Mic Drop

Why Not Me? (ft. Peter Sheahan)

Episode Summary

This week, we talk with Peter Sheahan about how to find your market positioning sweet spot, including the critical question to ask yourself that will change everything. Peter also shares some practical advice on sustainability in the speaking industry, how to win for the long term, and when is the right time to raise your fee and by how much— plus the big mistake speakers make when raising their fee.

Episode Notes

Why Not Me? (ft. Peter Sheahan)

Peter Sheahan shares how he wins, changes lives, and even how he inspired one of the world’s most impactful voices to share her message

OPENING QUOTE:

“I think it's such a beautiful growth oriented mindset. And really it takes the locus of control from outside back inside, like gives you a sense of agency over your life. I can't remember the exact phrase, but it was something like, if not now when, and if not you, who? And I'm sitting there in my early 20s just going, ‘Yeah. Someone's got to be successful. Someone's got to do inspiring things. Why the heck can't that be me?’”

-Peter Sheahan

GUEST BIO:

Peter Sheahan is one of the most prolific speakers in the business. Peter has delivered over 3,000 keynotes and earned over $30 million in speaking fees over the last 20 years. He's also built and sold two businesses, written seven books, and is one of the most outspoken leaders on leading through change, growth strategy, and navigating disruption.

Links

[7:24] - The Power of Repetition

If you want to do something great, do it a lot.

When Peter was starting out, he delivered 485 speeches in one year. For those counting, that’s significantly more than averaging a speech every single day. This didn’t just build his reputation, it gave him the repetitions necessary to move beyond worry about what he would say and into focusing on how he could more deeply connect with his audiences.

[11:26] - Target, then Target Some More

Many speakers think they’re ‘niche.’ Few really are.

Peter discusses how many speakers who think they’ve carved out a great targeted niche are actually more general than they think. Instead of worrying about making your target market too small, identify what only you can speak on with real authority and watch how your demand skyrockets.

[12:53] - Backstage with Brené Brown

Lessons from a chance encounter

When international mega-star in the thought leadership space Brené Brown gave her first executive keynote, Peter Sheahan spoke to her backstage. More than just being inspired by her message, he took the opportunity to inspire her along her journey— and now both of their lives have never been the same. Never miss out on the opportunity to be in the right room at the right time.

[18:04] - Protect Relationships. Period.

Your distribution channel is your speaking lifeline

Peter shares how he would rather have a hundred agents waking up every morning and selling his message everywhere they can than the possibility of something going ‘viral.’ He’s eliminated conflict, built deep relationships with bureaus, and always focuses on what will give him a 20-year career, not a 2-year flash of success.

[26:01] - Talking Numbers

Fees are a fact of speaking life

Don’t miss Peter and Josh’s detailed discussion about setting fees based on demand, and how setting your fees too low and setting them too high can be equally devastating to your career in different ways.

RESOURCES:

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ABOUT MIC DROP:

Brought to you by eSpeakers, hear from the world’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing tipping point moments, strategies, and approaches that led to their speaking career success. Throughout each episode, host Josh Linkner, #1 Innovation keynote speaker in the world, deconstructs guests’ Mic Drop moments and provides tactical tools and takeaways that can be applied to any speaking business, no matter it’s starting point. You'll enjoy hearing from some of the top keynote speakers in the industry including: Ryan Estis, Alison Levine, Peter Sheahan, Seth Mattison, Cassandra Worthy, and many more. Mic Drop is produced and presented by eSpeakers; sponsored by 3 Ring Circus.

Learn more at: MicDropPodcast.com

ABOUT THE HOST:

Josh Linkner is a Creative Troublemaker. He believes passionately that all human beings have incredible creative capacity, and he’s on a mission to unlock inventive thinking and creative problem solving to help leaders, individuals, and communities soar.

Josh has been the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million and is the author of four books including the New York Times Bestsellers, Disciplined Dreaming and The Road to Reinvention. He has invested in and/or mentored over 100 startups and is the Founding Partner of Detroit Venture Partners.

Today, Josh serves as Chairman and Co-founder of Platypus Labs, an innovation research, training, and consulting firm. He has twice been named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is the recipient of the United States Presidential Champion of Change Award.

Josh is also a passionate Detroiter, the father of four, is a professional-level jazz guitarist, and has a slightly odd obsession with greasy pizza.

