Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 5 -Stephen Shapiro

Peter Winick

Stephen Shapiro is an innovation expert with a 15-year tenure at Accenture, as well as multiple published books on leadership, including his most recent offering, “Best Practices are Stupid.” Today, Stephen focuses on transforming innovation practices for businesses like 3M, P&G, Marriott, Nike, and Microsoft.

Stephen joins Peter to discuss how he forged a business as a successful speaker and thought leader, and share tips for doing it on your own. Stephen also shares his strategies for growing your business beyond speaking engagements, and how to find partners to license innovative products and properties. Stephen also talks about the role of speaker’s bureaus, and gives handy tips for new thought leaders looking to make an impact. Listen in, there’s a lot to learn!

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick, I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And today we have podcast episode number five of leveraging thought leadership. And I’m delighted to have is my guest, Steve Shapiro. Hello, Steve.

Steve Shapiro Hey there, Peter. How are you?

Peter Winick I’m great. So let me give everybody Steve’s official introduction so they know who we’re talking to, because this has a lot to add to this conversation here. So Steve cultivates innovation by showing leaders in their teams how to approach, tackle and solve their business challenges, applying the knowledge he has accrued over decades in the industry. Steve is able to see what others can’t. Opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them. The first innovation opportunity Steve spotted was the opportunity to innovate within his own life. Halfway through his 15-year tenure at Accenture, while leading the company’s business process re-engineering practice, he realized he no longer wanted to be responsible for people losing their jobs. So he did exactly the opposite. By building it centers thriving 20 person process, an innovation practice focused on growth and job creation. In 2001, after publishing his first book 24/7 into innovation, Steve left Accenture to become a full-time innovation speaker and advisor to clients around the world. He’s published four more books. He’s talking to clients all around the globe PMG Marriott, Nike, Microsoft. He’s on the board of the NSA and is the recipient. I was actually there to see him receive that, which was another of the certified speaking professional designation. And in 2015, he was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame. He is also actively involved with Girl Starter as a judge and mentor on the TV show on TLC. And has supported the speaking tour and other endeavors. Steve’s based in Orlando. He loves travelling to meet clients, so. Steve, welcome.

Steve Shapiro Welcome. That was the longest introduction I think I’ve had yet.

Peter Winick Great. So you and I have known each other quite a while. Some might describe you as an author and a speaker. Some might describe you as a thought leader or an innovator. Well, we want to talk about today is the business side of Steve. So give me just a high-level what Steve world looks like, what your business looks like, and then I want to get into the things that you’re doing to scale it.

Steve Shapiro Sure! So I think a big part of my business is keynote speaking. So when I left Accenture, that’s that was my intention was to do that type of work. But over time, you know, all good speakers learn that if you’re just a speaker, you’re sort of a one and done transaction. So I’ve been developing products, developing technologies, developing approaches to be able to stay in front of clients for longer periods of time, allowing me to, as you said, scale the business so great.

Peter Winick So let me push on that a little bit. I find in my work. Right, which is why working with people like you, there are two types of speakers. I jokingly say there’s one is that’s one. One to speak more. And those that want to speak less. Yes. And nobody ever says, I’ve got this just right. I’m doing exactly the amount of gigs that I want to do. So when you talk about having other tools and solutions and such. Tell me how you were able to move the speech, which is typically a transaction. Right. The client calls you, says, are you available in Scottsdale telling me the third? Yes, my fee is such and such bang. That’s all good. How do you turn that into an ongoing relationship? And give me an example of some of the support tools and such that you’ve developed for your clients.

Steve Shapiro Sure. So some of them happen in conjunction with a speech. So, for example, one of the things that I’ve developed is called the 30-day innovation challenge. So what happens is you’re done with the speech. You walk off and people, as you know, get busy. And so they are going to forget you. They’re going to forget your message and they’re not going to do a lot with it. So the 30-day innovation challenge was something which I developed a number of years back where I said, OK, what can I do to use an event to kick off a process? And in my world of innovation, that’s how I’m always thinking, how do we move to process rather than just ad hoc events? And so basically what happens is there’s a number of different ways to register that doesn’t matter. But what happens is if I have an audience of 500 people, I walk off the stage, their phones ring with an email or a text message with a question about something I just talked about on the stage. And they get points based on how quickly and how accurately they respond to the question. And when they get it right up, pops a 1-minute video showing them why that was the right answer and why the other ones were wrong. And so this is a pretty unique offering, which then allows me to be in front of an audience for 30 days. And it continues the conversation and it gives me other opportunities now that sometimes I use as a profit center tool, but sometimes I use it as a differentiator if I’m up against somebody else and it’s like, OK, well, we’re going to go with Steve, we’re going to go with someone else. I sometimes throw that in, partly because it will set me apart from another speaker, but also because I know it will continue the conversation long after I’m done giving me a higher. We would have them remembering me.

