The People Whisperer With Ken Sterling

Posted by John Livesay in podcast 0 comments

Public speaking isn’t easy. Sometimes, to maximize success, you need a people whisperer like today’s guest on your side. In this episode, John Livesay and Ken Sterling, Executive Vice President of BigSpeak dive deep into what you need to succeed in the public speaking space. Ken talks about being authentic, reacting to feedback, accountability, and choosing the right speaker for the job. Tune in for more great insights and learn from one of the best in the business.

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Listen to the podcast here

The People Whisperer With Ken Sterling

Our guest is Ken Sterling, the Executive Vice President at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau. He talks about how they go from gurus to go-tos. Find out what he means in terms of speakers and the kinds of questions he asks to keep people coming back time and again and getting repeat referrals. He has an acronym called ACE for Anticipate, Communicate, and Execute. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Ken Sterling, who is based in Santa Barbara and the Executive Vice President at BigSpeak, the leading keynote, and business speaking bureau. He is a columnist for Inc. Magazine with a column called Talk Business to Me. He holds a PhD from UC Santa Barbara and an MBA from Babson College. He also teaches entrepreneurship, marketing, and strategy at USC Santa Barbara. In his spare time, believe it or not, he has some, Ken is a serial entrepreneur, a keynote speaker, and coaches executives for high-performance results. Ken, welcome to the show.

John, thank you for having me. It is an honor.

I am the one that is honored. You certainly are someone who does not dabble at life. You go all-in. You are able to be successful at so many things at the same time. Before we get into how you do that, I would love to know your story of origin. You can go back to childhood where you realized, “I gave a little talk and I’ve got a laugh. Maybe that is something I want to get into. I am interested in how organizations run.” Whenever you want to start the story from childhood or college because those stories are never linear, although I have done over 450 interviews now, no one has this, “I am going to get my PhD.” Few people have that in their heads when they first start their journey. Tell us how yours started.

I do not get asked this question often. I reflect on this a lot because I am so happy doing what I do in this blessed life and career that some people would call a job. It does not feel like a job. It feels like everything I did, including my origin, set me up to be successful doing what I do on what BigSpeak does. Going back over the waves of time back in the dinosaur days, I was born in a women’s college in Upstate New York. My mother was at a women’s college there. She is Sicilian.

Thanks to things like Roe v. Wade or whatever it is, I am a living being here. Thanks to my mom and the doctors at the little hospital there. I lived in a dorm for two years. My mom still has a picture of a drawer where they swaddled me in a blanket where I slept. We grew up very humble, not with a lot of money. My dad was not around. There was a lot of controversy around him and my mother. I grew up with a distant connection with my mother and no connection with my dad.

I have to make friends to survive and later to thrive. The first part of my origin story is about a kid that needs to connect and curate this tribe of a network. That is a lot of what we do in the agency world. We are networking, connecting, and being of service. We do good work. We have a reputation that we need to uphold. What I would do on my vacations is I would go live with my grandparents. My Nonno was an old-school Italian guy. He had a saying, motto, and value for everything. That rubbed off on me.

I was this poor street kid in New York then having these idyllic times with my Nonno. We came out to California when I was a teenager, which was interesting because back in those days, California was the big glitz and glamor of Hollywood. Elvis Presley was still the King. There was a lot going on. I was impacted a lot by Los Angeles, the energy, and the entertainment industry.

[bctt tweet=”Anticipate, Communicate and Execute.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I thought I wanted to be an actor. I auditioned. I was in a commercial with Sylvester Stallone for the Boys Club of America. I then tried out for a couple of being in movies. I’ve never got the parts. I did some theater arts and was in a couple of plays. I am still connected to performance, theater, and things like that. It is funny because I do have a PhD now. I am a high school dropout. I got kicked out and dropped out about two months before graduation.

Things did not go well. I had a run-in with a teacher and did not go back to school for many years. I’ve got my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD much later in life. All the things that I did and the different businesses that I’ve got involved in were very much about building the community, connecting with people, feeding the family, and creating a family. Hopefully, good background of what makes me good at what I do is that I know how to keep people together and take care of people.

