Is There a Place for Speaking & PR in the Pandemic? Pursuing TEDx Talks During the Pandemic

Hey, Adam, how's it going?

Oh, my goodness. Are you kidding me? How's it going? That's a loaded question these days, Drew. I mean, seriously, I am feeling blessed. And in so many ways, I think it's important to just be reminded of how blessed we really are. To be alive, to be breathing, to be in a world that is so dynamic. It is anything but boring out there. So if you're ever worried that somehow or another you're going to get bored to death. Right?

Yeah. Lord, it is crazy out there.

Toss it back. How are you, Drew? How you doing?

I'm really good. You know, I am like you. I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be in Hungary. You know, it's just with everything going on, I'm thankful. You know, the government here, not a big fan just to make, but they have done a really good job of keeping things kind of the middle way. Speaking of Buddha kind of the middle way, which I'm really, really grateful for. And, you know, business is really good. It's crazy. And the PR is definitely. The landscape has changed dramatically. But it's good. Yeah, really good.

I would say that it's the. For us, we found ourselves a quiet spot in a part of the country that's not too busy. And so we're staying, you know, sort of staying at a harm's way, doing our thing and our thing. It's strange because we know people whose businesses have really just sort of gotten to a standstill, and we know some other people who've just seen massive, massive growth. And I am in the speaking world, so not only as a speaker, paid speaker, but we work with people who want to go into TED arenas, speak to TEDx audiences, to do what we're doing, in essence, to model some of the things that we're able to earn a living doing, travel and that kind of thing. But at a certain point, I want to say sort of early March, like so many things, the speaking industry just sort of shut down.

Yeah.

And went and completely pivoted. I wrote that book, Pivot a long time ago at this point, it's several years ago. And it was pretty prophetic on some level. That word has really become sort of a household word these days. Right. Everybody's pivoting. And in the speaking industry, they had to pivot really on a dime. And I think did a pretty good job in many ways of moving to virtual. Obviously, you and I are just having a. Having a chat on Zoom right now, and we were using Zoom for six or seven years prior to this. But then, you know, obviously Zoom, Zoom has become the sort of technology of choice, I think, for now for these kind of conversations. And so a lot of our clients that we were working with have had to pivot as well. And one of the questions that we often get is, is there a place for speaking, for public speaking right now? Should people really be sort of doing their moonlighting or their side hustling into some other or, or just change their focus entirely, get into something else while this thing sort of passes? Because events, live events probably won't be back up and running for at least maybe another year or so. And you know, and that's a valid question people are asking. I can tell you from my own experience that the answer is no. It's absolutely for people that are either wanting to get in that space who've never been in it, or people that are experienced, seasoned people, but are just saw their gigs completely go on hold. Deals that they had already booked, contracts that were in place just got put on hold, dates were moved or were indefinitely kind of postponed and new dates stopped showing up. And the fact of the matter is that we went through a kind of a two month transition where everything was sort of just at a standstill. And things changed. Things changed sort of in June and into July. We saw a big uptick in our SEO, meaning tracking where the searches are coming from and how many people are clicking and looking for speakers and people that have a message that, you know, that they want to share with the world, that kind of thing. So that's been on the rise. And we went through a period where most of the virtual trainings that were, that were being done, conducted were for free because speakers were retooling themselves to learn how it is that they utilize this platform. And organizations or companies, associations, everybody that hires speakers for their events was sort of not clear A, whether or not this was going to be truly temporary and we'd be back in the fall conducting events in the fall, and, and B, whether or not what they'd get, the product that they'd receive would be worth what they paid. Meaning there was no way to kind of even determine a market pricing for a 45 minute keynote that's done by Zoom versus flying me to Dallas to stand on the stage for 45 minutes kind of thing. So major transitions in the space. I mean, I would imagine that you've seen some similar sort of transitions because you guys work with a lot of, a lot of authors and there's, there's a bit of a, you know, sort of an overlap area between the authorship space, people who are thought leaders and public speakers. And you must have seen some similar sort of changes over the last couple of months, right?

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's almost like it's a whole new world. And I'm just kind of really curious now about what is the. The difference like you were talking about, Some people are out there really thriving and some are really struggling. I talked to a client of ours who's a speaker, and, you know, she went through that period that you were talking about literally overnight. Her business was gone and now she's booked. I think it was like she was telling me 184 opportunities between now and the end of the year. So I'm just really curious about what is the difference there? What is having people thrive in not only speaking, but also, you know, for some of our clients, the. The opportunities they're getting are just incredible. Like full spreads in the Wall Street Journal, Real simple magazine. So it is a really interesting time. A lot of media have been furloughed, so we have to do PR a bit differently. In some ways, we have to serve the media more than we've ever had to serve them. It's always been our philosophy to serve. But this is a crazy time. And I do agree with you. I think this is an opportunity for a lot of people and we can really leverage that. But I don't mean leverage it like make a lot of money. I think leverage it to really serve. There's an opportunity to really serve out there.