Peter Winick So got it. So worst case, it’s a tiebreaker and you get the speech. Awesome. Best case, it’s the beginning of something else. So let me talk about or come into this if you would. I always believe that when you think about what the purchaser with the buyer, not necessarily the audience of the speech once. If they want somebody be engaging. They want somebody to be entertaining. And they want to be able to expose people to different thoughts, different ideas, exciting and interesting and creative people. On the other side of the house, when you start to move into behavior change and people really embracing and internalizing the content, the standard is really your content, your work, your tools, changes behaviors at the individual level that in the aggregate will move some business levers that are measurable. So it sounds like you’re your 30-day process. There is more of the latter than the former to talk about that if you could.

Steve Shapiro You look at every speech has to be entertaining and a great experience. And that’s actually one of the things which I focus heavily on is making sure my speeches aren’t speeches, but they are actually full-body experiences where people learn through having these insights, these opinions that they wouldn’t have had just by listening to somebody talk. But when it comes to how you would ultimately measure the success of any one of these events is does it push the needle, doesn’t move the needle for the organization in terms of the results that they’re gonna get. So in my case, since I talk about innovation, you know, companies are interested in are we developing better innovations, higher quality innovations, are we moving beyond just product innovation to service in business model innovation? And that’s really to me, ultimately the goal of anything that we do is to get that, as you said, the behavior change, get people to start doing things differently such that they will innovate rather than just be an order taker.

Peter Winick And frankly, that’s almost an impossible challenge to hold yourself to. If your experience is limited to 60 minutes at a ballroom in Las Vegas or something.

Steve Shapiro Yeah, I mean, obviously, look, in 60 minutes, you can do a lot. I mean, it is actually amazing what shifts I have seen in companies. I mean, I remember talking with a number of companies after just a 60-minute presentation how completely fundamentally shaped the way they did innovation in the future. And they’ve had some of their best year since. So and test. I don’t think we want to underestimate that. At the same time, I think it would be naive of us to assume that people with busy schedules are going to automatically internalize what was said. And therefore, I think reinforcement mechanisms of many forms are helpful. Got it.

Peter Winick So you’ve got speaking. You’ve got the 30-day innovation challenge. Give me a sense of the, you know, sort of walk me into the back room there and what are all the tools, services and solutions that you’ve got that you put out into the marketplace to help your clients and scale leverage the content?

Steve Shapiro Sure. So some of them are partnerships. So as you know, I have a partnership with Linkage training company and they’ve licensed my content and I have, after all these years, continue to have a nice relationship with them.

Peter Winick Well, let me pause you there. So licensing, you develop something once and you’ve partnered with Linkage, which is a great firm. They’ve got clients, they’ve got distribution. They’ve got certain skills there. So they’re tasked with the distribution and the sales and the marketing. And hopefully, you’re getting paid often for things that you did, you know, once a couple years ago.

Steve Shapiro Yeah. I mean, that’s sort of the theory. It doesn’t always work out quite the way you plan, but. Yeah. I mean, so licensing is certainly there’s multiple ways of licensing. So I license to a company. And what’s great about this type of situation is it’s very hands-off and low maintenance for me because they developed the course, they trained their trainers, they find the clients. And, you know, that’s pretty much for given that I want to be a solo partner, that I don’t want to have a lot of people on my payroll. That’s a great way to do it. But there’s other people. So I have another product called Personality Poker, which is a card game. And that is something which I’ve done in-house. I actually produce the cards, sell the cards. And what happens is it’s something which actually used during my speeches and then people buy it after the speeches. And it’s a great low-cost product that we sell quite a bit of. The reason why I mentioned that one is because there’s a lot of different ways you could go even with something like that. So I’ve never done a licensing deal with that where I say, here’s a certified personality poker trainer because to me that would be more work that I want. But that’s another way to do a licensing deal as you have other people. But you manage the relationships with the.

