[Perspective Series] Authentic Connections: The Key to Winning Customers With Greg Bennick

Greg Bennick is the Founder and Executive Director of One Hundred For Haiti, an international humanitarian initiative focused on rural Haiti’s development, community leadership, and human empowerment. He is also a keynote speaker, documentary producer, and author of Reclaim The Moment. Greg has delivered transformative presentations in 27 countries, spoken to audiences ranging from private groups to thousands at major corporate events, and has been recognized as a TEDx speaker. His work centers on building better teams, fostering authentic human interactions, and helping organizations and individuals reclaim focus amidst daily distractions. 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:10] Greg Bennick explains how keynote speaking brings people together and reminds them their work matters

• [3:15] The connection between creating customer experiences and delivering engaging presentations

• [5:22] Leaving ego out of the process and making the customer the hero

• [8:06] How keynote speeches and sales presentations mirror each other

• [10:05] Greg’s process for listening to an audience before and during a keynote

• [12:41] Adapting in real time when an audience’s energy doesn’t match expectations

• [16:29] A defining moment of authenticity — when silence strengthened connection

• [20:34] Overcoming fear of public speaking and embracing imperfection

• [26:25] Greg shares his views on using AI responsibly while preserving human connection

• [30:08] Key lessons from his book Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now
  

In this episode…

Many professionals struggle to connect authentically with their audiences — whether in sales, leadership, or public speaking. They focus too much on outcomes like applause, recognition, or profit, and lose sight of the people they’re meant to serve. How can leaders, speakers, and entrepreneurs shift their focus from themselves to creating genuine, lasting impact for others?

Greg Bennick, keynote speaker, author, and humanitarian, offers actionable insights on how to engage people through authenticity, empathy, and listening. He explains that effective communication starts before the first word is spoken — by observing, preparing with intention, and reading the room. Greg encourages listeners to check their egos, focus on shared human experience, and remain adaptable in every interaction. Drawing on decades of stage experience, he emphasizes that success comes from service, not self-promotion.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Greg Bennick, keynote speaker and author at gregbennick.com, about the power of authenticity in communication and leadership. Greg shares how to listen deeply to audiences, build trust through vulnerability, and adapt quickly when plans change. He also discusses public speaking fears, the role of AI in creativity, and lessons from his book Reclaim the Moment.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik!

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn

• Greg Bennick on LinkedIn | Website

• Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now by Greg Bennick

• Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With : A practical guide to giving customers what they want--when and how they want it by David Avrin

• David Avrin on LinkedIn

• "[Perspective Series] Streamlining Franchise Success and Operations With Matt Goebel" on The Customer Wins

• "[Perspective Series] Scaling With AI, Collaboration, and Team Culture With Tracy Lee" on The Customer Wins

• "[Perspective Series] Boosting B2B Relationships and Revenue Through Podcasting With John Corcoran" on The Customer Wins

• "[Perspective Series] The Art of Wonder: Solving Problems Through Magic With Dan Trommater" on The Customer Wins

Quotable Moments:

• “When I walk out on stage, my goal is to make people laugh — to bring them together.”

• “All my preparation only prepares me as far as me walking out on stage saying hello.”

• “You are not going to die. Not going to happen. It’s not going to happen.”

• “If every keynote speech is exactly the same, the audience knows they’re being cheated.”

• “We fear failure all the time, but we also fear success because success puts us in unknown.”

Action Steps:

1. Listen before you speak: Arrive early, observe the audience, and understand their energy before presenting to ensure your message resonates deeply and feels relevant to their needs.

2. Leave your ego at the door: Focus on serving the audience, not on applause or recognition, to build trust and make your message more impactful.

3. Adapt in the moment: Be ready to pivot when the audience’s response or mood shifts unexpectedly so you can stay authentic and connected.

4. Practice authenticity over perfection: Audiences value genuine communication more than flawless delivery because being real helps you connect emotionally and leave a lasting impression.

5. Reclaim focus in every interaction: Concentrate on the moment and the people in front of you to enhance engagement, clarity, and overall effectiveness in communication.

Sponsor for this episode...

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn, grow their business.

Richard Walker: 00:16

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Today is a special episode in my perspective series, where I talk to leaders from different industries and professions to inspire new ways of thinking for our audience. Today's guest is Greg Bennick, a team building keynote speaker and author. Some of my past guests in this series include Matt Goebel of Woven, Tracey Lee of This Dot Labs, and John Corcoran of Rise25. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing.

When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing forms. Instead, get Quik! using Quik!. You'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. Now, before I introduce today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Dan Trommater, magician and keynote speaker who also appeared on my show.