I mean, to me, that's the first place to begin. If you were looking to create an opportunity, if you were kind of calculating how is it that I create an opportunity out of such a disruptive time, the first place to go is towards service. I mean, everything about when you show up in service is a game changer. You have to raise your energy. You have to face your own uncertainty and your unknowns and have to be able to show up or create the intention to show up as a version of yourself that is constantly improving, constantly on your growth edge. To do that only. Only put you in proximity to people who are looking for leadership. And whenever you're in proximity to people who are looking to be led, as we all are, and to be given access to information that makes our lives better in some way, you find people are going to pay for that. They offer to pay for it. You can charge for. Doesn't have to be that. You're just kind of turning into somebody who's opportunistic. Or manipulative even. It's just that old Stuart Wilde expression, which I love because he's such a funny writer. He would say, I think you, you have to raise your energy because when you do, people will show up, and when they show up, bill them and forget whether it's Stuart Wilde or Josh Billings. But isn't that hysterical? Right?

I love that. And I think that this is really a particular time for us to invest in raising our energy. You know, I love that, I love that quote. But that for me is really, you know, gets to the heart of who's really thriving. Whether you're talking about speaking opportunities or landing pr, getting coverage, building their businesses, it's how do you really. And I think that's an interesting question, how do you really raise your energy?

Ah, well, it's interesting to me just because I got bit by the public speaking bug and I wouldn't have called it back then. It would have when I was transitioning, pivoting out of 18 years in the practice of law and moving into what, what we were referring to then as a transformational training space. So getting into a training environment where you could you really work with people to help them to see the world, not see it the way you saw it, see it differently, to be able to just kind of widen your aperture to see more. And when you create a space and a context for people to be able to see more, to see more in themselves, to see more in their fellow brothers and sisters, to see more in their businesses and the more in the opportunities that are there when other people might be seeing scarcity, you're seeing abundance, something small like that. When you create that space, things happen that are just beautiful to watch. They're tantamount to miracles in people's lives because so many things can shift energetically. And to be, again, to have the desire to stand in the fire of a disruptive period in our world and to want to be heard, have something to say, want to be heard, to want to be seen, to sort of step forward in a role of leadership that is the equivalent of raising your energy. Because there's a great, I think it's a great question that you asked. What does it mean to raise your energy? And I think that that's it. That you seek out opportunities to lead doesn't mean you have all the answers, by the way. It doesn't mean you're the, you are the only voice or the only voice of reason or any of that. It's just more like, you know, I do have something to Contribute. I do want to lead a conversation, and not because I am arrogant, but because I have humility, actually, that, that coming from that place is all. Raises your energy, raises your vibration, opens your heart, attracts other people in the process. And so as you said right now, your friend that you mentioned, she's not alone. We have a full calendar from now till, till well into 2021. And the shift that occurred sometime over the summer was that the organizations that were typically bringing people in to speak and paying them really well before the pandemic and then stopped or at least had their sort of fingers on the pause button, have now once again realized that they can't bring in that kind of talent and bring in that perspective, those fresh ideas, that great storytelling, that, that the humility to stand in front of other people and say something in such a noisy, crowded space that we're in. They can't do that without also compensating those people fairly. Because this, you know, it's like art. It's a performing art in so many ways. That's what public speaking is. Great storytelling, great communication. So to me right now, your friend is probably somebody that has worked on her speaking assets. And even during the period of those couple of months when things were sort of down and people were sort of paralyzed in what to do, what we were doing was creating content. In fact, we even, because you and I have a long standing relationship, and we came to you, I think in March or something like that, and said, hey, we wanna hire your firm, Wasabi, to get after some PR for us right now, because this is the best time that we know. We're not on the road, we're not so super busy with things that we actually wanna spend time creating content, working on our assets, the assets of a company that is trading in information and thoughts and ideas. We wanna use this time to curate more of those valuable ideas and thoughts and questions and the like. And we started just working on those things. And so probably I would say for people that are wondering, you know, what should they be doing now? Curating content. Content, content, content. Getting out and developing the assets that would enable them to be seen as a thought leader. It could be that you're working on the book, you're getting that book proposal finally, finally prepared, right? You're writing that table of contents, you're writing that first chapter, right? You're doing it with us. They're working on, and we work with them on how to craft the right speaker video assets for the people who would hire them right now, if you've got a demo reel. Most people haven't updated their demo reel in months or years. And what I could say is, have you updated your demo reel? Do you have a brand new demo reel for the pandemic, meaning post pandemic, which is a virtual real and most people are still working on the old reel or the last reel that they did. So very important, their website. If your website still looks the way it did six months ago, there's a missed opportunity that has to be seized. There's sort of a wholesale audit of everything that made you special as a thought leader, an author, a speaker six months ago and auditing it so that how you're positioned now is relevant in the now because the world is so dramatically different. Right? It's prolific difference now.