What a fascinating story from your crib being a drawer to dropping out of high school. With the predictions that you would go on to get a PhD and be at the level of success and contribution that you are making now, most people would not have bet on a story turning out like that. Was there a mentor involved that got you back into school? We are talking about your hero’s journey. Usually, there is some inciting incident or in a speaker’s career, there is a flashpoint, whether it is a book or a talk that changes things for that person’s career. Is there something you can point to now, looking back, that you said, “This is this person or this event got me on another path?”

Yes. It is interesting because there have been a few different mentors over the years. The mentor that helped me realize it was time to get back into education is the CEO and Founder of BigSpeak, Jonathan Wygant. We have known each other for years. Ever since I was a teenager, he has been a real mentor in my life and helped me a lot with getting me on good paths. What happened was interesting.

I was applying for a great job. Jonathan was one of my references. I ended up not getting the job because I did not have a college degree. I had some accomplishments and started some companies. I made some money, had some houses, and all the stuff. I was upset candidly that I did not get this job. I remember saying to the CEO of that company, “Mark Zuckerberg did not have a college degree.”

To her credit, she said, “With all due respect, you are not Mark Zuckerberg.” I said, “Thank you.” Jonathan invited me to go to lunch. We were having lunch and he shared with me at his company such as BigSpeak that he had a requirement for people to have a college degree and that to him and a lot of people, it demonstrates someone’s ability to follow through on a commitment and analytical thinking.

That was a barrier or a ticket of entry into a different world. I got out of that lunch meeting with him, drove up to the local community college, and went to the transfer center. I remember I waited in line, read a magazine, and got in front of this woman. Christine was her name and I said, “How fast can you get me to UC Santa Barbara” She put a plan together and I stuck to it, hustled, and made it happen.

Let’s talk a little bit about BigSpeak and the story of origin around BigSpeak. It is based in Santa Barbara where you live as well. What is it that BigSpeak does that makes clients want to keep working with you?

People Whisperer: I know how to keep people together and take care of people.

It is a great question to answer externally. It is a great question that we ask ourselves internally all the time, and because we ask ourselves that question, it sets us up for success. At BigSpeak, we are averaging about a 75% repeat referral rate, which is pretty phenomenal. We also run what’s called an NPS survey or a Net Promoter Score survey. To set the table for that, if anyone has ever gotten an email that says, “John, thank you for shopping at XYZ Widget Company. On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend XYZ Widget Company’s services to a friend or colleague?”

There is a lot of science between why they asked the question the way they do and in the waiting for the answers. For example, on a scale of 1 to 10, most people think that a 7 or an 8 is pretty good when 7 and 8 are not good, so you want 10s, “How likely are you to promote us? How likely are you to tell a friend to do work with u?” We have for years sent the survey out to every client that we work with. We send it out on the company event planner side, to speakers, and to the speaker’s bureaus. The number is important. Our number is phenomenal.

Our NPS is 82, which shows a very high level of satisfaction. Back in the day, when Nordstrom had a great reputation, their NPS was in the 80s. Zappos back in the day was up in the 80s. Banks are notoriously down in the 30s and 40s. That is terrible. It is worse than an F’s. I will use the word obsessed because we are engaged with customer satisfaction and with Net Promoter Score, we always improve our systems. The number is one piece of it. The other thing is we ask the question, “If you did not give us a 10, what would it take to earn a 10?” We ask another question, “What’s something you think we do not want to hear?”

It is very vulnerable. With the stuff we have picked up on that over the years, we have revamped the way that we send out bills, collection notices, set up contracts, and do handoffs between our sales team, the events team, and other operations team. It has helped us understand those comments. We learn a lot more from them than the numbers, for example. We love the number and it is great for the ego. What we love are those comments where we learn from those.

Circling back to your original question here, “What is it that has made us successful?” 1) We are obsessed and concerned with customer satisfaction. 2) We work hard to do clean, effective, and good work. What that means is that we try to remove the turbulence and friction. We try to get everything cleaned ahead of time. Some folks in different roles, bureaus, and industries might half-communicate upfront. We like to get it all out on the table upfront. There are no surprises.

