Communication is key when it comes to connecting people. David Delaney, known as The Communication Connoisseur, helps companies reach their people through comprehensive marketing communication workshops and coaching. Not only is he a keynote speaker but also a WinnerĀ ofĀ theĀ AmericanĀ MarketingĀ AssociationĀ award and has authored the book called New Business Networking which explores online and tips, offline tools, and techniques to grow and nurture your professional network for your business career by communicating the right way. Today, David talks about the importance of communication and connecting with people as well as where we fail in our communication with them.
People that donāt love what theyāre doing and arenāt aligned well can create engagement issues in the workplace. Award-winning speaker and gratitude expert Lisa Ryan works with clients to develop employee and client engagement initiatives and strategies that keep their top talent and best clients from becoming someone elseās. Her expertise includes strengthening workplace culture, improving employee engagement, increasing customer retention, and initiating gratitude strategies. She joins us today to talk about her company, Grategy, the power of gratitude and reaching out, and elevating engagement levels.
Iām glad you joined us because we have Dave Delaney and Lisa Ryan here. Dave is a Communication Connoisseur, a keynote speaker and author of New Business Networking. Lisa is a keynote speaker as well. She is also an author of ten books and she has co-starred in several inspirational films and does a lot of different video formats that Iām fascinated to talk to her about. Weāre going to talk to Dave and weāre going to talk to Lisa.
Listen to the podcast here
The Communication Connoisseur With David Delaney
I am here with Dave Delaney who is known as the Communication Connoisseur. He is the author of New Business Networking. He helps companies reach their people through comprehensive marketing communication, workshops and coaching. He works with big brands. FedEx, Google, LinkedIn, UPS, you name it, he has worked with them. Itās nice to have you here, Dave.
Thank you for having me. Iāve been excited to talk to you.
I like that youāre an early adopter. I was looking through your stuff and Iām always fascinated by the people who know when to get into things. You got into a lot of things early, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. How did you know these were going to be what they ended up being? Do you just do whatever it is youāre in and you like to try the next big thing?
If I knew that, Iād be rich. I canāt claim the crystal ball exactly. My thing has always been about communication. Iāve been always about finding ways to improve the way I communicate with people. That goes way back CB radios as a kid and then also running a BBS on my Commodore 64 back in the ā80s. Iāve always been about connecting with people both in person through events and networking that way. Also, online, Iām a nerd. I love being able to connect with people. Naturally I got extremely excited as social media started to become what it became. I was early to Myspace and Friendster and the more popular ones that weāre familiar with now, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. Iāve become an early adopter and I was excited. I got into it more for the community aspect, the connection aspect. All these mediums are wonderful ways to connect with people and thatās what Iām all about.
I had a Commodore 64 and you think back to those days and you know how little things they even did, you got so excited you had this computer.
Itās funny because I bought one for my birthday on eBay.
Does it turn blue screen? There is hardly anything it does. Does it do anything?
Iāve been able to download games. This is how nerdy I am. I found a Wi-Fi adapter for it so now I can get on the internet with it and there were bulletin boards that you can access through it. If your readers are following me on Instagram, Iām @DaveDelaney on Instagram. You could find some of these hilarious videos and photos of things that Iāve been doing with my Commodore 64, old school nerd.
It seemed like the cool thing at that time. You mentioned a couple of sites, Friendster and stuff. I never got into that. Did it even crash that you thought should have made it? Were you surprised by the way that some of them went?
'Yes, and' teaches you to accept and lead with acceptance. Click To TweetBoth ways, Twitter historically would hilariously and tragically go down almost daily, it seemed. When I first started using Twitter in February 2007, they had this image that would come up whenever they would crash. People donāt even know what a fail whale is now, but that was later. Before the fail whale, there were kittens with screwdrivers and there were images of a cat with a screwdriver saying, āBe right back. Iām fixing something.ā Twitter was interesting. I wasnāt sure what would happen with Twitter.
Twitter at that time was called a micro-blog. There were other micro-blogs like Jaiku, Plurk, Pownce and these other similar things to Twitter. Jaiku got acquired by Google around the same time that Google acquired a startup called Dodgeball which later became Foursquare which also became Swarm. I thought they were going to take Jaiku which was like the chocolate and Dodgeball which was like the peanut butter and put them together into a location-based micro-blogging thing. Unfortunately, nothing ever came from it. If I had that crystal ball, that would be handy.
Itās hard to be in all these. I teach a lot of marketing classes, a lot of business courses and I know you do workshops, keynotes and all the things you do. We did talk to so many people in so many different ways. Itās so many, I canāt be in all of them. You could set up Meet Edgar or whatever to keep up but then in a way, youāre trying to keep up instead of communicate. Do you think weāre communicating well with them? Where are we failing in our communication with them?