Yes, exactly. For our clients it is because one of the things that we are letting them know, if you don't do that, you're occurring as tone deaf. Like you're not out there actually being responsible for what people are actually dealing with. So if your press materials don't reflect your social media, your Internet marketing and we get this, you get those emails from people and it's literally, you know, that they wrote them a year ago and it's just so disruptive and so jarring for all of us. Now. I love the idea of actually just doing an audit, right? A pre and post pandemic audit. But I love what you said about that. You know, in this time they want to be heard because I think that there's a lot of people out there that during this, this, this disruptive time, they feel that calling to be heard like never before, it's on loudspeaker and even if they are being heard, they want to be. They know they have something to contribute to the planet.

It's so true. We are. That question comes up for us in a context of the TEDx event space because we help people craft their talks and get on stages by a number of means, but primarily getting TEDx application assets and then making applications until you get a yes. I mean, it's just not that more complicated than that. Right. So. And we, you know, of course we film them and we craft their script and edit and all that kind of stuff. But people are asking us, are there even like what's happening with TEDx? Because they obviously you're not seeing the physical TEDx. It's like just go to the Ted.com website and see what's happening with them. They pivoted very, very quickly. And so many of their events are virtual. They have almost as many events planned for 2021 as they had in 2019. And what was planned for 2020, shockingly enough, you know, Ted I think is reaching more, will reach more people. Yeah, listen, when I gave my TED Talk and stood on that stage as nerve wracking even for an experience, you know, I was an experienced speaker all over the world and a lot, you know, in front of a hundred, hundreds of thousands of people and I still, my knees were knocking before that one, because it is a very different environment and I want people to have that experience for a number of reasons. One, because it's such a great growth edge. Two, the credibility that you get out of doing something like that in the marketplace. If part of your business is to be seen and to have people see you as an expert, want to hire you. You know, if you're a coach or you're an author or any of those things, your presence on a TED stage is really powerful. So I want them to have that experience. But I can say right now, and it doesn't need to be, there will be TEDx stages opening up again in 2021 and on as kind of everything will open up. But there are opportunities to be on a virtual TEDx stage right now that I never would have thought that I would even be recommending that. And yet as much as I want everybody to have that knee knocking experience that I had, because again, it's just, you know, you never forget it.

Yeah, yeah.

To be in front of the camera and to do it to an audience of hundreds and hundreds of people and have that video produced and end up on YouTube and then be viewed thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of times, the message is more important. I guess what I'm saying is that to me, what I realized is that the message plus what you were saying is so important to people now that getting the message out there is more important than being physically in that room, to have the experience that many of us have had. And those experiences will be back, as I said. But right now, more important than that is the idea that the message that the idea deserves to see the light of day as soon as possible. So why wait? Like, why wait?

Yeah, that's what I tell, you know, people. A lot of people contact have been contacted and they have a message around the pandemic and making a difference for people. I'm like, the world needs your message now more than ever. Like seriously, it's fundamentally like we are all in this together and it is time to get your message out there, to make that Difference, It's, I don't think. Well, there's never been a time like this in history.

Yeah, not, not in, not in our history anyway.

Not, I don't know, ever in the history of the world that you talk about this. The breadth and the depth of how this is impacting the planet with. You throw technology in there and what that makes available. It's just, it's almost mind boggling when you step back and you think about it. Because we do have access to really continue to make a difference, if not make a bigger difference. Now.

