Create Memorable Experiences
Gail Davis of the GDA Speakers Bureau tells her story of launching her business. It was in the early ‘90s when event budgets were big and the stages were filled with former heads of states and retired Olympians that she was leading events at one of the world’s largest corporations, EDS. It’s now Hewlett Packard Enterprise. After a hugely successful event, she was sitting with the CEO. The keynote had been a former president and he said, “That’s good, but next year find somebody that no one’s ever heard of but no one would forget hearing from.” One evening she was watching the movie, Alive. She decided to search for Nando Parrado, the main subject of the movie. After calling the bureaus on her Rolodex, she was told that he was either dead or spoke no English, “Wouldn’t head of state or an Olympian, be better?” They wondered.
Fast forward through research and phone calls throughout South America, Gail convinced an Uruguayan named Nando Parrado to come to speak for the first time about his experiences. His story at the time had been made famous by the movie, Alive. The event was unbelievable. People were more than moved. They were inspired by his story. It was a home run. Then two years later, Gail took a bold step. She left a successful twenty-year career and launched Gail Davis and Associates. She only had one speaker on a roster, Nando Parrado. She wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue managing events, just manage him or grow a large company. One thing she knew for sure was her experience as a corporate event planner led her to create a new model of serving clients and selecting speakers. GDA speakers are more than a speaker’s bureau. It’s a service and a trusted partnership with their clients. After almost two decades, they built a database of world-renowned thought leaders and they vetted those speakers and curated highly qualified speakers who they trust and deliver with confidence to their clients.
We always talk about the importance of branding yourself and being memorable and a sea of similarity and you have that in spades. People mention your name. It clicks energy for everybody. I love the details of this story of the origin and trying to find something a little off the beaten path. One of the qualities that I see in you is tenacity. The fact that you did go, “He doesn’t speak English.” You did what it took calling South America to find this guy. That would be some of the things that would be interesting to hear. Is that, in fact, one of the core assets that you’re bringing to the party and does that allow you to stand out?
You’re probably born with a determination or tenacity, but also it can be fostered in your environment. You mentioned that you were familiar with EDS. I know some listeners may or may not recognize that acronym, but it was a company that was founded by one of the most tenacious people, Ross Perot. The culture at EDS is if you want something done that no one else can do, just ask us to do it because that’s who we are. We know how to get things done. Working in that environment at the time that the story with Nando took place, that environment fostered tenacity. If you’re told no, there’s another way. That played into this. I’ve worked with lots of speakers and coaches who talk about vision and how important having a vision is. From the moment I saw the movie, Alive, and then subsequently saw Nando interviewed, I detected his warmth. I was brought into the story and I had the clearest vision of him on that stage. Everyone in that audience mesmerized by this incredible story which at times is a story of leadership and other times it’s a story about teamwork. Ultimately, it’s about the power of the human spirit but I always had that vision. I didn’t know how it was going to get there, but I had it so clear.
Having the vision, being born with a certain amount of tenacity and cultivating it in that EDS environment, all those things together played a big role and eventually Nando showing up in the alley and knocking it out of the ballpark. That was 1994. There was no Google. The story is dramatic when you consider that because at that time if you wanted a speaker, you were dependent. You used the word Rolodex. I remember a Rolodex. I’m calling someone who could flip through the Rolodex and have the number. The fact that none of the speaker’s bureaus have it and the fact that there was no Google made it a challenging situation, which I’m so glad it worked out. Nando, to this day, remains one of my dearest and closest friends. He is the number one go-to speaker of our almost twenty-year history. I’m so acutely aware of how many lives he has profoundly changed or encouraged. When someone has a good story that I’m able to retail in an effort to make the client aware of who they are, that’s just magic for me.
Creating Memorable Experiences: When someone has a good story that you’re able to retail in an effort to make the client aware of who they are, that’s magic.
One of the benefits of great stories is it becomes a memorable and people can then pass on the story and it’s in our DNA. We used to sit around the campfire and tell stories in caveman days and now we tell stories around PowerPoint glow.
I want to add an event where I was talking to a group of people who hire speakers and I was telling them about our industry. As an icebreaker at the beginning, the organizer was playing the game two truths and a lie. They said, “Gail, we want you to play and do this quick.” I said something like, “I am from Ohio, I can do the splits, I don’t want speaker videos.” Everyone immediately raises their hand. First, they probably think I can do the split, but it seemed too obvious that they said, “Surely, it’s the fact that you don’t watch speaker videos.” I’m like, “I rarely do.” What I have built this career off of is exactly what you just said. Listening to speakers, being inspired by their story, having it be so memorable but I get on the phone and retell the story. Nando often laughs and says, “Gail, if anything ever happens to me, I have no doubt the story will live on because you’ll start going out and tell the story.”