Peter Winick Awesome and personality. Poker is ultimately a game based individual, assess a sort of personality assessment and it gives you sort of team composition as well. And the fact that I mean, that speaks to your creativity and innovation, that you’ve put something that’s typically delivered in a boring, you know. Yourself this. The other thing into a really fun card game.

Steve Shapiro Yeah, I mean, just imagine a ballroom with a thousand people instead of them sitting there listening to somebody talk. I’m getting them up on their feet, trading cards. They’re literally on their hands and knees fighting each other to get the best cards. And then we will reconfigure the room where we based, have every person stand up and we reconfigure them based on their particular innovation personality. And so it’s just I think it’s probably the most interactive keynote in the planet. I can deliver to any size orgiastic. But the cool thing about that is people leave with the five cards that best describe how they see themselves. That’s awesome. So they get to go back. People see it. They get to it. So it gives you that physical reminder of the experience because we still think that the physical world is still important. So they take the cards back, but then they say, you know what, I want to play this with my team. And they go off and they buy decks of cards for their team.

Peter Winick And what’s cool is that a thousand people, obviously, everybody’s profile is different. You’re able to give a customized, highly individualized, highly introspective piece of insight to a thousand individuals in real-time. That’s pretty cool. So what do you call me about what you see in the next year or two or three different creative, innovative ways to get the word work out there, to get the content out there? Because part of your goal, I assume, is obviously you want to make a living. But the more people that you can touch, either through speaking or indirectly through the content, the better off the world’s going to be.

Steve Shapiro Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, worth it to me, it’s all about the content. So I do have. This is not the future. But just to give you a little bit of context, I do have an e-learning course. Now, again, my philosophy is partnerships. So I partnered with a company that developed my e-learning course. They paid to develop it. They do all the sales. They do all the distribution. And it’s a great relationship. And we’ve been able to scale that into some companies to tens of thousands of people in a very powerful way. So that’s sort of the if you really want to scale at a maximum level. Obviously, e-learning is a great way to do it. If you can get people to buy and it’s such a crowded market right now that it’s not a it’s not really a differentiator. It’s becoming a common interesting. So. So what I’m working on right now is to basically figure out how do I take the best of a number of different modalities, a number of different ways of delivering content and blend them together into something that is scalable but still has the high touch. And so I’m creating something called innovation intervention. I’ll be watching that very soon. And basically what it is, is a platform and process whereby people get the results that you would get from a, you know, six-figure seven-figure consulting project, plus all the benefits that you’d get associated with going through a training course. Plus all the benefits you’d get from mentoring and coaching. So it is a hands-on approach where I do work with people. Everything is done remotely. And, you know, the goal is to actually transform the business in a week. It’s not about education. It really is about transformation.

Peter Winick So that’s the applied, not the theoretical. So the multi-modality piece is interesting because I think the you know if you go back 10 years or so, you used to be able to have to take your content and put it in various modalities that you each have different sort of rules and the rules or sales, marketing, learning, efficacy, but sort of this mixed model. Right. So you do a little bit of distance learning and blending in some tools and sort of the smorgasbord of all that you have to offer to give people different experiences. That’s awesome. Another comment. I wanted to make, Steve is here’s what I find fascinating. And you and I’ve known each other for 10 years or so is most keen voters are keynoting. That’s what they’re doing. And you’ve got a full repertoire of offer offering services and solutions. And you’re doing that without happy living the life you love. Right. So you don’t have an office with 30 people working and worried about payroll and all this other sort of things and stresses in R&D and all that kind of stuff. You’ve figured out how to do it through partners. And I would imagine your e-learning partners probably better ready learning than you would be if you did it on your own. The folks at linkage have advantages that you don’t. Right. So talk to me about how you can expand and scale, because some people think that that means, you know, creating the job that they would have quit if somebody hired him for it.