For those who donāt know Meet Edgar, it automatically schedules your content to redistribute and send it back out for your evergreen blog post and content. Similar to Buffer in a way, Hootsuite has scheduling built-in and things like that. I got very early on excited about these different mediums and playing with them, meeting people on them and that kind of thing. Twitter didnāt start with an algorithm. Now it has one and itās trying to show you things that would be of interest to you.
That sometimes backfires the way algorithms can work and we can get into that for a long time. Algorithms in a way, have messed up a lot of these social networks or at least removed the social aspect to social networking. For me, itās in a way ashamed and sad that way. Nowadays, especially if youāre using social for your business, you need to focus on what works best for your business and reaching the people that you most need to reach whether thatās LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Youāre right, you canāt spend your time everywhere.
Itās interesting that youāre talking about the recommendations they make. On Twitter, they make no sense to me. Other people tell me, āPerhaps you would like to follow this person or that person.ā They make sense in some of the other platforms but I donāt get Twitter. I look at them and Iām thinking, āIt will be like sports,ā or something I donāt even deal with at all. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, Iām the same way. I scratch my head about Twitter a lot because the two best features of Twitter are features they never promote and never talk about. The two are Twitter List and Twitter Advanced Search. These two features are awesome, they are killer features. I do a lot of presentations, workshops and training on networking effectively on social online and offline and speaking about communication internally as well. When I speak at social media conferences or those types of events, Iāll ask the audience, āHow many people use Twitter?ā Every hand goes up, and then Iāll say, āHow many people use Twitter List?ā Itās maybe 10%. āHow many of you use advanced search?ā Itās around the same. It fascinates me that Twitter has done such a poor job of promoting some of the best features. That is interesting.
They donāt. I use LinkedIn the most, I have to admit. Itās where everybody I need to be is chatting and where they are chatting. On Twitter, I teach a lot of marketing or if somebody put their foot in their mouth or something, I might go to Twitter to see the trending conversation about it. Thatās where youād go for something like that or to see if an ad is doing something great. There are different ways. I found it interesting that the President shows Twitter as his means of communication because you canāt say that much in one shot. Does that surprise you?

Yeah. There might have been some good reason for that I donāt know. It is off way convenient to jot up 140 characters or 280 characters now. That was part of the attraction for me for Twitter in the early days and still to an extent is the brevity of it. You had to be quick, simple, concise and witty. Many years ago, I used to use when Twitter introduced its favorites button or itās like. You could take a feed from all of your favorited tweets. I started favoriting only the funniest tweets I came across. I had a page on my site dedicated and I embedded that Twitter feed of hilarious tweets.
Youāre verified, I noticed. A lot of people want to get verified. You canāt get verified anymore, why?
With social media in this day and age, unfortunately with the number of trolls, bots, media manipulation, all of that stuff that is taking place up again for that matter. Theyāve got to be very careful with how they select people through verification. I was verified reasonably early on as a person. Iāve been using Twitter since the very early days, February 2007. Iāve been around a while.
This makes you a networking expert as well as a communication expert. I talk a lot to group spec communication and soft skills, emotional intelligence and all the stuff. I talk about that Iām an expert in the area of curiosity. Iām very interested in how you think curiosity plays into the importance of how we communicate and how we can recognize the importance of communication and its link to curiosity.
A part of my background besides business, marketing and communications professionally is, I studied improv at Second City in Toronto many years ago and went through their entire program for improv. I spoke at HubSpot’s inbound conference in 2015 and did a presentation called Improve With Improv. How we can use improvisation to improve the way we communicate with one another, with our prospects, customers, colleagues and families to that extent. I created this workshop called Communication Mastery and a big part of that workshop is improv and teaching people. I have a presentation called The Master Communicatorās Secret Weapon and I did this in Wisconsin for the AAF chapter there in Madison. The audience doesnāt know what that secret weapon is, but the organizers do as I tell them. Itās using improv and the skills from improv to improve the way we communicate and it brings on that curiosity. Even for people who are completely shy or more introverted or what have you, I teach them how to use skills from improv. Iām not talking about them performing improv or anything like that.
Like within a skill.
āYes, andā is a perfect example. For your readers who are not familiar the way āyes, andā works, letās say I have a ball in my hand. I hand the ball to Diane and I say, āI have a ball.ā Diane responds with, āYes, and,ā then insert the blank. Go ahead, Iāve handed you a ball, āHey look, Diane, Iāve got a ball.ā
āYes, and what else do you have?ā
āYes, and Iāve got a baseball bat.ā
āYes, and is your baseball bat new?ā
'I love to be micromanaged,' said no employee ever. Click To TweetāYes, and Iād loved to try it out with you.ā
āYes, and we could do that right after lunch. Can you join me for lunch?ā
āYes, and I would love lunch and I love baseball.ā From doing that, āyes, and,ā it teaches you to accept and what I call leading with acceptance. It teaches you to become a leader to lead with acceptance. Youāre accepting and youāre empowering and being empathetic to whoever is sharing that idea. The flipside to this is āyes, but.ā If I say, āHey Diane, Iāve got this ball,ā and you say, āYes, but.ā
āYes, but itās a little bit too big for the game weāre playing.ā
āYes, but we could try it and it might work.ā
āYes, but Iām not feeling the need to do that right now.ā
Do you see what Iām saying?