Go check out his website at DanTrommater.com. Cool. Today's guest, Greg Bennick, is a best selling author, a keynote thought leader, a noted rare coin expert, a TEDx speaker and speaking coach, a human humanitarian, philanthropist, and an influencer devoted to transforming the world by inspiring personal and social change. I'm so excited to talk to you, Greg. Welcome to The Customer Wins.

Greg Bennick: 01:46

Thanks so much, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. This is great.

Richard Walker: 01:50

My pleasure. So for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. So, Greg, I want to understand your world a little bit better because your customer may be something different for most people. So how do you help people?

Greg Bennick: 02:10

Well, you know, I bring people together with keynote speeches, and that's typically what I'm doing, right? It's not just the keynote speech, it's the bringing people together that matters. So when I walk out on stage at a corporate event association event, whatever it might be, I'm I'm aiming to bring people together to remind them that they matter, that the work they do is meaningful, because at the end of the day, they're going to profit more. And I don't just mean in terms of money. They're going to profit more in life and work and relationships, connection, efficiency, productivity, excitement, joy, all those good things.

If they remember that they're important, that they matter, and that they're working as an effective team. So when I walk out on stage, my goal is to make people laugh, to bring them together, to have them have a good time. But then I customize these presentations as I'm running and flying around the world to make sure that it's applicable to them. So that's really what I do, is bring groups together and remind them of where their focus needs to be.

Richard Walker: 03:03

All right. So I don't know how many of my listeners are keynote speakers or have had that chance to do keynote speaking. How do you create a customer experience? By getting on stage. Like what is what's your craft here?

Greg Bennick: 03:15

No, this is awesome. And it's a it's a great question because your listeners are thinking in terms of customer experience and or, you know, customer relationships and things like that. When I walk out on stage, it's very similar. And here's what I mean. Let's say you and I start a business today and we make widgets.

Is our goal to profit from widgets? Sure. But I would hope that our goal is to make the best widgets for people so that their widget experience is absolutely awesome. And at the end of the day, if people are fulfilled, happy, joyous about their widgets, if their lives are transformed, and if they tell all their friends and all their friends, write to us and buy our widgets by the trillions, and we profit wildly and sit on the beach drinking rum or oat milk out of coconuts or whatever we do. That's great.

Everybody wins. The experience of me walking out on stage is very similar. If you and I had our goal to be the prophet, we would forget the experience of the customer. When I walk out on stage, if my goal is to receive the applause at the end of the keynote, I have forgotten about the audience member. So the entire experience of walking out on stage is one of thinking of the needs of the audience member.

And as I say, audience members think of customers. It's one of thinking of the audience member, what their experience is, what they're going to get out of this, what they're going to remember after they've forgotten what I've said. And then the keynote is different. It's not just me glorifying myself on stage for the sake of applause, it's me giving of my time and experience for the benefit of the audience. That's an entirely different experience.

And I think it's it's relatable to the customer experience that you often talk about and that your listeners would probably find pretty readily recognizable.

Richard Walker: 04:59

So I'm going to state something that you're saying, but you didn't use these words, and you tell me if you agree or not, but you're effectively leaving your ego out of the sale, out of the process. It's not about.

Greg Bennick: 05:10

Yeah.

Richard Walker: 05:11

I mean, yeah, look, I'm not saying diminish your confidence, your skill set, your expertise, but leave your ego, your need to receive out of it and make your customer the hero in this experience.

Greg Bennick: 05:22

Yeah. And, you know, it's the same thing right now. Like I actually care about your listeners. I don't want to waste their time. They get a certain number of breaths and heartbeats in their life.

I don't want them to waste any of them on us if we're not being effective and entertaining and fun and interesting, right? But there's always going to be a degree of ego involved, okay? Psychologically, there's part of me right now that is the subject of this interview. You're not interviewing my brother in New York. You're not interviewing my mom.

You're not interviewing the guy down the street. You're interviewing me. Wow. I must be cool. I must be important.

There's that always going to be that ego. And for you as well. I've taken the time as a guest to talk to your podcast, not the XYZ podcast or the Go Climb a Tree podcast. It's your podcast, so there's a part of your ego. I hope that is stoked as a result of the conversation.

But here's what I don't do, and here's what I don't do on stage is take it further. I don't sit here and go, well, as I was saying earlier, I'm the focus of this podcast and therefore the best human being that's ever lived. Because what happens is then I'm losing the message. I don't walk out on stage and say to myself, everyone's looking at me. I'm so cool.

I'm so cool, I'm so awesome. I'm so cool. And I would hope that a business owner who is helping people or providing a service or selling a product doesn't just walk around all day thinking they're the most awesome thing in the world because they're going to forget quality control products going to break, they're going to forget customer service, they're going to forget their own team and human resources, and things are just going to fall apart bit by bit. And let's not do that. So yeah, there's always going to be a degree of ego involved.

