Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick | Keld Jensen | 208

Peter Winick

As a keynote speaker and content creator, you want to connect with your target audience, regardless of their background, location, or industry. So, how do you craft a message that works for everyone?

Keld Jensen is the Founder and CEO of Marketwatch Center for Negotiations, a speaker with 20 years experience, and the author of 24 books including The SMARTnership Negotiation Manual and Honest Negotiation.

As a dual citizen in Denmark and the United States, Keld shares unique insights about speakership on a global level. What can you expect regarding fees, and how are global audiences different? Keld also discusses how to narrow down your book’s content, and keep the very best – and how to manage publishing expectations, so you can tell a great offer when you hear one!

It’s amazing that Keld has written two dozen books – and still maintains a very successful business! We know that writing a book can become a consuming process. Don’t let the process of writing a book control you or your business!

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today my guest is Keld Jensen, KG, a unique blend of real world experience and strategic problem solving to the global conversation and optimizing business transactions. He’s the founder and CEO of MarketWatch’s Center for Negotiations. He’s got 20 years experience as a speaker. His speaking engagements have been at international conferences all over the world, like Denmark, Lithuania, Major contributor at Forbes. He’s been on the top thought global leaders in trust. And there are many books that he has written. As I look through here, we’re going to get through all those, but several that he has written along the way. So welcome aboard today.

Keld Jensen Thank you, Peter, for having me.

Peter Winick Great. So you’ve got lots of the boxes checked, writes of speaker, author, advisor, consultant, etc.. Give us a quick overview of how all those various pieces play together in a systemic way. What is the what does Kells Universe look like?

Keld Jensen Well, it’s a very complicated universe, Pete, I have to tell you. Okay. Well, basic, you mentioned most of the stuff. I’m an although obviously having published 24 books in a number of countries. I am I’m born and raised in Denmark, moved to the U.S. for about ten years ago. I’m a dual citizen today. And I really consider I know it sounds very true to say that I really consider the world my workplace. I’m working in Asia and Europe and North America in general. So I’m 70 working with middle sized through Fortune 500 organization, and that could be anything from classroom training advisory services. I’m doing a lot of keynotes and then I’m a professor at a university here in the US and two universities in Europe. So all of these involved a lot of traveling, but it’s, well, it’s great fun, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.

Peter Winick Great. So talk about, you know, you given that you’ve written 24 books, my assumption is there’s probably ten more ideas for books floating in your head. What’s changed on the not on the content side, but on the, you know, just sort of the landscape of publishing between your first book and your 24th book and what are you doing differently about it?

Keld Jensen That’s a very good question. When you do your first book, you think you’re going to save the world and you, you, you, you know that that that’s your baby, right? When the first book is out, you’re looking at it with loving eyes and you think this is the most important thing since forever and you have a tendency to think that that it will actually change the world. And obviously you shouldn’t believe in that. Every time you publish a book within management, at least then you get surprised because it doesn’t really create a lot of awareness or attention because as all of us knows, so many books out there today, especially since everybody’s been able to self-publish and everybody’s been able basically just to to launch their own book and, you know, in any possible way. So it’s a very crowded market. What I would say is important and what I’ve learned from publishing the book is it’s actually helping me, focusing my thoughts. And obviously it’s also kind of a blueprint for you as an authority, especially when you have a number of books out there that has been published by publishers and they’ve been published globally. So that means that publishers in China, Malaysia, Japan and Germany and England and the US and.

Peter Winick I want to touch on that point you made for a moment there for a minute. So because I’ve heard this on more than one occasion and you would think there are easier ways to get from point A to point B, but not always the case, that oftentimes one of the outcomes, one of the benefits of writing a book is it’s a forcing mechanism to get the author to codified their thinking in a succinct and clear and teachable way. So you might have all this stuff floating around in your mind and this expertise, but it’s not particularly organized because you only need to retrieve it out of the realm of your brain. So tell me about sort of a little bit more about how a book forces you to get really tight and clear about it.