Yeah.
What youāre doing is pushing back and youāre saying āno.ā You take this and you put into a board room, and this happened to me once many years ago where I worked for the company and they had a time when you could offer product ideas or services ideas. I started there and I have this idea and the CEO said, āGo ahead and share your idea.ā Iām in front of the senior leadership team. I pitched my idea and he says, āThatās the stupidest idea Iāve ever heard.ā You can bet I never offered another idea in my short tenure there. I sunk in my seat and I felt like a jerk. The point here is that it could have been a bad idea, thatās fine. What he could have said was, āYes, and letās talk about it after the meeting over coffee,ā or āYes, and letās talk to sales to see if that is a viable idea,ā or āYes, and letās talk to customer service and see if this is an issue our customers are having.ā By using this āyes, andā mindset and using this alone, this will help you definitely with curiosity but also be more open-minded.

When I do this as a presentation and I talk about these key skills, there is a few that I share in this Master Communicatorās talk, the secret weapon talk. I share these tips that they can use during the conference as they meet one another. It rolls into the networking thing as well. They can then share what they learned with their colleagues. I also do this half-day workshop that gets more into this and I work with teams so that the entire team is āyes, andā one another and other great goodies throughout that too. I did it for FedEx and heard great feedback from that. Itās fun.
That ties in so well to my research in curiosity with the four things that keep people back. One of them is fear, and thatās fear over helping them not shut people down and have fear by doing that. Itās funny because you donāt think of improv for that. I took improv classes thinking, āThis would be great to be a better speaker to learn improv.ā You get stuck in an area and it makes you think of, āWhat was I talking about? Where can I go? Yes, and letās go over here.ā
I love that you bring that up because thatās the second thing I talk about. I talk about leading with acceptance and not fearing failure. I also talk about how to listen effectively and actively as part of that talk. Whatās funny is, I begin the presentation by talking about a time that I was doing a high-pressure presentation in front of a huge audience and my equipment failed. I go and I share that story in that presentation as the opening of that talk to explain how I realized that a secret weapon kept me alive on that stage as I rolled with it, went along with it and pulled it off. That secret weapon was definitely improv.
You have to be able to think on your feet and a lot of people donāt have that skill and improv is good for that. I went to a conference at the Genius Network where Joe Polish was interviewing Naveen Jain, the billionaire behind Viome and Moon Express. He is awesome. He is great. He was a guest of the show. Naveen is a funny guy and so was Joe. Joe was getting ready to interview him. He looks down at his iPad to look at what he is going to ask him. Naveen grabbed it and threw it across the room like, āWeāre going to have a chat here.ā These things happen, people want to have real communication. He is in front of a group and he was like, āI donāt need that.ā He went on. I love that when people can move on and you have sometimes better conversations. A lot of people get too planned, too status quo, too stuck, āThis is what I have to do, this is how it has to be.ā Do you think that we get into that too much?
If we do get stuck in that, we get complaisant for sure.
Itās a little of the, āWhat got you here wonāt get you there,ā thinking. We need to open up to some new ideas and I like the idea of using improv to make you open up to, āWhat else can I think of? What else?ā Do you know what I mean?
Exactly.
I donāt think we do enough of that. What youāre doing is important. Your book, New Business Networking explores online and offline tools, tips and techniques to grow and nurture your professional network is how you put it. Who is this book for?
Itās for anyone who is trying to grow a business. Itās certainly for business leaders, management. Iāve got sections in there for students or for younger people. People that are transitioning careers or maybe getting started with their careers as well. I have a lot of different ideas in there about everything from organizing your own events, attending conferences and networking there. I also have a course at BetterConferenceNetworking.com about how to network before, during and after a conference and what to do there. The book has a lot of that. I also have chapters specifically on using different social networks, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus.
Your employees will give you their heart, their soul, and all of their efforts when they feel that you value them. Click To TweetBefore networking, now you got my attention, what do I do prior to my networking event that you can give me a little tip?
One thing I recommend is networking with the speakers and sponsors as well before going to the event by looking at their website. Nowadays, a lot of website for conferences include the Twitter handle, maybe the LinkedIn link as well of the speaker. That gives you an opportunity to message them, reach out to say hello. Let them know youāll be at the conference and youāre looking forward to seeing them there. Maybe to begin a conversation or interact with content theyāve already shared, not in a stalker type of way, but rather in a friendly way. My friend Mitch Joel, do you know Mitch?
Yeah, heās been on the show.