Learn more about Josh: JoshLinkner.com

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Episode Transcription

Peter Sheahan:

And I think it's such a beautiful growth oriented mindset. And really it takes the locus of control from outside back inside, like gives you a sense of agency over your life. I can't remember the exact phrase, but it was something like, if not now when, and if not you, who? And I'm sitting there in my early 20s just going, "Yeah. Someone's got to be successful. Someone's got to do inspiring things. Why the heck can't that be me?"

Josh Linkner:

Welcome to Mic Drop, podcast for professional speakers. We cover the ins and outs of the business, helping you deliver more impact on bigger stages at higher fees. You'll gain an inside edge through intimate conversations with the world's most successful keynote speakers. Mic Drop is brought to you by eSpeakers. I'm your host, Josh Linkner. Get ready for some hiring mic drop moments together. Today's show is sponsored by Three Ring Circus, the industry's top training and development program for professional speakers. They've helped hundreds of speakers launch or scale their speaking business, earning tens of millions in speaking fees, landing bureau representation, securing book deals, and rising to the top of the field.

Josh Linkner:

If you are looking to take your speaking business to the next level, they'll simply help you get there faster. To learn more and schedule a free 30 minute consultation, visit threeringcircus.com/micdrop. That's three, the number three, ringcircus.com/micdrop. Mic Drop is produced and presented by eSpeakers. If you want more audiences and organizations to be moved and changed by your message, you owe it to yourself to find out why thousands of top experts use eSpeakers to manage and grow their business. When you use eSpeakers, you'll feel confident about your business, package yourself up for success and be able to focus on what matters most to you and your business. For more information and a free 30 day trial visit espeakers.com/micdrop. That's espeakers.com/micdrop.

Josh Linkner:

On today's show, I sit down with one of the most prolific speakers in the business, Peter Sheahan. Peter has delivered over 3,000 keynotes and earned over $30 million in speaking fees over the last 20 years. He's also built and sold two businesses, written seven books, and is one of the most outspoken thought leaders on leading through change, growth strategy, and navigating disruption.

Josh Linkner:

In my conversation with Peter, he drops many powerful insights, including the monumental decision that led to his long term success in the speaking industry. How to find your market positioning sweet spot, the critical question to ask yourself that will change everything. He covers the unconventional step that he took to cut through the noise and launch into the market. He shares the secret he told Brené Brown in a green room that helped launch her explosive speaking career and also what he refers to as the intoxicating delusion of the speaking business. Peter also shares some practical advice on sustainability in the speaking industry, how to win for the long term, and when is the right time to raise your fee and by how much. Plus, the big mistake speakers make when raising their fee is coming to you all from one of the best in the business, Peter Sheahan.

Peter Sheahan:

Josh, if I was half the man you said I was in that introduction, I'd be proud of myself.

Josh Linkner:

Indeed, well, you are more like two X the man and it's such a pleasure to sit down with you and chat. Listen, you're a legend in the industry. Everybody knows of you. Everybody respects you, but if you could start by taking us back, how did you get into this crazy business in the first place?

Peter Sheahan:

Oh, wow. I hate to admit how long ago that might have been, but it was a good solid 20 years now. I was running a pub in Sydney. And if you know anything about the hospitality industry in Australia, the only way to make any money is through slot machines and I decided getting people addicted to gambling was not my future. Right? And I'd begun a really curious search for what I might want to do next and as part of that search, I went to the touring American superstar speaker event. It was Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, and Jim Rohn, and I paid 99 bucks for a ticket, Josh, sitting behind a concrete pylon because it was about all I could afford at the time. So I'm sort of doing the whole conference leaning to my left and looking around this concrete pylon and an hour and a half with Jim Rohn changed my life.

Peter Sheahan:

And I know I'm not the only speaker that identifies him as the person that triggered them, but it really, it fundamentally changed my experience of my own life and it happened in an hour and a half. And I decided, hey, that's it. Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to create catalytic experiences that nudge people in a different direction in their life and why wouldn't I do that in schools? I had done incredibly well at school. I had a lot of success running bars and restaurants straight out of school. So I had a pretty good story to tell and I thought it would be great to learn what I learned from Jim Rohn that day, but when I was 16. And so I decided I would go into high schools and help kids make the transition from school to work, so that's what I did.