Keld Jensen Yeah, that’s a good question. And I would say the biggest challenge for me is actually keeping a book down to a normal size because I always end up with three times the material that I need for a book. And then the biggest challenge for me, and I guess that goes for a lot of authors, is really trying to filter and limit the information that goes in the book. So if you have a very good book editor and you’re working with a good book editor, they are usually the partner that will that will keep you challenged on what is really the interesting thing that you need to keep in the book. What I learned, though, throughout the period is that a lot of the leftovers that doesn’t go into a book is something that you can use later on. It might be something that you change or switch around, do whatever with, and then it goes into the next book because all of it is obviously relevant. And then there’s another very important part in all of this, Peter, that I know you are, that you are very experienced on. As well. And that is obviously the timing. I mean, you could, in theory, have the greatest book with the greatest idea. But if those ideas a little bit out of time and is not the right time to launch it, you know, you have to be very aware of when is the right time to bring something out. And, you know, so.

Peter Winick Let’s yeah, so let’s touch on I think there’s another key point you made there. I want to I want to press on is for you. And I don’t think this is particularly unusual. You know, it starts off with so much stuff in the beginning to boil it down to 250 pages. And I think I call it sort of the curse of the expert. Right? So, yeah, there’s you can go so deep on a topic because this is what you do, right? So you can go, you know, to the Ph.D. level literally on a particular topic. But when you get to put that in a book, you know, unless you’re writing, you know, biography of Ben Franklin or something like that, nobody wants to read 7 or 800 pages. And the challenge is to get it to the not the minimum, but what is the essentials, what is the you know, what’s too much. And it’s a bit of the Goldilocks problem. And it doesn’t mean you I like what you said that the stuff that doesn’t make it in the book gets used in other in other ways and other formats, etc.. But I think it’s a challenge that experts have and saying, but there’s so much to say about this topic, understanding that on the receiving end, I’m not going to commit 40 hours of my life to learning whatever it is, right? So give me the Ted talk. If I like what you have to say, maybe I’ll buy the book. Yeah, whatever. So whatever. I think the what the challenge of, you know, condensed attention span of the universe. Yeah. Yeah.

Keld Jensen Absolutely. And I love the phrase you just coined by saying, you know, the curse of the expert because yeah, the same goes when I’m delivering a keynote. You know, when you’re done, you feel that, my God, there’s so much that I didn’t give them. You know, I would have liked to told him this as well and that as well. And I didn’t mention that. And, you know, but by time you learn, obviously there’s a limitation. So you basically and I think my approach to doing a keynote today is the same as writing a book. I basically just list three, 4 or 5 key items. That is my ambition. If I deliver these five key items throughout the whole book or throughout the whole keynote, I’m happy. You know, I actually got the message across. I got because what is really important at this moment, at this time, because exactly the curse of the expert, if you want to hand everything over, you know, it’s a never ending story and you just end up confusing the receiver because it’s just, you know, a data dump instead of trying to just get some very specific that is needed right now.

Peter Winick Yep. So given that your global right and as many of us are, you’re more global than most, I would argue, given that you’ve got dual citizenship, citizenship and you you’re your time between the states and Europe. Talk a little bit about the similarities and then the differences on the business side of speaking in North America versus Europe, because they’re very different markets with different pricing and different expectations. And, you know, tell us about your experiences on both sides of the pond, if you will.

Keld Jensen Yes, that’s a great question. And I’m in this in this interesting, funny position where I can look from the outside in both into the U.S. and from outside in in Europe. And there’s a big difference that the audience and the speaker platform in Europe and the US are very different from each other. And the typical American speaker will not be as easily accepted in Europe just as well as the European speaking will not be that easily accepted in the U.S. for several reasons. That’s one part. I’m getting back to that in a second. The other part is that if we’re looking at the fee structure, the speaker in North America, specifically the U.S., there’s a big difference between the U.S. and Canada as well. But if you look at the U.S., the fee is generally higher in the U.S. than you would find in Europe. So if there’s any of your audience out there listening saying, I would love to speak in Europe, that’s great. And it’s fun for, you know, traveling out there. But you fee will generally be lower than it will be in the U.S. However, though, if you do it correctly and you adapt into the European mentality, when you are speaking, you can actually get a great crowd because, you know, the grass is always greener. So in Europe, interested in actually getting American speakers in. Now what they dislike in Europe is the typical how can I put it? Because I consider myself American today as well. So I’m offending myself. But they don’t appreciate the typical American expert, self-confident speaker that just comes in there and know it all. They are a little bit more humble. They are not being how can I put it nicely. They’re not being convinced as easily as the typical American audience, I would say.

