Thought Leader Disruption | Terry Jones

Peter Winick

Navigating the disrupted landscape of thought leadership.

An interview with Terry Jones about how COVID-19 had disrupted the thought leader and speakers industries and how to survive in the new landscape.

Today’s guest is Terry Jones, founder of Kayak and Travelocity, author of Disruption Off and Innovation On. Terry is a digital disruptor, and venture capitalist with a deep knowledge of what it takes to change and thrive in a changing industry.

We discuss with Terry what thought leaders and keynote speakers who have been disrupted by COVID-19 should be thinking about. Also, we explore methods to continue delivering content. In addition, we examine why prices should be protected even when delivering digital content, and what types of speakers might be hardest hit.

If you are a speaker or thought leader wondering how to continue working, or worrying about the future of large scale meetings and the communities that host them, then this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview:

Thought leaders need to find a way to deliver quality digital productions from home.
If the content of your thought leadership has not changed, then the price should not be deeply slashed, even while delivering it remotely.
Corporations will still want thought leadership, but you’ll have to be clear about the value you offer.

If your thought leadership has been disrupted in the recent months, contact Thought Leadership Leverage for assistance. We can create a strategy to reach your target audience in the current environment and assist with many other aspects such as marketing, branding, research, and sales.

Transcript

Peter Winick 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 I’m excited about this episode because Terry is an interesting fellow. So Terry Jones is a digital disruptor and author and a venture capitalist. He’s founded five startups with $2 billion IPOs, Kayak and Travelocity and has served on 17 corporate boards. His career path has established him as a thought leader on innovation, disruption in our increasingly digital world. So I love Kayak, and I do remember Travelocity back in Job. Yeah. Yeah. So welcome aboard. So you you’ve got a lot of boxes checked in terms of entrepreneur, entrepreneur, author, speaker, board member, all around thought leaders.

Terry Jones So even a travel agent at one.

Peter Winick Point, even a traveler. Remember, if you’re under 35 Google that they used to be people that would actually book your ticket.

Terry Jones You know what’s funny is that people think they’re gone. And this is a good lesson about how business changes. There were about 60,000 of them in the United States agencies and half of them went away. Sure. But half of them are still here. That’s a problem, of all things. My daughter ended up being a travel agent. I spent my whole career putting them out of business. And she are one, right? And but that a form of rebellion.

Peter Winick Is that a form of.

Terry Jones Yeah, maybe. But she’s in high end leisure, which is still writing. Right. And business travel, A lot of travel. I just still do that career Disney. So it’s surprising we think of things obliterated by new technology but usually it takes a very long time.

Peter Winick Yeah, well, and it’s not really obliteration because, you know, I remember early in my career the I mean, you couldn’t do anything without a travel agent, right? And they were retail and they were in every corner liberty, travel and all that sort of stuff. That all went away, thanks to you, Travelocity and Kayak and others. But what have survived because there are others that we use are high end specialty. You know, if you want to do a safari or something exotic. That’s right. Right.

Terry Jones So, you know, thinking of where we are today with Corona and I, I’ve been doing a lot of radio and talking about disruption because when you book is disruption of it was 911 after 911 when the airlines were flat on their back like they are now. Yeah. They decided to take commissions to zero Yeah not pay airlines commission anymore. And that’s what made travel agents go away. Right. Right. We’re going to see other businesses in this disruptive time make the kind of decisions they were always afraid to make because they have nothing to lose.

Peter Winick So I want to go better with you, right? So you’re the disruptor and you’re the thought leader. Okay. Right. Amongst other things, one of the things that we’re seeing a lot of right now is and this is, you know, we’re in the midst of Covid right now. Obviously, the whole thought leader industry, if you will, keynote, speaking, advising, consulting blown up, right? Yeah. Disrupted. I mean, we’re talking about 2020 pretty much if you’re a keynote or assume you’re just don’t just throw a month of your calendar way through the whole damn thing go away and 2021 ain’t going to be much better, right? That’s just that’s what it is. I’ve even heard from very well known authors and keynote, you know, the day of the $50,000 celebrity, you know, Guru keynote is over because post-COVID, we’re in a recession, potentially. Depression values change where we spend our money on changes. So if you were a thought leader, a keynoter, that has been involuntarily disrupted, what would you be thinking about this?

