Virtual Thought Leadership Speaking | Dan Lier

Peter Winick

Virtual thought leadership speaking | Dan Lier

Maintaining thought leadership speaking during a pandemic.

An interview with Dan Lier about the speaking industry and how traditional stage speakers can move to be successful in a virtual setting.

Today’s guest is Dan Lier. He is the best-selling author of The 10 Minute Coach and Is Your Child Wired for Success. Dan is a sales and leadership expert, and internationally recognized motivational speaker. He has the experience of presenting over 3,500 customized talks to companies around the globe.

Selling your service as a speaker means serving two masters.

Dan explains why you need to satisfy both the event planner that hired you and the attendees of the event. Then, we discuss the competitive market and the things you need to provide to stand out. Also, we talk about why having video content is of the utmost importance.

Over the last year, speakers have had to make incredible changes to the way they sell, attend, and deliver keynotes. In addition, Peter and Dan discuss how pricing has changed. They explain the skills you need for success on camera, and what you can do to add value to your virtual speaking.

Three Key Takeaways from the Interview

Thought leaders must be aware of the needs of both the buyer and attendee of keynote speeches in order to truly be successful.
Delivering thought leadership digitally means having to be charismatic in a box, and that takes practice.
You can add value to virtual speaking engagements by adding on additional training of your thought leadership in workshops after the event.

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

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is an old friend, Dan Lehr. Let me give a little background on Dan. He’s a powerful force of optimism and achievement, who believes every person is capable of incredible potential. He’s six foot eight, so that makes him a giant in sales and leadership. And for over 20 years, he’s been helping leaders and salespeople improve their mindsets and increase their productivity and performance. Dan’s written several books, the first one being the ten minute coach. And I can get into all the other pieces here and has done lots of other interesting things, including working with companies like Pfizer and JPMorgan and the usual suspects. But let’s just Dan’s right here, so let’s just dive into it. Welcome, Dan, how are you?

Dan Lehr Hey, I’m doing great. I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Peter Winick My pleasure. So let me ask you sort of the easy question. So if I were to have found you, you know, 25, 30 years ago and said, okay, so, you know, what are the next 30 years like? Would the outcome actually would the reality look like the way you might have answered that question?

Dan Lehr It’s not even close. Not even close, you know. So my background, I was I mean, I didn’t know what I was going to do in my life. I was a college basketball player. I was blessed to get a scholarship. I’m six foot eight. I got a D1 scholarship to University of Toledo in Ohio. Then I transferred to a small school in Kansas. So we want a couple national titles every year. And so that was incredible. That really set, really set my mindset for what was possible. You know, when it’s back to back titles is very difficult. I had a coach that was incredible. He was my first entree, if you will, into personal development. So get this I might be a man and maybe I was 19 maybe. And I’m a transfer. I’m a junior. I go from I go to Kansas in the middle of nowhere. This guy’s a great guy. He’s a great coach, but he’s crazy. And, you know, I’m a good player, but I’m not a great player. I’m a role player. They had they had finished fourth in the fourth in the nation last year. And his pitch to me was, you know you’re are missing linked and we can we can win the national title with you right there’s no pressure.

Peter Winick No pressure. Right.

Dan Lehr Well, you know I was one of those I don’t know if you’re a basketball fan or not, but you’re about my age range. But if you remember back North Carolina basketball with James Worthy, Michael Jordan, Jimmy Black, Matt Doherty, Sam Perkins. Yes. I was the Matt Doherty of that basketball team. I was the guy who was the Kurt Rambis guy, the guy that was doing all the dirty work but making the good passes. But the bottom line is, it helped my mindset to change my belief system, what was possible. We won two straight national titles, but I still didn’t know what I was going to do after that. I wasn’t good enough to go play pro. I could’ve went overseas like France did. But I know what happens. You come back at 30 with a bunch of money and probably a couple of kids and you’ve got no skills.