Peter Winick So I would say let’s try this. I would say from my experience, some of the motivational, hubris, arrogant stuff that plays well in North America doesn’t play well. I think they honor the grob, the cost and the thoughtfulness first and the theatrics less. And in the States it might be a little bit the opposite if I were you. Yeah.

Keld Jensen Yeah, I. I would agree. I would agree with you. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So it’s not it’s not a downside to coming from the U.S. It’s not a downside being imperfect. I mean, they are very intrigued and very open and like everything that comes from the U.S., because obviously so many things are coming from the U.S., You’re in the market for it. You just have to be careful as you speak and how you present and introduce yourself. And I’m even being told now, Peter, when I go back to Europe that, you are starting to become an American now. So you know what? I’m kind of adapting the American way as well. So European, that.

Peter Winick May not be a compliment. Depends depending on who’s saying it, there might not be many. I want to touch on what you said about the fee structure, because I have a little bit of a different take on that. So for a traditional North American, American speaker Right, that’s going to Europe. My experience has been is in the right circumstances, at the right price point, they will pay a premium. So if you’re a, you know, American New York Times bestselling author, blah, blah, blah speaker, typically you should be commanding one and a half times your fee. Because the other thing is, if you know, if you lived in, say, Denver and you’re keynoting in Chicago, that’s a different amount of time being consumed than if you lived in Seattle and you’re doing a gig in Belgium. Right? So somebody has to pay for that time. Yeah. Unless you can stack up, Hey, I’ll be here two weeks and do a bunch. But domestically, I agree with you that the European rate is, you know, a $20,000 domestic speaker in the U.S. the comparable in Europe might be 12 or 15. It’s just a different market, just different price points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keld Jensen No, I absolutely agree with you. And then then there’s psychology in this as well, because I noticed that when I’m back in Europe and delivering a keynote, I’m always being introduced as And he came all the way from United States, you know, So it’s something exotic. Exactly. So I agree with you. If you can coin that correctly, if you can market that correctly, you can actually charge a premium just for the fact that you are for the weight. You know, so if somebody, as you mentioned, plane is sitting in Belgium and need a speaker, he will if he can attract the right expert from the US, be willing to pay more than if he was attracting the same speaker from Paris just for the fact that the US is further away. So it is more exotic. Sure. Sure. So in that aspect I complete agreement.

Peter Winick 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 podcasts, please leave us a review and share it with your friends. We’re available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

So how do you integrate speaking into the other areas of your business? So what I mean by that is there are folks that that are very selective about where they speak because they’re only looking to speak in places that, you know, where the clients become consulting clients or licensing their content. There are other speakers that say, listen, you know, I’ll speak to pretty much any management or leadership audience. I look what I do. How do you thread that needle and integrate the other solutions and ways that your business operates? So that speaking is supported by, you know, the other businesses supported by speaker?

Keld Jensen Yeah. Great question. I would say that I’m a little lucky since my field is collaboration and negotiation and it’s kind of a niche area. So when I’m invited as a keynote speaker, it is typically already an audience. There will be a potential continuing client base for me.

Peter Winick So it’s self-selected based on the subject matter itself?

Keld Jensen Yeah, exactly. It’s very rare that I’m standing in front of somebody that is far away from the world of contracting a legal negotiation or collaboration or whatever. It is typical already an audience that will be clients for me. So that’s a good thing. Yeah, yeah. I know that makes life easier and is typically either conferences or major corporations that would invite me and obviously that is somebody that typically knows me already. So that means it is within my field. So somebody who’s been reading my book knows what I’m be doing, has been looking me up on whatever, you know. So that is the typical audience. So I’m General Pete. I don’t have the difficulties of later on identifying whether that audience I’m speaking in front of is potential for me, you know.

