Author: leadgen

Mark Coopersmith is Changing Our Global View of Failure

As seen on BigSpeak.com

“Don’t tell me I have to love failure—no one does.”

Mark Coopersmith, entrepreneur, Fortune 500 executive, educator, author, and entrepreneurial business speaker, is tired of the same old lines fed to us by Silicon Valley startups preaching their undying love for “failing-forward,” “failing-up” and failing-every-which-way.

As a Senior Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley where he teaches Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and being an entrepreneur himself (Google owns an e-commerce company he built), he has seen his fair share of failures, but he’s changing the way we interact with failure… again.

In his Amazon-bestselling book “The Other “F” Word: How Smart Leaders Teams and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work,” Coopersmith explains we don’t have to love failure or even pretend to love it—we’re biologically wired to hate it —but we do need to create a more productive relationship with it, and ultimately learn from it (OFW is co-authored with John Danner, published by Wiley).

Coopersmith works on an international level to change our global view of failure and create a productive relationship with it by using metrics. After working and teaching in Silicon Valley, Coopersmith believes the best way to learn from failure is by viewing business endeavors as experiments.

In every experiment, the outcome is collected as data. Whether or not the outcome mirrored your hypothesis does not constitute a failure or success— it’s simply something to learn from to better your next experiment and improve future outcomes.

This pragmatic and productive approach to failure has received recognition around the world and brought him to almost a dozen countries and 4 continents this past year where he has shared his ideas on entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, and growth, while further developing his failure philosophy.

After coaching, mentoring, and speaking to entrepreneurs, big corporations, and government programs from across the US and Europe, Southeast Asia, Korea, China, South America, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand, Coopersmith has redesigned the tech/startup industries’ smile-at-failure model to be more inclusive and adaptable for different world-views.

While Silicon Valley entrepreneurs seem to encourage failure, other countries have a hard time believing they should welcome it. Coopersmith sees how valid this is, yet knows the importance of failing. By restructuring the idea of entrepreneurship to be an experiment he is able to communicate the idea of necessary risk-taking and failing across many cultures.

His most recent travels abroad brought him to Saudi Arabia where he led multi-month UC Berkeley program with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, developing critical thinking, innovation and leadership skills as a part of that country’s Vision 2030 program to modernize culture and society and develop new industries, jobs and value in sectors not reliant on petroleum.

Not only does he speak to startups and entrepreneurs, but he also coaches big and very established businesses on innovation and growth. He draws upon his experience as a global executive for companies such as Sony and Newell Rubbermaid, and his recent corporate engagements and speeches include Disney, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Genentech, IDEO, Samsung, Mercedes-Benz, Salesforce, Nasdaq, and even delegations from the European Union Parliament. His focus is to help them harness the drive and innovation found in startups, with insights on how to do this and succeed in a large enterprise. He’s helped global corporations develop the foundational ideas for creating and nurturing their own startups within the company and running them with an experimental mindset.

Mark Coopersmith’s unique worldview as a business speaker is something that any company can learn from. His entrepreneurial philosophy stands alone in a large array of tech-business startups, millennial speakers, and Google tropes.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

Top Keynote Business Speakers

Now, more than ever, businesses are turning to keynote business speakers to gain valuable insights on industry best practices. Keynote speakers are proven experts who can energize an audience, have a story to tell, and are the best of the best in their respective topics, such as, leadership, customer service, sales, business strategy and innovation. They’re also a valuable way to educate and inspire your business’s employees and emerging leaders to dream big and achieve their goals. Here are some of the top business speakers that event planners should know about when booking their next keynote event.

  Bert Jacobs and John Jacobs

Motivational business speakers, Bert and John Jacobs have an inspirational story of turning their dream into a socially conscious business. Bert and his brother John launched their business, Life is Good, with $78 in their pockets, selling T-shirts in the streets of Boston. Today, Life is Good is a $100 million positive lifestyle brand sold by over 2,000 retailers across the US and Canada.    

Ben Casnocha

Ben is a successful entrepreneur and executive who developed an e-government software company, Comcate. He has co-authored several books, including #1 New York Times bestseller The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (with Reid Hoffman). He is has appeared on Charlie Rose, CNN and served as a business keynote speaker and an entrepreneur speaker across the world.     