Peter Winick Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Dan Lehr So I chose to. I chose not to do that. But anyway, what happened to me was something that I couldn’t even, you know, think about. I, I started getting my first job I got was working for an insurance company. I was selling commercial insurance. I didn’t know anything. You know, I just was doing what I did, making calls. But I started reading books, obviously. I started the first book I ever read was, I think, Harvey McKay’s Swim with the Sharks. Yeah. And then I read Tony Robbins book, the first book, and I really dug that. I was really vibing to Tony Robbins. And I started, you know, back in those days when he’s playing those infomercials with. Yeah, Yeah. Givens and Fran Tarkenton in those days. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I ordered these audiotapes, three easy payments of 6995.

Peter Winick And shipping and handling my shipping and handling.

Dan Lehr And this is back in the day. Remember this? We had these cassette, these console. Yes. You put it in, you press the buttons. So after work, every day I’d get home and I’d put it in. There was a 30 day program and I’d put in one tape, I’d press it and I’d take notes. I pressed pause because there was no remote control back in those days. Right. And pressing buttons and taking notes. And I implemented those tools. Peter and I tripled my income that year. And I was the number one performer in the region in a six state region. I was 22 years old, 23 years old. This is act this is way back in the day. I made like $85,000. That was more than my budgets.

Peter Winick That was like a million bucks, right?

Dan Lehr I bought a house. I had a cell phone in my car. I was like a pimp. Yeah, but what happened was after that, I found out some guy, somebody called me and he says, Hey, Dan, this guy is a good friend of mine. He was with the Atlanta Hawks. He was the director of sales for corporate. He was the had a guy come into his office to do a motivational talk for his team. And it was a Tony Robbins guy, right, selling tickets to a seminar. And he got your name was Dale Hendricks. And he called me up, Hey, man, you got to meet this guy. He just came in my office. You got to meet him because this is what you need to be doing. So anyway, he introduced me to him. Long story short, I got a great story about how I got hired, but I got hired by Tony Robbins.

Peter Winick Right? Right. And you were there for a number of years as a high performance, part of Tony’s organization, if I recall.

Dan Lehr Yeah, We built his seven organization. This is back. Yeah. This is 94 to 2000. So we built his organization. I led his sales teams. I trained, I was trainers. I let these two teams out there, you know, six, six years. I lived in 30 cities in six years.

Peter Winick So let’s go. I want to I want to go back down memory lane a little bit. So back in the day, if you will, 30 years ago, almost 30 years ago, the thought leadership on the B to C side, the consumer side, because Tony’s always been on the direct to consumer side, was very much the large arenas or the hotel rooms. And the whole model was, okay, let’s get him into the arena for free or 100 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever. And then the next step is to click him up to the next level, the next level. So, you know, we don’t we my firm Thought Leadership Leverage, we don’t play in the B, the C space because we think it’s a we don’t have the skills to play in it and nor do we have any interest. I want to move this a little bit because that whole world has changed, right? The Internet’s changed that and the content hasn’t changed. The methodology or the tactics have changed or it’s always about getting them. And now we talk about getting them into the funnel instead of getting them into Cleveland on the third or whatever. But it’s really the same game, right? If I get them to spend a dollar today, how am I going to spend $5 more? We tend to focus our efforts and our thinking on the traditional B2B and enterprise space so large organizations have a need to develop their people in a variety of things leadership, management, sales, resilience, grit on and on and on. And the buying side of that, even though the content might be similar in terms of the models and the methodologies and the framework of whatever is under the hood, they’re the buying side of that is an absolutely, totally different game. So large scale enterprises don’t react to, you know, three payments at 69, 99, right? They’re sophisticated buyers and they’re looking for impact and they’re looking to they look at things as investments and say, if I spend $1 million in what Dan has to offer, what is the impact on my business? How can you about that? Because an individual that decides to take out their credit card on an infomercial, they’re probably not that sophisticated. They want to better themselves, but they’re not actually measuring going. What is the ROI on my, you know, three payments of 69 bucks? Like I either feel better, right? Which is, okay, I’ve learned something. Or in your case, while I performed astronomically better. But how have you. Experience. The enterprise side of this was really about business impact.