But let's check it right. I think that humans are essentially ego driven creatures in a way. I mean, we're all self-aware and we all hopefully put ourselves.

Richard Walker: 07:00

Have to.

Greg Bennick: 07:00

Be in a position of importance. But let's not let's not prioritize that over the experience of customers and other people.

Richard Walker: 07:06

Yeah. What I love about being an entrepreneur and a founder of my company is that it's about solving the problem. I love, love, love to solve the problem. And that's not even about my ego. It's the result.

It's the result of seeing the problem solved. I mean, who likes filling out paperwork? And when you find somebody who's like, oh my gosh, I don't have to do that anymore. This is amazing. I just love that feeling of I've given value, I've done something of value, and they're receiving that value.

And I get value in return too. So I want to point out something that I've always thought of the sales process as a keynote speech. I've always thought of myself, I'm on stage. I'm maybe in stage of 1 or 4, and I've had the experience of talking to a room of 18 people on a zoom call where nobody was on camera and everybody was mute. In fact, it was before zoom.

There were no cameras, and I still felt like I'm the presenter. I have to now do this performance thing. How do you feel is that does that resonates with you? I mean, do you think everybody should think that way in the sales process?

Greg Bennick: 08:06

Well, I like the fact that you think of the sales process as a keynote speech, right? And I think of the keynote speech as a sales process, where I think we're on both sides of the same coin. I mean, I have to walk out on stage. No one knows who I am because let's let's be realistic. I could describe myself as a best selling, selling author, keynote speaker, humanitarian, philanthropist.

All the things you said are true. I mean, I would say I'm not a multi, multi, multi, multi million follower influencer, but I do influence folks. That's what I do from the stage. Right? All those things are true.

But if I walk out on stage and think about only that, I've missed the process because people don't know who I am necessarily, I'm not, you know, Taylor Swift, although I do bear a striking resemblance when I walk on stage, you know, people don't know who I am, so I have to then sell myself to the audience. And it's a soft sell, but it's a hard sell too. Meaning I have to convince them that that again, the hours, minutes and seconds that they're spending listening to me are valid uses of their time, that they're going to get something out of it and it becomes about them. But I have to explain who I am. I have to explain my background.

I have to explain the reason to connect. I have to explain all that in a way that's not just, I guess, pedantic. Is that the right word, where I would come out on stage and say hello? Who I am is what I have to say is I have to do it in a way that's fun and conversational, like the conversation we're having now. So there's a degree of sales in every keynote, and there's a degree of every of a keynote in every sale.

I like that.

Richard Walker: 09:27

I want to clarify something because I just realized this sounds even arrogant to say I'm the keynote speaker in the sales process. Like you're going to listen to me. I have all things to say. That's not what I actually mean. I mean, it's the skill set of being able to present and be public with people and not be afraid to say the ideas and share the things.

There's a whole other side to the sales which is listening. And. And if you don't spend double or triple your time listening, there's no way you can be the presenter. So I'm now curious, how do you listen to an audience when you're there for that hour or whatever you have? How do you get that feedback that informs you about what you're doing?

And is that pre-work or what?

Greg Bennick: 10:05

Yeah. You rule. This is a great question. So a couple of things. One is I don't show up one minute before the keynote.

I show up a day before the keynote, typically. And the reason I do that is to go out to dinner with people the night before to have casual conversation in the hotel lobby with people, to connect with people as they walk in the room for the keynote, to watch them as they're finding their seats to to sense the timbre of the room as people are interacting with one another. Before I walk out on stage to watch the person who introduces me and see what approach they take with the introduction that I've given them and how the people respond to. Please welcome Greg Bennick. I'm paying attention to all that stuff because people will let you know where they are and what they're at, where they're at, and what they're feeling as an audience.

So you can tell if an audience is from an organization that's had a hard time or has been going through struggles, or is having problems with human resources, or is just having a great time and doing very well and are exuberant? All of that informs the experience. I have a note on the door of the studio right over here, and it says, as I'm walking out the door, it says that preparation only prepares you as far as hello. And here's what that means. That's what the sign says on the door.

I wrote that because there was one day where I was leaving, and I had prepared the presentation so perfectly as I was walking out the door I had lost touch with wait a minute, where and whose wait the audience is, and I had to reconnect with who the audience was. I'm like, whoa, that's so backwards. All my preparation only prepares me as far as me walking out on stage saying hello, how are you? I'm Greg Bennick and the same thing is true in the sales process. You can have the best product in the world and all the best promotional material and all the best things that tell everybody how the widgets are going to change their damn life.

