How Business Can Build Resilience And Thrive In The Middle Of The Pandemic With Gail Davis

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

21.02.22

Anything can change in a blink of an eye. We cannot dictate what we want to happen in this uncertain world. Join your host John Livesay as he sits down for a conversation with Gail Davis on developing resilience during tough times. Gail has decades of experience in corporate marketing and event management. In this episode, she dives deep into how the pandemic brought changes globally, especially in her business which involves in-person events. She experienced letting go of employees to survive. It was definitely hard, but she believes that the pandemic opened up other opportunities for events in a virtual way. People had to adapt to using the current technologies to help them move forward with their businesses, which paved the way for innovation.

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How Business Can Build Resilience And Thrive In The Middle Of The Pandemic With Gail Davis

Our guest is Gail Davis, you might remember, she was a guest back in January 2019. She is here to talk about how she navigated the challenging pandemic, especially to the speaking bureau world where live events were all cancelled. Some great takeaways for us about us for us about how, when you anticipate potential challenges, you are able to respond with an action plan as opposed to reacting from fear. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest Gail Davis was on the show in January 2019. Her decades of experience in corporate marketing and event management served as the launchpad for GDA Speakers. Before establishing the company in 1999, she spent years managing the events of the Dallas-based global technology conglomerate, EDS, Electronic Data Systems founded by the famous Ross Perot. While at EDS, she discovered Nando Parrado, a heroic survivor of the 1972 Andes plane crash. He presented an unforgettable speech at the EDS marquee event.

After his successful keynote, he signed an exclusive agreement with Gail. That was her first beginning. We were talking about how much life has changed for everyone in the speaking business and every business around the world since 2019. We had the pleasure of reconnecting in person at Josh Linkner’s event in Detroit. I said, “I would love to have you back on the show. You were such a great guest.” She said, “I would love to come back and talk about what the impact the pandemic has had on my business and how I have pivoted and maybe help some other readers and entrepreneurs do that. Gail, welcome back.

I am glad we made this happen. I feel like I have lived 1,000 lines since we did our first show, which was in early 2019.

It is that whole premise of, we think we have a sense of how the world operates and that we can always get a haircut when we want to. We can go see our friends and family when we have a meal, let alone live events going away. That wasn’t even on our radar of things to prepare for.

[bctt tweet=”Those who act quickly will survive.” username=”John_Livesay”]

That happened to be a leap year. On February 29th, I went to see the Eagles. That is a large concert in an arena, lots of people dancing, singing. The next day, I drove to Oklahoma and I stopped to see my mother. I said, “My business is going so great. 2019 is going to be the best year ever.” I have a fully trained team that has been with me for a long time. I am in a place where I can get away. Everything runs like clockwork.” That was Sunday afternoon, March 1st. On Wednesday, we had our first cancellation. By Friday, we had six and then the tsunami hit.

Let me ask you because so many have that experience of, “This is unraveling. It is no longer a thread in a sweater. This whole thing is coming apart.” At the time, none of us knew how long this was going to last. What was going on in your head? We were both former lifeguards. For me, as a former lifeguard, the training that I had to not panic and stay calm when someone was drowning does kick in sometimes. It can help us in those situations. What was your initial reaction? As a leader and running a big company and having people whose livelihood depends on you and your business, what went through your head? The second question is how did you keep other people from panicking?

I have a very vivid memory of that first weekend in March 2019. One of my colleagues from another bureau called to tell me that an event that was to have played in April of 2019 with Nando Parrado, he was supposed to be in person in Dallas, that client had decided they needed to reschedule. I said, “How are you feeling about all this?” He said, “I’m trying to save the company but I will talk to you tomorrow morning.” That Saturday we spoke. He had been on the phone with one of the sharks from Shark Tank. As he was hanging up, canceling an event, he said, “You have a lot of experience in running a business. What advice do you have?” The advice was those who act quickly will survive.

