Mastering Live Events with David C. Baker
Thinking about hosting a live event, but not sure how to make it well-attended, profitable and worth your time? Renowned author, speaker and creative firm advisor David C. Baker lifts the curtain on his wildly successful MYOB conference and live events:
The role of in-person live events in David’s expertise business model (plus a peek at the numbers for his four revenue streams).
How his pandemic pivot from in-person gatherings became a new lead generation source—and removed travel from his client engagements.
Why his conferences and events include multiple opportunities for attendees to engage with each other; he shares a few ideas you can borrow.
His philosophy on outside speakers: how he chooses, pays and manages them.
The one thing you must do if you want to make sure your conference doesn’t lose money.
LINKS
David C. Baker MYOB Conference | LinkedIn | Twitter
Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
BIO
David C. Baker is an author, speaker, and advisor to entrepreneurial creatives worldwide. He has written 6 books, advised 1,000+ firms, and keynoted conferences in 30+ countries.
His work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, USA Today, BusinessWeek, CBS News, Newsweek, AdWeek, and Inc. Magazine. He lives in Nashville, TN.
His two most recent books can be found here and here. His work has also been featured in the NY Times, where he was recently referred to as “the expert’s expert”. He co-hosts the most listened to podcast in the creative services field (2Bobs).
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00 – 00:17
David C. Baker: You know, here’s the easiest way to lose money with an event. When I learned this, my whole world changed about events. Do not sign up for room blocks because you’re having to guarantee them. And then you have this pressure to sell and then you cheapen your brand by starting to beg people to come to these things and so on.
00:24 – 00:39
Rochelle Moulton: Hello hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton and today I am thrilled to welcome none other than the unforgettable David C. Baker. Yay!
00:40 – 00:46
David C. Baker: That’s scary. There’s lots of reasons to be unforgettable. I hope I’m on the good column of that, right?
00:46 – 01:29
Rochelle Moulton: Well, you are in my book. So, David is an author, speaker, and advisor to entrepreneurial creatives worldwide. He’s written 6 books, advised 1, 000 plus firms and keynoted conferences in 30 plus countries. His work has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, USA Today, Business Week, CBS News, Newsweek, Adweek, and Ink Magazine. His 2 most recent books are The Business of Expertise, which is a classic. So if you haven’t read it, go grab your copy now, and Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, where
01:29 – 01:43
Rochelle Moulton: he was referred to as the expert. Finally, he co-hosts 2 Bobs, which is the most listened to podcast in the creative services field. And in addition to all those superlatives, he’s a generous guy to boot. So David, welcome.
01:44 – 01:57
David C. Baker: Thank you. It’s really great to connect with you again. We had you speak at 1 of our live events, which I guess is what we’re talking about, and it’s very popular, so it’s really great to do this. I enjoyed seeing the invitation from you. It was great.
01:57 – 02:18
Rochelle Moulton: Awesome. I like it when people are happy to see my name in their inbox. So, you know, you just alluded to what I want to talk about because we literally have a treasure trove of things that we could talk about from your work that would help solo us. But I really like to focus in on your live in-person events because I don’t know that you’ve ever really talked about how you use them in your business, or if you have, I haven’t heard it.
02:18 – 02:46
David C. Baker: Yeah. So I’ve been doing this for 30 years now and I didn’t have live events in the early days. I kind of learned about how to do them from somebody that was, he wasn’t a real partner, but we did a lot of work together. And I don’t know, I remember maybe 7 or 8 years into it, I decided to do them. And there’s a bunch of reasons why I do them. 1 is it’s an income stream. So I don’t want to put all my eggs in 1 basket. So that’s 1 reason I do it. Another is
02:46 – 03:20
David C. Baker: sort of Legion. So it’s a way to sample the advice in a sense. And so I’ve never tracked it exactly, but a lot of people that eventually work with me in a consulting arrangement came to an event. And they tell me that they came to a particular event, I don’t remember them, and they tell me that that’s what encouraged them to work together. So that’s the second reason. The third reason is because I just enjoy them. I really like them. I hate virtual events, and I think that’s just me. I think it’s like I just need
03:20 – 03:44
David C. Baker: to get over it probably, but I just like the in-person things. I like the drama of being in front of a group of people who can ask you any question at all. And then lately over the last decade I’ve realized, oh, this isn’t really about what I or speakers I’m inviting or talking about. It’s about them connecting with each other as well. So, anyway, those are the 3 big reasons why I’d like to do them.