And at the end of the day, when you walk into the interaction with somebody, you're going to sell them that thing and you say, hello. Now we're back to your listening example. Tell me what you need. And they're like, you know what? The one thing I don't need is widgets.

Okay, well, that's going to change your sales product, you know, prospect and situation. Right. Or if they say, you know, the one thing I really do need widgets and I need yours, great. Why, you know, I need this, but I need this feature. Cool.

Let's add the feature for you. And all of a sudden you're in conversation so the audience informs you in the same way they let you know where you're at and what they need. And then it's up to me to deliver.

Richard Walker: 12:30

Oh man, I have so many thoughts on this. So first of all, you know Mike Tyson's version of your saying on your door, right. Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.

Greg Bennick: 12:41

That's amazing. It's totally true. And you know what the thing is, is that let's be realistic. There have been times I could sit here and tell you and your listeners that I'm amazing. I'm so cool.

I've done only perfect presentations my entire life. There certainly have been times over the course of my life that I walk out on stage and go, whoa, I totally planned this, and it's not what I expected. And the audience is in a different space than I expected. And I've I mean, I've had wild things happen. I mean, you name it, it has happened.

And I've walked out on stage and had to readjust and gotten hit in the mouth, essentially metaphorically, by realizing, whoa, I came in, you know, you know, ready for like, Comedy Hour here. And this is an organization that really needs in like, intense business development or personal development or human resource development ideas. And I had to pivot. I think it's important to be able to pivot. And when you've got the experience, not patting myself on the back, but when one has the experience and years and years and years behind them, you can make those pivots.

Listen to the audience. Listen to the customer and make changes accordingly to satisfy them.

Richard Walker: 13:44

I don't think it's patting yourself on the back when you've developed the skill, and you've done the work to develop that skill, and that skill is active. Listening and being light on your feet and being willing to forgo your agenda, forgo the plan that you just had. And you know what? I fully agree with what you're saying, because I can't tell you how many times somebody on my team is like, we're going to have this call with this company. They want this service.

They're super excited about it. And I ignore that. And I get on the call. I'm like, what? Why are we having this call today?

What can we help you with? And they want the other service or a different problem. I've even been told, well, we just want to keep our paper. We don't want to go to digital forms. I'm like, why are we talking?

Right. But I want to share a story with you, Greg, about public speaking that I had.

Greg Bennick: 14:25

Great. Please.

Richard Walker: 14:26

One of the things I identified early on, I my dream when I was 18 years old was to be a fortune 500 CEO. And I said, what do they all have in common? What skills and traits do they have that I should develop? And one of the things I identified is public speaking. And how many fortune 500 CEOs have you seen get on stage, talk supernaturally like like it's all memorized or off the cuff and it's perfect.

They're just flowing and it's great. And like, how are they so prepared? So I started developing skills around that. And at one point this is like 15, 18 years ago now. I was invited to my alma mater, USC, to speak at a career day, an audience of 200 plus.

They were going to give me, I think, 20 minutes to talk just about my journey of graduating and becoming an entrepreneur, building my company, etc. I decided to do zero preparation, right? I decided to show up and see what happens. And the moment they called my name, I was sitting at a table like everybody else with lunch. They called my name to get on stage. I still had no idea what I was going to say when I got on stage.

Greg Bennick: 15:27

Awesome, awesome.

Richard Walker: 15:29

So I feel like what you were saying, I got up there and said, hey, I'm Rich Walker, and that was all the preparation I had And part of the story is I felt like, well, I know my story. I can just tell my story. Who doesn't? Who, who needs to prepare for their own story? So I'll just go do that.

Halfway through, I completely lost my train of thought, and I mean 100% blank mind. And I don't know where I was going to go next. And I just trusted. I stopped and I sat there in silence. I think 20 or 30s, I don't know how long because it felt like 2.

Greg Bennick: 16:00

Or 3, probably 2 or 3 seconds. But yeah.

Richard Walker: 16:02

Probably. But enough for the entire room noise to come to nothing. Awesome. And everybody looked at me and then boom, it came back to me because I stopped thinking. I waited and it came back to me and we kept going on.

That was a defining moment for me because so many people came up and they're like, rich, I don't care who the keynote was. You were the best speaker today. You had us in rapture. It was such an amazing experience that I just didn't know I was going to learn. Have you had those moments yourself?

Greg Bennick: 16:29

Absolutely. So here's what I love about your example. I love the honesty and authenticity of not knowing what you're going to say when you walk out on stage. That said, I know what I'm going to say when I walk on stage to a certain degree. And I love the the energy and feeling and idea that you brought to that speech.

And I do bring that to mind so that every speech is not exactly the same. If every keynote speech is exactly the same, the audience knows they're being cheated because they're not being seen. They're not being heard. And as you've been talking about, they're not being listened to. Okay.