Mitch and I go way back because weāre both Canadian podcasters. Iām a recovering podcaster at this time. We both started podcasting in around 2005 or so. Mitch said, āTwitter is permission-based stalking,ā which I loved. I quoted him in the book about that. Connect with speakers and sponsors, exhibitors before you go to the event. As a speaker myself, and I do a lot of presentations throughout the year, I tell you now, itās a lot tougher to connect with the speaker after the talk, especially if they are a good speaker.
Because you canāt get in.
You are way better off connecting ahead of time. I make a point to try to do that as well before attending a conference.
Every time I go to a conference, anybody who I have gone to the conference with, I always like to try and connect with in general, āI saw you at this event.ā The problem on LinkedIn is you start to get a huge following in a lot of people. You get to 20,000, you canāt have one-on-one connections anymore, they have to just follow you. Do you have a problem with maxing at 20,000? Do you think you shouldnāt go up that high? Whatās your idea on that?
Early on the social media, the rule of thumb, although it wasnāt a rule, which is youād follow back everybody who followed you. Accepted every connection request, friended anyone any friend request, of course, times have changed that way. The way I handle LinkedIn requests is I donāt accept requests from people I donāt know. Unless they send me a personal note that includes some reason why they want to connect and even then, itās got to be a good reason. It canāt be like, āI saw that you are also in marketing and communications.ā It depends and Iāll look at their profile. What I do with LinkedIn is I have a small short script that I copy and paste in every reply. When I get a LinkedIn connection request, if its people I donāt know where I donāt instantly say, āDefinitely, I want to connect with them.ā I will reply with a little blurb and the script is in one of my blog posts.
I also have a website called Networking For Nice People and itās on that blog. The script says, āThank you for sending me a connection request. I apologize, my mind is foggy. I havenāt had enough coffee today. Can you remind me where we met? If we havenāt yet, itās fine. Here is a link to follow me on LinkedIn. I usually connect with people who Iāve met before. Feel free to let me know and Iām happy to chat about it.ā Something to that effect. I copy, paste and send that to about every request I get. Every once in a while, somebody will reply and say, āI wanted to talk to you because remember, we met briefly at this conference,ā and thatās when I say, āOf course.ā Then we start the conversation. Instead of willy-nilly accepting everybody because unfortunately there are a lot of spammers, scammers, trolls, phishers, and you name it, they are all out there.

I spend so much time on LinkedIn that I think of that for my business and Facebook, I think of it as more personal. I have a personal and a company Facebook profile. My company profile is tied into things as I speak as well in different groups that Iām in. I donāt get on there very often. Iām surprised that those groups connect so much on Facebook because I think of them more as LinkedIn since theyāre business people. You donāt use groups that much on LinkedIn. They donāt appeal to people as much.
Theyāve made some changes to groups to try to improve them, but Iām not using them yet. Iām not convinced it will be that effective. Iāve noticed with Facebook, there are so many private Facebook groups, thatās where I do most of my connecting on Facebook. Iāve got pretty negative feelings towards that business now. Iām not going to delete my Facebook account because of the groups like Speak and Spill and other groups that Iām a big fan of, enjoy interacting with and get a lot front those networks.
What I noticed was, it was a couple of years ago, there used to be a great official Facebook groups app. It was perfect because I can interact with all the groups within the app and they deleted the app and removed it. My gut tells me they got rid of it and I donāt know this officially but my guts tells me because they were losing people. They need to have people interacting in the news feed on the main site, otherwise youāre not clicking the ads and so on. The key thing with Facebook groups and why they are successful is because everybody is on Facebook.
LinkedIn only has 150 million but I could be wrong. Itās certainly nothing compared to Facebook. Facebook is in the billion. The fact that everybody is Facebook, you donāt have to log out and log in to something else. I have a group on Facebook, I run it as well called Networking For Nice People. I tried to launch that as a private forum website and what I found was you had to login to the forum to go in. It was yet another site, another place to go and people couldnāt be bothered. Where with Facebook, it became way more successful because people are always logged in to Facebook, thatās where the action is, thatās where the people are.
You definitely know where the action is and how to communicate and network. A lot of people could learn a lot from everything youāre doing. I know that they might be interested in your workshop, your keynotes and all that. Can you share how people could find you, Dave?
The easiest way is DaveDelaney.me. Itās where you can find me. You can find me at DaveDelaneySpeaks.com as well, which redirects to the speaking page. Iām @DaveDelaney on Twitter, Dave Delaney on LinkedIn, Dave Delaney on Facebook and everywhere else. You google me and you will find me at the top.
Thanks, Dave. This is fun and Iām glad that we had a chance to chat and I hope everybody takes the time to look at your stuff.