He told me, “You should run three scenarios with your existing payroll and expenses.” This is March 5th or 6th, 2019 that he is telling me. “Scenario number one, there are no live events between now and May 31st, 2019” I was like, “You have to be kidding. There is no way.” He said, “Scenario number two, no events between now and August 31st, 2019. Scenario number three, no events in 2019.” He was so confident in giving me that advice that I picked up the phone and I called the person that does my bookkeeping and accounting. I said, “I need you to run this for me. We should meet at 8:00 Monday morning to look at the results.” I don’t know prior to that in business, not life, I had seen anything so sober.

I am not willing to go in a hole that deep. What can I do? To answer your second question, I decided at that moment that full transparency and complete honesty was the only way I can handle any of this whether it was talking to a client or my team. I called the team in and I said, “In the last 3 business days, 5 days if you count the weekend, we had 7 events that have been impacted. We don’t know where this is going to go but I want to share with you these 3 scenarios.” That first Monday, I planted the idea. On that day, I let three people go. That is not my style. My style is to try everything under the sun. I almost felt like I was doing him a favor like, “Get down there and get in the unemployment line because the rest of the people are there.”

Resilience: At the start of the pandemic, full transparency and complete honesty was the only way you could handle your business, whether it was talking to a client or team.

I’m happy to say one of those people ended up coming back. PPP came along. We were able to stretch it a little bit longer but we are well into scenario number two. We had to let other people go. Scenario three came and went. To be completely honest with you, 2021 was a tough year. It was better but it was still tough because we are still talking about whether it’s variant D or Omicron. Lockdown or not, we are in a global pandemic and it is impacting this industry. That is what I hope we can dive into because when I sit back and I look back, I have a handle on what the good is that we can take away and some sage advice on how to move forward because the one thing that is cliché but true, we don’t know what we don’t know.

As a sales keynote speaker, I thought to myself, “I have to figure out a way.” I had a client say, “This live event, April 2020 is not happening. I’m going to push it back to August 2020.” When that came, “We are going to make it virtual.” How are you going to keep 300 people entertained on a Zoom call? That is what made me realize I have to do something. Zoom burnout became an issue. There are so many new challenges. The funny thing I thought was interesting is sometimes in these challenging situations, other opportunities come up.

In my case, the client said, “In addition to your keynote and workshop, can you teach my team how to look and sound good on Zoom? They are so uncomfortable being on camera and they don’t know how to frame themselves or like themselves.” I thought, “I’m one chapter ahead of you on that.” Trying to order equipment during the pandemic, there are a lot of people wanting professional lighting and mics. It was interesting that became a new need that never existed before. There is a technology that allows me to do some special effects.

The people whether you are a speaker or a bureau owner like you that say, “I’m not going to offer anything or invest in learning anything new unless I am dragged into it last minute.” I thought, “That is not the speaker I want to be.” If there is some new way to keep people engaged, I want to be at the cutting edge of that. It’s going to cost me some money when money is not coming in like it was to invest, learn and get the equipment. I’m going to do it as opposed to waiting until somebody asks me to do it. I wanted to hear if that resonates with you as a bureau owner.

One hundred percent. I remember a conversation with one former employee. I might qualify her as a slow adapter was, “I’m going to go with virtual. I’m going to wait and I’m going to say my specialty.” Which are in-person events. That would not work well for anyone. I love watching speakers. I feel like there are speakers that got on the front end of the technology. On March 10th, 2019, they were building their in-home studio and they were ready to roll. Others sat back and watched, “Who is doing this well? What can I learn from them?” They came into the game. There are some people I love and respect who still are sitting on the sidelines because they don’t think it works for them.

[bctt tweet=”Cross-train your team to build empathy.” username=”John_Livesay”]

For me, I knew that we had to change. I can think that to my first office in Colleyville, Texas, where we had a wall of VHS videotapes that were out the alphabetical by speakers’ last name. We used to buy blank tape and the box scrolls. We had two VCRs. If somebody wants John Livesay, we go grab your tape. We plug it in. We put a blank and we press record then we send the VHS tape in the mail to the client to watch. That is not how it works these days. Only knowing how to do in-person events is like only having VHS tapes. We had to learn it.