Terry Jones Well, I am one, you know, I’ve been giving speeches for a long time, and I do I do now about 30 a year. Not as many as I used to do, but because I just don’t want to run that hard, do what I did. Right behind me is a TV studio basically built over the last two weeks, and that’s to prepare for virtual speaking. Have I have about four books already. Okay. And the ones I’ve seen so far are awful horrible. So I’ve tried to do it very differently. My brother is also a keynote speaker and a National Geographic photographer. He lives in Hawaii. So we’ve been on Zoom every day sort of brainstorming how to do this. And I think that virtual speaking needs to be like television. So.

Peter Winick So my like television do you mean production value and all that?

Terry Jones I’ve always had I’ll do 300 slides in an hour and they’re all graphics. Okay. I do that because it keeps people off their phone. It’s FOMO. They fear of missing out. Yeah, yeah, look down. Okay. But when I do it virtually, I’ve got graphics and video and polling. So they interact in interviews and compelling content combined in a new way. And it’s going to evolve for sure. And I’m not. The little box in the corner. I’ve got a video switcher, so I’m on screen. My sides are on screen and things are moving around. And the idea is to, you know, keep them off their email.

Peter Winick So I want to just I want to touch on that for a minute, Terry. So there’s some production value there that’s different. Yeah. Then what? So most great keynote ers have thought through almost every, well, every moment of their keynote, the introduction, the music, the tone, their setting, the lighting. They prefer the slides, you know, they’ve thought this through. And now, bang, you know, they’re in this virtual world. They go, geez, I guess I just hit record on Zoom or, you know, whatever. But I like the way that you’re thinking about it from a user’s perspective. I got to keep it. And with stuff polling and this, that and the other thing because it’s competing with the cell phones.

Terry Jones You know, I think it’s quite different. And we’re going to learn, you know, am I going to have a crawl go on below me like CNN, you know?

Peter Winick Yeah, but that’s a great thing. Maybe.

Terry Jones You know, maybe that’s where the questions are showing up. It’s just, you know, it’s different Even when I’m in a hall because of the way I speak. If they’re going to show an image mag, would you know, a picture of me and cut back and forth to the slides? I say, Don’t show me. Just so the slides I go too fast. You’ll never figure out when I.

Peter Winick Took turkey jerky.

Terry Jones Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just. Just leave me alone and I’ll be the voice of God. And you’ll see these pictures. And I never send my slides to a meeting planner because they. They’re determined that I couldn’t finish because they’ve had the guy who has four slides with 400 points. Yeah, right, right. We all know that guy. Yeah. So I don’t do that. And I get raves and raves. I give away my slides. I have an app so the people get the slides. I’ve already taken the notes. They can review me live, they can participate. Hopefully they can buy a book. And that way, if they really aren’t looking at their phones, then I’m not disappointed. I think they might be looking at my app and not playing Angry Birds. Right?

Peter Winick So, yeah, right. Well, let me ask you this, Terry. So I love you went at it from a little bit of a different thought that I had, but I love it that there’s a production value peace. There’s a tension. You know, you’ve got to keep their attention in hook Even when you watch the way television is today, situation comedies, you know, the average shot is moving at five times the pace that it did, you know, 8 to 20 times the pace is all in the family, actually, you know, go back to the 70s and you’d watch the same scene for four minutes, which is like an eternity today versus this herky jerky style we’ve all gotten used to. I want to flip it a little bit, and I’m seeing lots of things. Some of them are really concerning relative to value and delivery. Right? So there’s one school of thought that says if I was a speaker that was charging X, whatever, X was 20, 25, K, whatever. Now I’m doing it virtually. OG’s My book of business went away. I’m desperate. I’ll do it for anything. There’s another school of thought that says, Well, you know what? It’s reasonable to discount your old fees 2,025% because you don’t do the travel. So that quote one hour keynote, which didn’t include two days of travel back to back and sort of reasonable, what are your feelings on protecting the value discounting making sure your brand.

Terry Jones Yeah I think it’s too bad you know when people discount a virtual product it’s very hard to maintain price integrity. I have a friend a high level speaker who claims he’s not discounting at all. We’ll see. I want to sort of backstop that to see if that’s true. He’s getting some of it. You know, what you’re paying for is the content. Yeah. And frankly, the content isn’t any different. And so you don’t have to travel two days. Okay, big deal. You’re paying for my trip anyway. And usually it’s, you know, I’m in and out going to do another one. So, yeah, you know, 20% fine fit, but a lot of people are discounting 50 and 60% and I think that’s not good. Yeah, I don’t think you know, it’s unfortunate in the business. Now whoever said a one hour speech is worth $50,000. I mean, it is an unusual price anyway. Yeah. So, you know, it’s sort of like, why do I pay a realtor so much? Yeah. When they don’t do very much anymore. So I think we’ll have that problem with price. I don’t think the keynote is going to go away. I think people even more need to be motivated and they need to get together and people as they as this goes on longer. And Gartner just released numbers that 75% of major companies have said we’re not sending everybody back to the office. Even if we have a vaccine, we’re not doing it. You know, we don’t we don’t want to do it. We don’t need to do it. But therefore, how do you how do you motivate them? You know, the woman who came after me at Travelocity went on to become the CMO at IBM and had a lot to do with bringing remote workers back into IBM. So we don’t want cultural standpoint. Yeah, Yeah. Because they had to change the culture. Yeah. And you know, that was the same thing that Melissa did at Yahoo! And, you know, widely panned. But I think the right idea and it doesn’t mean you can’t have work from home but it’s hard to change culture when people are remote. So I think.