Jeff DeGraff

Dubbed “The Dean of Innovation,” Jeff is a world-renowned innovation keynote speaker, business speaker, thought leader, author and professor. He is Founder of the consulting services center, Innovatrium; and Clinical Professor of Management and Organization for the University of Michigan. He has authored successful books on innovation, including Creativity at Work, Leading Innovation, and Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved.

 Marc Randolph

Marc Randolph is a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, advisor and investor perhaps best known as the co-founder of Netflix. His message is a blend of inspiration, stories drawn from the starting and growing of Netflix, plus dozens of concrete suggestions taken from his 4 decades as an entrepreneur on how people can bring innovation back to THEIR companies. Marc is a sought after innovation speaker, CEO speaker, and business speaker.

Thomas Kolditz

Brigadier General (Ret.) Tom Kolditz is an expert on crisis leadership and serves as Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Management and Director of the Leadership Development Program at the Yale School of Management. He is a sought after keynote speaker and leadership speaker. He has presented leadership insights to 150+ organizations worldwide. He has been featured on various media outlets, including ABC 20-20, NPR and the New York Times.   

 

Matthew Luhn

Matthew Luhn, one of the original story creators at Pixar, has heard thousands of great ideas while working at Pixar, The Simpsons, and ILM, but how is it that some of these ideas make great movies and TV shows, while others don’t make the cut? The answer: the best innovators and directors have developed a process that focuses their team’s creativity into not only creating great ideas but also fleshing them out – something Matthew has experienced firsthand. He has gained much recognition this year as a marketing speaker, innovation and creativity speaker, and for his storyselling for business workshops.

 

Pre-Event Planning Tips from Keynote Speakers

You undoubtedly have an event planner checklist that you’ve refined/perfected over the years. Here’s a chance to perhaps refine it further from advice straight from keynote speakers.

PRE-DECISION CALLS BETWEEN THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER AND THE CLIENT

“I think great outcomes begin by selecting the right speaker to meet your needs. Even the best speaker may fall short of expectations if assumptions are being made about their relevance to the topic – or some other issue.  That’s where a pre-decision call can give event planners peace of mind – and allow the speaker to determine if he/she is a good fit. More importantly, a lot of speakers might be able to give you some great ideas on how to maximize their impact and get the most out of your investment. I have given over 1500 speeches and can share ideas of what I have seen work well. I am always happy to talk with event planner before they pick me.  It is reassuring to all concerned.  It’s hard to correct a situation where the wrong speaker was chosen in the first place.  A pre-decision call is a perfect way to assure a successful speech.”

–Mike Abrashoff – Former Navy Captain and Author, It’s Your Ship

AS AN EVENT PLANNER, KNOW WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANTS

“I was to keynote the funeral directors symposium for state association directors and their assistant directors.  In my preparation research I learned that, reacting to the bestselling book, The High Cost of Dying, the FTC had issued new regulations on price disclosure that intensely angered most funeral directors.  The association’s executive director, however, assured me that, while some members were still hot over the issue, his state directors were ready to move on and eager to learn how to teach their members ways to effectively communicate with their customers.

“He introduced me and outlined my topic. As I was about to speak, one audience member walked to the floor mike and said, “If that is your topic, I have wasted my time coming to this meeting.”  The entire audience broke out in applause.  I had not yet spoken a word.  I quickly huddled with the executive director, now totally embarrassed by the reaction of his state directors.  As I had warned him, they were far from over their anger over the regs.

“After agreement on a change of plans, I announced to the audience I was relinquishing my time to the association attorney to talk about the FTC regulations. I got a standing ovation…and took an early flight home, but I felt bad for the executive director who had to deal with the consequences of his failure to understand the real needs of his audience.”

– Chip Bell – Customer Experience Expert and Author, Take Their Breath Away

DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER IS USING POWERPOINT?