Steve Shapiro Yeah, I. Again, you are spot on there. You know, my thought is I need to do what I do best and that only I can do. And I try to find partners for everything else when possible. So when it comes to developing the innovations, developing the new products, the new offerings, that’s my job to design them at some level. I still think it’s my job. But when it comes down to almost everything else, I try to find partners. Partners could range from going on a fiver to find somebody to do some voiceover or graphic design or whatever it might be. And I’ve used them quite a bit. I have other partners who are more strategic partners. And to me, that’s the key as much as possible is to when you can. And it’s not always possible, but when you can find somebody who would have a vested interest in your success and give them a slice of that, because if you can give somebody a slice of your business, then they’ll be more incentivized to want to help you be successful. And if they’re really.

Peter Winick So there’s an alignment piece to that. And then there’s also a complementary skill set. Because what I’m taking away from what you said is the core or the creating the content in the models and then sort of framing it. That’s you. You can’t outsource that because that’s that special DNA that makes Steve SHAPIRO. Steve SHAPIRO, right? You bet. It was a long, long time, etc. But going around that, you know, you could probably create an e-learning system, but that’s probably not a good use of your time. What I find happens all too frequently with folks in this space is, you know, this quarter they’re going to attack social media and then they’re spending their time on Twitter or LinkedIn and all that in a very tactical way, not in a thoughtful strategic way of just creating the content. I’m looking at that going, that is not the best use of your time. The best use of your time is coming up with the ideas that only you can do and you need to find a partner. And I love that you’ve created this empire through partnerships if you will.

Steve Shapiro Yeah. I mean, empire might be a bit of a stretch, but the. You know, my my thought is it’s like I love going to Vegas, and one of the things you have to know in Vegas is that you’re going to have some hands to lose and some hands that win. It’s a game of probabilities. So if you’re playing blackjack, you’ve got to play the odds. And even if, you know, hitting on a 16 against 10 feels risky, it’s what the odds tell you to do. So. That’s what you have to do here, is you have to place more number of bets knowing that some hands are gonna win and some hands are gonna lose me. Kenny Rogers, the gambler, if you listen to the words, it is actually to me some of the best advice for innovators. You know, every hand’s a winner. Every hand’s a loser. Yeah, but it’s all in how you look at it. I’m not going to ask you to say no. I was thinking about it and I thought, you know what? You want to scare people away.

Peter Winick So, wow, what a great sort of tool. So. So how? Talk to me now about the process. And so now you’ve got a suite of tools. You’ve got a bunch of folks that are specialty expertise and distribution, all that kind of stuff. When a client comes to you. Right, typically, because you’re sort of lead that the point of the spear is a speech. They’re not probably thinking about all these things. How do you probe and expand and move the conversation to, hey, I’ve got all this other stuff and here’s how I can take it from the event on May the 7th in Orlando to an innovation journey for your organization.

Steve Shapiro Yeah, that’s a it’s a great question. And it’s a challenge, actually, because in some cases people are if they’re if we’re talking with an event organizer, for example, for a conference, they’re thinking about the conference, they’re thinking about the experience for the people in the conference. So it and it also depends on where the lead came from, if it came from a bureau. It’s a different sales process than if it’s a direct lead. But typically what I try to do is know there’s a lot of debate in the speaking world. You know, should you quote somebody your fee, should you try to just get on the call and sell them a solution? And look, I don’t like to be evasive. If somebody asks, what’s my fee? I have a fee. I tell them my fee. If I’m available, I tell them I’m available. Then I say. But here’s what my best clients do. And I’ll always that’s sort of the line that I like to use if I’m trying to get some. Look, if you want just a speech, here’s the fee for it. But our best clients know that the results come from doing things before, during and after the event. Not just at the event. And here’s some of the other things to think about. So we try to weave it in, but I don’t want to confuse the buyer in the beginning. I want to give them just the bare bones for them to be able to make a decision on me as a speaker. And then.

Peter Winick So close the speech when the speech, plant the seed, expand the conversation post.

Steve Shapiro I think that’s for me, that’s the best way. Everybody’s got a different strategy. But I like to be as low maintenance and direct as possible if somebody asks for something. As long as I think it’s the right solution, I want to give them that.

Peter Winick Got it. So two thoughts on that. One is and I think this is really important. The buyer of a speech is often different. Right. If you have a whatever the head of sales at Company X running their sales event, they have a longer-term perspective in terms of what they’re trying to achieve. If you have the event planner, their job is to produce, deliver the event, move on to the next thing. And they probably have five others that they’re planning that that they don’t care about those other things. But it’s outside of their purview, if you will. How do you take that person or that sort of engagement and sort of sniff around for other people you may be able to talk to about the other things that you can do for them.

