Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring David Arvin

I don't know if it's playing.

Nope.

On the left of your screens. I selected it, I pushed it, make it go.

All right, we could go without it. Well, if you just turn your camera off, then we can go without the music. If If we need to.

I can sing.

You could. David will sing. Okay, well, we missed our intro. I think we missed our intro, but I will introduce David nonetheless without music. We'll do this old school. So welcome. This is— I'm Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and this is the Leveraging Thought Leadership podcast. And we do special editions of LinkedIn Live every now and then. And this one I felt warranted a special edition of LinkedIn Live. So I have David Averin. David is amazing. He is a speaker. He is a 7-time— or we could debate 7.5-time author because he's got a second edition of his book out. He's a very, very well-known keynoter, an author, a researcher, and a consultant. And he's decided to spend some time with us today. So welcome, David. How are you?

I am doing great, actually. Honored to be asked. We had a nice conversation the other day in preparation for this, so I'm looking forward to connecting and sharing with so many of our friends and colleagues around LinkedIn Live and, and the, the Introverses.

Yeah, yeah, no, there's a lot of Introverses. So let's start with your expertise, and we'll get into sort of the business side here. But so, so customer experience, right? It's, it's, it never goes away. It never gets old. But it's never the same, right? So

And I think it's, I think it's never been more important. I think for so long, and I think in the heyday of customer service, as a broader category, you know, it's how well are we treating our customers? Are we greeting them with a smile? And I think we've been talking about it for 50 years. I think we know how to be nice to people. But the experience is dramatically different than it was. You could take somebody from 1970, pick them up and drop them in today. They'd starve within a week. They wouldn't know how to communicate or pay or connect or learn. I mean, because it's all different, right, through our devices and, and through so many amazing conveniences. So the experience, from the customer's perspective— customers or clients or patients or constituents—

Sure.

We engage with business very, very differently today. And our expectations are changing dramatically. So it's a real challenge, oftentimes, for even some legacy companies who are very good at what they do. They have very well-established customer journeys and reputations in the marketplace. But their customers are changing and how we want to connect and pay and communicate or complain.

So stay, so stay there for a minute. If you were, and we'll pick any industry, a supermarket, an airline, a hotel chain or whatever, you would have previously defined your customer experience as the experience the customer gets with interacting with the business. So if it's a hotel, it's when I walk in, I'm a Am I greeted? Do they give me whatever perks I'm entitled to? If it's a supermarket, is the lighting good? Does it smell nice? And all that other stuff. Sure. But now, and if you start as a hotel, like everything's about the physicality of the hotel, so much of the interaction happens before and virtually and digitally.

Absolutely.

So talk about how do you maintain a consistent experience in the real world, in the virtual world, in the digital world, presale, during sale, post-sale? Because now—

Yeah, well, I don't think—

9 variables.

Yeah, I don't think we do provide a consistent experience. I think we provide a varied experience. And the options and the choices that we give our customers for how they want to engage with us— one of the challenges that we're seeing so much in the marketplace is there's so many new methodologies and ways of connecting.

Yes.

But we're serving 4 or 5 generations at the same time. And those millennials, we, all of us with kids and how they want to communicate, is very different than the octogenarians And how they want to engage. And the challenge for business today is, are we giving them choices and options and journeys that, that align with their level of comfort and their level of, of, of desire with, with self-serve or technology?

It feels like so many organizations are pushing so many of their clients or customers or patients to do it the way they want it done, i.e., the most cost-efficient, cheapest. You know, if you think about your healthcare, you got to go on to your myhealth.app and do this and do that. It's like, Wait a minute, I actually wanted to talk to my doc. They don't let you do that, right? You got to download the— Right.

And I think you said exactly right is that they don't let you. Now, listen, I'm not naive. And I'm not a huge fan of chatbots or whatever. But I understand the inevitability and how all that's going to grow. One of the things that I talk about in my new updated and expanded version of my book, Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With, is that I understand this quest for efficiency, cost savings, and predictability with some new technologies. The challenge is that businesses too often are simultaneously taking away the options that we like. I understand self-serve at the checkout. But when you have 47 self-checkout and 1 staff checkout lane, it's not really a choice. It's social engineering, right? And that's frustrating for us. When we're screaming into the phone, real person! Real person!

Yeah.

Agent! I think you said no. No, right? It's not even, even our research showed recently that, that it's not that we hate chatbots or digital assistants; it's that we hate being trapped in them.