“I can’t count how many times I send a technical rider (which is very easy) in advance and the things that I’ve requested aren’t there.  I can easily get by without any of it, but the things that I (or any speaker) requests are there so that they can give the best presentation possible.  Help your speaker do the best job possible for your audience and assign someone the responsibility to make sure the tech needs are passed on to the right person and in place at the event.”

– Bill Herz – Master Magician

 

Choosing the Right Event Venue– Advice from Keynote Speakers

Add this thought to you event planner checklist: Does your event space help the keynote speaker to succeed?

The purpose of this article is to provide valuable tips for your event planner checklist. When it comes to booking event keynote speakers, almost nothing is as important to your ROI than the event space. Any event planner checklist should include a few key elements relating to the room and how well it enhances or interferes with the presentations of the keynotes speakers you’ve hired.

Here is some advice straight from the keynotes speakers themselves to consider before booking Your next event venue.

Avoid the outdoors

“Probably the worst was a talk I gave on one of those dinner cruise ships. This was a fairly small group, maybe 30 or 40, and the ship’s dining room was barely big enough to hold them. When I checked it out before the cruise departed, the air conditioning was so loud that I knew I couldn’t be heard — there was no sound system — so I asked that they shut off the AC when I started my talk. When the time actually came, however, the ship was underway and the engines were MUCH louder than the air conditioning.  When the staff obediently shut off the AC at the beginning of my talk, it didn’t make a bit of difference to the noise level, but it did cause the crowded dining room to become very hot. I tried to yell my remarks over the sound of the engines, but I doubt if more than half the audience could hear anything. Perhaps the one saving grace was that by that time pretty much everybody, except me, was drunk.”

– Geoff Colvin, Fortune magazine, Author, Talent is Overrated

Odd sized rooms need extra sound reinforcement to compensate

“One time I was invited to speak and receive an award from a university during a reunion. The room was laid out in the shape of a long skinny rectangle, and the acoustics were terrible — so the only people who could hear me were the people at the top of the rectangle. The rest, I imagine, carried on happily reuniting with their former classmates — what else could they have done?”

– Susan Cain, Author, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Fear the big room half-full

“1,000 people can generate great energy, unless they’re spread out in an NFL football stadium or an arena. I had that experience once. The stage was on the 50-yard line – mid-field and a LONG way from the audience. A great sound system was in place but it was a strange vibe overall in an otherwise empty stadium.

“If you want to meet somewhere like that, fine; give people a tour but then cluster them in a place that can sort of make sense, like behind where the team would sit during the game, and have the speaker up close, not far away and high in the sky.  Whenever the room is much bigger than the size of the crowd, rope off the seating area and have the ushers send people forward. It enhances the crowd energy tremendously and makes for a much more successful audience experience.”

–Tom Morris, Noted Philosopher and author, If Aristotle Ran General Motors

Event planner checklist priority: eliminate “the gulf”

“Ask comedians, entertainers, and motivational speakers about the biggest challenge to connecting with an audience and they’ll tell you it’s “the gulf” – the distance from the front of the stage to the first row of seats. The greater the distance, the harder it is to connect, and the lower the energy. It’s no different with speakers. Many of the stories here make that point. Whenever possible, have your audience seated as close to the action as possible. The energy will start up front and ripple through the room. It can literally change the outcome of the presentations and should be a critical goal on any event planner checklist.”

– Tony D’Amelio, Principal, D’Amelio Network

 

Top Booked Speakers of 2016

Fredrik Eklund
Fredrik is a sales and business keynote speaker. Fredrik is the #1 Real Estate Broker in the US, and Founder of a renowned Scandinavian real estate agency. He is also the star of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York. He is also extremely personable with his audience, and has an extensive social media following.

Peter Diamandis
Peter is Chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Co-Founder of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), Co-Founder of Singularity University, Co-Founder of Planetary Resources, and Co-Founder of Space Adventures. He has also authored the #1 New York Times bestseller Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think. He is primarily a futurist keynote speaker and speaks on such topics as artificial intelligence (AI), technology, and innovation.

Kevin O’Leary
O’Leary is an entrepreneurial, sales, and business speaker. He is a venture capitalist and also stars on ABC’s Shark Tank. Unlike his character on Shark Tank, Kevin is extremely personable, and easy to work with, and he ensures that his audiences understand his fundamental and personal beliefs about success, entrepreneurship, money, hard work, and sales.