Our stories can become our legacy. That’s where the social impact is because you as a business owner and the risk that you took leaving this secure job to start out on your own and grow something is what a lot of the audiences are going to be inspired by. What I see as a key, one of the investors who fund startups said to me, “Please tell your clients, don’t boil the ocean.” I love that visualization of too many things at once and you have done this. Can you tell us about how you had a goal of growing your company from just Nando to now 500 and then eventually 5,000? You said, “I need to put these things into three categories.” These three categories can be helpful for any business owner or even one-person speaker or entrepreneur. Share with us how you came up with those and what those are.
I started with one speaker that my business model was a little shaky. I had one speaker and a guy that didn’t want to be on the circuit. His original direction was, “I don’t want it to be more than six times a year.” As I’ve started off, I was on fire about his story but I had an ad. On some subconscious level, I was measuring a metric that I use. A metric that I was hung up on is how many speakers do I have in my database because anything is better than one. I remember reaching out, making calls, working my network, getting 100, getting 400, I’m sure 500 was significant, I’m sure 1,000 was significant. For the early years to update the website and say, “GDA speakers have a database of over 1,500 speakers,” I started to feel I was getting some traction. I was getting some credibility and then I didn’t revisit that metric for a while. The next thing you know, it’s saying, “2,000, 2,500, 3,000, 3,500,” and the landscape of our industry was changing. I one day started to read my own press release and it said something along the lines of, “GDA speakers have access to and can help you with over 5,500 speakers.” It just stopped me in my tracks and I thought, is that a thing to be boasting about? Where’s the value add there? Can I honestly storytell with you about each of those 5,500 speakers? I don’t think so. Where’s my value?
I often compare our industry or what I do something very similar to a travel agent. There are people out there, especially younger people that probably don’t even know what a travel agent is. They are completely capable of going, searching and finding their own speakers. I also know people who wouldn’t dream of taking a trip because they value their time and they value the expertise of their travel agent partner so they wouldn’t dream of doing it without. I started to think a little bit about that and I thought, “If I’m a partner and I have a seat at the table and I’m supposed to be bringing value, I’ve got to revisit this 5,500 because I cannot bring value for 5,500 speakers.” I came in and I triaged those massive speakers. I like to keep things very simple, so clarity and simplicity are good guideposts for running a business. I said, “We’re going to first create a category called High Priority Speakers.” What are my criteria going to be? It’s going to be that we’ve booked the person, that we’ve gotten positive feedback from our clients and that they meet our economic model because as I grew as a business owner, so did my expenses. I now have real estate that I’m releasing. I’ve got employees that I’m paying for. I have health benefits that I’m paying for and 401(k) matching and profiteering.
Maybe in the early days, I could make $500 profit and it made sense, but when you do something with passion, you put the same effort into booking a $5,000 speaker as you do a $50,000. Through the help of a fabulous CPA, I realized that we had a threshold. We needed to make X or we shouldn’t be doing the deal. That helped me identify my high priority speakers and honestly if I could, I would just tell my team, “Let’s only book those.” It’s because we know them, they know us. They’re a proven commodity. We’ll probably not going to run into a hiccup and it’s a win-win for sure, but you can’t scale if you don’t constantly have something new. I realized my second category had to be radar and it’s exactly what the name implies. These are people that have been vetted through an existing client, through speaker relationship. We’ve lost business to them. They’ve got a New York Times bestselling author book on the charts. This is somebody that should be on our radar. We just haven’t yet had the chance to book them. If they’re going to meet our economic model, they’re highly recommended.
Then the truth of the reality is a whole bunch of others probably somewhere between 2020 400 speakers had to go into a category that’s called low. Low might be they don’t make the economic model. They were a dear friend back when I was booking speakers for this elementary school, kindergarten graduation but today we don’t do that. Occasionally we’ve made a conscious decision. We don’t want to work with a particular speaker. There was a bad experience with the client, they weren’t open to the feedback, they’re not willing to change. It’s small because this is the greatest industry on the planet. There might be a couple of those or maybe there’s someone that everybody wants but they’re simply not on the circuit. We try not to put our energy into that and try to keep our clarity, focus and drive on high and always looking at the radar to make sure we’re not overlooking someone that should be in that high priority category.
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John Livesay, aka The Pitch Whisperer, is a keynote sales speaker and shares the lessons learned from his award-winning sales career at Conde Nast. In his keynote "Getting To Irresistible," he shows companies' sales teams how to become irresistible so they are magnetic to their ideal clients. After John speaks, the sales team becomes revenue rock stars who know how to form an emotional connection and a compelling sales story with clients. His TEDx talk: Be The Lifeguard of your own life has over 1,000,000 views. He is also the Co-Founder, CMO of QuantmRE which is a blockchain real estate company. His new book Better Selling Through Storytelling comes out in 2019.
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