Yeah, as a chatbot.

We're going to give people a legitimate off-ramp. So I think you said it just right, is that, is that we're rolling out these, these new processes, which I understand; it's advancement. We're looking for new efficiencies. But if we're simultaneously taking away what they liked, Then the choice is gone. And that creates a level of frustration.

Yeah, and I've seen that in the hotel. And you've probably seen this as well, David. You travel a fair amount as well. On the hotel side, this sort of self-check-in kiosk, check in on your app and never see a human. Now, there are times where I'm like, listen, I'm on the road. I'm like, I don't need to talk to the dude or whatever at the front desk at the Moxy. Like, boom, click, get me my room and I want my bed. But there are other times where I might need an interaction. I might want to question. I might want to pretend to be charming and think I'm going to get an upgrade or whatever, because I have more time, or because that trip is one where I'm actually going to spend more time on the property and want to— I have questions about the gym or whatever. So—

Right. And some, and some do and some don't. Yeah, absolutely. And I do a lot of work with hospitality. I'll give you an example just for what you're talking about. One of the big hotel chains, I did a conference for them. And they also had a trade show that had a lot of their internal vendors and people. And this was back right before COVID And they were talking about the new digital key that you can do on your phone. And One of the guys says, what we're working towards is the 100% adoption. And I said, well, you don't want 100%. He says, no, that's our goal. I said, but it isn't. It shouldn't be, because that means you're forcing people to do it the way you want. Because, okay, so I'm going to pull out my phone. I'm carrying luggage in one hand or food in the other.

Exactly.

I have to open the app. I have to navigate to it, click the button to open my door, or I just reach in my back pocket and I tap the card key, right? It's a— it's— we're making things more difficult. Adding friction to the process. No, some people would prefer that. But what's part of my message and mantra is that, that we've got to keep allowing the options that people prefer. And I understand steering them. I saw a statistic, Peter, that said that one chatbot replaces 700 customer service workers. That is pretty damn alluring to the bean counters of an organization, right? Sure. But

the CFOs, I can see them doing backflips down the hall. Absolutely.

But I tell people, I said, adopting and implementing AI is not so you don't have to talk to your customers. It's so we can offload pedestrian issues and that we have the time to allow people who really want it. But we have to allow it for those who really want to escalate. And they shouldn't have to be furious to get to that point. And this is one of the challenges we're seeing right now across the board with, with customer service agents. There's already pretty high turnover and attrition within the industry. Tough job. But we're seeing something completely different than we did 8, 9 years ago, is that they used to solve problems for us, right? You get somebody in customer service. Now, by the time it's escalated and you can talk to a real person, your customers are at a 12. They're livid. And these poor workers are being abused on a level we've never seen before. So now they got mental health issues. I've been dealing with organizations— Yeah. who are saying, this is our biggest issue right now, is the level of abuse that our customer service agents are enduring. And day in and day out,

right? And it's not just that one wacky customer a day, day in, day out. OK. So I was thinking about getting prepared for our session today. How do I bridge this to the business of keynoting and thought leadership and all that? You're doing 50, 60 gigs a year. And so let me tell you where my head was and feel free to—

Sure.

Add your 2 cents or 10 cents or whatever. So as a keynoter, you have customers and you have to serve them, right? Absolutely. And you've got to walk the talk and be your brand, whatever. However, I've seen far too many keynoters where they get that gig, whether that's through a bureau or direct or whatever. And then the next thing they do is they send the contract and the contract starts with, okay, you agreed to pay me X to do Y on this date in Scottsdale or whatever, but here are my requirements. It's all about me, right? So I need, you know, potato chips in the guest room. And I only need a room that's a suite that's overlooking the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard. And I need, oh, and I only travel first class. And I, I've worked with far too many keynoters to say, wait, hold on, from a customer experience standpoint, that's pretty god-awful.

Like, nobody wants to be a pain in the ass, right? The good news is, I think, I think it's kind of few and far between. I think some of the celebrity speakers might have that kind of a level. I got, I got offered for an opportunity that I ultimately got to speak for a big hotel or a property developer in Dubai. And they said the other person that they were considering was Magic Johnson, because I'd asked her, I said, do you have a budget? And she says, well, my, my boss wanted Magic Johnson and he wanted $1.3 million and a private jet. And I said, I will do it for half that.

Yeah.