Josh Linkner:

I want to learn more about your journey of course, but real quickly, do you remember anything that Jim said? I mean, the thing that's so cool for a speaker is you could say a phrase, a nugget that lasts with somebody for 30 years and in your case, change the trajectory of your life and career. What was it? How did it make you feel? Was there something, a particular piece of content, that just stuck with you?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah, it was three, all right? One was, if your life's worth living, it's worth recording. And I know most of us would probably give Tony Robbins credit for saying that, but Rohn was the originator of that, not the concept, but certainly that line. And so I started keeping a journal man, and it just changed the level of self-reflection and living more consciously would be one. The second thing was, he said, "Don't wish life were easier, wish you were better." And I think it's such a beautiful growth oriented mindset and really it takes the locus of control from outside back inside, gives you a sense of agency over your life.

Peter Sheahan:

I can't remember the exact phrase, but it was something like, if not now when, and if not you, who? And I'm sitting there in my early 20s just going, "Yeah. Someone's got to be successful, someone's got to do inspiring things. Why the heck can't that be me?" And so they were the three things and it's such a great example because it's one of the skill sets of a great presenter is the ability to create sticky declarations that last long after you get off the platform.

Josh Linkner:

I mean, just want to acknowledge what a beautiful thing that here you are, you recognize this, and that's the business we're in. We deal in aha moments. And for all of us, regardless of where we are in our career trajectory, that's the real gift of being on stage. It's not money or accolades, it's really this act of service and act of giving, and you've been a terrific example of that. So moving forward, how did you go... There may be a lot of people that have gone into a school and given a keynote for $30.00 and not so many that have taken that and built the incredible business that you have. How did you go from speaking in schools in Australia to being on the biggest stages in the world?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah. Well, for one, at my peak in schools I was doing about 485 speeches a year. So you want to talk about compressing the learning curve from a stage mechanics perspective, having that level of volume and that many repetitions is a pretty good way to not be worried about what you're going to say and instead be worried about how you architect the experience, create a setting to lead an audience in a new direction. And so I had this foundation of skills that when I hit the corporate setting, and I'll explain how I did that in a second, I kind of blew... I don't want to sound arrogant when I say this, but I really did set a new standard for the level of engagement possible in an adult learning environment. Right?

Peter Sheahan:

But I was working with 300,000 Millennials, Gen Y kids a year and I remember going to an early mentor, a guy called Ron [Tacky 00:08:13], who ran a Speakers Bureau in Australia, he's unfortunately passed away since, and going on, I'm ready to go tell IBM what to do, and he's said, "No offense, Pete, IBM's not going to listen to what you say. What's your actual expertise? What do you know more about in the world than anybody else?" And I'm like, "Well, I don't know if you know this, but this whole new generation's coming up and they've got totally different expectations," blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, "That's your sweet spot."

Peter Sheahan:

And by the way, no one had written on that topic. I essentially wrote the first book in the world with a focus on organizations, and brand, and culture, like really practical commercial application on the topic of Gen Y, AKA usually in the U.S. these days probably called the Millennials. And three months I went from being a full-time speaker in schools to a full-time speaker in a corporate environment. I was the only game in town. I was in the boardrooms of News Corporation, I'm working for Google, for Cisco and I'm 25 years old at this point. And so...

Peter Sheahan:

... Google for Cisco and I'm 25-years-old at this point. And so it sounds like I got lucky and there was some luck in that, but there was some really specific things, Josh, I did around my positioning and around choosing to be narrow in that topic so I could get cut through rather than being generic. And so I know a lot of speakers are listening this. Do you mind if I just break it down a little bit and make that super applicable?

Josh Linkner:

Please. That'd be great.

Peter Sheahan:

My publisher wanted me to write about all four generations and I was like, "No. Firstly, I'm only an expert in one of them, not all four of them. And two, that's a topic that people are already talking about." Someone wrote a book called Gen X, Douglas Copeland wrote a journal on that, a fiction book about that.

Peter Sheahan:

There were people talking about the Boomers. I want to be a narrow wedge to get cut through in the market. Now I got advice from other speakers going, "Well, you don't want to be too narrow because you'd like to be considered for every possible topic." And I'm like, "Sure, but right now, no one knows who the heck I am." And so right now I need to cut through that mental barrier, differentiate my signal from the noise that's in the market and get known for something. And I did that really aggressively and in a really narrow way.