Elevating Engagement Levels With Lisa Ryan
I am here with Lisa Ryan who is the Chief Appreciation Strategist at Grategy. She is a certified speaking professional, award-winning speaker and bestselling author of ten books. She does a lot of things. She is the host of Elevate Your Engagement Levels, what you need to know on Elite Experts Network. She is the creator of the Seven Mistakes Managers Make to Crush Company Culture video series. You do a lot of fascinating work and video. I want to talk to you about that. Welcome, Lisa.
Thank you so much for having me.
I was looking forward to this. I saw that you had been in two films with Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul. People canāt not know who that is, as well as John Gray of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. You have some pretty impressive people to do stuff with. How did you get to this level in your career? Can you give a little backstory?
When I first filmed for the Gratitude Experiment, I was at a National Speakerās Association conference and while there, I met a gentleman who wrote How Thoughts Become Things. He was doing a program for it. I flew to Vegas and he was telling for this three-day boot camp type of thing. He was talking about this movie that he was making about gratitude and I said, āIām a gratitude expert. How do I get involved in that?ā Doug and I spoke and next thing you know, Iām flying to Calgary to film for this movie.
It took a long time. I filmed for it in November 2010. A couple of months later, I was going to Las Vegas and one of my friends said, āYou have to meet Robin Jay. She owns the Las Vegas Convention Speakerās Bureau.ā I said, āFine.ā I was meeting with Robin, and Robin was telling me about this movie that she was making with Jack Canfield and Marci Shimoff of The Secret. Iām like, āThat sounds wonderful. I filmed a movie with John Gray and with all these people from The Secret. Your movie sounds fantastic. Good luck to you.ā I got on a plane and came back to Cleveland, never expecting to talk to Robin again. It was a nice meeting.
Iām at church that Sunday and this guy I have known for 25 years starts telling me about this movie that his daughter was making with Jack Canfield and Marci Shimoff. Iām like, āThat sounds like Robinās movie.ā I said, āErwin Jay, Robin Jay.ā I said, āWhatās your daughterās name?ā He said, āRobin.ā I said, āI had dinner with her.ā He said, āNo, you didnāt. She lives in Las Vegas.ā Dr. Jay got on the phone with his daughter and said, āLisa needs to be in your movie.ā Within six months of each other, I filmed two movies. The Keeper of the Keys came out in December 2011, and then the Gratitude Experiment, which I had filmed in November 2010, didnāt come out until April 2013. It was quite a journey but theyāre both well done. Theyāre different types of movies. Keeper of the Keys is a little bit more scripted, where the Gratitude Experiment is a little bit more talking head.
I have had people who have created The Coaching movie. I know Marshall Goldsmith and a lot of people who have been on to my show were in that movie. Itās fun to see people you know in these movies. I was like, āI know him, he was on my show.ā There were four or five of them on my show from that movie alone. It must be fun. Do you get to play yourself or did they give you a character?
When youāre open to the power of gratitude, it can change their life. Click To TweetI was playing myself, and the funny part of it too, is that John Gray of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, is in those movies. I am in not one but two movies with John Gray.
John was supposed to be on the show. I need to get him back on the show. It would be fun. He is interesting.
When I got to meet him, we had a red-carpet premiere in Las Vegas. I brought my mom with me and it was fantastic. Jack Canfield, Marci Shimoff and John Gray were all there. I was hobnobbing with them. It was very fun.
Itās interesting that youāre a gratitude expert. I had Judith Umlas on my show. She wrote The Power of Acknowledgment. I have to get you guys talking to each other because she was very much into the same things that youāre into and she was great on the show. When you talk about, even your company name, it involves this gratitude. Tell me about Grategy.
When I first started my business, I was Chief Appreciation Strategist at Appreciation Strategies. That was the original name of my company and it was quite the mouthful to say the least. I was at my friendās house, Dick. He is an old marketing guy. He had been in marketing forever. I was over at Dickās house and we were walking along the beach in Cleveland and we were trying to come up with a new name for my company. We were putting together all these things with thanks, gratitude, appreciation and all of these things for about two or three hours. We were brainstorming. Finally, I looked at him and I said, āItās 5:30 on a Friday night, I have a date with my husband. Iāve got to go.ā
My husband and I were out to dinner and Dick calls me, and Iām like, āDid I not leave you an hour ago?ā He said, āItās Grategy.ā Iām like, āItās Grategy,ā and I look at my husband Scott, and I said, āItās Grategy.ā Scott was like, āWhat are you talking about?ā It was easy because Dickās brain was still continuing to process after our brainstorming session and as soon as he said it, I knew that that was the name. It took so little explanation and it explains exactly what I do for in all parts of my life for my corporate clients, for my association audiences. Itās all about the gratitude strategies.
The website was probably available, the URL, right?

Yeah. The funny thing about the URL is there is this guy who was on YouTube, itās my Grategy because he has Grategy and he is like, āOne of these guys that plays with Japanese anime dolls or something.ā It has been years since I looked him up, but Iām like, āReally? Grategy?ā I donāt know if it was his last name and I donāt know if itās Japanese thing, but it was funny. Thatās the reason why I canāt have Grategy on YouTube, but I do have my Grategy and I have lots of videos up there.