You know, of course, got a good laugh. I think most are pretty easy to work with. I think By the time you get to the point of having a contract, I think we've already had those enough discussions in terms of what their expectations. I think the biggest challenge for speakers or aspiring speakers, because it's a tough business, is the recognition that it's a business. And my mantra all the time is that speaking isn't a business. Getting the gig is the business.

Sure.

We love the presentation. And I think speakers will live or die if they've got good content or they don't. They have credibility and gravitas or they don't. But getting the gig is the hardest part. And the problem is, and we talked about this earlier, is that we have probably the only profession where most people get into this profession because they're encouraged by people who have no idea what the profession is. They love them and they compliment them. Oh my God.

Right. But this is their story. Their cousin Mel says, David, you're so funny.

Oh my God, you're amazing.

You gave a great toast at my kid's wedding. You should—

you can inspire people.

Right.

And nobody's writing a check for you to live your dream of wanting to impact people's lives. Or if they've undergone, you know, had diseases or lost limbs or won Olympic gold medals. And I haven't done any of those things, to be fair. Great admiration. But they're always going to hire for their purposes. They want to increase their sales. They want to develop their leaders and understand AI and meld their cultures or whatever that might be. And so we can take our experiences, our expertise, and apply it towards that. But the challenge, the real challenge in this business, why most speakers fail, and most aspiring speakers leave this profession within 18 to 24 months, is they're starving. They like, I did a, I did a 4-day boot camp on hand gestures, and I can't get the phone to ring. I'm like, stop.

Yeah.

So we treat it like a business. We actually, I actually do a speaking business retreat just to help them with the business part, not the storytelling and not the nonsense.

No. Well, the craft and the art, there's plenty of people that can help you write speeches or the physicality.

Absolutely.

All that. But, but the business side, I think, you know, this is where people— It's the hardest part. It is the hardest part. And this is where people dive into the pool, and on the way down, they look and say, oh, geez, no water, right? Like, how does the— who's the water guy?

Yeah, because they never turn, they never turn the spigot on. Right? So it's marketing. So we probably reach out to 30, 40 organizations a week pitching me. I'm not famous. I'm good at what I do. My clients love me. But I'm not a, I'm not a celebrity. And so we have to be visible. So we send pitch emails, we follow up, I send signed books, I do a bomb bomb video email message. And we are competing. And so it's, you know, they may have a conference, they may have 2 or 3 speakers total, they may pay 2 of them. They may have 40 free breakouts. And you're competing against 1,000 other speakers. And so having a great keynote or signature speech and waiting for the phone to ring doesn't, doesn't make it, doesn't make it happen.

Talk about the inherent awkwardness I call it awkwardness, whatever, of being, you know, on the same phone call, the talent. And there's a checklist of things that the buyer's looking through the talent. Is he friendly? Is he warming? Is he engaging? Will he customize? Is he gonna make us look good? Is he gonna make my boss look good? Yeah. Like, there's things that they're doing as you, as the talent, right? Does it— is he communicating on a Zoom that looks— doesn't look sloppy or whatever, like all that stuff. But then you're also wearing your CEO hat. or your biz dev hat, where you also have to negotiate and say, well, there's a reason, you know, this is my fee and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do you handle that? Because that's an awkward, not fun place to be.

How would you handle? But that's a great question. And that's, and I think it's information that aspiring speakers, speakers really need to hear again and again and again. Yes. This is a freak. This is a freaking business.

Yeah.

And you treat it like you do any other businesses. People are like, oh, how's it feel to be your own boss? I'm like, everybody's my boss. Every client. And so we're always in sales mode. But it's about, it's about them. Here's understanding their industry. And you had said call, and you mentioned Zoom. Everything is face-to-face. Look behind me. It's a well-curated background. And so a level of professionalism, recognizing that we are in a very competitive marketplace. And the other part is really looking at it from their perspective in that, that they're very risk-averse. They may have one event a year. And their speakers, for lack of a better term, their speakers cannot suck. And so for us, it's—

you don't get to have a bad day. You don't get to have a bad day.

No, absolutely. And they don't, they don't get to have a bad choice, because they'll hear about it. Like if it's a, if it's an association, people won't show up the next year. If it's a corporation, they're answering to somebody. So our job is to make them feel like Like to exhale. I tell them straight out, or my staff will tell them, listen, you're going to be a hero for bringing Dave in; he's that good. And that's not ego, but because we take their investment very, very seriously. So it's, it's, it's, it's less about motivating and, and, you know, we're going to help people connect with their joy. There's, there's things I'll mention briefly that just still makes me crazy.