Dan Lehr Well, yeah, a totally different ballgame. Obviously, the people that are buying those tapes or CD’s or whatever like I used to, you’re in one of two places. You really motivate and you want to get better or you’re down in the bottom and you’re trying to figure out what your next step is, right? So now as we, you know, here we are 20, 21, obviously, we got a lot of stuff going on, but my primary business is keynotes, keynote talk and consulting for major corporations. So obviously it’s a whole different ballgame because number one is ROI. You know what? What am I going to do for your company? You know, first, can I solve your problems? Can I expose your problems? And what can I do to fix those problems?

Peter Winick So let me even just push there, though, so you get this. But I don’t know that everybody has the understanding of the nuance at the level that you do is, yes, you’re still in front of a room or on a zoom with a bunch of people. However, you have two masters that you need to serve the buyer of that that speech for that organization. I’m the head of sales of ABC Co and I got that together and the button the seat because if you put him to sleep, you don’t get invited back. So want to talk about the things that you need to do to satisfy the buyer and then what you need to do to satisfy the attendee because oftentimes they’re hostages. Somebody else told you have to you got to show up at 2:00 for this Dan guy because I’m the boss. And I said, So yeah.

Dan Lehr Yeah, yeah. Well, the buyer, I mean, that’s the only focus that, that I have is because if I don’t get booked and I don’t get to speak and I don’t get paid, so I’m going after VP of sales CEOs, people who are hiring speakers, whether it’s meeting planner, it’s just and you know, it’s a very competitive ballgame now, as you well know, in this business, there’s like, yeah, there’s 30,000 speakers registered by the NSA that are motivational speakers, if you will. And, you know, there’s a lot of speakers that aren’t even in the NSA.

Peter Winick Well, I would say a multiple of those that are in because it’s not like it’s not like being a doctor that you can’t operate without a license. That’s correct. Yes. Correct.

Dan Lehr So the point is there’s a lot of them. So what it really gets down to is messaging and how you’re delivering your messaging. Because nowadays, if you don’t have solid video content in my business, you know, I’m sure it’s similar in your business, you don’t have a chance because you’ve got to the buyer has to see you, the buyer has to feel you and they have to obviously experience you and what you’re saying. So.

Peter Winick Right. And you and you are the product and the best representation of that is in a one page it says stands tall dams. Great. It’s take let me show you a few clips. Let me show you me in action in a Salesforce that’s kind of similar to yours. Let me show you. Here’s another group that I work with during a recession, and we’re going to let me show you a similar piece so people can experience it. And I think, you know, one of the things that we’re seeing in this in this Covid universe that we’re in is lots of speakers. And you’ve been at this game a long time have awesome collateral. However, it’s totally irrelevant to that, meaning we’re not getting together in places of a thousand people. Most of us are places of a thousand people. So I’ve seen some people do some really wonderful, innovative, creative things, sort of redoing their reels, if you will, to show how they can have impact in a virtual world.

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.

Peter Winick So can you touch on that? Because I think many of the skills that work on stage, like when you take the typical. Wonderfully trained speaker on stage when they come out and there’s music and everything’s intentional and the rhythms go whatever. And you have to exaggerate your emotions and your movements and all that stuff. And you try to do that on Zoom. my God. You’re like, Whoa. That’s too much. So talk about sort of showing off the digital Dan and then how you’ve had to modify and adjust and it changed just your craft to be able to deliver digital.

