Strategic Leadership: Nurturing New Leaders And The Leadership Tree With John O’Grady
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Strategic leadership uses the concept of the leadership tree, where you nurture the people under your leadership until they develop to become leaders on their own. Former Division I athlete, West Point graduate, Army Colonel, and leadership coach John O’Grady joins host John Livesay in this episode to share his experience in strategic leadership in challenging situations. He is a distinguished combat leader whose unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for “extraordinary heroism in the face of an armed enemy” in recognition of their exemplary work in Afghanistan. John attributed this success to their values-based culture and used what he learned from this experience to drive his leadership coaching career. His empowering message now benefits coaches, athletes, and corporate organizations through his coaching firm, O’Grady Leadership and Consulting Services, LLC.
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Listen to the podcast here
Strategic Leadership: Nurturing New Leaders And The Leadership Tree With John O’Grady
Our guest is John O’Grady. He has an incredible background in both athletics and in the military. His company is Strategic Leadership Academy where he takes his lessons learned from the battlefield into the world of Corporate America. He said, “You need to be willing to seek collaboration from wherever it may come.” The kinds of people he likes to work with are those that have both humility and curiosity about how they can learn to grow and raise better leaders. He said, “The key thing about athletics and the military is you have a sense of purpose greater than yourself.” Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is John O’Grady and what John does is helps athletes, coaches and executives bring out the best in their players and teams. He’s a former Division I athlete, a West Point graduate, Army Colonel, and a distinguished Combat Leader. John inspires leaders to become the best version of themselves in the most demanding complex, austere and challenging environments. He utilizes the principles he’s developed and practiced for over 30 years in athletics and the army. He works with a diverse group of organizations and he provides leadership, culture, and strategy principles that are fundamental to getting the outcomes of excellence. John has a decorated military career where he led organizations from 30 to 3,500 people in active war zones. One of the things he’s most proud of that we’re going to ask him about is his leadership tree. John, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, John, and it’s a pleasure to spend time with your audience as well.
The readers are much in for a treat learning from you. I started to tease out what your leadership tree is. Can you take us back a little bit to your childhood and college? How did you become you? How did you decide you wanted to get into the military?
It’s a little bit by accident and a little bit due to athletics, quite frankly. The accidental part is in some way, I socialize and I would always watch the old war movies with my dad on Saturday afternoons. I look forward to that. The athletic part was being a lacrosse player that provided me an opportunity to get recruited and then ultimately go and attend the United States Military Academy.
You are an athlete and, in the military, concurrently, is that correct?
Yes, technically. While at the Military Academy, you’re playing Division I Lacrosse, but you’re also a cadet, which has clearly the military components of the academy.
What similarities are there between being a great athlete and being a great cadet?
Some of the key similarities are a sense of purpose greater than oneself, certainly, and understanding that being part of a team is purposeful, it’s purpose-driven. The little bit that you give of yourself exponentially returns by the larger community that you’re a part of.
There’s so much to dig into there. A sense of purpose being greater than yourself. A lot of people, unfortunately, go through life not having a sense of purpose. If they do have a sense of purpose, it’s all self-focused. “I want to be better at this. My purpose is to do that.” You’ve got big scale purposes of making the country that you’re serving a safer place, then you’ve got your own purpose of the team doing well. For those of you who don’t know, Division I is the top of the top. It’s the Olympic level performance going on there. You’ve taken all these amazing things.
Strategic Leadership: No matter what position you think you’re in, always be willing to seek collaboration from wherever it may come.
I love this image of you and your dad watching war movies and becoming athletic, and now you’re a cadet. We’re going to take the readers on this next start of your journey. You’re in a war zone, and I don’t have many people ever encounter that I get to talk to about what that is like. There’s little I know about military training. You’re the expert. Is it true and do you have a story that when you’re in those crisis situations, you don’t have time to think about what to do and you just rely on your training?
That is accurate in many respects, for sure. There have been a number of situations I’ve been in that I can share that will lead to that.
Take us back to a specific incident however long ago. Tell us what year it is, but give us a little bit of the who, what, where, so we’re in that story with you and then it will take us on that journey.
It was 2011. I was deployed to Afghanistan, leading a 500-person organization. We are in a battlespace, roughly 8,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, Rhode Island’s about 4,400 square miles. We had to break out the team of 500 into approximately five 100-person clusters across this battlespace. We deal with a myriad of challenges and complexities, 5 major ethnic groups, 15 districts that this was broken down into, 1,000 villages, and 30 major languages with a whole host of other dialects spin-off from that. Also, a whole host of players inside this space from non-government organization people to government organization people to other military forces to tribal warlords as well. It is one of the unique stories I have.
We’re in Afghanistan with all these different tribes and languages and things. What’s at stake? Everybody could die, but what is the biggest problem you’re having to solve besides all of the logistics? What is your mission?
Our mission essentially is to help the Afghans themselves provide a safe and secure environment for themselves so that they can begin to thrive in a healthy way.
You’re protecting them from attack, correct?
In many regards, yes. We’re partnering with a whole host of people to do that.
Is it an active war zone?
[bctt tweet=”Being part of a team is driven by a purpose greater than yourself.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Yes.
Tell us a time when they were being attacked and what you had to do to keep them safe.
We are one of those outposts. Those separated forces of about 100 people that I put out in one of the spots in the battlespace, they’re under attack. It’s starting to get dusk and we can’t get air in because of the weather. I deployed with a ground element to go into this village to help provide additional support. You’re hearing things over the radio and different things are coming in. Reports from different places if things aren’t going particularly well. Dusk is starting to fall. There’s an act of firefighting going on for a couple of hours here. Thankfully, we have no serious casualties. In a distance, we see what looks like these torch-like lanterns, almost like the old medieval movies that got that stick with the large flame on top. We’re trying to make that out like, “What the heck is that?”
What it turned out to be is that we were in a valley called the Sanglakh Valley and that valley had been taken over by the Taliban. What these lights ended up being were about fifteen people from the Sanglakh tribe coming to attack the flank of the Taliban, who was starting to gain on us. At the end of this, we link up with them and I’m on the ground now standing there. The tribal leaders, who I ended up becoming good friends with during my time there, had led fifteen of his tribesmen into this attack. Finally, there was an organization there that they viewed could help them get back to their valley that was part of their tribal lands going back as long as time.
You’ve got this huge contrast with American Forces there with state-of-the-art technology and basic tribal weapons and people with just a torch trying to help you help them.
