Erik Wahl

SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to take away and learn from your presentations?

WAHL: I want them to experience a mind shift, so I don’t focus on one particular theme. I’ll touch on leadership change, customer service, and related topics, but overall what I really want audiences to take away is a shift in culture – a shift in how they view all of these components of their work and lives.

SPEAKING.COM: What kind of special prep work do you do prior to an event? How do you prepare for your speaking engagements?

WAHL: The amount of preparation I do is immense. The first thing that I do the moment we get booked by an organization like Exxon, Microsoft, or Google, is buy a sizeable amount of personal stock in that company. I don’t buy it for financial gain; rather, I buy it so that I can personally invest myself in the company and understand it at a new level: What moves the needle? Why is the stock going up? Why is the stock going down? Who are their competitors? What products are they releasing? Usually, I sell the stock after the presentation.

I do interviews with the executives allowing them to paint a word picture for what they want their audience to feel at the end of my presentation. I also send out a very extensive questionnaire for clients about what their day-to-day looks like. It’s not meant to be a cumbersome homework assignment and I very actively use everything that they say to help me understand what it’s like to be one of them. For example, if I’m speaking at a Presidential Summit for the top sales force for a particular pharmaceutical industry, I want to know what the best of the best have done to become the best of the best so that I can understand how to help them expand their consciousness, their mind, and their creativity to continue working and performing at a higher level.

Right before I go on stage I meditate listening for the audiences’ heartbeat and breathing patterns so that when I take a stage, I’ll be one of them. Every room is different and all these differences matter: the atmosphere created by the speaker before me, the energy of the audience, if it’s a morning presentation versus an evening presentation, if it’s an analytical or engineering audience versus a sales audience, and so forth.

I’m not coming out as a clanging drum, with fists pumping, acting like, “Hey, now, everyone, we’re going to be motivated.” This is very much about connection. It’s not a lecture; it’s a share. It’s not pushing content. When I’m onstage, I want to change the format for what a keynote experience looks like. I don’t want my audience to be passive consumers of information, but rather engaged participants. In order for that to happen they need to believe that I know who they are and that I’m not just a talking head. All the research I do then, prior to taking the stage is what creates that connection.

SPEAKING.COM: What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?

WAHL: My presentation is meant for events that want to change pace or experience something different, so it’s not aimed at a specific audience on a linear scale such as sales, marketing, leadership, and so on. It’s for anyone who wants to kick off or close their event on a dynamic high note moment with an “aha!” multi-sensory experience.

We look at every invitation that we’re given with: “How can we add value?” or “Can we add value?” We’re very specific then, in what we take and what we refer out. There are many great speakers out there and there are many great opportunities, so when it comes to considering an audience, I want to make sure that we’re the right fit.

SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to start doing speaking engagements?

WAHL: I had this message that I wanted to share to scale. I had seen many beautiful paintings in studios as well as amazing pieces of poetry or singing and song-writing that never got shared, never got amplified, and never got pushed out. In addition to this new exploration of art, I had this understanding of business, how I think business is changing, and how I think business could be improved and done better.

My speaking career, then, was built out of an understanding of how to share an idea to scale and make that shared experience awesome. The keynote speaking stage that virtually every conference has, is an this amazing opportunity to express, share, and amplify ideas to scale, but I’m not a big fan of the mainstream keynote speaking industry, because it’s hard for me to listen. It’s hard for me to listen in church and it’s hard for me to listen to other keynote speakers. Formats that mainly consist of information push, slides, and graphs just don’t engage me.

Live music engages me. The experience of interacting, like a Q &A for example, engages me. I love the uncertainty of what’s coming next so I built all that into my presentation to create a share of ideas through a theatrical “Wow!” experience – something that fascinated me, and I’m grateful that this same format fascinates audiences as well. Corporate audiences love the fact that I understand business, that I can talk shop and what they need to hear, but they also are deeply appreciative that I’m doing it in a very entertaining way, using music, lights, production, and interaction.

SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the successes you’ve helped clients achieve?

WAHL: I blow up their social media.

Why don’t we just watch conferences on our iPhone? Why don’t we stay in our office and just read the cliff notes in a PDF file? People are going to attend conferences for the value added live experience of networking and communicating. One of the ways that’s done is through building a social media presence. It helps make conferences relevant, and so organizers spend tons of time and energy, pre-conference, building up social trend, energy, and interaction into the meeting with social media.

I understand social media. I get where it’s been, where it’s at, and where it’s going. So one of the things I do is blow up their social media channels and get people talking and sharing through polls, quotes, and pictures. Having this mind-blowing keynote experience, and then sharing it on social media transfers into this “aha!” moment that connects all the sessions. It connects their workshops to their dinner, to their entertainment, and to all the other elements of the event.