think is, you know, that I would love to say a kind word to or thanks to or something like that.

By the way, I'm still hoping to make that gratitude list that she makes out every day.

I think today's your day, Richard. I mean, if I was a betting man, tomorrow first thing, it's gonna be like—

I'll put him in the notebook tomorrow.

He just agreed with me and he That's right. He's making the coffee tomorrow. We used to— the company I was running for a bunch of years, we had a special afternoon ritual. It was like a Wednesday afternoon at 3 o'clock. Everybody got a half hour and not just got a half hour, we really wanted it to be that everybody would take this time to simply send out notes of appreciation. So it was a half hour that the company basically shut down and all everybody was required to do at all was to send out these notes of appreciation to people that they didn't just otherwise Have the time. You know, we all have that intention that we want

to

be grateful for folks and share it, but we're just so busy sometimes.

Right.

So it took a little while, believe it or not. People were just a hair kind of resistant to the ideas. I'm not forcing you to be grateful. You know, you honestly don't have to be grateful at all. I mean, this might not be the right culture for you, but, you know, we'll see. But the principle was really embraced at a certain point because it was family and friends and folks that just got— when you go through your phone, just pick up your phone and start ABCing and going, oh my goodness, I can't believe I haven't spoken to this person in forever. Now, wouldn't it be nice just even though I know we're not necessarily going to get together tomorrow or something, but I just want that person to know I'm thinking and I do think about them. And it's like, boom, boom, boom, I'm thinking about you, or I appreciate you. And it's, you want to see miracles? A miracle happened. Send a few of those out randomly in a day and see

what

you feel coming back. I love that idea.

Yes. That's so nice.

Yeah.

It's fun to get notes like that too. I mean, it just makes your day when you get something like that.

Oh, it does. It does. It impacts you. But I think one of the things that's a key, which I think you brought up there, Adam, that we didn't even touch on yet, is really not just during this period of time, but anytime in order to be successful, You have to get outside of yourself. And if you stay too inside of yourself, things can only grow so much. But real true success comes when you start thinking about other people who are around you. And, and that really does allow you to be more creative and innovative.

It does.

Yes. Brilliant. Listen, I could speak to you guys ongoingly. This is just the beginning of a great conversation. So I will ask you if there's one final thing that you'd love to share, say, to that group of people out there that are maybe caught in the throes of this still? They're still white-knuckling this experience of COVID And again, there's such a gamut of where this has interacted and interfered with people's— the status quo of people's lives. So is there something— I'm kind of giving you— you hire the talent. So often you're the one matching talent. And if there's one thing I think I've heard from event producers and promoters for years is that they want those folks to leave inspired. They want them to be motivated. Yeah. They want them to have takeaways and things they can use in their life. So you guys have the mics. Is there one thing you'd like to say to the group of people who are still kind of maybe caught in the grips of this?

I'll go first. It's something that I'm telling a lot of people every day. And that is, is that even today, even in the most challenging of situations, we all have things to be grateful for. And we need to embrace the things that we have, the gifts that we have, the blessings that we have every single day, embrace those and use those. And appreciate the life that you have, appreciate the situation that you have, and that's how you can take steps forward. It's when you're caught up in too much of, oh no, the bad stuff, the bad stuff, that you can't grow, you can't move, you can't get better. The only way you can get better is to really appreciate where you are right now.

Wow.

I would say, you know, because there are still people out there that are holding on hopes and they'll say every day, I'm ready for it. it to go back to normal. And obviously we know that's not going to happen anytime soon. And I just think that the more, again, that you can be grateful and surround yourself with happy people, surround yourself with other people that are happy—

And agree with

you. Yes. But it makes a difference. It feeds off of it. So if you're with a group of people that's talking about, okay, how are we going to get through this and how are we going to make it better? What can we do? It's totally different than if you're in a room of people that just says, this is so bad. I can't wait for it to be back. This is so bad. And then you're all going to get sucked into it. But it's not going back to normal anytime soon. So the quicker that those people can join a group of happy people and realize that it can be great, it can, there's so many good things happening and we are healthy right now and you just have to focus on those things. things. And it's going to be good. I mean, it is. I mean, these virtual events are great. And I think that the speakers that wait too long are going to get left in the dust. So, and because I mean, the ones that have really been going, they're getting booked a ton. So I think that the quicker they make that, you know, that jump over, the better.

Well, I love what you said there. Because, you know, we've seen in our own office that the happier we are about stuff, the more positive we are, the more our office has become just as active and productive as it was before the pandemic now, because we're excited and we're working on new stuff and we're exchanging ideas and it doesn't stop. And that is happy people being productive and getting better.

It's contagious.

It is. It is very contagious.

I mean, and that's an interesting word to use in the midst of a pandemic, but you think about

it. That's right.

It's the right kind of—

Positivity is contagious. And higher energy is contagious. And I truly believe that one of the things that happens when you speak and you present is that the law of transference is activated. So you're just transferring your own energy to other people. So if your energy is one of enthusiasm and optimism and seeing opportunity, and even in the midst of uncertainty, seeing that there's all this growth, you transfer that feeling to other people. They can't help but not only feel, but feel lifted. That's some of the best work we can do in the world, I think, right now, is just help lift other people.