03:45 – 03:52
Rochelle Moulton: You know, I just have to ask about that, because I’ve always felt like you’re probably an introvert. Is that true?
03:52 – 03:56
David C. Baker: Oh yeah, I hate people just in general. Yeah.
03:57 – 04:15
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. And the reason I want to point this out is because a lot of introverts are really exceptional on stage because they’re so hyper-focused on the experience of the audience, and most introverts will not get on a stage without knowing absolutely everything they need to know to be up there.
04:15 – 04:28
David C. Baker: Ah, that’s interesting, yeah. Yeah, I’d much prefer speaking in front of 5, 000 people for an hour with no preparation than talking with individuals after that presentation when I walk off the stage. Yeah.
04:28 – 04:31
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I call those situational extroverts.
04:31 – 04:35
David C. Baker: Yeah, right, right, where you’re acting for a few minutes and then you’re exhausted, right?
04:36 – 05:08
Rochelle Moulton: Exactly, exactly. So, you know, when I spoke at your NYOB conference in Atlanta, I felt like I really got a firsthand taste of what I feel is a deep community that you’ve built, and I started to say just from that 1 offering, but it may be from the other events you’ve had over the years. So maybe we could just dive in and talk about your business model. So you’re not a soloist, but it’s possible that many people listening might think of you that way because you’ve got this really high profile as an authority in the creative
05:08 – 05:16
Rochelle Moulton: space. But when you think about your business model, how do you make money in your business? I’m not asking how much, but how do you make it?
05:16 – 06:02
David C. Baker: Yeah. Oh, I don’t mind answering all those questions. So, there’s 2 of us full-time. The other 1 is actually my oldest son, Jonathan. And we bill about 1.7 on average a year. And we divide the income into big streams. So there’s events, there’s the book revenue, there’s the M&A side, which he runs, and then there’s my side, the advisory side. The book revenue is anywhere from 70 to 120 a year. Those are the royalties. The events are probably, I don’t have the exact number, but probably around 400, something like that.
06:02 – 06:06
Rochelle Moulton: With presumably higher expenses than the other revenue streams.
06:06 – 06:35
David C. Baker: Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, but a typical event where we have maybe 20 people, like we just did a pop-up event, which I just said, hey, listen, I think there’s room for this. Let’s just see if we can make it happen. It was last minute. We had 20 people. They each paid $3, 000, so that was $60, 000. Our expenses were, I think, $20, 000, so we would make $40, 000 on that. And then the rest of the money is split basically evenly between the M&A and the advisory side. So that’s how the money comes in. So
06:35 – 07:07
David C. Baker: that’s what I mean by revenue streams because like when things are slower on the business side, I just view that as okay I’m gonna work on the next book and and then when things are super super busy I just put it off. We’re not super busy right now, but we tend to be very busy most of the time, but doing very different things. So maybe it swings to M&A or maybe it swings to, okay, business isn’t good for these people, let’s help them get new business in, or business is great for these people, let’s help them
07:07 – 07:26
David C. Baker: manage growth. So that kind of helps even it out a little bit on the advisory side. But I really like, it’s not just protection to have these income streams, it’s also about lead generation. So the books are written, like they make money, yeah, but I want people to hire me. The events, they make money, but I want people to hire me
07:26 – 07:40
Rochelle Moulton: too. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s what’s so interesting to a lot of soloists that are early on in the journey because, you know, they don’t necessarily think of books as a revenue stream, but as legion, they can be priceless if you’re an authority or an expert’s expert.
07:41 – 08:11
David C. Baker: Yeah, yeah, even if you don’t make money, and the book doesn’t sell, and it doesn’t make you famous, a book is still worth writing because it forces you to spend a lot of time with the topic and you’ll be able to speak so much more confidently about the topic and then if the book does happen to make money, that’s great. The truth is most books don’t make money. They really don’t. I consider myself really fortunate that my books make money because I think it’s unusual and you know what, let me add something. Maybe you were going
08:11 – 08:43
David C. Baker: to get to this later, but I’ll pretend I’m the host here a second. But You know, none of this stuff works. None of these income streams work unless you have a central connection with your audience. And in my case, that’s a newsletter subscription list. It’s free. It comes out weekly. But that is the only way I get people to listen to the podcast or to buy a book or to come to an event. It’s having tens of thousands of people, in my case it’s it’s 14, 000 so it’s like it’s 10, 000 plus half a 10,
08:43 – 08:57
David C. Baker: 000. People who get this weekly email, that is the lifeblood of my business. And I couldn’t do any of these things unless I had that, right? You can’t do an event unless you have people who already know of you and think of you well enough.