You do a lot in terms of videos and we were talking about how you host Elevate Your Engagement Levels: What You Need to Know in Elite Experts Network. Tell me what thatās about. Is that about Grategy as well or something more about engagement?
Iāve been doing the episodes for over three years. I film two episodes a month and itās a local company that she has the Elite Experts Network. Itās on internet, you go online and you can watch. She has a variety of hosts that talk about different topics and they are not overlapping topics. Mine is on employee engagement. At the beginning, I was all over the place where I did some on gratitude, some on engagement and they were in the 4 to 6-minute range. I met with this guy from SCORE, the Senior Core Of Retired Executives, Mike, 84 years old. He is watching one of my four-minute videos and he told me I was boring. What he did is he made me realize, āThe videos can be more powerful, more impactful at two minutes,ā thatās what they all are. We donāt like to hear negative comments. We think that everything we do is fabulous. Sometimes being open to real feedback from people who have no investment in you whatsoever. When youāre open to it and make the changes, I have a much better product now than I used to.
Something tells me that guy is not a gratitude expert though. You get a lot of trolls on the internet and on YouTube and they can be brutal. Itās so hard. What you talk about with engagement ties in a lot to my work with curiosity. I deal with engagement quite a bit as well because it ties back to engagement and people that donāt love what theyāre doing and arenāt aligned well, youāve got engagement issues. A lot of that ties into people wanting to ask questions and exploring new areas. I relate to what you deal with because thatās important. You also talk about your video series. Youāre the creator of the Seven Mistakes Managers Make to Crush Company Culture. Iād like to know some of those mistakes that caught my eye.
The first one is micromanagement. I start off with the video as, āI love to be micromanaged said no employee ever.ā Your employees know their job better than you know their job. As long as itās getting done, it doesnāt matter that they are doing it exactly the way that you would have done it if you were doing it yourself. Empowering employees, make them feel important, make them feel included. There is no feedback, there is no training, no appreciation, unrealistic expectations, there are all these things that sometimes leaders do and it may not even be on purpose. We are so focused on making sure that everything is right, weāre keeping on top of it that we donāt get down to the basics of human connection, of recognizing people, people who are starved for attention, who want to be acknowledged.
When you acknowledge them, those employees will give you their heart, their soul, all of their efforts when they feel that you value them. When I go and I do my programs and I do these video series, unfortunately, there is nothing like mind-blowingly new in any of them. I teach people things like, āSay thank you.ā When somebody says thank you to you, say youāre welcome. Donāt say no problem, donāt say no worries, donāt say it was nothing, complete the cycle of appreciation. Itās these little things, and sometimes people love my programs because itās about human connection and itās about the basics that work as well at home as they do in the office. A lot of times, if I have one of those negative Nellies or negative Neds in my audience, theyāll be like, āThis is all the stuff Iāve heard before.ā Itās like, āIf you were doing something with it, then you wouldnāt need this.ā
Itās all common sense. Itās interesting that the people who need it donāt recognize the thing you did a lot of times. My research in emotional intelligence was fascinating to me and what people recognize of themselves and others, thereās so much work that still needs to be done. I remember when I wrote my dissertation thinking, āThatās a cute topic. Emotional intelligence will be interesting for a little while.ā All these years later, itās still so huge and I keep thinking, āHave you not heard of emotional?ā You think that everybody knows this stuff but thatās because you live it day in and day out from whatever youāre working on and then people out there. Iām always surprised at whatās new to people, that to me seems common sense.
Common sense isnāt always all that common. Click To TweetEspecially when youāre around a lot of speakers or you go to a lot of programs, you hear the same things over and over again. You think, āEverybody must know that,ā but I will tell you and you know this too, the stories that you share for some people, itās mind-blowing to them. Iām certified in this, you know all the personality assessments that are out there. When people do personality assessments for the first time, it blows their minds. They canāt even believe like, āItās not something is wrong with me. This is the way that Iām wired.ā When weāre into professional development and personal development and we understand as well. Everybody should know that youāre either extrovert, introvert, people are tasked, people donāt and we have to stop assuming.
We donāt want to dumb it down or condescend people, but by the same token, this is wisdom, this is knowledge. I work with a lot of manufacturing plants and not only the leadership but I love working with the plant people. A lot of them have never been exposed to the power of their subconscious mind, the power that gratitude brings to them. When theyāre open to it, it can change their life. We look for getting this message out to as many people as we can and as many ways as possible and bring it back to that connection.
You brought up so many interesting things. Many years ago, I wrote a book. Every chapter was about different personality assessment, DISC was one. My experience with another in emotional intelligence, all these different types. Iāve found it interesting to look at self-assessment and awareness of what you are. What I find most important is you know what you are, but finding out what if someone else is and if itās opposite of what you are, you go, āThatās interesting.ā Why would they want that?
