Elevating the Event Space | Kraig Kleeman | 519

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. This is gonna be a fun episode. My guest today is Craig Kleeman. He's a highly successful entrepreneur, an author, and a showrunner. Pretty eclectic. So his success started in high school when he was part of the speech team. Today he's a showrunner for large-scale events, and he's even shared a stage with former President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. And he's the mastermind behind the Must React System, the go-to guide for C-suite prospecting. But what we're gonna focus a little bit on today is this Rock the C-Suite. So he is a thought leader and his modality, if you will, is creating customized rock and roll lyrics for organizations, which is a really, I think a really cool output of thought leadership that, quite frankly, I haven't seen before. So anyway, welcome aboard, Craig. How are you?

Hey, I'm doing great. I'm glad to be here. And thank you kindly for having me today.

Yeah, so let's first talk about— because there are lots of folks out there that are keynoters. There are a fair number of folks out there that are keynoters that integrate creativity, music, art, jazz, singing, the arts, if you will. Into, you know, juggling. I've seen, you know, in, into what they do, but I haven't seen somebody that does what you do, which is kind of study an organization and then come up with these customized rock and roll lyrics to deliver. So where did, first, let's start with how did, how did that idea happen? What was the apple that hit you on the head?

You know, I, I guess I have been a, you know, sometimes I describe myself as the world's greatest music listener. I, uh, spent a lot of time with, with music, and I grew up with classic rock and roll and have been involved in theater and the performing arts all throughout my life. And even though much of my life, you know, in the professional world has become business, having written books and done consulting and advisory work, etc., I also own an offshore team, you know, that does Right. Outsourcing work, all that. But in all of my twists and turns, I've never ever departed from the performing arts. And I began, it kind of almost always naturally to perceive that messaging, corporate messaging, believe it or not, was better received through performing arts then through sterile overloads of ebooks and data and information, et cetera. And I think I began to kind of intuitively understand that particularly conference producers, whether that's an association or whether that's a in-house big sales kickoff, that the producers were prioritizing distribution of information over the well-being of the audience.

And they assumed that the way the audience wants to hear it, because it's the way we've always done it, is smart expert gets up in front of a room, does their thing, delivers the information in a traditional— here's some PowerPoints, let me show you this— whether that's the business results or the outside expert that they bring in, or whatever the case may be, right?

You're exactly right. In fact, there's been this sort of template that is like keynote, keynote, keynote, breakout, lunch, breakout session, keynote, network, wrap it up, you know.

Cocktails. Don't forget cocktails.

Yes, of course. You know, in fact, that's the thing that our research shows that people want the most, or at least give the highest marks. And that's because they like the interactivity and the interaction. It comes with it. So really what we've done is we've tried to just, you know, challenge that thought and kind of just say, hey, you know, careful guys, you know, those who cling to past traditions just might be forfeiting goodness that could be theirs. And we then began to wrap, study a group, understand their messaging. I've got a group of studio musicians. Choreographer. You have got a great choreographer, onstage dance. We integrate improv comedy. So we put together these big 2.5, 3-hour shows that's totally focused on the audience at every stage of lyric, concept, etc.

So, so this— so where this is really fascinating to me is anytime you take two disciplines and sort of smash the atoms together? Because to me it sounds like there's a consulting front end to this. You have to ask questions, you have to go through data, you have to research qualitative, quantitative to actually find out what is this company about? What is their culture about? What are their struggles? Where do they challenge with whatever? And it's not what the typical keynoter does, which is, ooh, do they use customer or client, right? Is it professional services or retail or, or whatever? So you put on your consulting hat on the front end to get all this input. And one deliverable might have been some sort of a consulting report, but your deliverable is this performance. So how do you— give, give me a sense of how you get the input and then what you go through to create the outcome or the output.

You know, that's a great question. And I will tell you that I think at this stage of my life, it's much easier for me than it would've been, let's say 10 years ago, or certainly 20 years ago, because having attended a lot of conference and have conferences, having worked with a variety of different companies, you know, a lot of it is just doing some great searching, keyword searching, understanding the topics that are trending for a particular audience, doing some of the basic work, the same kind of work that we would do almost for Google ad campaign, you know, in many ways. And then of course, the most important thing is to take that, those findings of that research, and then have a 30 or 40-minute conference call with the stakeholders of the organization for which we're doing the performance. And then we just say, so here are some of our ideas. How does this map with you? And they'll weigh in on that. And what will happen is, you know, most of the time we will have nailed it 75%.

Yeah, sure.

Right. And then, but we'll need that collaboration to get that additional 25% to deliver them the deliverable that's gonna be effective for them and their audience.

So now let me ask you this. So this is really creative. It's really innovative, right? As an approach, as a, as a product, as an offering, as a way to highlight some form of thought leadership. So that's good. What might be a challenge on the other side of this is there's probably not anyone out there meeting today planning the next conference saying, and we need somebody to cut, do exactly what you just explained that, you know, get me that. Now they are having dozens, hundreds of meetings today saying, and we need a keynoter. Oh, maybe someone on innovation. Oh, maybe someone on creativity. Maybe someone on leadership. Ooh, I just read this person's book, right? So how do you sort of square that circle?

