Keith Harwood has spent his career perfectly matching speaking talent to events audiences – a global pandemic shutting down the live events industry certainly hasn’t stopped that. In this episode, we take a behind-the-scenes look at how Keith and his business, Inspire Speakers have adapted to survive in these challenging times.

In our chat with Keith (and in the discussion amongst our hosts), we cover a lot of ground; from understanding what Keith means when he says business fit through to the lessons learned from putting on virtual events – there are some real nuggets of wisdom in this episode.

Keith inadvertently drops some truth bombs about how we’re delivering virtual events. Hint, it’s all about the audience experience and interactivity. Keith’s perspective adds weight to our chats with previous guests including Alex Daoust in Episode 5 and Bonus Episode 2 with Maz Speaks. 

Also in this episode, we consider some questions around pricing in a crisis. Should the price of our services drop because most events are currently virtual? Should you reduce your rates to attract the few clients who are spending on events right now? What impact could these decisions now have on your future? This is a hot topic for the industry and one that we’ll be grappling with over the next few years.

Given all of this our regular wellness segment in this episode is focussed on how we can better negotiate. In Keep Calm and Negotiate, Steve Angel takes us through effective pointers on what to remember when approaching a negotiation. He helps us to consider how clarity of intention and our emotional state impacts on the process. We can tell you now that anger doesn’t help!

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Back to the Future of Events is produced and hosted by Steven Angel, Paul Boustani and Chad Davis. The podcast is also edited by Paul Boustani.  Our podcast artwork is by Rosa Morgan, and all of our music is by Adam Bozetto.