08:57 – 09:33
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard enough to get, for some people to get somebody to buy a $20 book, but to shell out $1, 000, $2, 000, $3, 000. Yeah, you’ve got to have a lot more built-in trust. So what’s interesting, so the events are a decent percentage revenue-wise of your total revenue, probably quite expensive on some level, especially the big 1. But, so what happened when we had the pandemic years, because it wasn’t really just 1 year, because I’m thinking your speaking would have dropped off, of course, as it all did, and you couldn’t do live
09:33 – 09:40
Rochelle Moulton: events. Did you pivot at all, or did you just find the other parts of your business picked up, or was that when you were working on the last book?
09:41 – 10:08
David C. Baker: Yeah. So I did some speaking still, but it was all virtual, and I hated every minute of it, but I still did some of that. I needed to do it for, well, I had a lot of time and it helped just to keep the brand out there, so to speak. And all the live events stopped as you anticipate. I had written a book and it was all ready to go. It was a secret trade craft book, but I didn’t feel like it was the right time to release it. So it just sat there for a couple
10:08 – 10:46
David C. Baker: of years. What I did was, well, after panicking for 6 weeks, is just do tons of free webinars to help the industry. I had the time, I like, I need a platform, I need people in an audience, I need to force myself to think through things. And I wanted to help the marketplace. And so I did that. I think I did 11 webinars, and there were more than 1, 000 people at many of them. I didn’t realize at the time that that was my alternative lead generation plan. It really surprised me completely, but so many people
10:46 – 11:19
David C. Baker: came back and worked with me afterwards, and the books were still selling really well, that it was fine. Like, I think I dropped 30% that year, but it was fine. So, I just pivoted. But what really changed had nothing to do with events. It was about the advisory side, because I was traveling to a different country every week doing an in-person consultation and that stopped. And I thought, well, maybe this is the end, you know? I didn’t know. This is when we’re still wiping off UPS packages, for God’s sake. We really had no idea what was
11:19 – 11:34
David C. Baker: going on, right? And I decided to reinvent the whole process and make it virtual. And the marketplace responded really well. In fact, it’s, so I don’t travel at all anymore for consulting, I do for speaking, but not for consulting.
11:34 – 11:37
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, it makes a huge difference being off a plane.
11:37 – 11:48
David C. Baker: Oh, I feel so much healthier too. It’s like, you know, when you’re on a plane or if you have little kids around, it’s like you’re licking a Petri dish all day. And now I feel so much healthier too without traveling.
11:49 – 11:54
Rochelle Moulton: Yes. When I got off that treadmill, my life changed pretty much overnight.
11:54 – 11:55
David C. Baker: Yeah.
11:55 – 12:07
Rochelle Moulton: So, David, like logistically, how do you handle doing multiple live events? Like I was looking at your schedule in 2024, and it looks like you did 1 live event a month from February through April,
12:07 – 12:07
David C. Baker: and
12:07 – 12:15
Rochelle Moulton: you mentioned the pop-up. And then, of course, you’ve got your big multi-day MYOB event in October. Like, how do you juggle all that?