What I learned from that was no matter what position you think you’re in, being willing and able to seek collaboration from wherever it may come is always important. Keep that mental aperture, if you will, organizational aperture open for those opportunities because that partnership became one that fundamentally changed the dynamic. That’s the second thing. Bad situations seize the opportunity and create and collaborate on new opportunities, which was powerful for me.
While they may not have the state-of-the-art weapons, they’ve got a passion and a heritage that is a reason and purpose bigger than anybody else to figure out how to help you. In this particular battle, were you successful?
Yes. It’s successful as any good battle is.
That’s the best you can hope for. You help keep them safe, so mission accomplished. This resolution part that you’re talking about is these life lessons of being willing to see collaboration for wherever it may come. Also, another resolution was that they felt empowered and the morale went out that we won this battle and together, we can continue to win. That would be some great things.
Strategic Leadership: The principles of leadership are very transferable. How they’re applied is very contextual.
It falls back a little bit to some of my athletic training as well where the team being larger than any one individual. You have your team that you normally think of, but then what are the other teams outside your team that you can create that larger pie if you will. It doesn’t have to be about scarcity, competition, and me grabbing my own. It could be about collaboration, growth, and we eat the bigger pie.
That leads right into what we teased, which is your concept of a leadership tree where you continue the success of people that reported to you and they become leaders. Were there some people in that situation that saw how you handle that and then went on in future situations to become their own leaders?
I would like to think so in terms of either directly or indirectly observing my leadership and the culture that I tried to create that then helped them in their own authentic way, go ahead, and have their own success. There’s one that comes straight to mind. A guy named Jim Collins, who’s a brigade-level commander is in charge of about 3,500 people. He’s at Fort Bliss and he’s been made the COVID response commander for the Fort Bliss community, which is a large military community down in Texas. At the time, he was a major in my organization. He was a direct report to me, but now he’s the guy who’s commanding 3,500 people and taken on this additional challenge for not only the soldiers but all the family members. Also, all the other people who work to support Fort Bliss installation as well as the surrounding community.
Your command was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, which is the highest award given to you and it’s for extraordinary heroism in the face of an armed enemy. You attribute this to the culture that you created.
I’m incredibly blessed with unbelievable people inside that organization and layers of leadership inside that organization. I won’t take that credit on my own at all because that’s deserved by not only the entire organization but here’s something for your readers. The American people can be as proud of that as I am because it’s their sons and daughters that they give to us, and it’s a sacred responsibility and trust that I know I never wanted to break. I know many of my peers as well feel the same way.
You’ve taken all this experience with your crisis situations and managing all these people and managing huge amounts of money including operational portfolios in excess of $14 billion. You have your own consulting firm, O’Grady Leadership and Consulting. Who do you do your best work with, John? Who is your ideal client?
My ideal client is a person who’s in a leadership position, who has both the humility and the curiosity to want to grow. That’s who I work best with. What sectors do I find that in? I find that ideally in athletic coaches because of my tie and how strongly I believe about not only sports but what lessons sports can provide these young people who are going to be the future leaders in our society. Also, corporate executives and executive teams.
Do you have an example of a case story where you worked with someone that came to you and they said, “We want to grow, we’re humble and curious?” It could be athletic or it could be a corporate story.
I’ll give an athletic one, but I’ve had it in corporate as well. The parallels are there. Principles of leadership are essentially immutable and transferable. How they are applied is contextual and that needs to be first understood. That’s one of the first failures I find that people have when they’re going through leadership. They take one thing from one and try to plug it into the other. It doesn’t quite work that way. It centers around not understanding, not knowing, or worrying about where my next generation of leaders is coming from. In this case, it was an athletic coach who wanted to make sure that he never found himself in that position. He knew and looked back over the course of a successful career that some years, he was more concerned about leadership inside his organization and others, and he didn’t want to have that much variance anymore.
[bctt tweet=”If you have an ad hoc approach, expect to have ad hoc results.” username=”John_Livesay”]
How long ago was this? What sport is it? When you say leaders within the sport, do you mean where is the next quarterback coming if it’s a football situation?
It was lacrosse at Georgetown University, the women’s lacrosse program. It started initially with just being focused on the captains. These are phenomenal kids, so it’s no indictment or judgment value statement on one year of captains versus another. It’s about getting the maximum potential out of those individuals and being intentional.
In the corporate world where you have to develop new talent all the time to keep them happy, promote them, how do we find them, and how do we recruit them? The number one problem I hear all the time in Corporate America is, “How do we recruit and how do we retain top talent?” The same thing is true in this lacrosse example you’re saying.
Also, develop that talent. In corporate, lots of times, it’s middle management. Usually, the CEOs and those higher-level executives are clear in their own minds of what they want, how they want things to be, and what they want the culture to be like. Somehow, by the time it gets down to the lowest levels of the organization, that message gets dissipated or even flat out stopped. It’s not unlike that with a coach with his assistance, captains, and then leadership group.
As you’re working with this lacrosse coach, you’re helping them figure out where the future leaders are going to come. What is the one mistake you see people making all the time? Is it worrying about it or not knowing what to do next? What do you see happening?
The biggest thing I see is an ad hoc approach and then they’re a little bit surprised when they get ad hoc results.
You have a step by step proven system I’m guessing so that you take the guesswork out of it and say, “You need to be doing this and then you need to be doing that.”
Let’s use captains as an example on a sports team, but the same could apply for mid-level managers. “Coach, how do you pick your captain?” “This and the third.” “Might you and your senior staff get together and list ten attributes or characteristics that you’d like your captains to have. Go ahead and institute a program where you ask it in a survey form to the entire team.” “List the top three athletes on your team who will best advocate for you to the head coaches. List the top three who you trust the most, etc,” whatever those attributes were. That alone is incredibly powerful because one, you give anybody who’s listening, a word roadmap of how to behave and you’re reinforcing the things that you say are important. Two, you learn about how different people list all those people and you juxtapose that to what you thought would be on that list. You see what they value and who they value. You see people who maybe you thought were good who aren’t on that list. That alone is incredible.
It’s a way to curate that with some value and everyone’s agreeing on what the values are. This leads me to one of my last questions for you, which is your distinction that is important between capability and capacity. If we’re looking at criteria to define the next captains or leaders, how can people put that into action? Should they emphasize one over the other?
Strategic Leadership: Capacity in the leader development sense is about the attributes that are going to best allow you to deal with the unknown.