Peter Sheahan:

And then once I had momentum, I quickly repositioned my brand, both because that's what the market was needing and because I wanted to reposition it to realize that it wasn't about young people, it was this bigger concept of transformation, and well, more disruption in those days. This bigger issue around digital disruption, new business models that were coming from there. And so I was narrow early and then I broadened out and actually strangely enough, I've narrowed further again at this stage in my career, but I'm happy to unpack and unstitch some of that more, if you'd like?

Josh Linkner:

Well, I think a couple things I heard loud and clear is that you developed unique and compelling expertise, that you were the best in the world at. You went narrow instead of broad. And over time you were able to broaden the aperture, but that was the wedge that got you in the door and got you on the stages and got you there quickly. I have a question for you back to those early days. So you had a wonderfully incredible bestselling book in Australia. You were on television shows. So you got a lot of high visibility. What advice do you give to the speaker today that takes the same route with respect to being narrow in focus? I've got deep expertise, my stage skills are good, but I haven't had that big, bright spotlight shined upon me. How do I get out there without such a big high visibility blast?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah. I'd say two things. I'd say number one, the single most important thing a speaker can have is a great speech. And if you are not getting three offers every time you do a presentation, your speech isn't as good as it could be right now. Literally the most beautiful thing about this business is when you crush it, it becomes a self perpetuating machine, as long as you remain relevant and you don't do anything to like upset people in the distribution channel along the way. So number one is I just call it hitting the brick wall, doing the work, doing the repetitions, even if you have to do it in your spare bedroom on a Saturday morning. Because if you don't get up and make people laugh and deliver real content and actually move an audience, then you're not going to get momentum. You're not going to break through.

Peter Sheahan:

I'd say the second thing is people think they're targeted, but they're not necessarily. They're still appealing to a fairly generic space in a space that sometimes they don't really have a deep expertise in. Like that book I wrote, Josh. It was coming from deep interaction of surveys of hundreds of thousands of the kids. It had credibility, it had weight. And so have a great speech, but damn have great content too. And by great content, I just mean funny stories. Do you actually deliver insights that shift the way people experience the world? And let me give you two examples from my own career. I'm sorry, friends that I've met along my career. So I remember sitting in a green room with Brene Brown, 12 probably 15 years ago right now.

Peter Sheahan:

And it was the first speech she'd ever done to an executive audience. And by the way, if you've read any of Brene's books, they're opening chapter in Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead I think's the most recent one, that opening story about the Aussie guy called Pete. That's a story about this interaction in the green room. Just a side note, Josh, I get more fan mail for being in Brene Brown's books than I have ever gotten for anything I've ever written in my life. It's a rather depressing reality.

Peter Sheahan:

But when she hit that stage, she had 20 years of truly wrestling with the complexity of a deeply challenging thing to understand, shame, vulnerability, the roll it plays in behavior. So when she started delivering insights, it was like she was dropping bombs. They were so elegant. They were simple, but not simplistic. Does that make sense? And as a result of that, it was sticky. As a result of that, people couldn't get enough. And now, Brene's got Netflix specials and stuff. Now I remember how perfectly she had done the work to have genuine insight. And so I think if you're not getting the cut through, if you're not getting the momentum you're talking about, you're either not nailing it on the platform or you haven't really got to a level of insight that truly moves people.

Josh Linkner:

Yeah. You're spot on. And especially on depth, a lot of early speakers, they have something to say that perhaps is a little generic and it's important to them. It's not a bad message, but working hard or something is not a new message. It's not a message that's going to cut through. It's not contrarian. It's not revealing a surprising truth. It's re-spouting a cliche and therefore you hit a floor. And so I think in your case, you really busted through because you had something to say, and of course you delivered in a beautiful fashion. So I don't want to go through your career sequentially because we don't have enough hours in the day because you've been such a legend. But I did want to ask you a question about that.