My first thing to my team was, “If you don’t already know Zoom, figure it out. Do you know what Teams is? Has somebody talked to you about StreamYard? I need you to get on there.” There were so many that came in at the beginning. “Everyone, I want you to learn.” The funny thing is you showed me your new toy, which is that Stream Deck. I have been doing this for months and I have never seen Stream Deck. The innovation in our industry is ongoing which is one of the gifts of the pandemic for our industry. You can look at it. People are like, “I want to go back to normal.”

I’m not sure normal is ever going to be the way it was in 2019 but there were so many gifts. Most of our sales calls are via Zoom. Prior to 2019, most of my team probably did not have a Zoom account. There are a lot of gifts. I wrote a blog. I used the line that I borrowed from a friend, Sean Hanks is the IASP President. He said, “Virtual events have become an and versus an instead of.” People who for many years had these three in-person events may now go back to those three in-person events but they may be augmenting with this August 2019 event that is going to be virtual because, in the pandemic, that was a home run.

It makes sense to keep that going. I love that. It’s not like, “We are going back to in-person. Virtual is going away.” Virtual is here to stay. There are instances where it makes sense. With international travel, it may be a long time before every person from every country can travel with this. There are a lot of gifts that have come out.

I did a keynote to a company based out of Israel and their entire sales team is global. One person is in Singapore and one person is here. Instead of having to fly everybody in, I was part of their annual kickoff meeting for the year. When I first came to Austin in March 2020, I was all excited. I had my tickets to South by Southwest. When they canceled that, I thought, “This is not something that is going to be fixed in a few weeks.” Here we are in March 2022 and it is still iffy if that is going to come back.

Resilience: The innovation in our industry is ongoing and which is one of the gifts of the pandemic bark industry. You can look at it.

Elton John was going to have two nights in Dallas. He tested positive. He canceled. There is an uncertainty in making plans that are becoming the reality of how we move forward with just about every personal or business decision.

A new skill is required because when I gave that talk down at the healthcare company in San Antonio, they said, “There are only going to be about 25 people in the room. However, we are streaming you live to 500 people so you have to speak to the room and the camera and not forget that there is an audience out there watching.” It was a fascinating hybrid experience. The fun part for me is when a client embraces the change. He said, “I have been talking about you and your book to my team about Better Selling Through Storytelling.

Instead of the normal way of introducing you by reading this introduction, we are going to put you in a private room next to the conference room. We will keep the door open and I am going to start talking and say I have been wrong about the power of storytelling and sales. We should not try and do this anymore. I want you to come in and interrupt me and say, ‘Cut, don’t listen to him. I’m here.’” I thought, “What a great way to break back into a live event.” Be that playful with your clients. It is the people that are willing to keep rolling with the disruption because that is what our brain craves.

Is this going to be the same old? When you have something new like that, it grabs the audience’s attention. You said that you feel like there have been some good takeaways. I gave an example of a client asking me to train their sales team on how to look and sound good on a Zoom call and not be intimidated if the other person keeps their camera off. It is fascinating what stresses people out. What would you say has been a good takeaway? Is the team closer than they ever have been getting through this?

Yes. I believe the team is incredibly cross-trained. When we did our last show, I had twelve people on my team. At one point in the summer of 2019, I went down to what I lovingly referred to as the core four. Those four can do anything other than run payroll. As we would add that in one person that summer, I remember when I was interviewing her she had prior bureau experience and I said, “I need you to do this. Sometimes I might need you to do this.” She said to me, “You need me to catch what needs to be caught.” I was like, “That is what I need.”

[bctt tweet=”Virtual is here to stay. It just makes sense to keep that going even after the pandemic is over.” username=”John_Livesay”]

She came on. She is super cross-trained. That is a very big gift in terms of the team’s closeness. When you are super solid and you haven’t sat in the seat of your fellow teammate, it is easy to get super irritated with them like, “Why are they aren’t meeting this deadline?” We have some new people that this is not the case but the majority of the people on my team are super cross-trained so there is a lot of empathy and understanding of the competing priorities. That is a positive for the team. In terms of the value that we add to clients, our skill or anticipating things we need to consider in the contract is at an all-time high.