Peter Winick Okay. So give examples then of and just have to be specific. But you know, you go to speak, they see you speak and then what is that next step? Because I think a lot of speakers struggle with being really clear about what that client journey is, right? So I buy your book for 20, $30. I see you speak or I bring you in to speak for X dollars. And then after that, these are the problems that you can solve. Either you directly or you with derivative accounts of your contacts. And what does that sort of product journey look like for the ideal client for you?

Keld Jensen Yeah, that varies a lot. Okay. Let me just take one step back and just go back to my first book. Yes, I had with that book because when I launched my first book, I was actually thinking, my God, this is great. I can just sit back and the phone will start ringing. You know, people will just call me day in and day out and invite me out to do work and consultancy and speaking and whatever because they read a book and obviously the phone rang, you know, basically because that is not enough, you can publish a book. Nobody will react to that book whatsoever unless you really have a very unique one that just blows the whole market off. But that didn’t happen with my first book, so I kept getting back to it to to the keynote. The keynote is a little bit the same. You shouldn’t do the keynote with the expectation that you walk offstage and the phone would just continue ringing and your email box will be full. To me anyway, is not happening immediately. But what is funny is that two years later I might get an email from somebody saying, Hey, I saw you speak in Boston. It was great. Could you come and help us? I could actually get an email the day after, but typically I would say it takes a little bit of time. So it’s not like I can capitalize on a keynote and just think that, Hey, I spoke on Tuesday, so on Thursday I will have made X number of revenue. Is not happening that way for me. It’s like people take the experience, they take the knowledge, they bring it back home, and then when time is right and they can implement the knowledge that they know they can get from me, then they reach out.

Peter Winick Okay, but what is it? So I agree with that. But I would also say that you have to have the systems and processes in place, right? Because there’s a time for serendipity, right? Where someone read you, send you an email, says, hey, you know, Akhil, they say you speak at such and such event two years ago and now I have this problem. But you you can accelerate or increase the probability of those things happening by having doing things like collecting their email addresses, doing things like in a professional way, letting the audience know the types of things that you tend to work on and all the, you know, and coordinating with the sponsor of the event to, you know, maybe contribute an article or short form video to the audience after as a way to deepen the relationship. What are the systems and processes that you’ve developed and deployed over the years that.

Keld Jensen Your advice right there is very good, Pete. And I would say in general, I haven’t been very good at that. What I typically do though, is I typically try to write an article for okay, for, for the sponsor, for the one that is coordinating the event. I very often try to have my book sold at the event as well because one area where I see a certain effect is the combination of the book and a keynote, because people still, regardless where you are in the world, they still love to walk away with the book of the person they just saw on stage. So the percentage of books you can sell at an event just increases tremendously. And I have very good numbers in percentage of people buying books, percentage of the audience there.

Peter Winick But typically that’s that. That’s 25 to 35%. Right.

Keld Jensen And I very often even go, hi, I usually pass you in 50 or 60% of the audience.

Peter Winick Fantastic.

Keld Jensen Okay. I’m very happy with that. Yes. And but just back to what you said, Peter, that is still not motivating or promoting that. People should call me afterwards because. That’s right. Something where I believe and I’m been awful. Honestly, I think a lot of the people don’t actually buy the book because they go home and read it. They just buy the book because they go home and tell the spouse, look, this was the sure page. And he signed the book. And then it goes.

Peter Winick More of a souvenir, right?

Keld Jensen Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So if I was selling T-shirt, I would probably be buying. So I completely agree with you. Having a systematic approach and I know you’re very good at would be would be great because that would definitely increase the potential sales that you could get afterwards. And I haven’t been extremely structured on that, but it’s been just focus on execute delivery.