Yeah.

That you hear again and again and again. And it's freaking nonsense. The— oh, here's one: the world needs to hear your story. Complete lie. The world needs to pay their bills.

Nobody cares about your story.

No, I mean, they might like your story, but only as it pertains to their business. But they think that people are gonna pay them because they have this great story, and they're gonna write them a check for them to have a cathartic experience on their stage. The other one is this one. I hear— I've spoken at 11 of the Global Speaker Federation countries around the world. And in every one of them, somebody says, Because remember, if you make a difference in the life of just one person, then it's worth it. And I got on stage at our National Speakers Association. I said, if you make a difference in the life of just one person, you are a terrible speaker. Like, you're really bad at it. This is, this is not your thing. Listen, we brought in 700 people to hear the speaker. We got absolutely nothing out of it. But Carl, Carl really got a lot. Just, you know, you're fired. Yeah. But here's the point. I understand why they say it. You're encouraging people. We can make a difference. You can impact people's lives. But only if you get hired and get hired again and again. So for us, it's the business behind it. You have to have something solid. But it's the marketing. It's the outreach. It's the follow-up, CRM.

Let me, let me throw this out at you and see how you react, because it's the world according to me, for whatever it's worth, right? So I think far too many speakers Miss the point of speaking. So speaking is great for a lot of reasons. It's fun, it's engaging, it's, it's, you know, there's an intrinsic piece.

We love the performance.

Financially, it's probably the highest value thing you will do financially in terms of time for money, right? But sure, they tend to be transactional, and that does— that's not a, a, a ding at their personalities or who they are as humans.

They're gig workers, and they look at it as gig work.

Yeah, well, and the cadence of the business is transactional. You know, we're in presale. Can you come? Okay, come to the event. Do your thing. Catch your flight to the next event. I think the smart speakers, smart meaning from a business standpoint, look at the speech as the beginning of a potentially beautiful and viable relationship that's got multiple pieces, not the beginning. Tell me about that.

How do you react? It's funny. And you've been involved in this a long time as well. Speaking is a terrible business model. It's a great business. But it's a terrible business model, right? And so, yeah, some of them are absolutely episodic, right? So-and-so, an organization has a conference, and they want you to come in as a speaker, or you, they want them. When you're working with larger organizations or single-company entities, it's absolutely an opportunity to show them what you have, what you can do, the transformation that you can offer on whatever level, whatever subject. And ideally, it is the beginning of a conversation, but you've got to be ready for that follow-up question. It doesn't mean we're holding things back. We're giving everything that we have. But my, my friend and colleague, Chad Hymas, has a great line, is that he would talk to the CEO afterwards, and he would say, listen, I want to make sure that we keep the momentum going. I want to keep the conversation going. I want to make sure that we don't lose momentum. Can I follow up with you next week? And so how do we implement this? Like, what's next? And for so many speakers, you know, people come up and they all say, oh my gosh, you're the best speaker we've ever had. Every speaker hears that, right? But then they come up and say, so what, like, so what's next? So what do I do? Well, so the so what is, you know, I have a, I have a book, right?

Yeah.

You gotta be ready for the answer.

Well, but the so what thing is, there isn't any speaker out there that in 40 minutes or an hour or whatever is actually going to transform enough people to have impact on a business, right? The idea, the concept of a keynote is, You're going to exchange some ideas. You're going to engage some people, get them to think about something. And then they're having the bad Caesar salad in the Aloha Room at 2 o'clock and then checking their email. So they're not— and you're not equipping them with any tools or anything to do differently. So it's a ridiculous expectation and a silly comment to say, oh my God, I changed the way they think at GM or Microsoft.

Like, no, you didn't.

You gave them a good show for 45 minutes.

It is a bit arrogant when they talk about, I'm going to give you this transformational experience. You're not going to do it in 45 minutes. You may absolutely help them achieve their, their objectives for that meeting and that event.

Yes.

Right? But it's the same thing. It's like, because somebody climbed Everest and overcame obstacles and tells you about their journey, I'm not going to get along with, with Phil in accounting better. Right? There's not a lot of takeaway. And it's a challenging time for that pure motivational speaker. I'm not; I'm a business speaker.

No, right.

But I have great admiration for what they went through. But If you can at least spark enough, right? But I like exactly what you said, which is, what's next? Not everybody can afford it. Not everybody wants it.