Pre-2019, you want John, you want him in Austin and you want him on this day, contract done. Let’s move on. Now we are asking the question, if something prevents John from being there whether John can’t travel, you decide to go virtual, there is a government restriction implies. There is a new variant. I could go on and on. Let’s go ahead and discuss what that looks like. A lot of times they will say, “We are only going to do it in person.” We say, “Let’s talk about that. Do you want to kick the can down the road or do you want to have a contingency? What are we trying to accomplish?”

Sometimes if you are trying to train your team and keep the momentum on your team going, rescheduling the event to a later date is not necessarily the best. We get into a discussion of, “If he didn’t come in person, would he give us a reduction on the fee for virtual?” We have to navigate that. Anticipating and having the conversations that everybody is so tired of having but making sure we have them, we are better prepared. When I looked at how many events were impacted by the original Coronavirus, I still have 8 things we haven’t resolved out of 200.

You go to the Delta variant, we only had 23 and all the 3 are resolved. We know what we were doing, we are just waiting for a signature. So far, we have only had sixteen on Omicron. It is only two weeks old but about half were already resolved. That directly ties to anticipating, thinking, contingency, covering things in the contract. It is a little bit of a pain because you have to do a quick agenda but you have already thought through it. That is a time-saver to everybody because these variants coming up right before the event and we don’t need to be exploring options. We need to implement options.

That is a true sign of a good leader whether you are leading thousands of people, 10 or 4. Anticipating a need. I remember when I had the Banana Republic as a client and they said, “We want to redefine what luxury is. We are never going to be Neiman Marcus in terms of pricing but what if it was anticipating a need before you knew you needed it?” They put a place where you could get your phone charged in the flagship stores in San Francisco and Manhattan Rockefeller Center. They would say to these people, “Would you like us to charge your phone? We will guard it while you shop.” Unexpected luxury. The sales went up 10% because people kept shopping until the phone was fully charged.

Resilience: There’s an uncertainty to making plans that is sort of becoming the reality of how we move forward with just about every personal or business decision today.

There are all kinds of outcomes by anticipating a need before you know you need it. That separates the Banana Republic and you as a bureau. “I like working with Gail’s team because they think of every potential thing that could go wrong and a contingency plan to solve it.” Back in the day, your plane was late, you would miss a plane. You are great at getting another speaker there at the last minute. The microphone, battery or power bank goes out. Your remote doesn’t work. A hundred and one things can go wrong in a live event and you still have to be able to perform.

I had a situation where we had done little tech rehearsals on virtual in addition to the prep call. They were using a different platform besides Zoom or Microsoft. It had not been tested. They had not tested 300 people coming on at the same time, which caused the bandwidth to stop. They were freezing. Luckily, I had somebody on as my tech backup because as a sales keynote speaker, I’m used to people in the corner running the show. I’m not going to go solo on a tech call.

I have somebody on the call with me going, “Your volumes not all right. Something is off with the camera. Let me fix this. My Zoom call can handle 500 people. Let’s all move over to this Zoom link and we will redo the breakout rooms while you are giving the keynote talk so that the workshop will still work as planned.” The client was so grateful because their whole thing almost crashed because of technology. Is it worth it to pay somebody out of my pocket to be on those calls? You bet.

It is funny talking about the challenges and technology. We added to our team one of our logistics managers. She manages all the logistics. She started in the summer of 2019. One day, we realized, “She has never done an in-person event.” She mentioned that in the olden days, it was all about light planes, snowstorms and speakers’ travel delays. It was comical. It was like trying to show someone the old VHS tape and say, “Here is how you plug it in.” She had no frame of reference. She picked it up quickly. She is a rockstar but it was funny that they are talking about digital data. She was a virtual speaker.