That tends to be important in terms of taking good care and setting good expectations. It is also great because when the speaker meets the buyer during the pre-call, onsite or virtually in the virtual green room, there are no surprises. You are in the speaking industry and we were talking about this before we came on. Sometimes, things happen. Anticipating those things and doing good, clean, thoughtful, and considerate work for all the parties helps.

I love a couple of things you have said that I want to double-click on. One, from your TEDx Talk, you talk about how leaders own turbulence. They do not try to avoid it. It is your process at BigSpeak of being transparent. I talk about, as a sales keynote speaker, the need to be a copilot with your buyers. Therefore, you are both agreeing, “This is where we are landing. It is not a surprise when we land the plane.” This concept of removing friction up front is so important because you have this wonderful acronym that I wanted to get into.

This is the perfect place for it because what BigSpeak is doing is putting the acronym into action. It is Anticipate something, Communicate it, and then Execute it. Let’s take the ACE. Let’s take each letter. Anticipating is what could go wrong and not shying away from it, both at the beginning and this is what is so smart about what you are doing but also at the end. What is it you think we do not want to hear? You are anticipating even the worst-case scenario. We still want to hear it so we can learn from it and this clear communication of, “This is what the speaker or the event requires.”

[bctt tweet=”From gurus, to go tos, leaders own turbulence.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Also, let me ask you this. How important is it that people are flexible enough like when a pilot hits unexpected turbulence? If something might go wrong at the event, that speaker has some flexibility in everything from how long they are going to speak to incorporating what happened so that it does not seem like a canned presentation. Do you have some examples of how you as a bureau have communicated some things that have allowed the clients to say, “We feel like you had our back”

Those moments happen when there is turbulence. We did about 1,600 events in 2021 and in 1,575, I will make that number up, we do not hear much. We get the smile sheet on the NPS and the 9 or the 10, “Amy was great to work with. Marc Randolph was an excellent speaker.” Those are great. In less than 1% of what we do, there is going to be some turbulence and the way that we show up, meaning BigSpeak, the leadership team, the operations team who might be interfacing. Also, the advisor on the sales team, when we get that feedback or know there is a problem, the first thing is to remain calm.

We talked about this as a group when we were all together. When a challenge comes up, embrace it as an opportunity to shine. A lot of folks, me included, would tend to sometimes feel a little triggered, anxious, and almost like we need to get defensive about something. What I mean by that is that even if let’s say it is not BigSpeak’s fault, we are still part of it. We still help create, promote or allow whatever the situation happens. Having ownership and accountability around that, realizing we are here to help, and this is why we exist. Otherwise, people could use Expedia for speakers.

We are here to solve challenges. That is a big part of the first step, “We are in a situation. I am here to help. I am a professional. I’ve got the expertise, knowledge, and experience. We have a team here to help.” That helps internally with the process. As we do hit those, let’s say 25 out of 1,600 events a year where there is a stumble and we hit the guard rails. Any number of situations may be created from those 25 challenges. What have we learned from those? That is where we can help with the A of the Anticipate.

We have been seeing more of this going on. It’s because of COVID, airlines have been canceling flights. We have got a speaker stuck in Dallas who was supposed to be in Orlando tomorrow. It is not going to work. Even if we could get a private plane, it is still not going to work, so we are going to have to scramble. Scrambling could mean lots of things. Scramble could be, “Who do we have in Orlando? Who do we have within three hours of driving to Orlando? Could we do a virtual? Could we get that speaker who is stranded in Dallas to a studio?” Those are the things that sometimes we are ahead of.

As we are putting that event together, speaking with the event planner and the speaker on that pre-call, what is our contingency plan? Gosh, forbid, everything is going to go great, and if it doesn’t, what is our backup plan? That is interesting because it hasn’t scared anybody away. It has helped the companies and the speakers feel, “BigSpeak knows what’s going on there. They are thinking of this stuff.” We have changed some of our discovery intake processes and agreements around what happened to COVID. It’s funny because A could be a lot of things. A is Anticipate, Accountability, and Adapting. As long as we are coming at it from those points of view, it is very helpful.