So check it out. So I was on stage in front of a thousand people at an event in the Midwest. This was a big event, like the governor of the state was on the same bill. Meaning it was me, the governor and other people. Big event, big, you know, Imax screens the whole deal, right?

And I'm on stage. And my keynote for this particular event was scripted at least, except where it was bullet pointed that I could just, you know, kind of go freeform. But there were some sections that were scripted and on teleprompter 100 yards away in the audience, on a giant screen, in the audience. And I get up on stage and that's not how I work. I don't read off of scripts.

And for listeners, just so listeners know, you and I have prepared none of our conversation today. We had a pre-call. We had a pre-call that was like, oh, hey, hey, wow, you're cool, you're cool. Okay, let's do a podcast. And here we are.

Right? These are the best types of conversations where we bring our own expertise to the situation. And like you did in your moment, you were just honest and real. That's what we're doing. I'm on stage in front of a thousand people.

I'm reading off the teleprompter, and all of a sudden the teleprompter starts spinning. And when I say spinning, imagine the opening credits of Star Wars. And instead of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it says that and everything else in one second spins. And I'm just I don't know what to do. So what I did was I paused, and that tells the teleprompter person get it together.

And they brought it back to the point they thought I was, you know, where I was and it wasn't. And I just picked it up from there and the teleprompter starts spinning again. And I started laughing. And I'm on stage in front of a thousand people looking at me. And I stopped because the audience could tell that I was struggling with the teleprompter.

Okay, I'm not reading off a teleprompter now. Your audience knows that. But if I was, they'd be able to tell, especially if something went wrong. So I stopped, I stopped speaking, and I looked at the audience, and I looked this way, and I said to them, I am right here with you right now. And I ignored the teleprompter from that point forward.

And I just talked to them, and I told them what I remembered we'd covered on the teleprompter. I just, I but speaking from the heart, I am here with you right now. So let's talk about and I just went from there. It was awesome. It was so real and so genuine.

The room completely changed everyone. I mean, you want to hear an amazing sound? A thousand people breathing a sigh of relief. It was awesome. So yeah, I've had those experiences.

It's happened. I could probably think of some other ones too, but that was a great example of getting real, getting in the moment, not relying on what you've prepared, and the experience of being on stage. For literally 40 years of my life. I did my first presentations when I was a kid, came through, and all of a sudden I could just say, as you did, pause and then just talk and have everyone relate. Like in your example, everyone's saying that was you're the best keynote speaker, and what you did was sit there for probably two seconds that felt like two years and were terrified and then just spoke.

That's exactly right with authenticity. Yeah. Love it.

Richard Walker: 20:11

You know, it's funny. I mean, you know, public speaking is super high on the list of fears, right? Divorce, death, public speaking. Yeah.

Greg Bennick: 20:19

Absolutely. Yeah.

Richard Walker: 20:21

What you're talking about when I said I forgot what I was going to say and it's that terrifying moment. That is why people don't want to public speak. It's one of the main reasons. That's the like death. Oh my gosh, I'll die of that.

And you and I are talking about is one of the best things that ever happened to us.

Greg Bennick: 20:34

Yeah, it was awesome. Because you know what it is. You know, it's not going to happen when you're public speaking. And this is this is not I'm putting on my public speaking coach hat. Here's what's not going to happen.

You are not going to die. Not going to happen. It's not going to happen. You know, you mentioned before, isn't it amazing when CEOs get up on stage and they speak like they've done this a million times? You know what a lot of CEOs have come to me saying I don't know what I'm doing.

Can you help me with with can you coach me? Can you coach me as a speaker? Absolutely. And in fact, it's true of lawyers who get into law not because they want to speak in front of a courtroom, but because they want to help people and uphold the law. And they have come to me and said, I need some help in coaching around my speaking, because speaking is terrifying.

CEOs, lawyers, you name it, people are afraid to speak because they feel like they're going to be judged or metaphorically that they're going to die. Literally they're not. And you, dear listeners, are also not going to die. If I had stood there with the teleprompter spinning in front of a thousand people and just looked around the room for 30s, that would have been a massive eternity. Like dinosaurs roaming the earth up till like Costco opening eternity.

Okay. And instead, realistically, 30s, it's a long time, but it's not an eternity. And I wouldn't have died. And no one has died just from speaking from the fear of it. I don't have any evidence that that's ever happened.

So given that that has never happened, what's what's the second worst thing that could happen on stage? Realistically, you'll feel embarrassed. I get it, I get it, you'll feel afraid. I get it. There's a chapter in my book, leap Into the dark, and it's about leaping into the dark to embrace the possibility of success.