Peter Winick That if you but if you look now. L and take that variable out of the equation where the office might not even be an option for many anymore. Right. You can’t say, Well, I guess we don’t have culture anymore. You just have to figure out how to do it. Okay.

Terry Jones Yeah. Which means that that doing what we’re doing here on a zoom with high quality production and good content becomes even more important. Yep. Much more important. So I don’t think the keynote goes away. I do think that perhaps the emotional keynote goes away, you know.

Peter Winick But when you say emotional, is that it?

Terry Jones Well, let me tell you what I mean. So the real stuff. Yeah. So it’s it’s the. The guy who climbed Everest. Yeah. Yes. Arms.

Peter Winick Yeah. Right, Right.

Terry Jones You have wonderful stories. They’re. They’re highly emotive, but they really don’t move the needle for business. Right. And, you know, or the sports coach who talks about before. Yeah, it’s. It’s great. It’s, you know, it’s an easy thing to do in a meeting. But, you know, corporations and I, you know, ran big corporations want to look at return on meaning what am I getting out of this thing and how am I really changing people’s lives?

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 podcast and on all major listening apps as well as at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com/podcasts.

Peter Winick Next is the Return. So let’s forget Covid for a moment because that will be behind us at some point six months, a year. God knows when. But this is a moment in time. What I don’t see people putting up front enough, in my opinion right now is okay. And I’m not discounting or diminishing the seriousness of the gravity of Covid. It’s a it’s a horrible, crazy, awful thing. The business world has totally changed in the last 60 days. Right? So if we think about where were we in January, February war for talent, why do we have a war for talent? We’re at full employment. People are making a ton of money. Stocks are going through the roof, etc.. We just lost 35 million Americans in the workforce here. So how does the and I’ve seen not to the level that we’ll see now, but we’re clearly in a recession. And the D-word is floating out there. Right. Which is very, very real possibility over the next couple of years being ugly. What does that mean for a keynoter? Because I, I just fire, you know, if I’m if I’m Hilton Hotels, I don’t think I’m having my top sales guys conference in Hawaii this year.

Terry Jones No, but you will even look in 2008. Yep. You know, I had a bad year, but I didn’t have a disastrous year. Yeah, my business was down maybe 30%. Sure. Because the first thing you do when you come back, I mean, the guys who die, okay, are going to die, but the guys are going to live. Say, I have to motivate my sales team. I have to change my strategy. I’m getting people together. I had one speech that was March 3rd in New York and I was already there. And I got I got a text and they said, we cancel the meeting for tomorrow morning because of Covid. So, you know, it’s kind of crazy because I think everybody is already there. But yeah, right, right. Put them all in a room, which I get. So I thought, well, that was just off the books. No, I’m doing it virtually because there’s a very large company over 100 years old. They’ve got a strategy they’re going forward with, you know, not all. It’s an industry that’s going to do okay, and they want to motivate their folks and they want to talk about digital disruption, which is what one of the things I talk about. Yeah, okay.

Peter Winick But your topic is a highly relevant topic today. Yeah. And what I’m saying is that I’m a thought leader today. Number one, forget the mountain climber with Islam and we’ve all seen sort of those guys or whatever. Okay.

Terry Jones Yep, they’re.

Peter Winick Gone. Well, that’s the froth on the cappuccino that’s gone now. Right? So how do you make your content relevant in this business environment? So digital disruption, this is actually might even be a demand gen for you this this crazy.