Josh Linkner:

So there are people that have hit the scene hard. Maybe they were on the Today Show. Maybe there was a feature of them in a movie or a big book, and then they fizzle out. So you and I have spent a lot of time talking about what does it take to be a journeyman or a journey woman in this business? Somebody who can stand the test of time. So what do you think are the differences when you see someone that has been able to sustain their career versus has a quick shot up and a quick fall down?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah, it's a great question. I think number one is you don't have to rush the next thing. Meaning if you've gotten breakthrough and you've got some momentum, it's got 24, 36 months in it, usually in my experience. Unless you're a Super Bowl champion and people only care about that for a year or something. And so I think sometimes we rush to follow up our breakthrough album with a really crappy album. I'm giving like a music metaphor. Or we follow our first book with a second book, it's just not that good. And so, take your time. You now have a different platform. You don't have to hustle and be as desperate as you were before, but you do have to be as good if not better.

Peter Sheahan:

And so I think firstly being really thoughtful about that too, asking the question, where is the market going next? So let me give you a trajectory of my positioning as a brand. So firstly, I started in schools as a guy that helped students transition from school to work. Then I wrote a book on those kids I was helping transition that I put a label on a generation and that became a pretty popular, still to this day, I go to conferences and people are delivering on that and sometimes still quoting stuff from my book 15, 16 years ago. But I very quickly realized that I had two paths from there. Path one was I could get deep into the HR training, learning and development world, which is not where I wanted to be or deep into the strategy leadership world, which is where I did want to be mostly because the speaking fees are higher on the latter than they are on the former.

Peter Sheahan:

And I made that as a very intentional choice. And I was like, "Well, what's coming next?" What's coming next is a realization that this is not a millennial thing. It's not a Gen Y thing. This is a business disruption thing and it's happening across multiple industries. It's going to be viral up the generations. And the big issue companies going to deal with is disruption. So I moved and positioned against that. I wrote Flip, which was all about counterintuitive thinking in an upside down world, that wasn't in the subtitle, but it probably should have been something like that. So I positioned against disruption. Well, there's only so long you can talk to an executive team about how disrupted they are without telling them what the heck to do about it. And so I repositioned and moved my brand towards, both one, how do you find the market opportunity in the face of changing disruption? And then two, which is where I evolved to after that, how do you transform an organization fast enough to seize that opportunity?

Peter Sheahan:

Now that's a very linear and sensible line, but notice a couple of things. At no point, am I still rolling out a derivative of the same first piece of research or the same derivative of the same idea, unless that idea has relevance for multiple decades. Mine, I want to always be the new thing on the block a little bit. I want to have content that people are seeking out. And so, evolving that positioning, but staying in your lane I think is a really powerful way.

Peter Sheahan:

Staying in your lane, I think is a really powerful way. Two, I mean, we could do a seven hour podcast on your question, but I'll try and keep this one short. Two is protecting distribution relationships. You know, the one thing I've learned is that I would rather have a hundred agents waking up in the morning selling me than relying on the virality of something on YouTube or how many headline I was going to draw that week. And I made that as a really intentional decision. And so I eliminated conflict in my channel. I built deep bureau relationships. I never stole a piece of work. I sent every piece of spin back. Because when you're the flavor of the month, you think you're invincible. Well, trust me, you could be the unflavor of the month, just as quick as you were the flavor of the month. Right? And so really thinking about what is it going to take to be high performing in this industry for 20 years not for 2. May be the two bits of advice I would give.

Josh Linkner:

Yeah, that's so good. And just real quickly, yeah, I think it's an important call out to note that you evolved your content to your subject matter. So you were remaining fresh and relevant, but you didn't bounce all over the place. You didn't go like this month, I'm a sales speaker. This month, I'm a Y2K speaker. This month, I'm a cybersecurity speaker. So there was sort of a logical evolution of you as a thought leader, as opposed to you trying to be just adapting your complete body of work for whatever seemed to be the hot topic.

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah. But it is a body of work that builds on itself. You know? Let me make one more point. Just I didn't figure this out on my own, by the way. Like if I look back and go, what was the most monumental decision I've made for like... You know, I've been very successful on the platform. I've built incredibly profitable companies around my brand and profile, but the turning point was actually paying for a mentorship program of people who had walked miles ahead of me in this industry that knew the potholes, understood distribution. And like Matt Church was the guy I worked with. This was a long time ago. Now and like I can go back and go, I would not have been as successful as I had been if it wasn't for getting access to that community, being in those masterminds, being connected to people that knew that stuff.