Steve Shapiro While every event. I mean, this is not unique to me, every speaker has a pre-event call, one or multiple calls where you speak with typically executives in the company. So that’s the easiest way. And sometimes I will in those conversations just cede the hey, look, I know what you’re interested in. You want it to be a great event, but you really want to get results, want to produce results in the organization. So I’ll start seeding these conversations with the executives during the prep calls so that when the time is right, we can continue that discussion.

Peter Winick Got it. And then the other piece that you mentioned is the bureaus. And sometimes, you know, there’s great things about working with bureaus, but sometimes they can be not totally transparent with regards to the early side of the process. Hey, I’ve got a you know, a client. I can’t tell you who it is, but they’re based in Cincinnati and they might have PMG and their initials or something like that. How do you take that relationships? Obviously, you want to serve the bureau. You want to close the engagement on the speech. But if there’s sort of a buffer between you and client interface, how do you how do you navigate those waters in a way that’s respectful to all parties?

Steve Shapiro Yeah, I think it depends not just on bureau in general, but the relationship you have with the bureau. So there’s one bureau where I do a lot of work. I love these people. They are just amazing. So they give me shit. Sure. Big speak, great big speak out of Santa Barbara, California. To me, they’re just unbelievable. We have a great relationship. We partnered a number of different things and they have a lot of trust in us because we do we do the right things. We just yesterday we got a request from someone in the conversations been going on and on and on. And then all of a sudden they mentioned a client saying, oh, by the way, the first thing like they found me on the Internet. But then we discovered that somebody had actually heard me speak in an audience of an event that was booked by Bigsby instantly before we even thought the client back. We wrote the big speak because their do their commission on any set in. A lot of people would’ve said, oh, you know, I can hide that. I would never have do that. So my point is I built this relationship with them over a long period of time, such that if I want to talk to a client, they have no issue with my talking with a client. They’re happy to, you know, for me to get involved. Now, there’s others who don’t know me as well, who are very protective of the client. And so in those situations, it’s a lot harder.

Peter Winick But your integrity and the long term relationship sort of trumps that, obviously. So this has been great chockfull of good stuff as we start to wind down Steve. Give me talk to Steve Shapiro 15 years ago, 20 years ago, probably 15 when you started in this space. And now you’re the wise and elder. What advice can you give that young, Steve? Not that you’re not young, but a couple of tips. Couple of things to think about as they’re entering the journey in the world of thought leadership and monetizing their code.

Steve Shapiro Well, I think the first thing is that the best advice is to ignore all the advice, because you know how it is. Peter, you go we should go to these you know, you go to conventions, as you mention, I’m on the board of directors for NASA. And we just had an event. And NASA is the National Speakers Association, not the other one. And, you know, you hear so many different perspectives and it gets exciting. And you want to do all of them. But not all of them are right for you. I mean, you have to understand your business, your context, your strategy or how you’re designing. Like I want to have a great life while having a great business. I’m not looking to have an amazing business at the expense of a great life. But those are going to influence the decisions that you make in terms of how you partner. So I could possibly make more money if I did everything myself, like by hiring people to do everything for me, not doing myself, but hiring people. But I love the licensing deals because it allows me to have the life I want. And I think that’s you know, for me, the best advice is to really just start looking at what’s right for you. What is an expression of who you are? I’m an innovation guy, so I have to do innovative things. It doesn’t mean everybody has to push the envelope on things and, you know, just have fun with it. Once it starts stops being fun, then it’s time to change things up.

Peter Winick And it is a lot of fun for most folks. So I want to thank you. You’ve shared a lot of your wisdom, your thoughts, your insights and multi-modality e-learning, partnering tools, being innovative and creative. We’ll recap it a little bit more in the show notes. But this was chock full of great information. I suggest if you listen to it, listen to it again because there’s probably things you didn’t pick up. The first time. Thank you. I am grateful to have you here today. I’m grateful to have you as somebody on my shortlist of folks I can call and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Steve Shapiro Oh, my pleasure, Peter. I look forward to maybe doing this again sometime in the future.

Peter Winick Excellent.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our Web site at thoughtleadershipleverage.com to reach me directly. Feel free to e-mail me at Peter at thoughtleadershipleverage.com and please subscribe to Leveraging thought leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.