As a professional speaker, I get to work with meeting planners. As someone who has created and executed many conferences myself, I have a great deal of respect for these unsung heroes from companies and associations. So, I try to go out of my way to assist them in any way possible. I am always amazed at the stories of the difficulties of working with speakers. We have the greatest job in the world and the meeting planners are our customers. Not the audience, the meeting planners.
I was scheduled to give the opening keynote at an Emerging Leaders conference for Western Independent Bankers (WIB). The session was to be held in an amphitheater, the type you see on college campuses for lectures. I had already completed my sound check and there was about 40 minutes before the start of the meeting. The A/V equipment and sound technicians were set up on the front row on the far left and I took a seat in the row behind. I was just going over my notes and doing some last minute memorization to make sure I was going to remember the names of some attendees that I had interviewed in advance of the conference (channeling my friend and amazing speaker Joe Calloway …).
While not specifically listening, I couldn’t help but overhear WIB’s Sr. VP Ray Smith talking to the audio tech about an announcement file that they were going to play. It was a standard, “The program will start in 5 minutes, silence your phones …” type of message. But, since they created it for their last program in Hawaii, it said, “Mahalo” at the end. Ray was trying to get the audio tech to time killing the sound on the track before that last word played on the track, but it was so close to the spoken words, that there was always an audible “Mm” before the sound would get cut.
Now I have some expertise in audio sound. I have a recording studio in my house and I actually know how to run digital audio software to do full audio tracking. And I have software on my Macbook that allows me to edit audio files on the fly. I leaned forward and told Ray that if he could send me that file, I would trim the unneeded Mahalo and give him the file back. He seemed surprised and said, “Can you?”
Sure thing. I got the file on a jump drive and in less than 5 minutes, I handed Ray back his jumpdrive. He loaded the new file and tested it. Sure enough it played just exactly the announcement that Ray wanted. He thanked me and we went on with the program.
This is an example of when an opportunity presents itself and you have the requisite talent, skill or technology to solve a problem, you should do so. Especially if it takes only a few minutes. Make yourself someone who exceeds expectations. You still have to be great at your job; if I had laid an egg on the platform that day, my fixing the audio file will not get me invited back, but in the future, if they are trying to decide on whether to hire me or another speaker, Ray will likely remember that going the extra mile and maybe it will throw the engagement my way. But, even if it doesn’t, it is the right thing to do and will pay off over time. What can you do this week to provide that extra value for your company or client?