12:15 – 12:45
David C. Baker: Yeah, and we just today went live with an M&A event, succession valuation event in December. So I had a partner in doing MYOB, that’s our big event, that stands for Mind Your Own Business. We had hundreds and hundreds of people come every year. And My partner did all the logistics for that. And then they went away, they were purchased, and so the event just stopped. And I decided to do something else, and I did it with Blair. It was called the New Business Summit. We would have about 120 to 150 people at each event. And that
12:45 – 13:20
David C. Baker: was pretty easy to do, partly because of how I think about events. They’re much easier to organize. Now, my son, we hold the events at the brewery that he’s a partner of, so that makes it a little bit easier. And then we actually hire an event planner who does this in the background. We pay her thousands of dollars to do this. And it’s very smooth, actually. And we kind of learn from each 1. So we have extensive surveying afterward, like what worked, what didn’t work. Like a couple years ago, it was pretty clear that our food
13:20 – 13:49
David C. Baker: service wasn’t as good, so we fixed that. Coffee service wasn’t fast enough, we fixed that. And then we pay lots of attention to what the attendees want. In fact, at some point, I want to talk about the whole speaker selection thing. But that’s how we do it. Now, if Jonathan wasn’t there to manage these things, because all I do is I do the programming. So I invite all the speakers, and I sort of filter all that. He does all the rest. If he weren’t on scene, then I would go back to doing some smaller events. And
13:49 – 13:56
David C. Baker: for those, I would just do 30, 40 people at a time. And I can explain more detail how that works, but it wasn’t complicated at all.
13:57 – 14:14
Rochelle Moulton: Well, it’s interesting because, you know, it was there last year and Jonathan was like the guy with 47 hands. He literally was constantly in motion. And that also explains, so a lot of the helpers, the kind of worker bees who were fabulous, so those were all your event planner people.
14:14 – 14:46
David C. Baker: We had 1 event planner. It was a lady that was sitting at the table, the younger woman, and then we had 4 other people who were motorcycle riding friends, neighborhood friends, none of them are professional in this space. They’re just good people with great attitudes. They’re just people we hired, Eddie and Christine and so. You could have fooled me. That’s, yeah. They’re just the right people that know what to do. We keep things simple and they can think on their feet. So if something goes bad, they’re authorized to spend money to fix things, to make quick
14:46 – 14:49
David C. Baker: decisions. You’ve got to have those kind of people on your
14:49 – 14:57
Rochelle Moulton: team. Absolutely. And when I was there, there was the electrical problem. Oh, right. We lost power. Yeah. I mean, how do you anticipate that?
14:57 – 15:16
David C. Baker: Yeah, we don’t. We don’t. But I learned about it on my drive, my walk over, I was staying in the RV in the parking lot and I said, okay, here’s what we can do. It’s like, it’s crazy to think you can’t do an event without power. It’s like, people did events before power. Like, why do you think this is so essential? So anyway, yeah, it was fun.
15:17 – 15:38
Rochelle Moulton: Well, and just as a side note, the funniest thing about it to me was that so many people said that was the best keynote ever in the dark or essentially the dark. And so people remember that and they remember how we recover when things go awry. So I think it helped the brand.
15:38 – 15:39
David C. Baker: It could have, yeah.
15:39 – 16:05
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Yeah. So I want to dig into MYOB in particular, because I feel like a lot of people look at that as the gold standard for a niche, independent event. And it’s, you know, having experienced it, it’s pretty darn impressive. So how long did it take before it was financially successful as a standalone? So I’m thinking you said, would be 23 years that you’ve been doing this, did I do the math right?
16:05 – 16:35
David C. Baker: So, from the very beginning, yes, but there was a 10-year gap in there. So the first 10 years, I had a partner and I made a fixed amount plus a bonus, and I never made much money on it, even though I was responsible for all the programming. The people who did all of the risk taking, like signing up for the hotel block and so on, and we did this in multiple countries, they were the ones that made the money when things went well, and then they never lost money, but they broke even when things didn’t go
16:35 – 17:00
David C. Baker: well. When I started this back up on my own, there’s no way I wanted to make a little bit of money. This had to be really interesting money-wise as well. And so from the very first 1, it’s made money and made really good money. And we’ve learned especially how to not spend unnecessary money in terms of speakers and so on. So it’s made a lot of money every time we reinvented it without the outside partner.
17:00 – 17:01
Rochelle Moulton: Got it.
17:01 – 17:05
David C. Baker: I don’t think they have to though. Like I think it makes sense to do them as long as you don’t lose money.
17:06 – 17:12
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Well, I think that’s the fear is putting on a big conference and are they going to make money or are they going to lose money?