Peter Sheahan:

Now the industry's changed a lot since then, but no secret to people on this podcast. You know, you, me, Ryan, Esther, Seth Mattison, and what we're doing at 3 Ring Circus is an example of that. It's like, don't take nine years to figure it out on your own. How do you compress it in three? How do you go from 300 grand in fees to 3 million in fees in 36 months or 24 months? Not a decade, you know? And so I really felt good about investing early on my journey, even though I didn't have the kind of cashflow to justify it at the time to shortcut a bunch of this stuff. And I'm eternally grateful for the mentorship I had.

Josh Linkner:

Yeah. I couldn't agree more, and that applies to just about any field. You know, if you want to be a master musician, you want to study with the masters. And so, I think whether it's through mentorship or learning, any way that you can compress time that you can get there faster, obviously as a monumental ROI and it can serve as an accelerant as you continue to build momentum and trajectory.

Josh Linkner:

Becoming a keynote speaker is an amazing profession. The top performers earn millions in annual income while driving massive impact on audiences around the world. But the quest to speaking glory can be a slow route with many obstacles that can knock even the best speakers out of the game. If you are serious about growing your speaking business, the seasoned pros at 3 Ring Circus, they can help. From optimizing your marketing and business efforts, to crafting your ideal positioning, to perfecting your expertise and stage skills, 3 Ring Circus is the only speaker training and development program run by current high level speakers at the top of their field. That's why the major bureaus like Washington Speakers Bureau, Premier Speakers, Speak Inc., Executive Speakers, Harry Walker Agency, Keppler, Gotham Artists, and GDA all endorse and participate in 3 Ring Circus. From interactive boot camps to one-on-one coaching, 3 Ring Circus will help you reach your full potential in the speaking biz and to get there faster. For a free 30 minute consultation, visit 3ringcircus.com/micdrop. That's 3ringcircus.com/micdrop.

Peter Sheahan:

You know what's interesting about that adult learning space? Is in any discipline, like say sport, the more elite you get, the more you train, coach, develop, and get guidance. Right? Somehow in our jobs, we flip that and we're like, all right. We assume that we know now know everything. Right? I mean, the amount of time we spend you and I and our other buddies and people at our level, like in the learning piece and like learning from each other. Like literally yesterday, I spent an afternoon dissecting one of your keynotes. Right? And giving your feedback. I'm certain you do the same for me. Right? For some reason we think we don't have to invest in our own learning because we're adults. I mean, it's ridiculous. I'm glad to have had a long time commitment to my own growth and development. It's been powerful.

Josh Linkner:

So as mentioned, obviously, you've ascended to heights that many people admire and you did a lot of things right? What did you do wrong?

Peter Sheahan:

Ah. Okay. This just depends on your lifestyle and what you value. I wish at the beginning of my journey, I thought about enterprise value, not just income and profitability. Right? You know, one of the challenges of being a speaker is you get kind of paid a lot of money for a day, and it can be kind of like intoxicating. Starting to go, oh, I'm worth, X dollars an hour or whatever, which you're really not. If you break it down and you're making a couple million bucks a year, you're like worth 500 bucks an hour, not $30,000. And I think it becomes an intoxicating delusion to be perfectly honest. And what I worked out in my life is that actually building enterprise value and scale and being able to create value without getting out of bed in the morning, that's a really powerful path.

Peter Sheahan:

Now not everyone wants to go on that journey. I did go on a journey and I've done it a couple of times now successfully, but man, I have left some money on the table because I didn't start earlier. And I didn't invest in my learning in that space as much as I would've liked to. And so I'd say I left a lot of money on the table would be number one.

Peter Sheahan:

Number two, sometimes I was a little too excited to move that body of work forward that I have at times been a little bit ahead of my skis in terms of what I really knew, like whether or not I had deep credibility and experience with. And I think that's always a fine line to walk. And I just know a couple of times I might have been trying to bat above my average a little bit, to be honest. I've also done some really terrible speeches too, by the way. But you know, thankfully not too many of them.

Josh Linkner:

I highly doubt that. What you think it's terrible, others would think was masterful.

Peter Sheahan:

I don't know, man.

Josh Linkner:

But you know, you really bring up an interesting point, punching above your weight class. I remember a conversation. You gave me great advice years ago talking about fee. And so if you are the hot man or woman of the hour and you're getting all these offers, the instinct is to maximize fee right now. The risk, however, is that once the exuberance of the moment fades, can you effectively compete on objective measures with others in the same fee category? And so, the conversation I recall, Peter, is I think I was trying to go from, 25 to 35 or something. And you're like, go to 30 at this point instead. Wouldn't you rather crush it at 30, then get left behind at 35?