I don’t think it’s binary and I generally tend to drift away from those types of things. Unfortunately, not a lot of people feel that way. I know you get that totally. I’m sure many of your readers do. The way I think about the two is to me, capacity is based on ensuring your human capital inside your organization can do the things that are necessary, based on all the stuff that has happened in the past. It’s informed by the past. What’s interesting is about the future, none of us, your readers, you or I, have any idea truly what the future will bring. If there’s a reader out there who does, please contact John and myself with the next lotto winning number. Generally speaking, we have no idea. Capacity, in the human capital sense and the leader development sense, is about the attributes that are going to best allow you to deal with the unknown, the future. That causes you to have to go down a whole other leadership development task.
Let’s give an example. You and I are both public speakers. We get hired to come and speak at corporate events and live events. With a lot of situations, people are saying, “Can you do it virtually?” We know we have the capacity and the skills to be a speaker, we then had to test ourselves to see if we were capable of learning how to do it in a new platform. John, any last thought, quote, or book you want to recommend?
A book would be Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I have read it probably 3 or 4 times and it’s incredibly timely too. Given the fact that at least as we’re having this discussion, we’re in the throes of the pandemic. It’s a powerful book about finding purpose and understanding where your agency truly lies and the power that comes with that.
If anybody wants to follow you on social media or get ahold of you to find out about hiring you for consulting, how can they find you?
I’m on LinkedIn, John O’Grady. I’m on Twitter, @OG_Leadership, and then email, [email protected].
John, thank you for your service, for inspiring all of us to be better leaders and for giving us a roadmap on how to do it.
Thank you as well, John, for you having this vision and also providing a platform for people to go ahead and share some goodness in the world.
Important Links
- Strategic Leadership Academy
- Man’s Search for Meaning
- John O’Grady – LinkedIn
- @OG_Leadership – Twitter
- [email protected]
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Say Something Entertainment: Pitching For Engagement with Kevin Hekmat
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
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Listen To The Episode Here
Say Something Entertainment: Pitching For Engagement with Kevin Hekmat
Our guest is Kevin Hekmat, who is a talent manager and Founder of Say Something Entertainment, which is best known for managing internationally recognized poet, IN-Q, and New York Times bestselling author and speaker, Cal Fussman. Kevin represents artists who changed the way audiences look at their lives. Say Something is built on the idea that inspirational entertainment can bring the most powerful perspective shift, whether through live shows, keynotes, poetry or podcasts. Kevin has brought this idea to dozens of Fortune 500 companies including teams at Facebook, Google, Lululemon, Nike, General Motors and many more. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I always like to ask my guests to take us back to their own story of origin. You can go back as far as you want. Childhood, school or whatever where you first started saying, “I think I want to get into talent management where I want to be involved with the creative arts.” How did you get to where you are now?
I grew up in Los Angeles. It goes back to my parents. My mom is a piano teacher. She has a piano school and my dad is a dentist. I grew up playing piano and grew up doing musical theater in high school. To be honest, it was never that I was the best artist in the class, that I was a great singer. I enjoyed the arts a lot. As time progressed and I started thinking about what I wanted to do, it became a question of, “Is there something in entertainment, in that world that I can see myself doing and living?” I didn’t want to be an artist and I was looking at all the options. Growing up in LA, a lot of options, a lot of people that I grew up with are doctors, lawyers and more traditional jobs in that way. All I knew is that I didn’t want to do that. I knew from a very early age that I didn’t want to go to medical school or get a law degree. Outside of that, I was looking at the options. I was looking at music, entertainment and I traveled for several months after I graduated from college, solo backpacking through Southeast Asia to really figure out what I liked and what I enjoyed myself. Before that, I had started doing a lot of the more motivational, inspirational speaker world.
[bctt tweet=”Value is not something you own, it is something you bring.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I was drawn to a Tony Robbins event when I was in college and that shifted my perspective. He has an incredible personality. If you go to one of his live events, outside of anything he even says, his ability to shift people’s perspectives and experience in a day or a four-day period of time is powerful. That energy he has on stage and the way he takes you on this emotional journey, a very logical journey through your own life and do what you want to do in your own life. When I went traveling, I went deeper in my own enjoyment, my own passion, one through traveling but also through meditation, through mindfulness. It was my first real dive into that world at the end of the trip. I had never meditated before, but I was curious about it and I did a ten-day silent meditation retreat. I thought it would be a fun idea, “It’ll be a great time. I’ll learn how to meditate.” Little did I know it would be one of the most intense and raw experiences of completely taking away any distractions, any stimulations that we normally have in our everyday lives with phone, music, TV, conversations with friends or strangers, going internal and sitting with your thoughts and learning how to be with your own thoughts.
The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Careers
When I came back completely, coincidentally that same month, I met both IN-Q and Cal completely separately. I had been to one of IN-Q shows. A friend invited me and another friend of mine named Alex Banayan, one of my closest friends growing up. I had met Cal that same month because Alex is writing a book called The Third Door and Cal started helping Alex write that book. The same month I met both of them, it took me a little longer to start working with Cal. Cal and I were friends, Cal was helping out with the book. I would see him every couple of months and I sit down for coffee or lunch with them. Hear about some of the stories that you heard on the podcast with Gorbachev and Ali. I was on the edge of my seat, “Who is this guy with these incredible stories in this incredible life experience?” He traveled for ten years earlier in his life, without a home from city to city across the world. At first, I started managing Q and that became the beginning of talent management for me.
I want to ask you about that ten-day silent retreat. Did it get easier or harder as the days went on?
I don’t know that it was a straight line in neither direction. It was more of a rollercoaster where it would get easier, harder and then all of a sudden, you’re flipped on your head. In every moment, you would have a different thought that comes up. The key thing that I remember most about that experience was that there wasn’t any distraction. You almost don’t realize not many distractions you have in your life on a normal basis, on a daily basis. In the workday, there’s every work distraction but then outside of that, even when you go home, you have whoever might be in the home with you, you have every little thing you could be doing in the house. You have your phone, you have the TV, you have food and even eating is a distraction. I use it. I know that I use it as a distraction sometimes when I’m thinking about something. In that experience, you’re forced because there are 100 people that were there and you would sit down.
It was a very intense experience too. You’re waking up at 4:00 AM, you’re meditating for nine hours a day, you’re getting four hours of teachings on meditation a day and they would ask you to sit down for two hours to meditate. I had never meditated. I couldn’t meditate more than twenty minutes and a thought would come in my head. I would try and avoid on a daily basis in my own life, maybe a memory, someone that I was angry at. I realized that typically I would maybe listen to music and I forget about it. I’ll talk to a friend and I forget about it. I would push that thing down and I’m sitting there for two hours, for ten days and that thought is not going to leave your head until you make peace with it. It won’t leave your mind until you figure out some way to make peace with that.
