I have had the honor of speaking at industry events – a lot of industry events. In the past five years or so I’ve shared my personal and professional thoughts in front of audiences at PPAI Expo, Expo East, Promotional Products Professionals of Canada, skucon, skucamp, Leadership Development Workshop, national sales meetings for leading suppliers and distributors, and far too many regional associations to mention. I’ve delivered just about every type of presentation from inspirational keynotes to hands-on workshops and everything in between.
This year, I intentionally scaled back my speaking obligations to focus on more things relating to PromoCorner. However, when Jody Shaw at PPAI approached me a few months asking me to conduct four sessions at their third annual SPARK event – an event that’s designed for the next generation of leaders in the promotional products industry – I couldn’t say yes fast enough.
Representing the much-maligned millennial generation, the almost 70 attendees – whose ages ranged from 19-36 – took part in a series of workshops, team-building activities, networking events, and even white-water rafting over three days. Usually when I’m asked to speak there is the typical setup – safety nets of a podium, a lavalier microphone, a projector, a slide advancer, and a carefully crafted PowerPoint presentation. For SPARK, the script was completely flipped as I presented without the aforementioned safety nets and simply connected directly with the group – no PowerPoint needed. For me, this was both horrifying and exhilarating – and that’s what attracted me to the event.
Like all humans, I crave the known, the comfortable, and the familiar. I knew that speaking at SPARK would shatter all of that and, candidly, I was getting a bit too complacent when it came to delivering presentations. I arrived about 40 minutes before my scheduled 8:30 AM session and was ushered to a second-story rooftop. It was there where I would conduct my first presentation outside on a very warm summer day in Charlotte to this young, dynamic, and hungry group.
This is the part where I dramatically wave goodbye to my comfort zone.
In each of the four sessions I presented, I was able to share my very candid, open, honest, and sometimes, raw thoughts on the following topics:
Accountability
Under the glaring light of the sun, I spoke to the group about defining the differences between holding clients, co-workers, and yourself accountable. As a group, we discussed the reasons why finding an accountability partner is critical to success and I shared personal stories on how my accountability partners (Mark Graham, Kirby Hasseman, and Danny Rosin) held me accountable and, ultimately, helped propel my career forward in ways I never imagined. After working collaboratively to understand how to find the right accountability partner, I closed the hour with five ways to get the most out of that relationship:
1. Know what you need
2. Make it a priority
3. Track all activity
4. Set goals and, more importantly, execute
5. Choose your partner wisely
Finding Your Voice
This was a breakout session with attendees who have more than four years of experience in the industry named, “Ignite.” In a more traditional classroom setting, I wanted to dig deep with each attendee so they could find their unique voice – the only true differentiator we all have. As a group, we talked about the emotions that clients currently feel about our brands and how those sentiments might be at odds with what we think our brands communicate. We participated in a challenging exercise where I asked each attendee to look inward at their brand and, focusing on integrity, share three things that their personal brand stood for. Finally, we uncovered the four ways to leverage each person’s unique voice to advance professionally:
1. Make curiosity a cultural mindset
2. Create a culture of the client
3. Develop agility through empowerment
4. Seek honest, candid feedback from clients
Business Storytelling
The SPARK and Ignite groups were combined for this session which was conducted almost like theater in the round. While a lot of people don’t believe storytelling is important in business, I hold a firm belief that margin is found in mystery and magic. In my mind every salesperson has only two jobs:
1. To connect emotionally with your audience to create a need where it didn’t exist before
2. Anticipate the future emotional needs of your audience
Last, we discussed the six tools that allow you to market emotionally while selling authentically:
1. Be conversational and relatable
2. Understand your audience
3. Let points breathe by using pauses
4. Use humor
5. Be authentically and unapologetically you
6. Sell the story – or the outcome – and not the product
Overcoming Adversity
If you’ve read my blogs, listened to a podcast, or attended one of my education sessions, then you know I pride myself on being both transparent and authentic. In this final presentation, I was as fully candid as I’ve ever been in front of a group. For me, this was easily the most difficult session for the simple fact that I shared my professional failures and personal challenges I’ve had to overcome. For this presentation, I focused on and freely shared the very personal details of a 48-month period where both my personal and professional lives were in a continual state of disrepair:
- Losing a job that I loved due to a corporate merger
- The death of my special needs brother-in-law in front of his wife at the hands of a hit and run driver where I had to deliver the eulogy
- Rupturing my Achilles tendon on the eve of the launch of my company
- My mother-in-law getting diagnosed with breast cancer
- My wife having a sudden cardiac arrest in our home which resulted in me having to give her CPR for over six minutes, her placed into a hypothermic coma to preserve brain functions, and, eventually, the implantation of a pacemaker/defibrillator
Sharing all of the above in such a raw, honest, and detailed fashion was both amazingly cathartic and flat-out exhausting. My goal for relating these series of events was to show that everyone has adversity – both foisted upon us and self-inflicted – that must be overcome if you want to succeed. As such, I asked each attendee to reflect upon their largest professional failure and their most significant personal challenge. To close this session, we talked about how being open with failure makes you more relatable as a human and discussed six ways to overcome adversity:
1. Have a sense of humor – laughter is the best medicine
2. Opportunity to learn about yourself and your level of resilience
3. Purpose combined with passion will always help you find a way to push through
4. Stay positive – negativity doesn’t help at all
5. Make peace with the situation
6. Believe in yourself and know you’re capable of finding a way forward
As you can likely tell, it was a fairly intense four hours of content and workshops. What’s interesting is that I believe I got so much more out of the event than I was able to give. I know people – and by people, I mean the status quo – often lament that generation the SPARK represents will ruin everything. I can tell you unequivocally that after being with this vivacious and effervescent group that the industry, if not the world, is in thoughtful, caring, and intelligent hands. I walked away from my time with the #nextgen group in Charlotte filled with confidence and excitement for what is to come for all of us.
One of the more interesting questions I get asked after I speak is some variation of, “how did it go?” I always struggle with answering that question as I feel the audience gets to decide that, not me. My sincere hope is that the SPARK attendees got as much out of the conference as I did.
Bill is president of PromoCorner, a digital marketing, media, and advertising agency, and has over 19 years working in executive leadership positions at leading promotional products distributorships. A featured speaker at numerous industry events, a serial creator of content marketing, president of the Regional Association Council (RAC) board, and PromoKitchen chef, Bill has extensive experience coaching sales teams, creating successful marketing campaigns, and developing branding that resonates with a target audience. He can be reached at bill@PromoCorner.com.