It reminds me of Captain Sully flying for years. When those birds flew into the engine, he needed to be able to land the plane in the Hudson. That is the kind of thing an event planner, management, and big clients want to know that BigSpeak has the skills. For everyone reading, when you start to collect worst-case scenarios, then you are not having to create them on the spot like, “This reminds me of another time somebody got stuck. Here are six choices we had.”

You offered them a virtual and a studio. Who lives there? You are not trying to come up with solutions under stress because you already have that template ready to go. I do the same thing with clients and stories. You have given so many great talks on what makes a good salesperson. We are in sync on the concept of having the ability to tell the right story to the right person at the right time so that you stand out against all the competitors.

People Whisperer: We learn a lot more from them than the numbers, for example. We love the number and it’s great for the ego. What we love are those comments where we learn from those.

It allows you to have this predictable revenue that you were focused on, giving people the sense of if you know your ideal client, in my case, it happens to be tech companies and healthcare companies, in that niche, when that offer or request comes up, then people go, “That is John’s niche.” They do not have to think about it. What if you could speak to them? I can speak to a lot of other kinds of sales organizations but that is my niche.

A lot of people are afraid to niche down but I feel and would love your opinion, that when you do have a niche, A) It makes you more memorable and, B) It makes you easier to refer and you get momentum. You are like, “You have got all these healthcare and tech companies under your belt.” You can speak to a real estate group, too, and they might even want to hear what’s going on in healthcare. That is what’s interesting but there is this ability to not try to be everything to everybody. Do you find that those are the speakers that are the most successful?

This comes up in conversations. This question comes up in my daily practice at least once a day, especially with newer speakers that we have been introduced to who are hungry for the work and may or may not be as passionate and do not have their niche, “What is popular? What are your top five topics? I can change my presentation and talk about something different.” That is a hard conversation because I am also empathetic to what their needs are and a few different things.

What I share with them and that I hope the impact is good with them is it is best to stay with your true north and your niche. Here’s why. First, you know it, you own it, and you are comfortable with it. To your point, when you get asked to shorten your presentation by ten minutes, the reason you can do that other than you being a wonderful speaker and you are very professional is that you know this content so well. You can take a couple of those Lego blocks out and it is not a problem.

If it is not you, if it is not authentic, and if it is this whole house of cards that you have built that isn’t true, then you are going to have a challenge with that. When things or a monkey wrench has happened, as you have seen on stage, sometimes, the confidence monitors go down or the lights go down. Who knows what’s going to happen? The more it is you and the more it is what you are an expert on, the better you are going to do, and the better the audience is going to feel.

They also can feel if it is not authentic and it is not what you are passionate about. I loathe sometimes to say, “Follow your passion,” because that is what a lot of parents say to their kids. I do believe in that as a speaker. Get up on stage and share your story that resonates and bangs so deeply in your heart that you have got to get it out there and share it.

I talk about it in terms of being an artist. An artist needs to create. There is this wonderful story of Picasso and other artists painting over their masterpieces in the ’40s because there was a shortage of canvases. If we were salespeople, speakers or whatever we are doing in the world, we would have that same urge, we will figure out how to compensate for a shortage of anything, whether it is a startup or not. The other thing is there are so many similarities between acting and speaking in terms of positioning and branding.

When they are casting a movie or sending out a request for a speaker, oftentimes, everybody wants Meryl Streep and a lot of people would love to have Simon Sinek because he is a wonderful speaker. They go, “We can’t afford either of them. Who else can we talk to?” I’ve got a gig that way because they knew they couldn’t afford Simon. They were looking for not a competitor but who can at least somehow connect the dots from why we like him to what we do when it fits our budget.