Terry Jones Yeah well could be because a survey of European execs shows that digital disruption will actually accelerate because of Covid. And I think it Well, we’re in the biggest digital experiment of our lives. Yeah. E-commerce is up 50%. Yeah. Remote work isn’t going away. Robots, Iot, all that stuff is off the charts. Right? So I’m in the right place, the right time. But let’s say I was just speaking about innovation. Guess what? You’re going to need to be pretty innovative to deal with this new market. You know, if you’re a cruise line, you’re going to be super innovative for your airline. How do you build trust of your hotel? How do you build trust? If you’re a restaurant, how do you how do you get contactless restaurants? You know, all that’s going to take innovation. If I’m a sales team, you know, this is not new. I think it was three years ago, I was with the guys from Arrow Electronics. You know, this company. You know, I’m in the van. I’m going to the cocktail. Before the speech, I said, What’s your biggest problem? They said, We can’t call on purchasing managers any more because they’re working at home in their pajamas. You have to deal with them virtually. Well, guess what? All sales calls are going to be virtual now, right?

Peter Winick Right.

Terry Jones The vast majority. So if you’re in sales, you’re going to need to be retrained and be motivated.

Peter Winick To even push that once further. So a big piece again, of the speaking world is the association side of the house. Right. So what is an association? They’re typically a nonprofit. They’re charter typically read something like to serve, promote and educate our members. Right. And why do people go to Scottsdale every February? Well, they go for two reasons, maybe three. One is if they want to, you know, wine and dine on the company dollar for Scottsdale. But that’s very few. Most of us would rather spend a night in our own bed and not have to do that. They go for content and they go for community. So we’ve been talking about deploying content in a different way than we’re all in, you know, the Aloha Ballroom or whatever. How do you get that community piece? Because people might not have articulated, but one of the reasons they show up in Scottsdale, everything.

Terry Jones Absolutely.

Peter Winick Is.

Terry Jones I think community is going to be much harder now. It’s interesting. So a good friend of mine started a travel consortium called Virtuoso. And they take all these high end travel agents and all the general managers of all the best hotels in the world and the best tour companies. They all go to Vegas and they have five minutes speed dating for three days.

Peter Winick Okay.

Terry Jones So the manager pitches five minutes to my daughter, come to my hotel in Macedonia. Right? Could you do that in zoom rooms? Probably could, you know. Could you could you have that kind of connection? That that kind of thing you could do? The cocktail party meeting thing is going to be much harder.

Peter Winick So it’s the randomness of it, of you and I are just on the buffet, right? Right. That that is correct.

Terry Jones Anyway, so it’s going to have to be orchestrated. The dating game, you know. Okay. I want to go to this breakout and I’ve been in a couple already where, you know, we were I ran a board meeting with 40 people and then we broke into six breakouts. Yep. And, you know, we had. It’s pretty cool. It worked. You can record them. You can get transcripts of them, you know, and. And Zoom has this wonderful tool so you can see if people are off playing a video game instead of being. Yes.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Terry Jones Right. You know, so you kind of go and you know, what are they doing? So it’s going to be different. And I think trade associations already have said, well, we kind of stopped the magazine and now we’re trying to do it, you know, an ezine or, you know, remember those?

Peter Winick And yeah, yeah.

Terry Jones They’re trying different things. But the meeting, of course, also is a huge revenue driver for them.

Peter Winick Yeah, no.

Terry Jones Total. So that’s going to be, you know, how do we how do we make money, you know, and show value. Now the other big part of what trade association, too, is lobbying. Sure. That’s going to be interesting. How do I lobby when there is no lobby?

Peter Winick Right. I think about that. Right. Think about the origin of that word. Right. Where that doesn’t. Right.

Terry Jones Ulysses S Grant in the Willard Hotel. That’s right. Yeah.

Peter Winick Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.

Terry Jones Have a have a scotch with or a bourbon with Grant.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Terry Jones So that’s going to change. So, you know, I think that speakers have to say what was the value I gave?

Peter Winick I stop there for a moment because I would argue and I don’t want to name names, why does someone bring in a specific speaker? And in my opinion, it’s there’s an entertainment piece. Is that a marquee name that will get Woo? That’s why I’m going I get to see. Right A-Z or whatever. Right, Right. There’s entertainment, there’s engagement. They’re good at what they do. Their craft is good, you know, And then it’s dropping a couple of bullet points on the people. So the over the cocktail party, they go, yeah, I’m just kind of, you know, it’s kind of interesting. But they were never held to the standard of changing people’s way of thinking, of having a business impact. Nobody ever really thought like, okay, So if I if I put, you know, 400 people in a room with someone like Harry, who’s a great disrupter, an innovator that actually do anything with that.