All of us have to continually evolve. What I have learned personally is we can never get too comfortable. We all hear people talk about getting out of your comfort zone but you think, “I have invested in learning this skill. I have got a great brand.” You have been in business a long time. “I have a great reputation. My staff is trained,” and then a pandemic hits. You are like, “I get to see if I’m going to reinvent myself. Look at the three possible scenarios, worst-case scenario, scenario number three.” You are still here, not the case through all the bureaus. This transparency and adaptability. The thing I want to double click on that you said, I have not heard many people talk about this and it is so valuable for the listeners is cross-training your team building empathy. There is The Great Resignation happening.

[bctt tweet=”We don’t know what we don’t know.” username=”John_Livesay”]

A lot of our clients are saying, “How can I keep my team from leaving? I have some superstars. I don’t want to have them leave.” I have found that helping companies not only create case stories to help them win more business but getting individual people to tell their story of origin. What got you into healthcare? What got you into the speaking business? They start to find out things about each other that they never knew. It is fascinating to hear other people’s case stories.

For example, with a healthcare client, they said, “My mom was a nurse. That is what got me into it. I was a microbiologist. I didn’t want to spend my life behind a microscope.” “We worked with you for three years. We never knew that about you.” The management and sales teams are telling me, “We feel like we are losing the bond because we haven’t been able to see our sales team in person.” Now that you have had them put their story of origins together on this repository map with their case stories, they feel seen, heard and appreciated in a whole new way.

It has become an onboarding tool for HR that they say, “Get to know your co-workers, share their stories until you make your first sale but also get to know them as people.” What we live for in the speaking business is if a storytelling speaker can impact a culture that, “I’m hired to help you win more sales but if I can help you break down silos because all these stories live in one place and you can start sharing the stories and make introductions to other divisions, that is the joy of all of this.” What you have done here is a role model for all business owners. You have a culture and from day one you say, “It is not just this job description. If that is your mindset, that is not the culture fit here.” Brené Brown’s latest book talks about that. In her people, she was like, “If you walk by a piece of trash and go, ‘That is not my job. I’m not picking it up. That is not why I worked here.’”

A part of the way we developed empathy during the pandemic is each month we would have what we call the leadership meeting. We might have done it weekly at that point. We did Brené’s book, Dare to Lead. The team got super vulnerable. They do the exercises. They would share. It is your point of getting to know their entire story not just, “This is Susie Q over here doing an account.” It is super important.

We start to remember, “Everyone had some challenges in their life or this is something they have always dreamed of doing.” Like your wonderful story of origin. From EDS to hearing a speaker in that launching. Companies need a story. We all want to connect emotionally. That is what the stories do. You have such a great story. I am so excited and thrilled to hear how successful you are continuing to be. If you have survived this, you can survive anything. Any last thought or piece of advice you want to leave our readers on how to embrace the ongoing disruption and changes that we know are going to be part of life now?

Resilience: We need to watch our language when we hear ourselves. We all want this pandemic to be over. But we can’t control it so we have to reframe our mindset. And we have to look for the gifts. We have to look for the opportunity and we have to take that skill that we’ve developed of anticipating changes.

Once someone gave me a book. It was one of those little flipbooks that you go through but the cover said, “Normal Is Just a Setting on Your Dryer.” There is something to that. We need to watch our language when we hear ourselves. Sometimes I’m so tired, I want this to be over. I wanted to go back to the way it was. I want it to be normal. We have to reframe it. We have to look for gifts and opportunities. We have to take that skill that we have developed of anticipating and anticipate what else can change. How else could we modify this? How else can we take this forward? It’s a shift and muscle we have exercised ad nauseam. We will be well-served if we tend to lean into that.

Imagine if you never worked out and then suddenly you had an emergency where you had to swim, run or something. If you keep that muscle active, I’m adaptable and flexible we will go full circle in the lifeguard analogy again. We had to train. When someone was flailing their arms and you couldn’t throw them a buoy because they were too panicked, you knew, “I’m going to have to go in.” Let’s go and embrace the new world. Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful stories with us.

Thank you. It was great. You are always such a good person to visit with. I love it.

Likewise, Gail.

Important Links

• Gail Davis – Past episode
• GDA Speakers
• StreamYard
• Dare to Lead
• Better Selling Through Storytelling
• Normal Is Just a Setting on Your Dryer
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

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