That's a great, great question. And, and the truth is we have to square that circle. To be able to bring this to the marketplace as robustly as we'd like to. And so Rock the C-Suite has spawned another service that I just simply call Craig Kleeman Live. And what, what really Craig Kleeman Live is, is rather than bringing the band, you know, a lot of folks have said to me, gosh, Craig, love this. But a professional band, a professional— sure, improv team. It's just more than we planned for and more than we budgeted for, right? With Craig Kleeman Live, then I offer the service where I can emcee an event, or if someone else emcees it, I can still do what makes it special, which is bring energy bumps. And an energy bump is a 3 to 5 minute a little performance that I do in between keynotes with, you know, ra— roaring rock music, getting the people up, dancing, including sometimes an inspirational soliloquy, some of the energy bumps. We celebrate birthdays, you know, and we just make it very, very fun. And what it does is that it accomplishes a similar purpose. It eliminates the, the snooze fest sort of element of conferences. It brings life, it brings immersion, and it, it helps bring a vibe that will be memorable forever for those who participated.

Got it. Got it. So I like the idea of that sort of short form, little shot of espresso to hit them with throughout the day. And I'm assuming that is thematic and connected to, you know, they're not just a bunch of random Lego pieces that you're throwing in, correct?

Oh no, absolutely. We create an effect or the equivalent of a run of show outline for each of the 3 to 5 minute bursts. And actually, in many instances, we can even add choreography. If we're in an area, for example, like Vegas, that's easy. For me to work with a dance team, but quite frankly, all in advance virtually, and then really show up and it go off beautifully. So we can still even do that at a low cost. That's typically, when I say low cost, what I mean is a cost that's typical for a keynote perform, you know, for a keynote speaker, but bring, you know, bring the music thematically, bring the energy. And even bring onstage dancing where appropriate.

Got it. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So let's switch a little bit and talk about your journey as an author, right? So how many books you have under your belt at this stage?

I've published 2. I've got 4 more on my hard drive that I just haven't quite you know, been able to finish either through the demands of work or just sometimes you get creative droughts, you know, when you write books and music for that matter. But no, I have 2 books. My first book I'm real proud of called The Must React System, which is a guide for outreach and cold calling and includes templates for email outreach and multi-touch campaigns. All oriented to win meetings with senior executives by leading with fact-based research versus leading with value proposition language. Now, I should say that book, I'm very much—

Wait, stay, stay there a minute though.

Sure.

But, but I'm sorry, stay there a minute because, you know, leading with fact-based, right? So this is all about knowing your audience, right? If you're trying to convince senior leadership, senior execs, it can't be because you say so or you believe so or only mission, vision, values. And I think a lot of people shy— I wouldn't say shy away, but they want to either be in the mission, vision, value camp or the data camp. And in essence, what you're saying is you need both.

Thank you for that. And, you know, Peter, I appreciate it. This is a topic that's very dear to me. And I've consulted with hundreds of companies on just this. And what, what I've found is that companies in their messaging, their outreach messaging to win meetings often lead with value proposition and product benefit language. And while that language seems intuitive, it's really the counterintuitive language that's far more effective. And so, you know, to give you an example, we worked with a company that was selling, that had read my book and contacted me, wanted me to help them. And they were selling a product that, a very, very expensive software product that they were selling to the Global 2000 companies to really optimize their accounts payable process, automate it, optimize it. They can drive the cost to process an order down from an average of north of $6 to $1, $1.14, $1.50 per invoice through automation and best practices. When I first met them, they would call, you know, CFOs and SVP controllers. And they would just give the classic, hey, I'd like to introduce you to X company and our product and share with you how we saved, you know, ABC Company $1 million last year. And they, they couldn't win any meetings that way. But when we began to teach them how to lead with research and invite CFOs to attend an analyst briefing where the topic was trends driving world-class finance organizations. And when we taught them how to deliver a fact-based research briefing that was as effective as if a Gartner Group or McKinsey consultant or BCG consultant delivered it. And then when we taught them the power of asking questions and discovery through mapping it with research. In other words, the research says this. I'm just curious, what is your experience? Then in about 20 minutes, they could qualify a $3 million opportunity and begin to advance next step meetings on their journey to win that meeting. So, you know, when I talk about leading with fact-based research, That's kind of a short thumbnail version of what the model really encompasses.

Love it.

Love it.

So as we start to wrap up here, what thoughts or advice, either do more of this or don't do this, would you have for folks that are out there that are maybe where you might have been 5 or 10 years ago relative to their thought leadership and their journey?

It's a great question. There are so many different things that I might, you know, be able to say, but One of them would be understanding and embracing the power of quiet time. And what I mean by that was, and I, you know, in some ways I think the pandemic and the lockdowns helped me reframe my lenses on this topic where there was a time for many years, maybe even decades, where I was immersed, almost buried in notifications, emails, and all the digital communications that comes at us due to the vast global commercialization of the internet, that I had forgotten how to clock out. And about 4 years ago, I made a profound commitment to health, fitness, and other things that contributed, and I began to realize that I needed quiet time. And as I began to commit literally 2, 3, 4 hours a day, you know, 4 or 5 days a week, I had no idea that my ability to think clearly, to create strategy, to begin to under— I mean, you know, the New Workforce was created, my outsource company was created from that quiet time of reflection. And I think what I would just share is that even though one has to be intentional to do it, the benefits of unplugging and, and almost walling off some guardrails around some serious business quiet time can lead to some exceptional outcomes.

I, I think that's, um, Wonderful advice because we're all really busy. And as a thought leader, you know, one of your primary objectives is to create more thought leadership. And you can't just throw on your calendar at, you know, 3 o'clock on Tuesday, come up with epiphany, right? That doesn't work, right? So you have to create the environment and the space and the time, which appears to be unscheduled and quote unproductive to get you to that productivity. So it's a little against the grain there. Well, this has been great, Craig. I appreciate your coming on. I appreciate you sharing your story with us. Great stuff here. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.