They ruminate or they hide, they pop back up. This could be thoughts of anger, thoughts of grief even. The reason I am so curious about your experience with silence, the old way of selling was asking someone to buy something and then whoever speaks first loses. It became this will of silence and that doesn’t work anymore. People are aware of it and people can feel it. It’s this horrible old school way of trying to sell. The concept of getting comfortable with silence has helped me get people to get more sales. If you ask someone if they want to buy a house for example and you’ve got all this internal dialogue going on like you were referencing of, “I need this commission. If I have to show this person one more house, I’m going to lose my mind.” You say something because that’s so anxiety-provoking to have all those thoughts going on. You’re not used to it.
You say, “If I throw the refrigerator in, would you buy it then?” You’ve missed the moment for people to say yes or no. What I work with people on is saying when you quiet the thoughts in your head either through meditation or going on to something like you did for ten days without speaking, you become comfortable with the silence in the room. That is so key, whether you’re performing in poetry, music or speaking, is getting comfortable with those pauses. You as a talent manager, your ability to be comfortable with silence has probably helped you when you were pitching IN-Q and Cal to people, when you tell them how much their fee is or whatever the issue might be. It’s not a battle of wills of who’s going to speak next but it becomes your ability to be comfortable with that silence. Sometimes you don’t know what they’re going to say next, whether it’s an objection or a yes but if you are uncomfortable waiting then you lose out.
[bctt tweet=”Let go of being right-collaborate.” username=”John_Livesay”]
It’s definitely true and I thought that consciously when you’re pitching and I may be pitching IN-Q or Cal or anyone for engagement with the company. That silence is very important because both sides naturally, you’re going to feel something and the other side is going to feel something. After you say it, it’s so easy to try and follow it up with reasoning or something that explains why you have to be silent.
I’m also fascinated by the combination of a piano teacher because I took piano lessons when I was a kid and a dentist. At one time I thought I wanted to be a dentist. I am going to give you my observations but have the unique inside track because you lived in that world. What they have in common is that clearly piano and music in general is about melody, sound and eliciting feelings based on what the music is doing. The dentistry is an art form. The dentists that I’ve met and have been patient of take such pride in their work and think of themselves as a craftsman. Almost like a person who’s a musician composing a song, those are my teeth and then to have those people create a son like you, who then brings that out into the world. I wanted to get your take on if I’m close to your childhood or the takeaways that you learned from your parents.
It’s funny because dentists are normally thought of as not creative people. When you think about what they’re doing, they are working on the thing that is right at the center of your face. Everyone sees this thing and they’re the ones that are making a beautiful. I love that perspective of they’re artists as much as a piano teacher. My mom was definitely the more creative one between the two of them, but I definitely picked that up from both of them. Another thought, jumping back to the silence. It’s sparked an idea, a thought that I actually don’t think about. I love that comparison you made between the meditation and silence there into the work. Not only does it come in pitching, but it also comes in pitching ideas.
As a manager, a lot of the time it’s focused around bringing ideas, whether it’s to the client or whether it might be another client that I’m working with. It could be a company, it could be creative and it could be an artist that we’re working with to create something. A lot of the time it takes giving your idea and putting your perspective in there but then not trying to convince anyone of that, not trying to sway anyone in your direction. It’s trying to understand what they want, what their vision is, giving your opinion in your idea but then letting it sit in silence. Creatives often have to think about what they want, what they envisioned and that idea has to be there.
If you come up with the idea and you try to sell it and push it on somebody, nine times out of ten it’s not going to work. However, if you have collaborative conversations and brainstorm without an attachment to any one outcome, what I’m hearing you say is that allows the decision maker to take ownership of the idea, pick a direction and see you as a collaborator. When that happens, then your clients are definitely the solution to execute that idea.
You can’t be focused on being right. You have to be focused on collaborating and working together to find the solution. If you have that, then you allow the person to actually come up with the idea that resonates with them and that’s going to be the best solution.
Say Something: Thoughts don’t leave until you process them.
Tell me a story of both IN-Q and Cal, one of your favorite stories of an event or an outcome that happened after someone hired IN-Q.
It was a very interesting moment. IN-Q was performing at a WeWork event and he performed at a global summit. It was 6,000 people in the Microsoft Theater in Downtown LA. A month before that, he was at a smaller event and it was 50 people across North America. We were sitting in a room and he was performing for dinner and he was doing this piece called Home. The first line is, “I want to buy a house where I can make memories in every room.” It’s a beautiful piece about having a family and having a house that’s more about what you put into the house in terms of your energy and who you are and the people as opposed to the physical objects. Value isn’t a thing you own, it’s the thing that you bring.
Value is not something you own. It’s something you bring.
We were sitting there and 50 people are sitting at three tables. IN-Q’s doing this piece and we’re all listening. He finishes it and the guy across from me turns to me and I told him beforehand that I was his manager. Five minutes during our conversation right after IN-Q finished performing, everyone’s like, “That was amazing. I loved that.” This guy turns to me and goes, “How many times have you heard that?” I said, “Between hearing it live, hearing it on video and recordings that we’ve done, I would say maybe 100 times, probably more than 100 to be honest.” He goes, “I looked at you while he was performing. I was watching you. You were smiling as if you were listening to that poem for the first time.” It gave me a perspective on that experience that I didn’t have, which was so beautiful. I didn’t realize that I had that perspective. It was beautiful because it is how I feel every time I hear him, I am hearing it for the first time and I’m hearing new things every time, the hundredth time I’ve heard of one poem.
That’s art. We are different when we look at it and all the energy that goes around it is part of that.
They’re different when you hear it. Every moment that you hear someone say something, it can be the same thing over and over. In your life, you’re having different things going on. You’re having a different experience.
[bctt tweet=”If you are uncomfortable with waiting, then you lose out.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That explains your success because people respond to people who are authentic and passionate. You can’t fake that and you are clearly authentic and passionate. That’s why you’re so successful. Am I still as passionate and authentic about what I’m pitching? If I’ve said it 100 times as it was the first time, knowing if you trust what you’re doing and you have a purpose behind it that keeps you alive and going, I would think.
That definitely is part of the journey. It’s figuring out how you can get excited about it because sometimes you forget. Sometimes I’ll go a month, two months, three months without seeing Cal, IN-Q perform live because I’m in the office in LA and they’re traveling and performing. Sometimes you do get separated from the art. You get separated from what you’re selling and that becomes something where I have to go back to why do I love it? What do I love about it? When I see it live again, for me that’s the clearest dive back into the arts and why I love it so much. You do have to constantly go back to why you feel connected. If you ever don’t, you have to look at that, look at the experience, look what’s going on in your life and look at the art and say, “What am I connected to in that?” Every time I go back to the art, I find that I go deeper into it.