I'm with you, brother. I mean, this is not the time to sort of take your foot off the gas. If there's something, you know, you have special you want to share with people, now's the time to, you know, go the opposite direction. Because there are a lot of people who are sort of gently tapping or putting their foot on the brake, trying to do the kind of one foot gas, one foot break. We know what happens there. It's like, you know, and now is a time when, because there is that sort of hesitation in the space that if I were advising and I mean, I do advise, I mentor a number of people that are growing their speaking presence and what I always tell them is the same thing I tell myself and that our team reminds me of now is the best opportunity we've seen in a really, really long time to have your brand get noticed, have people really learn what you're all about, make a difference and as you said, make a really important, positive difference in other people's lives. The ground only became more even. Like it's a more level playing field today than it was six months ago. Six months ago. It's kind of like in a car race or something. Formula one, you got somebody that's out in the head and they're clearly going to win if they don't crash or something. And you got all these other cars that are far behind, but whenever there is sort of a disruption, which is an accident in that context, there's an accident on the track, everybody has to slow down and the distance between the first place car and the last place car becomes really, really short, small. And that's, that's where we're at right now. And there'll be, there'll be cars that are going to take a pit stop, have already done that. They just get out of the race. You know, just like in real estate, when real estate goes, you know, through its cycles and it hits the bottom, the, the people that were in it for the quick cash you know, whoever, you know, just joined the ranks of the mortgage brokers and the real estate agents, they go off and find some other work to do. And then the ones who are really committed to that, they want to serve, they work on their business, they work on their brand, they work on themselves. And then when the market turns around, as it always does, they're in the lead. I mean, this is. It's. I don't know. It's not. It's not rocket science, I suppose, but I think we need to be reminded of that, especially when things are scary. And I think there's so much uncertainty now that there is a lot of fear.

Yeah, I think there is a lot of fear. And, yeah, I think that's a really good point. So I know that I just wanted to kind of riff with you, but I really love the idea of doing a more formal conversation, and I think really a conversation about how. What gas pedal should you be pushing on now? I love that analogy. Right, so. So what is. What are the.

That's a chin scratcher. Right.

What are those pedals that you. You should be, you know, you should be looking to press and to go faster or what are the things to be putting in place now to really, you know, kind of raise your energy and really help you make the difference that you're committed to and be heard and, you know, get out there? Yeah.

Well, I mean, to answer your question, I think it's just to start with. You share what you know, and I think that's the best place to begin. You and I have been doing our respective work for a while now, and we work together, which is really good. Well, don't say it's a long while. I mean, isn't that evident? Right? Isn't that evident?

Yeah, I think that the gray kind of makes that pretty evident.

So that's. Thank you for stating the obvious, Drew.

Yeah, I know.

You know, to me, it's, as you said, it's knowing what those pedals are. You can't operate well in the world if you don't know the rules of games that you play. If you don't understand the levers and the mechanisms that can create leverage to create some, you know, something. So I think if we were going to have that conversation, I'd be excited in two areas. One is to kind of talk about those. Those basic gas pedal, gas and brake, and that kind of thing, and how it is that you do, in fact, raise your energy, which we've defined as showing up and sharing, sharing your message and your gift. With the world and how it is that that dovetails with the work that you and I have done together in this. In the space of pr. Because if there's one mistake that I see with people who are thought leaders, authors, speakers and the like, that they really don't have a system for outreach, they sort of expect that it's the field of dreams thing, you know, that if they build will come.

Yeah.

They spend time and effort, even sometimes building those things and then wonder why nobody's shown up. And so I think that would be fun for you and I to talk about both the side of what are those key assets that have to be in place and how are they relevant or how do you make them relevant today in the world we're living in? And then what do you do by way of getting it out there? What we call outreach, which is my word for pr.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, well, I am totally game for that, so something I'm. Look, I think it's really great because I think there are a lot of people out there like you say that I think have and feel this need to be heard. Even if they're successful in their business, it doesn't mean that they're fully being heard. There's a deep need for that. And I love when you said that in the pandemic. That is that need. And I'd love for us to just chat about what are the elements, what are the foundations, how do you build the field, so to speak, in the field of dreams? And then how do you get people to actually come? What are those mechanisms? So I would love that. And so I'll reach out to you. My people will contact your people. I feel so Hollywood with that. My peeps will contact your peeps and we'll get something set up. And then, you know, I'd love to share this video with people. And then, you know, I like to invite.

Can we cut out. Can we edit out the age? The age.

Absolutely. We can even do what you can do. I don't know what they do, but we can even do touch ups. Oh, what age would you like to be?

Little digital Botox is that we're talking about?

Wouldn't that be great? I think you can do that.

Would be seriously.

But if not, I'm hiring. All right, Adam, well, thank you for taking this time. It's been great. Be well, be safe and we will chat soon.

Yes, brother, thank you.