Dan Lehr Yeah. I mean, for me, here’s what I found is that some people are good on camera and some people aren’t good on camera, and that’s just a skill set. I mean, it’s really all about reps. So I was blessed that I have a studio that I’ve been working. You know, I work with Lightspeed, I have very I have various courses. So I’ve been in front of, you know, cameras and green screens for years. When I got diagnosed with my sickness and I was going through, yeah, that’s when I started doing that. So I think that, you know, a lot of speakers have had challenges making that shift. But I think there is a big shift because yeah, on Zoom you’re not I mean, you’re only sometimes depending on how you do it, it’s full screen or it’s, it’s kind of like this sometimes even halfway. Yeah. So the way I do, I played with a couple of ways. So I’m a, I’m a more of an active, charismatic type of speaker, but I’m a teacher, so I do mine with a flip chart. I do my a lot by live virtual with a flip chart because I’m animated, I’m a teacher, and I’m breaking things down because the bottom line is people are engaged. If you’re interesting, you’re charismatic and you’re actually teaching them something. I think the days of.

Peter Winick Right. But my point is what was what was interesting on stage. Right. So there are speakers that hold on to the lectern for dear life. Right. And they’re white knuckling it. Then there are speakers that, you know that have the lab and they love to walk the aisles and walk the room and lean into people and all that sort of stuff. Can’t do that on a zoom. So going back when you started doing green screen, right, what were the maybe give us a couple of tips and tricks to say, Wow, these things that served me really well as a stage guy actually got in the way of my success on green screen until I needed to. You know, you talked about rep, but you need to build different muscles, different capabilities.

Dan Lehr Yeah, that’s a good point. But you know, back to the guy who’s the white knuckle or on the on the stage holding the lectern. He’s not interesting in the start. They’re not interesting in the first place. Right. Right. You know, so but but yes, to your point, like for me, I’m a I’m a typically an active speaker. I like I like to walk the stage. You know, I’ll go down, you know, whatever. But it’s not part of my routine. I do it sometimes depending on the crowd. But the biggest adjustment I had to make was really understanding that moving with a purpose. That’s an old speaking term from some great guys I’ve listened to in the past. So it’s move with a purpose, but now there’s really no where to move. It’s like a step, right? It’s, you know, it’s being charismatic within a box. It just takes practice. It just reps. But, you know, the bottom line is, is again, when you’re thinking about leadership and about innovation, you know, there’s other tools to you. So I took that and I mean, just talking about business, my wife’s in the speaking business, so she books speaker So I know what’s going on in the industry and there’s the speaking industry is getting crushed.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Dan Lehr So speakers are making half what they used to.

Peter Winick Half, if they’re lucky. Half is a good if.

Dan Lehr We’re lucky. Yeah, if they’re lucky. So, you know, one of the changes that I made to adapt is I prerecorded five keynote talks on different difference.

Peter Winick Of Yeah we talked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Lehr And so I created an alternative product for people who are looking for a high quality speaker at once now. So I created a package of what I call disruptive, distracted by disruptive keynotes series, and I packaged them and so they can buy the whole thing or they can buy one at a time a la carte for virtually they could buy all six of them for less than you can get me for a virtual live keynote. And the reason I did that.

Peter Winick So I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Lehr The reason I did that. Peters Because there are companies right now that they, they don’t they’re intimidated by the whole virtual thing. How do we do it? We don’t have the technology. I mean, they’re still in that place. Yeah.

Peter Winick Because there’s a lot of unknowns now. It’s still fuzzy. Yeah. Yeah. I want to push on. One of the things you said there, so up until Covid, right? You’re speaking pretty, pretty straightforward, right? Yeah. I’m a $10,000 speaker. I’m a 30. Got like whatever. And I’ve got my whatever they’ve had to redefine their whole value prop because I know, I know some, maybe 4 or 5 speakers that are still able to command comparable fees remotely. But how are you conveying to your clients that it’s worth the investment that you’re delivering value whether was whether it’s the same dollar for dollar as you were getting, you know, flying into Scottsdale on Tuesday or dialing into a zoom on, you know, on Wednesday, what’s your conversation with them like when I say, I don’t know how you got you know, you got a lot of stuff on video. I can I could just play a YouTube or whatever. How do you respond to that?

Dan Lehr Yeah, well, they could have said that anyway. I mean, I’ve got stuff. All over. But, you know, you’re looking for something that’s customized and engaging. So, you know, my typical fees 15 K when it’s a normal situation, again, if I get 7500 right now that’s solid, you know? Yeah.