Terry Jones Well, it’s interesting. I mean, one of the things that I pitch is return on meeting, okay? And I pitch that around myself to say, okay, I’m not only given these points, watch my video, I review all those points at the end. Then I’m willing to go out into the lobby and talk to anybody for an hour. I’ve got a companion book. I’ve got notes that they can have. So, you know, let’s talk about it and see if he gets a return. And by the way, afterwards, anybody who wants my slides has to review me. And I mean, I didn’t share all those reviews with the meeting plan because what does a meeting planner want to do? They want to show those reviews to the boss. So these people really got it. They really got it.

Peter Winick So that that’s different than most of what I’m saying is the keynoter that met the standards that the industry had. I’m entertaining, I’m engaging, I’m fun. People will clap. People give me the thumbs up if there’s no there, if there’s no gravitas, I think they’re at risk. Quite frankly.

Terry Jones I think they are at risk because people are going to say. 60% of the people on the zoo were playing Angry Birds.

Peter Winick Yeah, right.

Terry Jones More or less. Right. And they were doing their email or something else or, you know, and I saw the their daughter come in and they left, you know, or whatever. So I think it’s going to be much harder. And, you know, the people who don’t customize, I always get it.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Terry Jones Every single time I come.

Peter Winick The Drive-By Speakers. Right. Hello, Illinois. You’re in class.

Terry Jones Yeah. Well, yeah. I never say thanks for welcoming Illinois because I’m always in Iowa when I say that’s all. I don’t remember. But. But still, yeah. I think the bar for quality of content return on meeting is going to be quite high.

Peter Winick Got it. Well, this is been using that term return on meeting and I think and I hope that we see more and more of that and I think that’s actually a good challenge to folks to say, okay, if you would articulate your value prop to the meeting player or whoever that’s hiring you, what’s your return on meeting? And if you can’t answer that today, you’re in, you’re in deep doo doo.

Terry Jones Yeah. Yeah, I think I think you’re right. I don’t think it’s gone away. I do think large meetings are going to take a while to come back. That’s post-vaccine.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Terry Jones Yeah. Yeah. And we don’t really know when that’s coming, but doesn’t mean the business is gone. People still need to be motivated. I think when, you know, it calms down a little bit, business starts reopening. People are going to say, Hey, I need to do the same things that I was doing before for my employees. Maybe I need it more. Well, who can help me with that?

Peter Winick Yeah. And one thing that you said that I’m thinking about is, you know, obviously, as the workplace changes and if it doesn’t look like it used to, maybe meetings become more important because that’s really the only time or one of the fewer times. It’s not like I’m sitting next to you every, you know, you and I always having lunch on Wednesdays at the steakhouse, even though we work with the same company in the same city. Maybe the only time you see each other is the twice a year annual offsite.

Terry Jones That’s right. You know, people are saying, Well, how do I know my employees are doing anything? You know, I started, you know, before. Did you go look in the mirror? Have you measurement output? I mean, for example, I have a woman who’s worked for me for 15 years. And this the first time I asked her for a weekly report. Right. She was kind of upset about that. But I’m saying, look, there’s no business. So what are you know, I’m still you’re my boy. I’m still paying you. What are you doing? Right? And if she’s out there knocking on doors, that’s fine. So we started this because I need to know what she’s up to.

Peter Winick Well, that’s not about trust. That’s about. Okay, let’s document the activities that we can talk about them and say, is this working? Is it not working? Should we spend more time here? Less time? Let’s have an intelligent conversation.

Terry Jones Yeah. Yeah. Because before the outcome was, I got a lot of bookings. Right now I’m not.

Peter Winick So it didn’t matter, right?

Terry Jones The bookings. So. Okay. How are we doing with the books? Yeah. How are you promoting? What are your teeth. Yeah. And do I agree? Right. Because you’re my boy. So no, I love the measurement piece, but there’s also getting together and just how you.

Peter Winick Do strategy and the activities underneath that and willing to try new things. So.

Terry Jones yeah. For me like this. Try it. Like this virtual studio thing. Yeah. You know, I’m going to do one and it’s going to fail and then I’m going to learn again. My whole my biggest thing in my book, Disruption Off is about failing. Yeah. And learning from failure and testing. 20% of what you see on Kayak every day is a test. Yeah, you’re constantly failing, but continuously learning.

Peter Winick And the product is better.

Terry Jones Every day I talk about risk and failure and making faster decisions and all that has to be done right now. So disruption off. Take a read. If you haven’t, it’s I’m able.

Peter Winick Thank you so much, Terry. This has been fantastic and big fan of Kayak for a number of years. So thank you. Thank you for bringing that into the world and mean a lot of good stuff today and a lot of things for folks to be thinking about and really having the courage to internalize and ask yourself the tough questions. Thanks.

Terry Jones Thanks for having me on.

Peter Winick 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 at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.