Josh Linkner:

And then you start thinking, well, what message does that send to the market? If you are winning 7 out 10 times at 30, that sends the market that you are a high close, high demand speaker. If you're only winning 1 out of 10 times at 35, that sends a very different message. So how have you sort of navigated the near term versus long term push and pull, that tension, that exists for all of us as we're making both fee decisions and other decisions along the path?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah. Look, supply and demand dictates your fee. End of story. Right? And so if you are sitting there going, should I put my fees up, but you don't have a full calendar out, then the answer is probably not. Right?

Peter Sheahan:

Two, I do think people do go through flavor of the month stuff. Like you look at the social unrest in America right now, it's driving a very particular type of demand in the speaking industry. And you might want to... I think speaking has gone from 10 to 45 grand in the last 12 months, literally. And they're not $45,000 worth of value. Right?

Peter Sheahan:

And in two years time, when that settles down and a new social thing there, a new hot topic in business or a new, then they're going to have to go from 45 to 20. And that's not creating the kind of scarcity. No one wants an introduction that says, oh my gosh, you won't believe we found this great speaker. She used to be $45,000 or he used to be 50 grand. Now he's only 20. We've got such a great deal. I mean, total bargain. Let me introduce you to Pete Sheahan. Like said no introducer ever. Like you want to introduce going, we were lucky to get this guy. He flew in from the moon to get this done and we're so grateful to have his...

Peter Sheahan:

He flew in from the moon to get this done and we're so grateful to have his time, shut up and listen, you know? So you want to maintain a little bit of that tension. With that said, couple of things when you're at the lower fee range. Number one is value follows price. In other words, when you're at 2,500 and you put your fee to five, you feel like that's astronomically... What a fee, I couldn't possibly justify that. You know what? When you get booked for a $5,000 speech, you've now got twice as much capacity to prep for it as you did a $2,500 one, and you are going to feel the pressure to deliver, right? Or when you go from five to 10. So in those lower ranges, I would be more aggressive because I promise you you're going to work even harder to prep for them.

Peter Sheahan:

Number two, if you're relying on distribution, say through agencies or whatever, if I can book a $10,000 speaker versus a $5,000 speaker, I make twice the money on the 10. And so there's an incentive in the channel for doing that. And three, people like buying things that are at least a little bit expensive. That doesn't mean you go to 20 if you're not good, but I'm talking really at the lower ranges here, Josh. Generally people aren't trying to get bargain basement deals on this stuff. Generally, they expect to pay for expertise. And if I get put up against you and I'm 10 and you're five, somewhere unconsciously in that biased mind they're like, "Maybe this guy's twice as good And they might negotiate me to 75," which I wouldn't do but having that high position is like a nice expensive bottle of wine.

Josh Linkner:

Yeah, there's no question. There's a perception of price and value. So if I said, "Hey, I've got a good car to sell you. It's a brand new BMW, but it's only $16,000." Your first question would be what's wrong with it? It wouldn't be like, what a great value so I couldn't agree more. So hey, switching gears a little bit to the future. We are coming out of COVID hopefully sooner than later and that's shaken up our industry to its core. There's new delivery mechanisms, there's new demand for new topics. What do you see the next 12 months of this industry looking like? What are you excited about? What are you concerned about?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah, I think a lot of people are asking the question, what meetings... Let me back up. I think everyone's dying to get back in a room together. Like yesterday, I was with the top 15 executives of a massive CPG company, and they were just glad to be in a room together. I had breakfast with the CEO and he was like, "Oh my God, I'm all Zoomed out and you can't really get anything done on Zoom," and I was like, "Actually, that's not true. You can get a lot of stuff done in a Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Zoom environment. You just got to know how to facilitate in that environment. And as a CEO, you're going to have to figure that out because yes, you're dying to get back in a room and you're excited to do that but I promise you, you don't need to incur the travel and time cost of always having to be in a physical room to get decisions made.