17:13 – 17:42
David C. Baker: You know, here’s the easiest way to lose money with an event. When I learned this, my whole world changed about events. Do not sign up for room blocks because you’re having to guarantee them. And then you have this pressure to sell and then you cheapen your brand by starting to beg people to come to these things and so on. When you hold an event, you typically think of like a ballroom at a hotel. They’ll give you the ballroom for free or not much at all. They make money on catering, like feeding your food, and on room
17:42 – 18:08
David C. Baker: blocks. So, we get rid of the room blocks and we just say, hey, here are the 2 hotels most people will be staying at. We don’t make any arrangements with the hotel. That’s all up to people. So we’re not going to lose our shirts on that. And then we are really careful about how we pay for the rest of it. So that’s the easiest way to lose money on an event is a room block or a big hotel ballroom. So we just hold them in a, at a brewery.
18:09 – 18:21
Rochelle Moulton: Well the other thing with the brewery though is it’s, it’s very creative. Like it’s artsy. It totally fits with the vibe of your creative services audience. So that’s the other part of it I really like for
18:21 – 18:24
David C. Baker: you. Yeah, and that’s Jonathan. He did all the decor.
18:24 – 18:26
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Exactly. I can tell he’s
18:27 – 18:30
David C. Baker: a baker. No, I’m not a baker. He’s a Baker.
18:32 – 19:05
Rochelle Moulton: So the other thing that I noticed that you do is you create lots of opportunities for both organized and spontaneous gatherings of the attendees. I think it’s the only opening keynote I’ve ever been to with an open bar, like literally right there. So you can get up and go have a drink and bring it back and listen to the speaker. Your roundtable discussions to me are especially intriguing because you’re inviting attendees who are passionate on the subject to actually facilitate or moderate that. So, can you talk about that a little bit?
19:06 – 19:46
David C. Baker: Yeah. It starts actually with the speaker side of things, in the sense that an event that we do is really, really focused on the attendees, which means we’re going to only invite speakers that we really think the attendees need to hear. So there’s no other motivation. It’s not because I’m friends with somebody. It’s not because they’re a sponsor. We could make a lot more money if we took advertising. It’s no, it’s pure content. It may not all be good because maybe I made a mistake or whatever, but the intention is always good. So that’s the background.
19:46 – 20:18
David C. Baker: So then these people come to this thing and all the breaks are 30 minutes, not 15 minutes. Because we think the breaks are just as important because they allow people to discuss what they’ve just heard and agree with it or disagree with it or make connections and so on. And then the Breakfast Roundtable, that idea came to me, I think, it was the third year we started doing these things. It’s just like, these people, they have a lot to teach everybody. I’m not necessarily going to put them up on stage, but why not give them their
20:18 – 20:46
David C. Baker: own little audience and it’s self-selecting as well. So we filter that pretty carefully. If somebody wants to make a presentation at a breakfast roundtable, we will say, okay, give us several titles. I’ll kill the titles that I don’t want any part of, and then the rest of them, yeah, that’s perfect. And then that’s it. Like, I don’t look at what they say, they don’t have to, there’s no approval, none of that stuff. You just trust them. And then we put big signs up, and then anybody who wants to learn about that topic can come there. So
20:46 – 21:18
David C. Baker: people automatically feel like they’re, well, they’re more engaged because they’re not just listening to this speaker, whoever, they’re learning from each other. And I really do feel like this is 1 thing that’s really unique about, I think it’s unique about our industry in that we are very open and transparent with each other. And so I want to take advantage of that in a setting like this. This is also why everything is in real life. There’s no split here. We’re not going to sell people access to a video feed because that is not the vibe of the
21:18 – 21:26
David C. Baker: conference. The vibe of the conference is real people face to face. I’m not saying the other stuff isn’t valuable. I’m just saying that’s not the vibe of this conference.
21:26 – 21:59
Rochelle Moulton: Well, boy, I could take those all kinds of different places. So 1 of the things that I noticed is the people that were leading those discussions were hyper engaged. I felt like they were apostles, not just for the conference, but for your brand. So I thought that was really powerful. There was another thing that you did, I understand it was the first time you did it last year, where you set up a WhatsApp list. I’ve never seen anything like this. So because we were staying at these 2 different hotels and everybody had to figure out a
21:59 – 22:23
Rochelle Moulton: way to get to the venue, right? You couldn’t walk there. It wasn’t in the building. So there was a lot of chewing and froing. Hey, I’m meeting down at 05:00. I have room for 3 people or I’m Ubering at this time and this place and meeting in the lobby room for 5. I felt like that really broke down some walls. Like people started, I know for myself when I would see their picture in there, it helped me to figure out who they were, what they’re about.