Tan Le
Tan Le Tan is not just one of the top women keynote speakers; she’s also a technology whiz. She is a telecommunications entrepreneur and CEO of bioinformatics company, Emotiv. She was also a TED talk guest speaker and has been named one of Australia’s 30 Most Successful Women under 30 and Young Australian of the Year. Tan keynote speeches focus on innovation, big-data, and technology. She is also a very inspirational speaker and creates memorable and interactive presentations using cutting technology such as mind-reading headsets.

Jeff DeGraff
Jeff has been dubbed the “Dean of Innovation” for his forward-thinking and visionary approach to business. He is a highly sought after keynote speaker, author and professor and is the Founder of a consulting services center called Innovatrium. Not surprisingly Jeff’s speaking expertise is as an innovation speaker and an innovation speaker, but he also speaks on creativity and business management

Peter Zeihan
Peter is a geopolitical strategist who specializes in customizing executive briefs for high-profile clients. He was a key team member who helped to develop Stratfor into a geopolitical consulting agency and publishing house, and most recently launched his own firm, Zeihan on Geopolitics. A dynamic, energetic speaker, Peter is one of the most booked keynote speakers who has helped top businesses develop strategies for success. He is also a futurist speaker, a business speaker and a political speaker.

Jane Chen’s Entrepreneurship is Saving Babies’ Lives

As seen on BigSpeak.com

Jane Chen’s social enterprise, Embrace Innovations, is saving babies’ lives in 20 different countries, while keeping your baby healthy and happy in its crib.

Jane Chen traveled from village to village in rural India meeting women at every stop who had lost babies. One woman had lost all three of her babies due to premature births and a lack of access to medical treatment. While hearing these women’s stories of their desperate attempts to give their babies the medical attention needed Chen determined she would help.

Embrace Innovations started as a non-profit, providing remote villages in developing countries with low-cost, user-friendly incubator technology that is necessary for premature babies to survive and develop normally. She created Embrace infant warmers, which resemble tiny sleeping bags, after working with various non-profits abroad and seeing the continuous devastation of premature births ending in death from hypothermia.

“No baby should die from being cold.” — Jane Chen

As she cut through one red tape after the next, her non-profit began to transform into a more sustainable model. Alongside her co-founder, Chen launched Little Lotus Baby, a baby product line for the US market that uses a “TOMS-like” buy-one, give-one model.

These baby products use the same NASA-inspired technology found in the Embrace infant warmers to keep the baby’s body temperature constant, proven to give the child up to an hour more of uninterrupted sleep.

Chen’s innovative enterprise began by saving thousands of lives on a global level, but she didn’t stop there. With the goal of localizing technology and using her creative spirit to help others, she knew there had to be a more productive way to save even more lives.

She witnessed the power of parenthood while introducing Embrace infant warmers to villages and knew its strength. This inspired her to create a global community where parents helping parents is possible, no matter the distance.

The Driving Cause

Chen inspires this unstoppable drive in others when she asks, “What is your cathedral?” People dedicate their lives to building cathedrals that won’t be finished in their lifetime, but they do it because they believe in a cause greater than themselves. She wants you to examine your life and wonder what will your legacy be?

If you are moved through life by the question of “Why?” you’re on the right track. Chen feels that our time is best spent chasing after a deep sense of why- why are we here, why are we doing this or that, and why is our time so valuable?

How to Chase it

For Chen, her ‘why’ was clear with Embrace Innovations, but what was more difficult was learning to embrace impermanence. She claims that she owes a lot of her business prowess to her passion for surfing and her relationship with the ocean.

Surfing taught her to let go of outcomes and stop hanging her identity on your expectations. From spending time in the water, she saw how something can instantly shift in your favor, but just as quickly turn against you. When it came to her business, she encountered many obstacles that could have easily been the end of Embrace, but with ebb and flow in mind she persevered and created a new outcome for her business.

She now expects Embrace Innovations to save 1,000,000 babies around the world in 2018, but she knows this number depends on how she handles the forever changing tides.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.