When I hear actors talking about doing the same performance on Broadway for years at a time, they always have to find some nuance or it’s the audience response that energizes them to make it fresh for them. That’s part of being fully present and fully alive, which goes back to one of the takeaways you get from going on a ten-day silent meditation.
When you’re listening to the art, it’s that presence. When you’re trying to help someone understand how powerful it is and how it can really make a huge difference in their event or their experience, it’s the presence of understanding and listening. I learned that presence in that retreat. I’ve learned that presence from Cal. He’s incredibly present. That’s the thing I’ll always say is Cal, when he is talking to you, you feel like you are the only person in the room. Especially when you’re saying something that intrigued him, his jaw drops and his eyes open wide. He is enthralled. There have been times where he’ll finish speaking and we will be leaving and we have a flight to catch. We have somewhere to go and I used to drag him. He’s already done an hour of Q&A afterwards, off stage talking to people, answering questions and I’m pulling him away saying, “Cal, we’ve got to go.”
My experience of him is this bottomless curiosity for life and people’s stories. That’s what made him such a good journalist. He’s taking that same passion and tells the stories of everyone from Gorbachev to George Clooney in a way that makes everyone else curious to know what’s going to happen. What’s your goal next?
There are several things within what we’re building with IN-Q and Cal. I looked a lot at why I was drawn to both IN-Q and Cal. Early on, I was managing IN-Q about a year and a half or two years and then I started managing Cal. When I first started managing Cal, people would ask me, “You represent a poet. Do you represent writers?” Typically, you have a manager that represents actors. They represent screenwriters, musicians, comedians. There’s a lane for everything and people would look at me in this complete confusion of who do you represent?
Say Something: If you feel like you’re an island, then you won’t feel any sense of connection to the purpose of why you’re working.
Actors and performers have a talent manager mapping out their career. They have an agent that negotiates their contracts.
I started going around and people start asking me, “Who do you represent? What’s the common thread between IN-Q and Cal, are they writers?” I said, “What it is more than anything? When you see them, whether IN-Q’s poetry or Cal’s storytelling, they both make you think about your own life in a different way.” They challenge you to think about whether it’s your personal life, your work, your social life, your relationships. Both of their art acts as a mirror in a lot of ways and they both allow you to think about that but not only that, they also entertain. Once you are watching IN-Q’s performance or you’re seeing Cal’s speak, you’re not only inspired to think about your own life in a different, but you’re also entertained.
You’re laughing, you’re crying, you’re going through that journey. It’s the balance of those two things that is more powerful than anything. If it’s the balance of making you think about your own life, acting as that mirror but then also entertaining, making someone laugh and making someone enjoy that experience. If I look forward, it’s creating that experience for more people, allowing more people to have that experience. Most people live double lives. During the day they listen to podcasts, they’re watching YouTube videos, listening to TED Talks.
[bctt tweet=”If you come up with the idea and try to sell it by pushing it on somebody, nine times out of ten it is not going to work.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Most people are enjoying them and then they go home. They go out at night on a Friday or Saturday night with a friend on a date, with their wife, husband, whatever that may be and then they lose that. They lose the part of themselves they love so much, the inspiration because they’re going out to comedy. They’re going out to a bar or they’re going out to dinner. How do you bring an experience together where you can fuse the two things? IN-Q does that so well. When you go to one of his shows, it’s that kind of experience. Cal at 8:00 AM at a corporate event will give you that experience where you go in and all of a sudden not only are you learning, not only are you entertained but you are laughing, crying, you’re feeling every emotion. Every person in that room, you feel closer with because you went through that experience and you feel like you’ve shared that experience together.
That is one of the key objectives almost every speaking engagement that I’ve been. Not only do we want you to inspire them, inform them, give them some new tools but the whole experience is supposed to bond them better together. These are siloed departments and people that don’t see each other that often. They’ve all been brought together for a two-day summit. If your experience of speaking can make them feel bonded together and they can start referencing a story you did, a joke or whatever it is, then you are delivering on the overall connection. People have to feel connected to the people on their team, even if they’re not physically seeing them every day in order to feel part of something beyond what their little job is or big job. If you only feel like you’re an island, then you don’t feel any sense of connection to the purpose of why you’re working and then you burn out really fast. The outcomes of having people think about their lives in a different way impact the bottom line. Is there any last thought, book or quotes you want to leave us with?
What I found more than anything is that the art sells itself. Whether the art is a painting, whether it’s poetry, whether it’s a speaker on stage, whether it’s a podcast or whatever it might be, the art will sell itself if someone experiences it and they are shifted by it. That’s what I try and do more than anything. It’s to allow someone to experience the art. I’m sure you’ve experienced this in your speaking. When someone sees you live, that is the best experience they could ever have. You are probably one of the best people at pitching and selling but if they see you live, they have that experience themselves. When they see you take a group of people through an experience, they’re learning. They’re having takeaways, they’re standing up and clapping, that’s going to be the best sales pitch you could ever have. I try and do that as much as I can and put the art out there. Allow people to experience that art because that’s what’s going to get them bought in more than anything else.
[bctt tweet=”The art will sell itself if someone experiences and are shifted by it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The more people realize the value of this face-to-face connection, whether it’s one-on-one or you’re speaking in front of 6,000 people, it’s still that intense need to be present and in that moment so that you can have an experience. Otherwise, as you said, you’re in your head and distracted about a bunch of things and we wonder why we’re not having more joy in our life. That’s the reason, we’re not in the moment. Kevin, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful journey and these two amazing artists that you’re representing, IN-Q and Cal Fussman. The world is going to be a better place and I can’t wait to see what you do with them.
Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it. It’s been a fun conversation.
Links Mentioned:
- Kevin Hekmat – LinkedIn
- Say Something Entertainment
- The Third Door
- http://SaySomething.la/
- Quantmre.com
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Shark Tank Pitch Secrets with Kevin Harrington
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is none other than Kevin Harrington, one of the original judges on Shark Tank. If anybody knows what it takes to have a good pitch, it’s Kevin Harrington. He’s literally heard over 50,000 pitches in the many years he’s been doing this, from listening to pitches for infomercials to listening to pitches on Shark Tank. He has a really great key here which is that, “Consistency is the ultimate motivational tool.” He said, “When you’re out there, you need to show the investors how they’re going to get their money back.” He gives an example of exactly the kind of pitch he would like to hear in order to get him to say yes. He said, “You need to test before you invest.” He gives us great insights into what a magical transformation is that he is looking for when he hears a pitch.
