Peter Winick and a guest examine mistakes thought leaders make: treating speeches as one-off events instead of business development, delivering generic talks without customization, giving away proprietary content for free, abandoning consulting work to write a book with no revenue plan, and making unreasonable demands of clients.
What are some of the dumb things clients— you don't have to name the client, but it'd be fun— the dumb things clients you've worked with over the years do in either shooting themselves in the foot or more short-sighted than that long-term vision or, you know what?
Well, I wouldn't say— so let me— we'll start with less than smart and then we'll move to dumb.
Okay.
Maybe it's on a scale, right? To blatantly just dumbass to like maybe ignorant, right? So one is, A lot of speakers just by nature, and this isn't a judgment on their personas, it's a transactional business, right? So you come in, you deliver the speech, you do a great job, you get the standing ovation, and then you're on to the next city, and you're on to the next city. And I think that's great as a service provider trying to serve your audience, but the reality is the beauty of speaking to me is it's paid business development if you do it well. It doesn't mean you're selling nonsense from the stage or whatever, but if you're really smart and you're really passionate about what you do, and you take that opportunity to learn about the organization and show them that you can help them beyond the 60 minutes on stage. I mean, you made the point earlier, Rick, about CEOs don't like to talk to consultants. I think the fact is CEOs view most speakers as entertainment. You're the clown balloon guy at the wedding, right, or the bar mitzvah or whatever, right? They're not really hiring you to be smart. They're saying, 60 minutes, I've got my team here for the annual rah-rah. Keep them entertained, keep them engaged, and have them remember a line or two that you said. When you move to the content business, that's the behavior change business. And if you can give them insight on their business and say, listen, I deal with a lot of companies, and there's a couple things I learned getting ready for this event that might be of interest to you. And do it from a place of generosity, and do it from a place of integrity, and do it from a place of passion. They'll call you and say, tell me more, right? Don't try too hard.
One of my favorite examples, We're talking about sharing ideas, best practices. I tell clients I'm a consultant who speaks, not a speaker who tries to do more. And my version of customization isn't to slap your logo on the first slide, right? So I invest the time and effort to get to know their vernacular, get to know their nomenclature, get to know— somebody comes up to me at one of the meetings and says, how long have you worked for our company? I don't work here, right? But that level of due diligence elevates you above somebody that shows up and throws up and leaves.
I call that the drive-by speaker, right? And they don't even know to use client instead of customer. And the room just immediately knows there's no connection.
And you've seen, I've worked with a restaurant company that says, we call those team members and we call them guests, not customers. And the other thing I promised myself I wouldn't do is I wouldn't be a pull-string speaker. Have you met that type? You put them on stage, you pull the string, and they kind of hear the same thing over and over and over again. Don't do that. Because it just doesn't bode well for that content business you're in. So was that on the not so smart or the dumb scale?
No, that was not so smart. I think in terms of dumb, it's giving away the house. I talked about that evangelical piece before. So when they say, hey, your speech was great. Can we take all your content and create training for it for our company for free? Sure, I'm really happy that you're doing that. I have clients come to me all the time and say, I'm so happy that They're like, Citibank is taking my stuff and doing all that. I'm like, when did they become a nonprofit? I don't understand. Why would you be happy if someone came into your house and stole your stuff? That doesn't make sense to me. And they're like, oh yeah. And they're not stealing because they're bad people. They're stealing because you didn't make it easy for them to give you money. That's your job. You have to make it easy for them to pay you.
Any really, really dumb things?
Really? You were looking really dumb.
Yes, really dumb things, like shooting yourself in the foot, to kill the business for the next year.
Yeah, I mean, really dumb, I'm gonna write a book, so I'm gonna shut down the rest of the business and just write the book. And then my question would be, so, well, what are goals and success or whatever? Well, the book's gonna bring me to all these places. My phone will be ringing off the hook, and I'll figure that out after. Yeah, that's a good one, that's great. Really dumb, doing stupid things on stage. I've seen a lot of speakers that they've become successful, make some of their speaking clients feel as if they should be honored to have them. Like, here's my list of requirements, and it's like the Rolling Stones with the green M&Ms or whatever. You're like, really? You know, I had a client where their CEO wasn't flying first because they weren't, you know, we had this thing called the recession, and they were fighting that. Like, that's just dumb. That's just really dumb.
Yeah.