22:24 – 22:58
David C. Baker: Easy to connect with them also, like if you wanted to connect with them like on LinkedIn or something, it was easier in that setting. Yeah. That was the first time we’d done that. And I learned that from, I think it was SOTA, Society of Digital, Tom’s group, and I was just so impressed. Now, they use WhatsApp because they have a very international audience, and everybody uses WhatsApp. Like, I don’t text people when I’m outside the U.S., it’s all WhatsApp. And we also have an international audience, so it makes it easier, not as big a percentage as
22:58 – 23:31
David C. Baker: they do. So that’s where it came about And it was kind of an experiment, just honestly. And now we do it for every event. It’s fantastic. We did learn to sort of shut it down after about a month, because then the conversations get stale. Or in 1 case, you may have seen me jump on somebody who started selling on the list. That is not the vibe. You do not do that to my group. It’s like, I don’t even sell myself to these people. It’s like, if they want to buy from you, that’s fine. And we’re doing
23:31 – 24:02
David C. Baker: something different this time, too. We’re inviting, I’m sure you got the invitation, we’re inviting all the speakers to come back for free. That’s good for them. Now, most of these speakers are my competitors. I don’t care. It’s good for them. It’s good for other people to come. And if 1 of the big advantages of an event like this is not just the content, it’s getting to know other people, well, this is good for the attendees to be able to spend time with people they may not know. So that’s something we’re doing different too. I think we
24:02 – 24:11
David C. Baker: have 45 people signed up, it’s 4 months away, and maybe 10 or 11 of those are speakers. I was really thrilled to
24:11 – 24:25
Rochelle Moulton: see that. Yeah, and I just want to make a note for anybody listening to this. We’re recording this in early July, And so this episode will probably drop in early September. So I’m sure you’ll have another 50 or 100 people in addition by then.
24:26 – 24:27
David C. Baker: Yeah. Hopefully.
24:27 – 24:59
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, fingers crossed. So there’s another interesting thing that, and again, this is from my own experience, a feeling about MYOB is, well, it was definitely a David C. Baker fan club, right? I mean, people who are not a fan are not going to go to this. I mean, they’re just not, right? But it’s way more than that for some of the reasons that you’ve talked about. I was fascinated in how you bring in outside speakers with some really diverse backgrounds. I mean they’re not all traditional creatives, they’re not all your clients. What’s your philosophy about curating
24:59 – 25:04
Rochelle Moulton: speakers beyond what you’ve already said about just, they’ve got to be good for your audience.
25:04 – 25:39
David C. Baker: Yeah. Oh, goodness. I could talk about this for an hour because I just feel like so many events are so bad at doing this. So, yeah, I have lots of speakers, but I do not invite people as a favor to them or because I want them to invite me. It’s like, come on. I’ve got, I don’t know how many thousands of clients, very few of them are great speakers, or they may be great speakers, but they don’t have anything to really teach my group necessarily. And so I want them to come and maybe do a breakfast
25:39 – 26:14
David C. Baker: roundtable, but I’m not going to have them do a breakout session or a keynote or even a breakout session. The other thing is to be really specific in your mind about what it is, what’s the topic here, what’s the criteria. And so for me the topic is it’s nothing about the craft in this field. It’s a hundred percent about how to run your business better, okay? So the people that I want to speak to that topic, they need to have some demonstrated expertise in the area that they’re speaking. This is, I don’t know if you noticed
26:14 – 26:42
David C. Baker: the other difference too in terms of speakers, but like we don’t pay a lot of money. A lot of times, I’m asked to speak at pretty big events and they have no budget, right? And then other times it get paid a lot. So I don’t know, you know, we pay, we pay 2, 500 to breakouts and 5, 000 to keynotes, but that’s all inclusive, so they’re paying for the travel out of that, and that can be pretty significant. But I say, what would you like to speak about, or here’s what I would like you to speak
26:42 – 27:11
David C. Baker: about, would you be comfortable doing that? We agree on a topic, and then there’s just a paragraph description that we’re going to use in our marketing materials, but that’s it. I don’t need to see your deck. I’m not going to send you some template that says, this is what I want your slides to look like. All that stuff is bullshit to me. If I don’t trust a speaker, I’m not going to invite him to come to this thing, right? There’s another part of the philosophy that this one’s probably going to piss off a few listeners, I
27:11 – 27:47
David C. Baker: don’t know. But so I am not a professional speaker speaking of myself. I am a professional something who also speaks. So I do not have all the polish. In fact, I have this own little rule. I never give the same talk twice. So it’s never, I’ve never practiced it much. And when I have delved into hiring professional speakers, first they cost more. Next, they’re more difficult to deal with. I mean, some of the stories you wouldn’t believe, like, got to have a hotel room that can take my dog and somebody to watch my dog when I’m
27:47 – 28:24
David C. Baker: speaking, and like that was in a previous life. But the professional speakers deliver a really polished presentation that has some faux customization in it, but it doesn’t resonate with people. I want real people up there who are articulate enough to not be distracting, but it’s more about their transparency and their insight. That’s more important to me. And so sometimes you end up having a lot of speakers who have never written a book, because when somebody writes a book, they turn into a professional speaker. I haven’t, but that’s sort of the case. I really like people who’ve
28:24 – 28:30
David C. Baker: written books who don’t consider themselves professional speakers. Anyway, I just ranted a little bit there.