Peter Sheahan:

So I think we're going to have this elastic band bit back to get together because we haven't seen each other for twelve... By the way, a third of this [inaudible 00:29:51] a 60 billion company. A third of them have never sat in the same room since being in the roles they're in right now. So there are going to be a lot of face to face meetings coming in the next, maybe in the six to 12 month range. Then I think it's going to resettle. I think we're going to understand what's best done face to face and what's best done virtually. I believe there'll be an expansion in the available market that we can address, but it'll be really defined as to what happens in what areas. And in my consulting practice, we do a lot of executive development work.

Peter Sheahan:

Not executive development. We do alignment and transformation work with executives and we are having better results virtually than we do when we're physically in the room. For a whole host of reasons around no one gets to dominate the conversation. No one wants to be on Zoom for a whole day so you get stuff done in three hours you used to do in eight and as a result of that, decisions get made and we have tighter turnaround times and there's no flying involved, so executives are more willing to invest the time. It's been a really eyeopening experience, how much you can get done in that space.

Josh Linkner:

So there's a little bit on the future of the industry. Last question for you, Peter. And again, we're grateful for your time today. What's the future for Peter Sheahan?

Peter Sheahan:

Oh mate, I'm going to just retire. I'm going to take a boat down the BVIs. No, you know what I'm like, Josh. I can't help myself. I was lucky enough to sell one of my businesses two years ago and it put me in a really good position to think deeply about what I want to do next. And I'm working on a couple of interesting projects right now. One is the work that you and I and Seth and Ryan are doing about bringing up the next generation of speakers. There are so many brilliant people out there that I meet who belong on the platform, who have something to contribute, who have a voice that needs to be heard. And I've been doing this for 21 years. I can save those people a lot of time and effort.

Peter Sheahan:

And so I'm excited about mentoring and hosting masterminds for these guys. And to me, that's a chance to give back from an industry and a career that's been incredibly rewarding to me. And then secondly, I'm actually working on it. I don't know if it's going to be a book or not yet, but it's definitely a new... It's the next iteration of the work I've done because we've gotten really good at accelerating the transformation of organizations, big complex ones but in my experience, those transformations create the most enterprise value and economic value for its shareholders when that company is focused on leading their client to the future, rather than building a defensive strategy which takes you back to the Michael Porter days. And so I don't want to get too academic about this, but I'm excited about that. I'm developing that stuff in the background right now. I'm not in a huge rush, but I'm excited about both of those things.

Josh Linkner:

I love it. Well, the ever evolving, ever changing, ever exciting to talk to Peter Sheahan. For those that want to learn more about you, where should they go online? Is it Petersheahan.com?

Peter Sheahan:

Yeah, Petersheahan.com. Follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm just going to manage the expectations. I'm not particularly active in social media. My buyers aren't on Instagram but if you follow me there, if anything interesting's coming out, you'll know about it because I'll let it up there. So see on LinkedIn, Instagram, or if you're just interested in the work, go to Petersheahan.com.

Josh Linkner:

Well, great. On that note, thanks again. Thanks for your contribution in our industry and thanks for your contribution today.

Peter Sheahan:

Thanks Josh. Good to see you mate.

Josh Linkner:

Inspiring insights delivered with that captivating Aussie accent. Here are a few key takeaways that really resonated with me. Number one, Peter became great on stage by doing the reps. His exceptional stage skills developed by being on hundreds of stages, many of which were extremely unglamorous. When we see performers who make it look easy, we can be sure that they've done the reps to get there, which is encouraging for us all. We too can shine with enough deliberate practice. Number two, I loved Peter's viewpoint on sustainability in the speaking business. Optimizing fee, topics, positioning and industry relationships for a 20 year stretch instead of just a two year sprint. He helps us realize that we're better off trading small short term wins for those juicy, sustainable, long term triumphs. Number three, Peter's whole life changed from a single speech and now he's committed to making that same impact on others.

Josh Linkner:

To get there, he invests heavily in himself and his craft. His meticulous approach to research ensures that he remains fresh and relevant and compelling. He is relentless in his own growth and remains a lifelong learner and his willingness to disrupt an old version of himself to discover a new one. This is a dude who practices what he preaches.

Josh Linkner:

Thanks for joining me on another episode of Mic Drop. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows. If you love the show, please share with your friends and don't forget to give us a five star review for show transcripts and show notes. Visit Micdroppodcast.com. Mic Drop is produced and presented by eSpeakers and a big thanks to our sponsor, 3 Ring Circus. I'm your host, Josh Linker. Thanks for listening and here's to your Mic Drop moment.