But the spark is one thing, because a lot of thought leaders and keynoters have the ability to spark and paint the picture onstage of what would it look like if everybody here gave feedback the way I just did it or overcame something that I, the way I just talked about.

There's a lot of techniques we can use on stage.

No, but you have to have the suite of products, offerings, and solutions that are scalable and not dependent on you as the delivery vehicle to say, oh, Mr. or Ms. CEO, you can license a suite of whatever from me— assessment tools, video-based. Like, it's almost infinite. And the burden's on you to create that. You know, no client is going to stay up late at night figuring out, come back to you and say, David, you were so good as a speaker. I figured out a way to give you $1 million a year. I've been staying up and working with my team here at your client. We figured it out. Would that work for you? That's never, ever, ever going to happen.

No. And I know that you've helped a lot of speakers with that. And I think the most elusive thing in our industry is longevity. And longevity comes from multiple streams of income so that it's sustainable. We all saw how vulnerable we were when COVID hit.

Yeah.

Right? I mean, I travel on airplanes and speak at live events. They went away for 2 and a half years.

When you could get 500 people to show up at your house on a Tuesday and hear you speak from your back porch.

No, no, but I did 80, But I did 86 virtual events during COVID built a studio because we had to pivot quickly. But we also became very cognizant of the shortfalls in the business model. And so exactly what you talk about, and I know you've worked with some of the greatest speakers on building those systems to, I mean, we've said it for a long time, we're not selling speeches, we're selling wisdom. And that wisdom can be delivered across a variety of platforms. But the smart speakers are also selling that engagement and the transformation. And that comes from process and systems.

And it's, and it's quite frankly, it's really hard to be top of your game at all of these things, right? It's hard to be a great speaker, right? It's hard to be a great speaker that gets booked frequently. That's a different skill set, right? Right. It's hard to be the CEO of a company that's got a speaker as their primary thing. And do product development and distribution and sales. And so, you know, to me, that's why I do what I do. And I know that's why you, a lot of the work that you do as well is say, OK, well, double down on the things that you rock at and figure out like where the gaps are, and either develop those capabilities or figure out how to, who and whatever else can support you in that, in that.

Well, I think that's one of the things that you do so well is not only do you do it well for the speakers you work with, and the thought leaders and others, but you help others realize that there's so much more they could be doing. And it might be overwhelming, but to be able to just broaden their perspective and horizon of how other ways do they build that brand, they build that thought leadership.

Yeah, thank you. And monetize

it. They got to monetize it.

Well, and I think a lot of keynoters think arithmetically. I've got 2 variables, my fee per keynote and number of keynotes a year. Those are the 2 things I can move. And I just think that's not true. You could grow geometrically. by having a full suite of services and all. It's a whole different game and a whole different business, whatever. But, but, you know, you physically couldn't do 300 keynotes a year. It's just not possible.

And no, we're not scalable that way. But, but I would ask you, Peter, how many people have you worked with who said to you, why the hell didn't I do this 10 years ago?

Oh, I've never, you know, it's funny that you said that. I've never had a client say, I'm so glad I waited so long to figure this out.

Right.

They're like banging their head going, oh, shoot! Now I can see the piles of millions I've left on the table by not having this in the past.

Yeah, but they don't need to kick themselves.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.

I was gonna— it was right on the tip of my tongue. I was waiting for the opportunity to say it. So no, you're— it's right. I tell people, I say, don't, don't feel bad for what you haven't done. It's time to do it. I, we're in a really good place right now. We're launching assessments and and certification globally and some things that we're doing around Ridiculously Easy. And I said to my wife exactly that, like, I should have done this 20 years ago. And she's, but she said, you weren't ready. You didn't have, and with all the books I've written, now having the brand, the Ridiculously Easy that really resonates, it gives me that platform.

And was the market ready? Were you as well known? Were you as well known? Were you as well seasoned by working in so many industries? Like, so it's easy to say that, but there's a time and place, like, Is this the right time for me? What does the market want? What do I have to say, etc.? So

yeah, recognize the opportunity that comes from the convergence. Yeah, absolutely. We got to do this again.

Yeah, this has been a lot of fun, David. I wish you the best with Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With. And, uh, I think I love that as a platform because it says what it is and what it does, which is, which is, you know, I think that's half the battle. And, uh, it's very aspirational. Yeah, which people love that. So this has been great. I appreciate your time and wish you all the best and all that you've put in.

I appreciate it. Thanks.