Listen To The Episode Here
Shark Tank Pitch Secrets with Kevin Harrington
Hi. Welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today, I am thrilled to have Kevin Harrington. You probably know him as one of the original Shark Tank judges. He has been so successful in so many different areas. He has written multiple books, one called the Key Person of Influence, and he is definitely a person of influence. He is known not only for his expertise on Shark Tank, but he is the inventor of the infomercial, the As Seen on TV pioneer. Now, he’s involved with Quantum Media, which is a digital media agency. He hears so many pitches. He’s going to give us insights into what makes a great pitch. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Hey, John. You said a mouthful there, thank you for all that.
I’ve been a big fan of yours for multiple years. I’ve watched a lot of your clips on television and your areas of expertise. I always like to go back to someone’s story of origin. Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
I was lucky. I grew up one of six kids in Cincinnati, Ohio. My father was an entrepreneur and he always said, “Kevin, I want you to be an entrepreneur, own your own business, control your own destiny.” Now, my mother, her father was in banking, so she came out very conservative, “Oh no, I’d really like for you to be a doctor or a lawyer.” They struggled a little bit. The good news is I have two older sisters. One married a doctor, one married a lawyer. I got to be the entrepreneur.
[Tweet “Shark Tank Pitch: Consistency is the ultimate motivational tool.”]
Everybody filled the different dreams of your parents, so you got to do your own expertise there. One of the things that you’ve recently written about in Forbes is that, “Consistency is the ultimate motivation tool.” I’d love to have you talk about that.
I think that when I look at the infomercial business and I look at the infomercials space, that is an industry of consistency. We take Tony Little, who goes on in HSN and gives his pitch. Then, he hones it. Every time he comes on, he has to be consistently the same. He comes back week after week, month after month, year after year, and we’d take that infomercial and it continues that whole path, all around the world. When I get involved with products and companies and people like the Tony Littles of the world, I get involved once they have reached that level of knowing what the consistency of that pitch is and how powerful it is. Then we capture it on tape, put it up in front of millions of people and take it around the world.
Shark Tank Pitch: It’s a much more authentic world in the world of marketing and business today than it was even ten years ago.
Yes, consistency is important. That’s in a product but also running in the business. It’s the same thing. Why is McDonald’s so successful? It’s the special sauce. They give you the same thing. No matter where you go, you’re going to get that same quality little cheeseburger, whatever it is you’re getting. That’s why franchising works. Ultimately, successful businesses are good because they deliver on a promise of consistency. It’s important. People today, they don’t mind paying a little extra or the right price for something, whatever the deal might be. But they expect to get the same thing each and every time. I think, it certainly is as the millennials are coming out. They don’t want to be messed with. It’s a much more authentic world in the world of marketing and business today than it was even ten years ago.
I think we can use this as a through line for the whole episode because consistency is so important in what you’re doing with Quantum Media. When you’re talking about helping businesses increase their conversion rates and use social media and all these other digital tools to create a brand, it’s so important that brand would be consistent.
Absolutely. Let’s put it this way. In the world of marketing, when we first started, I didn’t even know what an infomercial was, we didn’t call it infomercial, we’re just putting them up. But it got down to where we were running our shows, looking for consistent dollar per phone call. We had an allowable with the station where we said, “Okay, we’re going to let you run this show and we need to get $10 for every time the phone rings.” That’s our allowable, that’s our consistency.
Shark Tank Pitch: If you’re not consistent in the world of digital, it’s even a bigger problem today.
In the world of digital marketing, it’s pretty much the same thing. If you’re going to go on Facebook and you’re going to use affiliates and you’re going to do different things, you have to be able to provide consistent everything. Because if you’re shipping your product within 48 hours and that’s consistent, and all of the sudden you have a delay on inventory and you’re shipping in three or four weeks. Your returns are going to go from 5% to maybe 20%. If you’re not consistent in the world of digital, it’s even a bigger problem today. In the old days, we could say at the end of an infomercial, “Hey, call the number, we’ll ship it within four to six weeks.” Can you do that in today’s world?
No. Not with the drones in Amazon and everything. That’s funny.
“Did you mean four to six hours or four to six days?” Don’t give me four days. I want this in 48 hours. The world expects authentic consistent performance. They just don’t allow for the alternative anymore.
It’s all about giving people an expectation that you can meet and then being consistent with meeting those expectations. Because the minute you lose credibility in an infomercial, on what you’re promising your clients from Quantum Media, or what the ad is promising people if they click on it that they don’t get, then everything goes out the window. Now, you have heard so many pitches. Let’s talk about of course your experience with Shark Tank, how did Mark Burnett pitch you to be a judge?
I’m going to tell you that in one second. I got to finish one point you just made. In today’s world, with the star system of rating people’s products and stuff, that is the other reason why consistency is so important. Because in the old days, you could ship something, if it wasn’t perfect, people didn’t have a way to complain other than call the number and say, “You know what? It’s not exactly what I wanted.” Now, you get one or two stars, you get yanked off the air, you get yanked off a website. You’ve got to be consistent. We’ll close that subject down.
I love that loop. Thank you. Even an Uber driver gets rated now, so everybody gets rated.
I was sitting there. I had done about 300 or 400 infomercials with Tony Little and George Foreman and Jack LaLanne and the juicer and all these different fancy shows and things. Taking them all around the world, built a public company with $500 million in sales and had done literally billions across the board. One day, Mark Burnett was on the line and he’s like, “Hey, Kevin. This is Mark Burnett. I’m a TV producer.” I said, “Mark, I know exactly who you are. I’m in your industry.” He said, “Look, I got a new reality show I’m doing. Would you come out to LA? I want you to meet my team and tell you what we’re up to. It’s something I want to see if you might be interested.”I said, “Mark, what an honor to get this phone call. I appreciate it. Thank you. But any kind of heads-up you could give me so I can be thinking about it? Is there any news on it yet?”He said, “No, it’s coming out but we haven’t shot it yet. It’s called Shark Tank. Don’t worry, just come on out here. I’ll tell you more about it when you get out here.”
I said, “Mark, wait a minute. I’m not sure that this is going to be for me. I do know you do some crazy things to people on that Survivor Island show. I don’t know about a show called Shark Tank. What are you going to do to me?” He thought about it and said, “Look, it’s not crazy like that. It’s a business show, Kevin.” That’s when I said, “If it’s a business show, I’m interested, if you’re involved Mark.” My wife said, “How is Shark Tank a business show?”
