If you’re in customer service or customer experience as a career, events like Customer Contact Week Nashville are vital:

- Dozens and dozens of speakers giving presentations on what’s working (and what’s not) in their organizations as they flip the switch on AI and more

- A huge exhibit hall filled with vendors who are bending over backwards to show you what’s possible.

- A super well-organized event that just works smoothly

And check this out…Keynote speaker for CCW Nashville October 22-24? Dick Vitale. THE Dick Vitale.

That’s AWESOME, baby!

Use link above with code CCWNASH25_JAY for 20% OFF.

Last week I was back on the Agents of Change podcast (5th time!) talking about the power of humanity in a world of automation.

It's a good one. Give it a listen.

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Jay's Faves

Our shared universal truth, the tie that binds us together, used to be baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. Now? Customer service fails.

Dean Norris from Breaking Bad and Brian Baumgartner from The Office teamed up with Regal to DRAMATICALLY recite a bunch of customer complaints.

Check em out for yourself. Best few minutes you’ll spend today, other than reading The Baer Facts.

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Book Report

Hustle can get you started, but it won’t lead to sustained success.

My pal Chris Ducker learned this the hard way. A successful serial entrepreneur, he's accumulated a lifetime of lessons about work/life balance, and he packaged them up in The Long-Haul Leader.

It's a set of 10 practical principles for business leaders to reclaim their time, refocus on priorities, and restore important relationships.

If you've ever felt a bit burned out as a leader, this is one you need to dive into.

Also, he's giving away $600 worth of bonus materials if you buy the book in the next 17 days.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Virtual Meetings

   (lessons from 850 keynotes)

I saw two comedy shows last weekend. Friday = the legendary Kevin Nealon, long-ago a fixture on Saturday Night Live.

Saturday = Emil Wakim, recently fired from SNL.

The surroundings had a big impact on the success of each comedian.

The first show was at a larger, fancier comedy club in Indianapolis. Clean. Modern. High ceilings. VERY wide room, with a lot of space between tables.

The second was at The Comedy Attic, in Bloomington. Low ceilings (it is an attic, after all), and is so "not clean" that they have a cloud of dust as their logo.

They PACK the crowd in like 3rd class on the Titanic.

And it's one of the leading comedy clubs in the United States.

Physical space matters SO MUCH to performance, especially comedy. Laughter is contagious, so the closer the audience is to one another, the better it works - all else being equal.

I've learned a lot about performance after ~ 850 keynote presentations, so here are 5 ways you can improve your own events, and even virtual meetings like Zoom calls.

1. Don't provide too much space

Just like in comedy clubs, speakers don't want extra space in the room. Too much space in front of the stage, extra space at the back and sides? All of it dissipates energy.

Same way with seating. I would very much prefer theater style seating to round tables, because the audience is physically much closer together (see contagion of comedy).

Virtually, it's WAY better if each participant is on their own computer, rather than the "let's all get in the conference room and have one camera on in there" alternative.

2. Audio is the most important element

Sub-standard visuals (lighting, terrible camera, et al) are problematic, but can be overcome.

Bad audio? Pack it in, it's over.

Scratchy microphone, too much echo, feedback, dog barking? All of that is MASSIVELY distracting in a live or virtual meeting.

On-stage, I always use a handheld microphone. Better audio, easier to adjust, and if you have to cough or sneeze you don't blow out the eardrums of the audience, which can happen with a lapel microphone.

In the office or at home, many folks spend money on a fancy Webcam for Zoom, when they'd be better off using the same funds on a better microphone.

3. Body language is crucial

Yes, audio is more important than visuals, but visuals DO MATTER.

It's why I insist on having cameras on in all virtual meetings. The ability to convey and receive body language cues adds so much information, much of it sub-consciously.

Research of sales negotiations found that body language significantly influences face-to-face outcomes, whereby telephone negotiations rely mostly on strength of argument.

It's not a coincidence that so many podcasters have moved to creating YouTube versions of their shows.

4. Support multiple learning styles

I'm big on screen sharing.

Not because I think meeting participants can't understand without looking at a document, but I want to make certain that people who learn better visually have an option to do so.

Same rule applies in live presentations.

When I'm making a key point, I say it verbally but accompany it with similar words on a slide.

Not because I'm reading my slides, but because some members of the audience learn better with visuals (and all people learn better multi-modally).

5. When the room is big, play it small

This is a common mistake newer speakers make, and it happens often in virtual meetings, as well.

In large rooms with a huge stage and hundreds of chairs, speakers might make their gestures and inflections BIGGER and BOLDER to "fill the space" from a performance perspective.

This backfires.

In those big rooms, many members of the audience are watching screens to see the speaker, rather than watching the speaker on the stage. This use of image magnification (IMAG) means that a lot of the audience is essentially watching television while inside a ballroom.

Thus, the physical room is big but the functional distance between the speaker and audience is tiny, due to the video closeup. So big gestures look comically large and out of place.

Assuming there is IMAG, the bigger the room, the smaller the gestures must be to feel contextually appropriate.

The exact same principle works in virtual meetings.

Sorry for the departure from my usual marketing, customer experience, and AI lessons, but I hope those five tips were useful for you.

Feedback? Follow up questions? Just reply.

And of course, if you want to see me do this stuff on YOUR stage, stroll on over to my website to put a date on hold.

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