It helps so much with empathy which is a big part of emotional intelligence. When I created my Curiosity Code Index which determines a lot of these what keeps people back from curiosity. Youāre talking about a lot of the things that I found were factors and one of them is assumptions which is we assume these things. We have this voice in our head that tells us certain things that hold us back and itās important that we recognize that. A lot of this stuff is bringing up common sense things to some people, but eye-opening things if you look at it, not from your own perception but from everybody elseās perspective, donāt you think?
Exactly. Also, common sense isnāt always all that common.
I definitely understand that. Your background is in sales and marketing and mine is as well. We have plenty in common. My husband is from Wickliffe, thatās probably not far from you.

Itās about 45 minutes or so.
What kind of sales do you have in your background? Iām curious.
I started my career as an executive recruiter. Iām one of the few people on the planet who can say they sold their mother. Mom hated that job but I said, āMom, you have got to stay there at least 90 days because I have a guarantee, and I canāt afford to give back the commission I made at it.ā She was there for two and a half years and itās all good. I went into industrial sales. First of all, I was in inside sales selling electrical cord and cable over the phone into the maintenance environment, 80 to 120 phone calls a day.
Donāt you love it when they throw you the yellow pages and say, āHere, dial?ā
I went into the welding industry for seven years where that was outside sales. I got to go into all kinds of cool auto plants. I was down in the salt mines. I loved being in the welding industry. I did that for seven years, and then I was in healthcare. Iāve sold a lot and I thank God everyday for having a sales background.
Itās so important, thatās what I was leading up to. How critical is it does that help you with your communication ability?
Not only with my communication ability, as a speaker, itās my ability to sell myself. You can be the best speaker on the planet, you can have the best speech in the world, but if you are not a good marketer and you donāt know how to get that message out to people, nobody is going to find you. Just because youāre good at what you do, doesnāt mean that people are going to find you without some outreach. Iām good at outreach and I like selling. I like sales.
A lot of people would like to know how you get your speaking gigs and things. I have a lot of speakers who tune in to this show. What do you do to market yourself?
You canāt out give people and not expect it to come back. Click To TweetI have done a program for the National Speakerās Association, a couple of different chapters called Smiling and Dialing Your Way to a Six Figure Speaking Business.
Were you the past president of NSA?
Yeah. I served for two years. That was a couple of years ago. I had been calling on a lot of the HR groups, SHRM, the Society for HR Managers and others. In December 2016, I decided to focus my business on manufacturing, primarily because itās what I love, I loved my audiences. I started with a cold list of 250 manufacturing organizations in December 2016 and Iāve turned that into $250,000 in speaking revenue. Itās picking up the phone, sending emails, connecting on LinkedIn, sending BombBomb emails which are videos.
People hear from me. If theyāre not getting gratitude thought of the week because theyāve been in one of my programs, I look for ways to stay in touch. I took an improv class in August and the graduation was five minutes on stage with the improv, and itās so cute. If youāre doing a search on YouTube, Lisa Ryan improv. Iām trying to break 500 views, Iām going viral. Itās about sibling rivalry. My siblings and I competing for the love of my mother, and I used that. I have sent that out to prospects, āHereās something a little different. Hereās something to make you laugh on a Friday.ā
I reach out and I touch people all day long. The mistake that a lot of speakers and other people make is itās all, āHire me.ā No. What can you do for them? How are you to work with? Why should they like you? Are you funny? Are you likable? Are you providing value? Thatās what I do. In my audience, as I use one of those join by text services and I give them the PDF of my book. If they do the join by text, they get my book, they get the video series. You canāt out give people and not expect it to come back and it comes back.
Iāve had so many people on the show, weāve talked about improv and how it ties to speaking and how it makes it a little bit better. Weāre talking about improv which is funny. There is so much that people can do to be more approachable and interesting. We all say, āGive a lot of free stuff before you ask for anything,ā just give and give. Sometimes itās challenging, people donāt want to be inundated in their email. Itās a wire youāre walking on if you do too much. Do you find that you learned a lot of that from sales, how much you can get away with?
I donāt do a newsletter. Gratitude thought of the week has been coming out every week since 2011. Itās generally about 300 words, itās black and white, there is no picture, its text only, thereās a quote, a story, a lesson, a PS and sometimes a PPS. It takes less than two minutes to read. My open rate on that is between 20% and 30%, and that open rate doesnāt even matter to me. My name is in their email box every week. If they want to hit reply, āThat Lisa Ryan woman,ā reply and Iām there. The other thing too, about give, thatās important but you have to ask. You also have to let people know, āIād love to work with you. Iād love to speak at your conference. How can we make that happen?ā You close the deal. Itās not just, āIf I give them all of these, theyāll assume that Iām a speaker and theyāll want me.ā No, they wonāt. They donāt even know what you do. You pick up the phone and you ask them.