28:30 – 28:52
Rochelle Moulton: Well, there’s a veneer of falseness, I don’t know how else to describe it, that can come from some professional speakers even though they’re highly practiced, they don’t work from notes, you don’t hear any annoying vocal habits, they use their body appropriately on the stage, but there’s just something missing sometimes.
28:53 – 29:18
David C. Baker: Yeah. Not always. Like, there are some professional speakers that have really moved me, but in most cases, I sort of entrance, like, okay, this person is as successful as they are because of a combination of being a really gifted speaker and having something to say. I don’t know how to divide that line between those 2 things. Like, I can put up with somebody who’s not a professional speaker as long as they have really great stuff to say.
29:19 – 29:24
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, and I think that that’s less true of a lot of big conference sponsors.
29:25 – 29:56
David C. Baker: Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I spoke at Adobe and I’ve done graduation stuff. And I think during the speaking, I didn’t want to see what was on people’s faces, like who is responsible for bringing this guy here. Because it’s not that it’s embarrassing to them, but it’s like They’re not used to that sort of transparency and candor because there are certain things you can’t say as a professional speaker, whereas I can say a lot of things.
29:56 – 30:24
Rochelle Moulton: Touche. Touche. You know, I just wanted to out a story that I saw on LinkedIn, and I don’t remember the gentleman’s name, but it was someone who considered himself to be a competitor of yours. And in the note, he was saying, yes, you know, David has invited me to speak. You know, I haven’t accepted yet. And what I loved about it, not what the guy said, but really your reaction and the way you think about this, because of course you would invite a competitor to speak.
30:24 – 30:25
David C. Baker: Well,
30:25 – 30:27
Rochelle Moulton: yeah. Right? And a lot of
30:27 – 30:27
David C. Baker: people wouldn’t.
30:27 – 30:28
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.
30:28 – 31:03
David C. Baker: Right. In fact, people, when I first started MYOB, people thought I was nuts because I was inviting my competitors and they just thought that was such a bad idea. And my thought was, listen, I’m specialized. I have certain things I’m good at, certain things I’m not good at. I’m really honest about that. I’m a terrible coach. And the world is huge. Plus, it’s like who gets the spotlight? The guy who invited all of his competitors, who’s not afraid of that? Or somebody who doesn’t invite any of his competitors because he’s afraid of them. It’s like, no.
31:03 – 31:27
David C. Baker: I have 120 or so people that I would consider competitors, and I have a really good relationship with probably 100 of them, and the 20 other ones are just idiots. But it’s like, no, this is great. I send work to my competitors all the time and they do the same with me. It’s fantastic. I don’t understand this weird obsession with not letting somebody else dance with the person you brought to the party.
31:27 – 31:38
Rochelle Moulton: And I just want to soloist listen to this. You know, this is an abundance mindset and philosophy. There’s enough out there for everybody and your share is your share.
31:38 – 31:41
David C. Baker: Yeah, right. Yeah, it’s a big, big pie and it keeps growing.
31:42 – 31:48
Rochelle Moulton: So what if I not asked you about the MYOB conference that I should or that you’d like to share?