And I'll just give you this little nugget here. We can talk about the book or not as we choose. But, you know, we fear failure all the time, but we also fear success because success puts us in a position of unknown, right? We don't know what will happen to us if we succeed and therefore are catapulted into a new space. So oftentimes, we're afraid to leap into the dark because we fear success as much as we fear or more than we fear failure.

Same is true on stage in front of an audience. Like what happens if I open my mouth and succeed? Then what happens? What what? What do I say next?

Just easy. Be authentic. The audience is there because they want to hear what you have to say, and they don't mind the pauses, and they relate to you feeling awkward because they have often felt it too. So as long as we keep those connections in our mind intact with our audience and listen to them and listen to ourselves and keep our authenticity rolling along, we're in good shape.

Richard Walker: 23:13

So I was really fortunate because going to USC in Southern California next to Hollywood, of course, in one of my classes, which was resume building and public speaking. We had to record ourselves on video and things like that. It was all about presentation and communication. My teacher was an acting coach, and one of the things she told us about being on stage that I still take to this day is if you're asked to be on stage, it's because they want to know your expertise, right? So one of the problems that we all have is the imposter syndrome of I'm not the smartest about this.

I don't know more than this than other people. Or what if there's somebody in the audience who knows more than I do that kind of stuff, right? Forget it. You're the one on stage. You are the expert at that moment, and you get to be you.

But I bring this all back to the experience that you're giving to your customer, because I truly believe that when you are being honest, when you're being transparent about who you are and what you're doing, and you take on that role of, I am the expert at what I do. That's why we're talking, and I'm going to help solve the problem. You give them a better experience in the process of sales or public speaking like you're doing.

Greg Bennick: 24:17

Yeah. And let me let me give a gift to your listeners. You don't even need to think of yourself as the expert, but rather that you have expertise in the thing you're speaking about. And that's that's a gift. Because if I walk out on stage in front of the American Society of Neurosurgeons, I don't know if that's an organization.

If it is, I'd love to come speak at your event. When when I walk out on stage in front of the American Society of Neurosurgeons, if I think of myself as the expert in focus and detail, I'll probably be wrong, because I think neurosurgeons know more about focus than me. But if I think of myself as expertise, as having expertise, because, for example, I've been a juggler on a professional level for 40 years, well, all of a sudden the metaphor of juggling becomes a metaphor for focus. Because which ball are we watching? You know, there's a chapter in my book, Keep Your Eyes on the knife.

If you're juggling two beanbags and a knife, where are you going? To keep your focus. And I hope it's going to be on the knife. Same thing when a neurosurgeon is neurosurgeon ING. New word alert.

They have to keep their focus and do away with all of the other things that might take away their excrutiatingly, exacting expertise or expert level approach to that surgery. They can't be thinking about other things. Well, maybe my juggling becomes a metaphor for that. I have expertise in it, and it eases the burden on me of having to present perform as an expert. Rather, I've got expertise in this.

Let's share some ideas and then it becomes a more authentic conversation. And again, authenticity is is everything in these interactions.

Richard Walker: 25:55

Thank you Greg. That's an excellent shift. Add es to the end of expert expertise. Because you're right. That's really what it's about.

I don't I don't claim to be the expert of whatever. It's I have that expertise I love that. Thank you.

Greg Bennick: 26:08

Good.

Richard Walker: 26:08

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to shift the conversation because in all of these podcasts, one of my favorite topics is artificial intelligence. So how is artificial intelligence impacting your life? Are you letting it write your presentations?

Greg Bennick: 26:25

I never once thought about it. Which? Which tells us that the answer is no, right? But that would be pretty awesome if I just sat back and let AI do everything. Here's the thing.

Lots of people in the speaking world are using AI, and you can tell AI is not yet what it will be, obviously. And you can just tell. You can tell when people are using it for their posts. You could tell it when people are using it for their presentations. You can tell when people are using it for their handouts, for their their PowerPoint slides and all that.

I choose to do a lot of that stuff myself. Now, the places that I do use AI are, you know, we talked about it very briefly before we started recording today, things like, you know, taking video or taking audio and working with it and seeing, you know, where, where in this file where I'm talking for an hour and a half on stage. Where did I mention authenticity? Where did I allude to the idea of authenticity? Where did authenticity and focus and team building Come up here.

Let's let's parse that out. Those those are really effective ways that I use AI. But in terms of writing new material, it's all me. And it's from the heart and it's from a place of sincerity and experience. I think that AI certainly has its place.

I don't want to sound like a Luddite, I just there's just a look and a feel to this stuff. And you can tell my my girlfriend is a professor. And, you know, we've often talked, you know, I've often asked her, can you tell if a student's using AI? And she's like, oh yeah. Oh yeah.