I was in pharmaceutical sales before I was in lending, real estate and computer sales, everything else. You teach to paint a picture in peopleās minds of how you can solve their problems sometimes, and some of these things that people send out are so vague. They donāt paint much of a picture, do you think?
Exactly. Either they sent it out and itās vague or itās all about me, not what I can do for you. Youāre reading and going, āWhat does she do? Does she speak? Does she do workshops? Whatās the point?ā It has to be benefit loaded language. Also, in a lot of different ways, Iāll send snail mail, Iāll create post cards, Iāll send my books in the mail. For manufacturing day, which is the first Friday of October, I sent out a PDF of my book, even though itās happy manufacturing day, the subject line was, āHappy Manufacturing Day, hereās a gift for your members.ā I sent them the link to the PDF to my book and I said, āYou can use it however you want. Share it with your members.ā I had people, they didnāt even tell me, they are like, āWe are going to put this on our website.ā Honestly, Iām good with that because it was a response.
Everything you do, it shows how much youāre open to working with people and how you are available to them and, āThis isnāt all about money, this is about other things.ā Thatās an important message. When I was looking at some of your stuff, I was thinking, āThis is going to be fun.ā I could tell with your background that we have a lot of things that we both focus on that were very similar. I knew we would have a lot of fun on the show. I know a lot of people want to find out more about your website and I have listed about twenty things you do. Where is the best place to reach you?
My website is LisaRyanSpeaks.com. My company name is Grategy. You can do a search on that. Iām on LinkedIn, Facebook. On YouTube, my channel is MyGrategy. If you want a couple of minutes of nice laugh and you have siblings that you can relate to it, do a search on Lisa Ryan improv and youāll like that. You could send me an email to Lisa@Grategy.com. I respond to all my emails personally. I like to stay in touch with people. You know how I can help. On the website at Lisa Ryan Speaks, there is place where you can sign up for gratitude thought of the week which is, I like to say itās a short inspirational message that seems to show up every Thursday when you need it.
This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for being on this show.
Youāre very welcome and thanks for having me.
Youāre welcome.
—
Iād like to thank both Dave and Lisa for being my guests. We get so many great guests. If youāve missed any past episodes, please go to DrDianeHamilton.com. From that site you can go to the Curiosity Code information at the top, you can also listen to the show. The show is also available everywhere you find podcast in addition to our AM/FM station. I hope you enjoyed the episode and I hope you join us for the next episode of Take the Lead Radio.
Important Links:
- Lisa Ryan
- New Business Networking
- @DaveDelaney ā Instagram
- The Master Communicatorās Secret Weapon
- Naveen Jain ā previous episode
- BetterConferenceNetworking.com
- Mitch Joel ā previous episode
- Networking For Nice People
- Networking For Nice People ā Facebook group
- DaveDelaney.me
- DaveDelaneySpeaks.com
- @DaveDelaney ā Twitter
- Dave Delaney ā LinkedIn
- Dave Delaney ā Facebook
- Grategy
- Elevate Your Engagement Levels
- Chicken Soup for the Soul
- Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
- How Thoughts Become Things
- Marshall Goldsmith ā previous episode
- Judith Umlas ā previous episode
- The Power of Acknowledgment
- LisaRyanSpeaks.com
- LinkedIn ā Lisa Ryan
- Facebook ā Lisa Ryan
- MyGrategy ā YouTube channel
- Lisa Ryan improv – YouTube video
- Lisa@Grategy.com
About David Delaney
Dave Delaney is known as a communication connoisseur. He helps companies reach their people through comprehensive marketing communication workshops and coaching. Dave teaches effective corporate communication with his Communication Mastery workshop. He works with brands like FedEx, Google, LinkedIn, and UPS.
Delaney is an American Marketing Association award winner. He has appeared in USA Today, Entrepreneur, Inc, Fortune, and Billboard Magazine. His acclaimed book, New Business Networking, explores online and offline tools, tips and techniques to grow and nurture your professional network for your business and career by communicating – the right way.
About Lisa Ryan
As a Certified Speaking Professional, an award-winning speaker and author of ten books, Lisa Ryan works with her clients to develop employee and client engagement initiatives and strategies that keep their top talent and best clients from becoming someone elseās. Lisaās expertise includes: strengthening workplace culture, improving employee engagement, increasing customer retention, and initiating gratitude strategies (āGrategiesā) for personal and professional transformation.
Lisaās participants enjoy her high energy, enthusiastic delivery and quick wit and they leave the session with ideas they are committed to acting on immediately to make positive workplace culture changes. Lisa costars in two films with other experts including Jack Canfield of āChicken Soup for the Soul.ā She is the Past-President of the National Speakers Association, Ohio Chapter and holds an MBA from Cleveland State University.
Love the show?Ā Subscribe, rate, review, and share!