Peter Winick Yeah.

Dan Lehr But back to your original point, how do you get that 7500 or how do you get the 15? And I think that, you know, it gets down to the leadership of the company. Some people, you know, and they’re talking to bureaus and they’re whether I’m getting a direct lead or through a bureau, they have a budget to what they think is they’re going to spend. Yeah. So if they go to me and they say, What’s your fee? And I say, it’s 15 grand, that’s my seat. And so they can just say I passed or they can, you know, we have. So now, as you know, we have virtual fees. Yes. So my set my virtual fee at 7500 because I think that’s the going price right now and that’s the game I’m playing in. And some people still aren’t booking that price. Yeah, well, I mean.

Peter Winick The other thing I’ve seen people do is say, Hey, it’s not just the keynote anymore. Right. So keynotes. Great. You get me from 45 minutes or not, whatever your standard thing is. But let’s talk about customization. Let’s talk about other pieces so I can do some pre work and survey your group and I can create a custom two minute welcome video. And then we could, you know, let me do my hour and then let’s come back a month later for 20 minutes and you position it more as a package, maybe closer to the old range. So I’ve seen a lot of people. I don’t know what the answer is. Yes. Yeah, I’m seeing a lot of I mean, I’m excited about right now because it is a time where there’s experimentation, there’s creativity, there’s innovation, you know? And I don’t know that it ever goes back to what it was. You know, I’m not smart enough to know that. But what I do know is and I’m going to be this year right now, it’s probably not going to be next year, and I don’t think it’s going to go back to the same thing where it just seems like everybody I ever knew was always on a plane three times a week. Right. So I don’t think we I don’t think we stay at zero like we’ve been at almost zero now. But I think, you know, one of the things that we’ve all learned is there’s a lot of stuff that we can do remotely that we never thought we could we could do, you know, university education meetings. You know, most of us are living on Zoom these days. And if I do one call a week on my phone versus Zoom, I feel like I’m missing something. But I’m watching a black and white movie, you know? So I think we acclimate. Anyway, as we start to wrap up here, did any any other final words of wisdom from the evolutions you’ve seen or predictions on where it’s going or things that you need to do to continue to win in an ever changing market and world?

Dan Lehr Yeah, well, let me just wrap this up, because you had mentioned, you know, some things you can do to too, or some things you’ve heard about and all those things you said are accurate. So some of the things I offer to get that 7500 is, you know, I’ve got a I’ve got a training platform at Lightspeed so I can offer them.

Peter Winick I’ve got two.

Dan Lehr Months of follow up sales training on I’ve got a virtual platform. So and of course you could do the two minute into all those things. I mean, the same thing I would do in a normal package if I was looking to close it up and create value. So it’s really about finding what works for that, that reading plan or that CEO, that VP of sales. And because you’re having that call, that call that you have, that’s your sales time to build a value on.

Peter Winick Yeah, Yeah.

Dan Lehr So that’s when you create the value, when the guy’s the guy or that woman’s talking to you about what are you going to bring to our team? Give me some examples. That’s your sales opportunity because that’s where you make your safe. And if your value proposition is good there, you’re going to the next step. And that’s when they ask about, well, you know, can you do this or that? And it’s one of those it’s a negotiation process. So you just.

Peter Winick Sure, sure.

Dan Lehr You feel it out. But I think there’s opportunity there. I think it’s been an interesting situation, obviously, with the Covid people make choices, make changes and make adaptations. So yeah, now prerecorded, disruptive keynote series that I created or it’s just changing the way you’re doing what I call your boss talk. That’s what I call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re talking to your customer. So yeah, I think it’s an evolution, Peter But I feel like there’s great opportunity there and it’s all about mindset and, you know, about being adaptive, and that’s what leadership is all about.

Peter Winick Exactly. Well, I appreciate your time and I appreciate you sharing your story. It’s a great story and glad we’ve reconnected recently. And I wish you all the best. And thank you so much.

Dan Lehr Thanks, Peter.

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.