It was kind of funny. Think about this. When I was shooting Shark Tank, nobody knew what it was. I tell my wife, “I’m heading out to LA. I’m shooting Shark Tank.” She says, “What are you going to do?”I said, “I’m going to be investing money.” She said, “Wait a minute, they’re not paying you? You have to pay them?” “That’s how it works, yes.” She said, “How much are you going to invest?” I said, “I don’t know. It could be hundreds of thousands, it could be millions.” She said, “When would we get that money back?” I said, “I don’t know, maybe never.” She said, “Why do you want to be on this show?”
[Tweet “Shark Tank Pitch: I’ve heard over 50K pitches over the years.”]
When you think about it, I was investing one of the first deals I did, I’d put a half a million into a company. She closed the doors six months later. It was a very risky endeavor and I was one of the original sharks in putting money up and wheeling and dealing and all that. I think the bottom line is this, once we got distribution, once it was on the air, once it got the buzz, then everybody understood. “Okay, there’s the Shark Tank show. Yes, I understand. Kevin’s on that show called Shark Tank.” Then, it started paying off for me. Much like why are we doing a podcast today. I’ve taken now 50,000 pitches over the last 30 years. This is why Mark Burnett wanted me, because I had taken so many pitches before I’ve even got on Shark Tank that I was an experienced pitch taker, if that’s the right way to say. I go to tradeshows every week somewhere. I’ll do 30 tradeshows this year. I’ll invest in products in every show that I go to, whether it’s the pet show or the fitness show or the beauty show or the golf or the toy fair or the house wares or the hardware. That’s what I do for a living and that’s what I love to do.
The one thing I can tell you, John, is that I have learned what it takes to give a good pitch because I’ll sit there in a day, I took 96 pitches in one day. Just think about this, do five minutes times 96, it’s 500 minutes, and do it back to back to back, it’s an eight hour a day and beyond, and there was time in between. Sit there for eight to ten to twelve hours and take pitches, you’re going to learn a thing or two when you get to 47 and you think you’ve taken 500. You’re ready for a little break in the action and you’re ready for a good pitch. I learned a thing or two about good pitches. That’s what I love sharing with people right now. That’s part of my DNA.
I’ve been called The Pitch WhispererR because that’s equally something I’m passionate about as well. I love helping people become great story tellers, and you and I are on the same page. I’ve heard you talked about the need for a pitch to have a magical transformation. Can you describe what that is for you?
I’m in a very visual business, in the world of as seen on TV products. If it’s Tony Little in fitness, we want to see people losing weight. We want to see people getting stronger. If it’s acne, we want to see their bad skin get cleared up. Just think about it. If it’s a kitchen gadget, we would take a little gadget and turn an apple into a bird, “Wow, what was that? That was pretty amazing.” The bottom line is this magical transformation sells. It’s before and after, before and after. It’s visual, it’s demonstrable, and it works. We know that it does.
[Tweet “Shark Tank Pitch: Magical transformation sells.”]
People ask me a lot of times, and you’re the expert to ask this question to. How real is it on Shark Tank compared to when somebody pitches someone like yourself in front of an Angel group? Because I know you’re involved with the Angel Investor Network as well. The contrast obviously is quite different, but I’d love to hear your answer on TV versus reality.
Look, the one thing that I would always say, Shark Tank is a great show but Mark Burnett is a television producer and he looks for ratings. He’d come down halfway through a day and say, “Nobody has invested any money, what’s going on here? If we’re going to have good television, we’ve got to have some deals.” We’d say, “Mark, you want good television, but we want good deals.” There’s a mix there. We could make fun of people or whatever, which I never really particularly wanted to do that. I was more of a constructive guy. Mr. Wonderful, that’s his brand, to make fun of people. That’s okay. He built his brand on that. Me, I like to empower entrepreneurs.
I would say this, that Shark Tank was about making good TV and getting good ratings and getting lots of viewership. They’ve done a good job of that. Along the way, you’ve got to have a mix of some good deals, or the sharks aren’t going to be interested. I’d be sitting there and somebody would come out with something that you just knew. They were looking for ten grand, for 20% of their company, they haven’t even started and it’s this crazy idea, and you just knew this one that it was just made for television.
Do you think that Mark Cuban, who owns a multibillion dollar enterprise and the Dallas Mavericks, is interested in really investing ten grand in one of these teeny little deals? It’s made for TV that they had to do, whereas when we’re pitching equity deals like Angels network and some of these things, these are hardcore deals where we want to see research. We want to see competitive analysis. We want to see exit plans. We want to see the risk analysis where we can really get into the hardcore crunch of the deal.
I did dozens of deals on Shark Tank and I know Cuban’s done probably, I think I read an article that he had done about 35 or 40 deals. He said a third of them are making some money or in business, a third of them are out of business and don’t know it, and a third of them are never going to make it and are virtually done. Two-thirds were done almost and just selling and not really understanding that they really don’t have a business.
Shark Tank Pitch: People forget, when they come on Shark Tank, it’s not really about them. It’s about how do they get the shark to want to write the check.
I think that’s probably not too far off the investor rule in investing in Angel-kind of deals, is if you can get a third of your stuff to work, that’s probably pretty good. However, I wonder how many of the third that are still in business, as Mark says, are actually going to have any kind of an exit to where he might get his money back even. That’s really the ultimate thing. People forget, when they come on Shark Tank, it’s not really about them, it’s about how do they get the shark to want to write the check. That’s the perspective people pitching a lot of times forget. They’ve got to get the shark to write the check. It’s more about understanding really the motivation of the shark to want to be your partner.
Would you say, for someone like yourself who has heard as many as 96 pitches in one day, that having a really compelling story is a way to get people to standout out of all those pitches? You remember the story more than the product, typically?
I’ll say this. I think the story is important, absolutely. I want to hear the story, but at the end of the day, I focus on a couple of things. I want to know, is there an exit strategy, because one of the challenges is this. If it’s a private company, let’s say somebody wants to have half a million dollars for X percent of their private company. There is never a distributions in these small companies. They always need more money. Here’s my half a million, I’m not going to get it back for a long time unless you sell the company or go public. I want to know that there’s an exit strategy.
This is the other trick that I talk about, and Mr. Wonderful uses this one quite a bit. Is there a way to accelerate the pay back to the shark? When I say shark, to the investor. I’ll give you an example. If somebody says to me, “Look, I want your half a million. I’ll give you 20% of my company, but I’ll give you 100% of the profits until you get all your money back. Now you’re whole. Now you own 20% for the rest of your life. You don’t have to be worrying every day, “Where’s my money? Where’s my money?” You got your money back right away. Now, you can focus on building the business to the exit.