31:48 – 32:27
David C. Baker: Huh. So I think 1 area that you want to work on is to try to get people to come back to it again. Because there’s usually this big splash, somebody comes to it, and then they’re either too busy or they say, I’m not going to do this every year, maybe I’ll do this every other year. That’s pretty important, right? And so in your pricing, I think that’s sort of important. Speaking of pricing, something else we haven’t talked about, I think people take events as seriously as you price them. If this thing was a 699 event or
32:27 – 32:59
David C. Baker: something, then people would, you know, they’d sign up because it just didn’t hurt that much. And then they may or may not come. And if they come, they’re looking at their phone the whole time. It’s like, no, when people pay good money, then they treat it way more seriously. And so I think 3, 000 is the most that I’ve ever charged for an event. It’s a six-hour event. And I think that’s fair, right? I have no problem with it. I’m not afraid of failing with events either, and I have too. Oh my God, I scheduled 1
32:59 – 33:23
David C. Baker: about, it was in Chicago during a really terrible downturn, I think it was in 2001. And the whole theme was, you know, how to manage this downturn. Well, nobody had any money to come to the thing. And that didn’t occur to me. So I’ve made some mistakes like that. And you can have small events that are really fun, right? Oh, there’s something else that we haven’t talked about. I think AV is really important.
33:23 – 33:24
Rochelle Moulton: Hell, yes.
33:24 – 33:43
David C. Baker: Yeah. We have about $120, 000 worth of our own AV equipment that we use for some of the smaller events and then we hire a big firm to do the ones like NYOB. But I think people really notice that stuff. And it gives, the speakers are so much more confident if the AV is good too. So that’s another 1.
33:43 – 33:49
Rochelle Moulton: So, David, like What’s next for you? What’s on the docket beyond NYOB 2024?
33:50 – 34:24
David C. Baker: Yeah. So, we’ll keep doing 560 events a year. We’re getting more and more M&A work. So it looks like the shift will be, Right now it’s about even probably. It’ll probably be more heavily towards M&A work for the same market that we serve. I am writing another book. It’s actually on M&A. I started writing it 5 weeks ago. I think I’ve got 26, 000 words. So I tend to love writing and I’ve had the time to do it. So I take 3 to 4 days off every week to write. Then I know what the next book
34:24 – 34:32
David C. Baker: is going to be about. It’s going to be a novel. Other than that, just keep my nose down trying to not get canceled. It’s a full-time job.
34:35 – 34:39
Rochelle Moulton: That’s why I read your LinkedIn stream. There’s always the possibility.
34:40 – 34:47
David C. Baker: Like, is this the day? That’s right. Yeah. It’s fun.
34:47 – 34:58
Rochelle Moulton: David, there’s a question that I like to ask everybody. If you could go back to who you were when you first started your business 30 years ago, what’s the 1 thing you’d advise him to do?
35:00 – 35:35
David C. Baker: I think I did a pretty good job back then. I don’t think I recognized how intertwined my own mental health would be with the success of the firm. That was a huge glaring mistake I made at the time. So I’ve been pretty public about that and worked through some things even publicly. But otherwise, I would say the 1 thing that I did really well that I would tell myself to do again is that I put a lot of energy into marketing my services. And instead of just assuming that, you know, if you build it, they will
35:35 – 35:53
David C. Baker: come. But I think I would just try to help myself put my own oxygen mask on first and then help other people. I don’t think That was true in the early days. I built boundaries around how I work now, so that’s pretty well managed, but that’s the 1 thing I’d probably tell myself.
35:53 – 36:14
Rochelle Moulton: That’s awesome. David, thank you so much. I meant what I said about your being a generous guy. You’ve always been generous with your knowledge and your help and connecting people. So I want to thank you for doing this. I want to thank you for being generous with me personally and with the audience today. Thank you.
36:15 – 36:22
David C. Baker: You’re very welcome, Rochelle. It was really a pleasure to be here and best wishes to you and your audience. Appreciate everything that you’re doing.
36:22 – 36:39
Rochelle Moulton: Thank you. So as we wrap up, if you haven’t joined my email list yet, now is the time. Your soloist business and your future self will thank you. The link is in the show notes. So that’s it for this episode. Please join us next time for The Soloist Life. Bye bye.