[bctt tweet=”If it’s not you, if it’s not authentic, and if it’s this whole house of cards that you’ve built that isn’t true, then you’re going to have a challenge with that.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I do not think a lot of people think of themselves like that. It helps bureaus like you and the salespeople go, “It is not the poor man’s whatever. It is just an alternative.” If you are looking for this kind of storytelling to explain your why, Simon is the man or the speaker. If that budget does not fit, there are also some other people that might be able to get you where you want to go within the budget that you have. You need to have that position for them to be able to think of you in those situations. That is the secret of it all.

I do not know if we can trademark this or not. We call it internally and when we are speaking with companies, the gurus, and the go-tos. I like that because it is not the plusser or the lesser situation. The gurus are Tony Robbins, Simon, Brené, and those kinds of folks. They are great. If that is not going to work out for a variety of reasons, then we have got the go-tos. These are amazing thought leaders who are professional speakers and knock it out of the park. They get 10 out of 10 reviews every time.

Sometimes, I will share candidly, and there is truth to this. I will say, “If you get a celebrity on your stage, it is great. Maybe you’ve got a photograph. I do not know if you or your audience is going to learn much from them. If you bring John in, he is going to get into how to help your sales team achieve their goals, be better storytellers, wrap storytelling into their pitch, and develop a better rapport with their clients. Isn’t that what is going to help move the needle at ABC Widget Company?” I believe that firmly. That is not a spin or a sales thing. I have written a couple of articles, “Do not Book a Headliner for Your Next Event,” and this is why.

It is that counterintuitive thing. I am sure you have got a lot of clicks on that.

I understand that a lot of big companies want that celebrity to sell the tickets, especially if it is an internal event and it is a sales team, you do not have to sell tickets. Their participation is mandatory. Why don’t you save yourself $100,000 and move the needle with someone like John and a thought leader in one of these go-tos who will get in, learn about your organization, and help make some change?

What’s fascinating is at one point, almost every guru was a go-to. They did not start with guru status, whether it is an actor or a speaker, everybody had their first break and went from there. What an enjoyable conversation wrapping around your expertise and BigSpeak’s expertise. Is there any last thought or a quote that you would like to leave us with?

A quote that I love applies to the speaking industry in general. We are in this area of information meets education meets entertainment. Sometimes I call it edutainment. At BigSpeak, our goal or mission is awakening greatness within. Where we go with that is that we believe that we want to help people learn, help them discover, and awaken things within them. I remember a quote by Ben Franklin. It had something to do with, “Teach me and I remember.”

I have got it here, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

People Whisperer: Get up on stage and share your story that resonates and bangs so deeply in your heart that you’ve got to get it out there and share it.

If you are a speaker, in the industry, and an event planner, as we build these experiences for audiences and have people up on stage or in a Zoom meeting, involve the audience, get them engaged, and make it inspirational, engaging, and interactive as much as you can because that is how you are going to get people and how they are going to remember in 30 days and 60 days. It is not that you had a blue shirt on or that there was a life preserver in the back. They are going to remember some content.

They are like, “There is a life preserver. We are drowning in a sea of sameness unless we tell a story. I’ve got it.” It is even a little visual cues. I have little life preserver chips that I can give people. It is a tangible thing for them to keep in their pocket or purse. They go, “I do not want to go back to my old habits.” There are all kinds of hooks. I love the involvement of using all of our senses. If people want to find out more about you, they can go to BigSpeak and follow you on Inc. The column is Talk Business To Me.

It is one of my favorites. It covers not only current topics but it makes us think in a way that brings your thought process, “I hadn’t thought about that,” or something like that. Here’s one of my favorite titles, “The Best Piece of Investment Advice I Got From a Billionaire Didn’t Involve Money.” That is how you hook an audience, whether it is a soundbite on a talk or a headline. That is part of what makes you and BigSpeak so successful as you cut through the clutter. Ken, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you, John. It is great to be here.

Important Links

BigSpeak
Talk Business to Me
TEDx Talk – Managing Turbulence YouTube
Do not Book a Headliner for Your Next Event – Article
The Best Piece of Investment Advice I Got From a Billionaire Did not Involve Money – Article
Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

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The People Whisperer With Ken Sterling

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The People Whisperer With Ken Sterling

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