Peter Winick Well, and I want to just touch on that because the business side of speaking in and of itself is very transactional and this isn’t a judgment to the individuals, but, you know, it typically works like this. You know, you get in touch with whoever’s booking the event through an agent or directly whatever, you know, or are you available on May the 7th? Yes. What is your feet? My fee. Is it okay? That’s within our budget. A great our theme is white. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Done. Great. We’ll see you in a few months. Right? Then you get on sale, maybe have a pre-meeting. You do your thing and you go home. It’s not really an ideal scenario for developing a rapport, a relationship that’s longer than a transaction. And I think the burden is on the speaker to use the speech as the tip of the spear and say, you know what, I don’t want to just go out there May the 7th and do my thing for an hour and get a thunderous round of applause. I want to turn them into a client or members of that audience into a client. How am I going to do that in an effective way? What’s the what’s the research I can do in advance? How do I plan meetings in advance? How do I let people know, etc.? And it’s and I think, you know, it takes time and it takes practice and it’s muscles that need to be developed that a lot of people frankly don’t have.

Keld Jensen I completely agree. Because typically. I don’t have a lot of talks, collaborations or meetings with a client before the keynote, and it goes exactly as you said, somebody and sometimes even come through one of my speakers agencies, you know. So I guess it’s just like saying, Are you available on that date? And I say yes or no. And then we talk about very briefly, what is the audience, how big is it? What is the expectation and deal done? You know, and I just show up. Yeah.

Peter Winick Exactly, Exactly. Great. As we start to wind up any final because you’ve been at this game for 20 years and you see things new that have become things and you’ve seen things that used to work sort of go the way the dinosaur. What are 2 or 3 things that you would recommend others out there experiment with or explore or take some chances with?

Keld Jensen I would say that obviously content is important and it’s important that you deliver quality and you have your product in order. Having said that, because that’s kind of what I expect everybody would do, and if you don’t have that in order, you’re just an immature. But that’s just, that is in order. Then suddenly it’s all about making a name for yourself and making some noise in the market because the market is so crowded, regardless of what you’re doing today, there’s so many players out there and it’s really, really hard for the buyer to identify who is it that we should get, whether it’s buying a book, getting an advisor, getting a consultant or getting a speaker, because everybody’s out there telling everybody that they’re the best one. And it is really, really complicated for the buyer, figuring out who should we actually be using. So as I said, step one is obviously having your product, having the right quality, trying to be different and delivering real quality and real results for your client. Step two is really figuring out how do I make a name for myself? How do I different, how do I make a voice and how can I actually penetrate this forest of voices out there? So that that is my experience. Very briefly, Peter, I think I told you that in a phone conversation. In my experience arriving in the U.S. years ago was that I had a meeting with a publisher in New York, and at that point I published a number of books in Europe. So I met up with the publishers. IT Hi, my name is Kelly. They just arrived from the U.S., you guys, to publish one of my books in the U.S. And I thought the publisher would say, Well, thank you for coming. We appreciate that. Of course we would love to book, but that was not what they told me, Peter. They said, Well, that’s great. Thank you. What have you done in the U.S.? And then I was quiet for a minute and I said, Well, nothing yet. Then they said, Well, give us a call when you’ve done something.

Peter Winick Exactly.

Keld Jensen And that was lesson number one. That is, you know, you may have a history somewhere, but you need to have your platform ready. You know, you need to have your marketing ready. You need to have your, you know, your voice just being very unique. So that’s one of the advice is I would I would define it well.

Peter Winick And being aware of being, you know, sort of a big fish in a smaller pond and moving to a smaller fish in a bigger pond. Absolutely. The burden on standing out from and differentiating content, which is ultimately the product from the crowd and knowing your competitors well, this has been fantastic. I appreciate your time. I appreciate all you shared with everybody today. Great stuff. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Keld Jensen Thank you for inviting me, Peter.

Peter Winick My pleasure. If you enjoyed this episode and I do hope that you did, please join our new LinkedIn group, which is exclusively focused on the organizational thought leader, the person in the corporate world that is using thought leadership as part of their job, whether that’s developing thought leadership, whether that’s deploying thought leadership, whether that’s helping others do so. Please take a look and check out our LinkedIn group. We think you’d get a lot of benefit from that. Thank you.