I tell people to always focus on getting that money back to the shark. If you’d notice, O’Leary, in many cases is talking about, “Okay, you’re a donut business. I want 50 cents for every donut you sell,” as a way to monetize his investment. That’s because he realizes that he’s going to be riding these people like crazy if he just has equity and he’s never seeing any distributions. But if he’s getting 50 cents back on every donut sold, he’s getting a distribution on a weekly basis and having the chance to have equity also.
I love it because not only does the investor get their money back sooner than the exit strategy, but also it takes the pressure off the founder not to have an exit strategy until they’re really ready because the investors already made their money.
Exactly. In all of the years of watching and doing Shark Tank and being there myself for 175 of my own segments, never did one person ever actually lay it out to me, the shark, “Hey, look. I’m so focused on you to get your money back fast. My goal as the entrepreneur here is to tell you that I’ve got a great business, here’s my plan, here’s my execution, here’s my team. But my goal is to get you your money back within one year, and this is how I’m going to do it.” If somebody came with that storyline, that’s going to be powerful pitch.
It’s really about showing empathy for the investor as opposed to what you need, isn’t it? I love that, Kevin.
I’ll give you an example. I had a company I got involved with. They needed $20 million. We went out and did a raise. They said, “Would you help us go on the road show?” I said, “Absolutely.” They said, “Look, give us a couple of weeks up in New York. We’re going to have people coming in one at a time, have a couple of group meetings. We’ll have you, if you could. There’s a couple of billionaires as part of this, if you could maybe go and sit in their big building that they own at the corner of 15th and Madison or something. We’ll make a couple of appearances here and there.” I made 90 something pitches over that two and a half week period of time.
Shark Tank Pitch: What is it that you like? What have been some of your most successful investments?
We made 90 something pitches to individual investors. The first thing that I did was sat, talked, got to know them for a few minutes. What is it that you like? What have been some of your most successful investments? They would instantly tell me what it was going to take for them to get the money. “This is what I’ve been doing. When I invested in this deal, I love it. I ride it out for years, and boom, boom, boom.” They would basically, within five minutes, tell me what it was I needed to do to convince them that we might have the right investment for them. Sometimes, you’ve just got to sit and listen.
It also sounds like you’re really smart in asking the investors before you even pitched what their criteria is of what makes them say yes. Also, you get them in the mindset of remembering a positive experience before you even pitch, which I think is also very clever.
Exactly. Because on Shark Tank, the advantage that people have today is they can watch all the Shark Tank segments, and they see what Barbara is looking for, what excites O’Leary, how to make those pitches. But when you’re one-on-one with an investor you just met for the first time, how are you going to pitch them? You’ve got to get in their head real fast. That’s what I like to do.
Kevin, one of the key things I know is so important to investors like yourself is, who’s on the team? Recently, I interviewed Laura Wagner of Digitzs. She put together such an impressive team of people from Apple and PayPal and Google, plus herself. Is that a key factor for you when you’re looking at a company that’s pre-revenue and maybe even pre-minimum viable product, is will they have a great team?
Yes. There are various things that I do look for. If someone says to me, “What is the one thing that an entrepreneur really needs to do to be successful?” I say, “They’ve got to have passion and vision and all that. But they need to surround themselves with experts and a dream team that supports their strengths and weaknesses, and more supports their weaknesses than strengths.” I think at the end of the day, Laura surrounded herself with some amazing people and was very, very successful in doing that. What was interesting is that when she first tried to raise some money via crowdfunding, she had some challenges. The bottom line is, it landed soft in the first part and then when we brought the shark stuff and brought more of this dream team aspect to the table, it has super charged what she was doing. The bottom line is we had some very powerful stuff happen as the dream team came together.
You’ve had your pulse on success for so long, from being on the cutting edge of what’s going on in infomercials, being one of the first Shark Tank judges when there was a lot of risk for you, it obviously paid off. Now, you continue to invest in a lot of startups. Let’s talk about where you see the future with what you’re doing with Quantum Media. What is it about that that you feel is so exciting and has so much growth, and how can people possibly use Quantum Media, and who are you targeting?
What’s happened is there’s been a disruption in a lot of industries. Uber has disrupted taxis and Airbnb is disrupting hotels. Not that they’re putting all these out of business, necessarily. They’re tightening up some of these industries. The TV industry has been disrupted itself. There is 50% fewer viewers on TV. By the way, there is big financial drain in the world of television right now. ESPN is losing millions of viewers every single year. ABC owns ESPN and Disney, they’re hurting because of this. What’s happening is, where do the eyeballs go? If they’re not watching TV, they’re watching digital. They’re on digital. They’re on Facebook. They’re on Pinterest. They’re on Instagram.
The bottom line is that there’s this mass exodus to other places. What do I do? I follow the eyeballs. Quantum Media, what we’ve done, five years ago, it was 80% TV, 20% internet digital. Now, I’m 80% digital, 20% TV. We’re doing campaigns for major corporations, for products across the board. We call it a test before you invest kind of a format and do a lot of stuff long before we go to TV, because TV is so expensive. Quantum Media is our new baby. We shoot very inexpensive videos, test them up on social media channels to see what the results are before we go to the next steps. It’s the new way for us. Digital is without a doubt the future in my mind for not only testing products but also rolling them out and, as you started off this conversation, getting the consistency you need as an entrepreneur.
[Tweet “Shark Tank Pitch: Test before you invest.”]
Nice. We’re going to tweet that out. I love that line, test before you invest. What a great sound bite that is. That’s fantastic. I know that people are probably going to want to follow you on social media. Your handle is @HarringtonKevin. You have thousands and thousands of people listening to your advice. I just want to personally thank you for being such an advocate and inspiration for so many people, myself included.
John, it’s been a pleasure to be here today. Thanks for having me. Keep the pitches coming for both of us. I love to take the next home run pitch. I love every single day when I wake up because I never know what I might be pitched that day. That’s what keeps my days exciting, is knowing that I’m going to be hearing some cool new things. I look forward to doing some more business with you. Good luck in your podcast ventures and taking new pitches.
Thanks a lot, Kevin. I appreciate you being on the show.
Thank you.
Links Mentioned
- J Robinett Enterprises
- John Livesay Funding Strategist
- Kevin Harrington
- Key Person of Influence
- As Seen on TV
- Quantum Media
- @HarringtonKevin
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