When when the student who's writing, you know, pretty rudimentary out of pretty rudimentary level all semester long suddenly comes back with a, you know, a term paper on Western philosophy and the way that Heidegger and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were besties, you know, and all of a sudden you start thinking, wait a minute, hold on. And you could tell the same thing when people's posts and their writing doesn't match who you know them to authentically be. There's just a disconnect that I don't love. But yeah, I don't. I don't fear it.

Like, you know, some people talk about it like, you know, it's awful. I think it's great. It just needs to be used as a tool effectively.

Richard Walker: 28:18

Yeah. Because I think your world is about authentic human connection. Right. I mean, that's what you're helping people get is connection with each other. Yeah.

It's bonding etc.. And for you to to discard that for yourself and how you present would be, I mean, just totally counterproductive.

Greg Bennick: 28:37

Yeah. It wouldn't.

Richard Walker: 28:38

Feel right. No. I recently somebody was having a dialogue with me and trying. They really want to earn my business to be an expert in my company, etc.. And I finally realized they're taking my email, throwing it to ChatGPT and saying, how would I answer this?

And writing this really long response. And it wasn't it didn't pay attention until the third email because my thought was, why am I getting such long emails about this? And the second I'm like, oh my gosh, the emojis, the em dash like the obvious signs are there. And you know what happened? My opinion of this person went way down real fast.

Greg Bennick: 29:15

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what? Even as AI gets better, we're always going to appreciate human interaction, even as we use it more effectively and more astutely and more exactingly. We're always going to appreciate human interaction and that feel, that touch, that connection, that authenticity that we're talking about. It's always going to be true.

I mean, humans are social creatures. We need we need interaction and the interaction with the with the with the, you know, AI and whatnot. And digital interfacing is fine. Great. It's an effective tool, but it's part of the experience of networking and connecting.

It's not it's not going to replace it entirely. It's not going to be the matrix, or at least I hope not. If it is, you know, hopefully we'll be long shuffled off this mortal coil by the time it is, and then other people can deal with it.

Richard Walker: 30:01

I haven't done a good enough job in the show to bring your book out to life. What's it called? What's it about? Because I want everybody to hear about this.

Greg Bennick: 30:08

You're awesome, I appreciate it. My book is called Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now. And it talks about now, this moment, and what can we do to build this moment now so that we're building the future that we want? And it talks about ways to do away with distractions as much as possible, but not in the sense of like eliminate distractions, only singularly focus on this thing. But rather it talks about creating possibility that when we do things like believe in the possibility of kindness, meaning when we believe in the potential of the person across from us to do good business, to have good relationship, to to connect effectively with us, that all of a sudden we have possibilities created with that interaction that wouldn't be there before.

That's a way to build a better now is to for me to believe that you and I will have a productive and amazing conversation, rather than, from the outset, me going, oh, okay, this guy's going to be a drain on my time. Possibilities are destroyed in that moment. So things like that, things like engage with laughter as a as a technique. And not to forget that amidst the weight of the world that we need to be laughing and have our teams laughing and connected. And then, you know, like I mentioned, keep your eyes on the knife.

Right. That juggling metaphor of where is our focus supposed to be right now? Where is it most effective if it remains so? There's strategies all throughout that run the line between soft and hard skill, and I give examples all throughout scientifically based and and rooted in experience. And then pepper the entire book with fun stories from my life and experience running around the world and interacting with people to get people to a point where they feel as though their moment is more better prepared to build the future that they want.

So Reclaim the Moment. Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now. And of course, people can find a link at Greg Comm as to where you could buy that and read more about it, but it's available at your online booksellers and and any bookstore on the planet can order it. I can't promise that they will have it, but it's most definitely orderable from any bookstore.

Richard Walker: 32:01

I love the foundational thing you said of believing in an intention, essentially, and I remember a long time ago, an old girlfriend of mine asked me, she noticed this about me. She's like, why do you smile at every stranger on the street? And I looked at him like, what if I did the opposite? Scowl at the person. What kind of effect would I have?

The smile not may not be received. I may not get a smile back, but at least I'm not getting the opposite.

Greg Bennick: 32:27

That's true. And I mean. And it's true. And when you when you talk to people, you create possibilities. So think about it that way.

I mean, we're talking about the book, but think about it this way, right. My, my again, my girlfriend Stephanie, she's often saying to me, you literally talk to everybody. Like, is there anybody that you don't talk to? You talk to people all day long. To the point of exhaustion.

Sometimes you're always connecting with people. And it's true because there's possibilities in all of these interactions. I mean, think about it. I have a conversation with amazing keynote speaker and magician Dan Trompeter, and all of a sudden, you and I are talking and having a great conversation, and then other people will have conversations as a result. All because I was sitting in Los Angeles and had a conversation with Dan.