Totally agree. It is. Our customers need that too, because our customers are nervous about making this shift and it's hard for them. I think the more that we get excited and talk about how things are going well and we're seeing events that are amazing and we're sending videos of these great events, they're getting excited. It just is building so that the excitement

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story. Yeah. And I'm here to talk to you about resilience. story that you will ever hear about, and it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. So I'm going to finish with a question and a discussion quickly about a waking ritual. It's the thing I ask most everybody at the end of these shows. And that is, first question for you is, did you guys wake up today?

Yes.

Yes, we

did. Yeah, I love it because Angela, she's certain of it. And Richard was checking in. He's like, well, I haven't had enough. I need another cup of coffee.

Richard's thinking there's a trick question.

Yeah, I'm thinking.

I know he is.

He's like, what's this guy up to?

Well, that's because the word is a— it's, it's a metaphor in so many ways. You know, we realize, as you said earlier about gratitude, that when we went to sleep last night, there was no guarantee. I don't think— should you correct me here? Did you get a guarantee in writing that you're gonna wake up today?

No.

No, neither did I. So my, my 18 years of being a lawyer, I still haven't figured out how to get A contract put in place that when I put my head on the pillow, the next morning I'm going to wake up. So when I do wake up each morning, have gotten that blessing, I realize there are people in that exact same moment that are taking their very last breath. So it's just not difficult for me now to start my day with gratitude because I immediately realize this wasn't guaranteed. And then that's the thing about it, Angela, too, is that waking up is like, what would be more important than each day that we're a little more awake than the day before?

That's good. Yes.

A little bit more conscious. So these are things I think that we can work on. And then the third piece of this waking ritual, waking up and being grateful, is that you can say something out loud. You can actually speak. And now I'm probably getting into that little bit of woo-woo area here, but I believe that you speak your life into existence. And I believe I believe in a lot of the things that are presented through spiritual means that you can look at and say, where's this tangible in my life today? Like the universe was created when these words were spoken, let there be light. There's a speaking something into existence from the beginning of time, at least as far as it's tracked in the Bible, let's say. And so where is it that we're speaking things into existence in our lives? And where is it that things are just showing up because we've just left it to default? Right. So is there something that you guys say in the morning? Can you— could you remember? This is, I know, maybe difficult, what the first words physically out of your mouth were when you woke up this morning?

I do.

She's checking in.

I mean, for me, I wake up and I've got the dogs. I'm like, come on, girls, let's go, let's go.

Yeah.

So, you know, I've got to get the dogs out first thing in the morning. So that's, that's what I do.

I think the first word I say is always to you, hi.

Yeah.

Look, you're here.

Probably so. Hi.

Oh, that's beautiful. I'm very blessed that—

What about you, Adam? What was your first words today?

They're written on my shirt.

Oh, I like it.

These are the words I say.

So do you wake up every day and say that?

These are the— yes. The TED Talk I gave was all about these 4 simple words that for the better part of 12 years now, every morning, put my feet on the floor, I feel that, that one moment where I go, yep, this is, this is special, this is a blessing. And then I say out loud, I love— I say 2 things. I say, I love my I love my wife and I love my life. And sometimes I do it in the reverse order, depends, but those are— they just come out. And at first when I started to say it, I wanted it to be true. And then it's kind of a riddle because it's a prayer, it's an intention. It's again, I think speaking a prophecy of things into existence. And at first I thought, well, that means if I have aggravation or I'm unhappy, because this was in many ways in the TED Talk, the thing that had to get dealt with. People go, man, if you lived my life, if you were putting up with what I was putting up with, if you just lost your job, if your kid was killed in a drunk driving accident, you tell me how you would love your life. And those are the real of so many people's lives, my life and everybody's. And so the thing isn't about that saying I love my life means my life is perfect or that I love every instant of my life, but I love my life no matter what. And those are the important words for me anyway. The no matter what.

No matter what is what, that's it. Because it's not, there's many days that it's difficult and, you know, hard and you just think, oh my goodness, but you love it no matter what.

Yeah, no matter what. Well, I can say that I have loved our conversation no matter what.

Me too. That's right. It's been fun and entertaining.

We've enjoyed it.

Yeah. So thank you guys for coming back for part 2 and everybody, we'd love as always to get your comments, to get your feedback. It's like oxygen for us. So please feel free to do that. You can go to adammarkel.com. Leave a comment, subscribe, and leave your thoughts on any of the platforms where you're consuming this, because it's very meaningful for us. And if you've got questions for the Shelps as well, we've got full show notes so you can find out more about their agency. If you're a speaker and you want to find out more about the work they're doing, if you're potentially a client, I can tell you that I've worked with these 2 gentle, wonderful people, really professional. And so if you're putting on an event, these are folks that you want to get in touch with and see if they can't help you to get the best talent. All right, that's it for now. Ciao, everybody. Ciao.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com. Thanks for listening.