When we have connections with people, genuine connections and smile at people on the street. You never know what possibilities are going to develop from there. So that's ultimately what the book is about. Same idea.

Richard Walker: 33:14

I love it, I love it, and unfortunately I gotta start wrapping this up. So before I get to my last question, what's the best way for people to find and connect with you?

Greg Bennick: 33:21

GregBennick.com I would love to hear from anybody. Anytime.

Richard Walker: 33:28

Awesome, awesome. All right. I get to talk about one of my favorite topics now. So who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role?

Greg Bennick: 33:37

Okay. So I'm going to give you can I give you three answers three people please. Okay. Please. Number one, in terms of business, there's a keynote speaker on customer experience named David Avron.

And David is a dear friend and has been a coach mentor, friend and is incredible at what he does. Absolutely incredible. He has a book called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With, which is a tremendous book that just came out this last year. But what David's influence on me has been as a leader is to and as and as a business person is to take the approach in business that you are in service and that you are not just doing cookie cutter marketing to people in order to achieve what you want to achieve. The idea that we are customizing our pitch, the idea that we are reaching out to people because we actually want to connect with them, the idea that in the business that I'm in, that the business isn't the gig itself, it's the getting of the gig, and you need to connect with people to do that in a genuine way.

Massively influential David Avrin I highly recommend people look him up. Second person is a guy named John Wilson. John Wilson is the genius and most smartest person you've never heard of. Basically not ever heard of, but never heard of. John was my professor of theater history and performance theory at in college, and his influence on me has been profound because he's the one that instilled in me the idea of the relationship with the audience and what the performer is doing on stage, what the speaker is doing on stage, and that the deepest part of the speaker or presenters bow at the end is reserved for the audience, not taken for themself.

Meaning I do not take the deepest part of my bow as celebration of me. The deepest part of my bow is the deepest point of reverence for the audience, for giving of their time. John Wilson profound intellect and an amazing influence. And the last person is my mom, who's amazing. My mom was a speaker for many, many years.

She's still with us on the earth, and she was a speaker for many, many years, speaking about exercising as we age. And she would speak in nursing homes and hospitals and small events in on the East coast. And the first time I saw her speak, she walks into the room and, you know, she's, you know, this short in stature, physically human, just saying hi and waving at people in the audience. And when they introduced her and she opened her mouth to a room of 200 people as I remember it and said, if you don't exercise and she's looking at them like, with this intensity, as you age, they will read about you in the paper when they find you at the bottom of the stairs. Okay.

She this is her opening line. I thought, oh my gosh, like, who is this person? It's my mom. She was so intense as a speaker, so powerful, so connected, so authentic, and so always willing to share and give and highly influential in terms of me as a speaker, leader, you know, business person in the way that I connect with people on stage. So David Avrin, John Wilson and my mom are.

Richard Walker: 36:39

I love all this. I love all this. I have to make one comment. The bowing to the audience at the end. So many speakers run off while the applause is happening.

And what I learned about that was you have just spent the last 45 minutes, hour or whatever giving to the audience, and you're not willing to To receive your bowel is your receiving their energy back to you and you're not willing to receive. That's a slap in the face to the audience to run off the stage.

Greg Bennick: 37:07

Yeah, and I love I love the fact that you brought that up. Because if we think about it in this moment, the applause is them saying, I cannot say to you, Greg, I appreciate you. I can't say to you, Rich, I appreciate you because we're not in actual verbal conversation right now. You're on stage 50ft away from me. What I can do is smack my hands together as my half of this conversation.

And you're absolutely right that the speaker, the presenter, needs to be there to receive that communication. That's really, really cool. So thanks for bringing that up.

Richard Walker: 37:40

Oh, and it's so hard. You're like, oh, I'm done. I can run off stage now.

Greg Bennick: 37:44

Yeah, but you have to you have to stay. Because the response in conversation is that, I mean, if you say to me, Greg, thanks so much for being here today, I'm like, yeah, cool. See you later. Bye. And I'm out of here.

That's way different than saying, hey, thanks. I really appreciate it, Rich. I really, really do. And that's exactly that moment. You're right, with the speaker on stage and receiving applause.

Richard Walker: 38:02

Oh, man, I could keep going. I had other remarks too, but I can't. So I gotta wrap this up. Let me give a big thank you to Greg Bennick, keynote speaker and author, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Greg's website at GregBennick.com.

and don't forget to check out Quik! at QuickForms.Com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Greg, thank you so much for joining me today.

Greg Bennick: 38:33

Thank you. This has been wonderful. I really appreciate it and I look forward to hearing from your listeners.

Outro: 38:39

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