episode 42 – craig price interview...

Copyright=TomCrowl–SavvyEventPodcast.com

EPISODE 42 – Craig Price

Interview Transcript

Show notes available at: http://savvyeventpodcast.com/42


Tom: Folks, I'm on the line with Craig Price. Craig, how are you today? Craig: Doing great. How are you sir? Tom: I'm doing wonderful. I appreciate you taking the time to sit and talk with me today. Craig: Oh, not a problem. Always here for you. Tom: Our audience is event planners and you sir, are a speaker. I was hoping you'd start out by telling us a little bit about your background, and how you evolved into the event industry? Craig: Well, I started off like a lot of speakers, not doing anything speaker related. I did stand up for years and years, and one of my former colleagues, another comedian, started a training company, and because he had some business savvy. Because you'll notice a lot of comedians are not actual full-time comedians anymore. Very few, it's almost like baseball. Only a small percentage make it to the big leagues, and at some point, you actually have to go find a job. So, you know, you gotta eat, it's weird, it's people have to eat, you got to sleep, that's not outside. So he started this training company and hired me along, and then he started doing keynotes and thought, "Hey, you'd be good at this," and I started doing some keynotes. And next thing you know, I'm full-time, that's all I do is speak for a living. I'm a professional speaker, author, I've written a book, I've got, you know do podcasting, so that's been about the last eight or nine years, I just exclusively speaking. Tom: So when you were doing comedy, and I gotta ask this folks, because I'm a comedian, a ventriloquist, what kind of venues did you work? Were you traveling around any comedy clubs, or were you in a local area or what? Craig: Yeah, local. regional. It was based out of Houston. And I did all the clubs here, and pretty much all the clubs in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, but then you also do horrible dive bars, you do church basements, you know, wherever people will pay you to show up, you do. I did a super bowl party one time, which was awful, because nobody wants to see you when Beyonce is on the screen, I mean, you know, it's like, you're the half-time entertainment? You're not going to cut a CBS well-produced segment, half-time show. So it was kind of a odd thing they did, but I took that money and ran. But yeah, I've done, and even today, you're hired by associations and corporations, and


they go to event rooms and event places, and some of them range from glorious palaces, there's a place in New Jersey that looks like that Saddam Hussein lived there one time, and it's really just a place where people get married and have meetings. And then I've been into tiny horrible little places that major associations just rented out, and they didn't realize, "Oh, we went on site, we got a great deal but then as it evolves throughout the event, we realized this was a horrible, horrible mistake." Tom: Well, that's actually funny, because I usually go to this later in the interview, but let's talk about some of these negative event experiences. What would you say was, yeah and don't call out names obviously, we don't want to do that, but... Craig: I certainly don't. Tom: ...was there ever, yeah, really. Was there ever an event that you walked into that, you just were like, "What am I doing here?" or how, you know, "I never want this to happen again." Craig: Well, I would say the worst one is actually one of my favorite clients, and like I said I won't talk about who they are, but one year their venue they picked burned down. I wasn't there for that particular thing, so it wasn't my fault. But it burned down, and it was like two weeks before their conference. And so that year, they had to cancel their whole conference. And that particular venue, this hotel's resort, got back on its feet, fixed everything, and the next year, gave them a huge, huge discount. I feel like Donald Trump, "A huge discount." It was so overwhelmingly huge a discount that they had to take it. It was one of those things where it's like, "Well, you know, we have an obligation to our staff and to our associated members that, to save some money, and this sounds like it's a great, great deal." So we get in there. They hired me for that particular year, so I go in and as I start walking in, you can still smell barbecue. You can still smell smoke, because they hadn't quite finished in time as they had promised. So you're going through construction, you're pulling away plastic that's keeping entire wings separate from the lobby. And I go to my room, and everything's fine in the room, and I wake up the next morning getting ready to go to speak because I had to speak at the beginning of their conference, and at the end of their conference. So I go downstairs for the opening keynote, and I notice there's a influx, slowly trickling for the first couple of hours as I mingle downstairs from...that there's a lot of teenage girls


running around. I mean, like a lot. It [inaudible 00:04:44] to be like 60 or 70 clogging the halls, and so I go do the keynote. We go do our events. We start to get going. Day 2 comes along, and now the entire venue is overrun with teenage girls. There is apparently a dance competition of some sort going on that weekend. So now, you're jumping over kids in the hall. They're swinging from the roofs, that's like all of a sudden, they let loose monkeys into the place. Fifteen, sixteen year old kids, unattended, go crazy. So Saturday morning comes along, I'm closing the session out. They had moved my client's room into a smaller room. So now all of a sudden, we're crammed into a room, because they needed the space, because right next door the competition was going on. It gets worse. So you can, so every three or four minutes, there's this rehearsal. The first half of my presentation, you can hear music every five minutes. It's all dance music, dan, dan, dan, boom dah boom dah dah dah, for, very loudly for coming through the wall, for the, every five minutes as they rotate kids along. But the worst part was as I was speaking, they were dancing. And they weren't dancing on a real stage, they were dancing on risers that were pushed up against an air wall. So every four and a half minutes, once the music started kicking in, you start to feel and hear a rumble like an earthquake, like you were...and then it get rhythmic and it was like, almost like Hitler youth marches, like joom, joom, joom, as they're jumping on the stage and doing their stuff, it was so loud and overwhelming that I had to, obviously I had to incorporate it into my keynote, because there's nothing you can do. You can't ignore it. Nobody could ignore it. But it was just overwhelmingly noise, it was just, you couldn't get through it and actually retain information, because it was just so loud and so weird. But an hour and a half later, we got through it. They've hired me back several times, mostly because of that. I think they feel guilty, they're like, "He did such a good job despite all the horrible stuff that when we bring him to a nice venue, he really does a great job." Tom: I can really relate to some of the stuff you were just talking about there. And so that should be a lesson to anybody who plans events. Find out what else is going on in the venue around you. Craig: Absolutely, and don't wait until you get there as you check in, going, "So, what's going on here this weekend?" and take a look on the note board.


You want to talk to your sales person at the hotel and say, "What is going to be going on that weekend? Give me updates when something closes, let me know, so I can be aware. So we can at least move the, we can plan ahead." They had moved us to a different room that was already booked for a wedding, but they could have juggled some stuff around, because I don't really think that wedding was happening at eight o'clock in the morning. We could have been a lot less noisy. It would have been a much more tolerable experience. But it was fun, as far as you get to riff off stuff, you get to go with the flow, you get to say things that you wouldn't, just because who has to deal with a hurricane of noise every five minutes? Yeah, so all of a sudden, you don't have to worry about hitting every note, you don't have to worry about sticking to the script. You can relax a little bit, because expectations have dropped immensely as soon as that happens the third time, people are like, "Oh, crap." Then you can just kind of win the crowd over by just doing a great job. Tom: Now, Craig getting back to your subjects, and I appreciate you sharing that, because that was a lesson right there for everybody. You have several realist's guides. Talk to me about what a realist guide is, what goes into it, what's the criteria? Craig: Well, having suffered through a lot of keynote speeches myself before I became a speaker, I did actually have a day job when I was doing standup, I was an IT manager, and so they would send me to a lot of conferences, and having suffered through really bad speakers and some really great speakers, I started to see patterns. And I noticed that a lot of times, they always talked about best case scenarios in their motivational speeches. They were talking about how you can make it to this and they were really talked about what was going on. They talked to you about either the greatest thing that would happen, or the worst possible outcomes, and then where I lived wasn't there. So whatever they were talking about didn't make sense to me, because my life isn't best case scenarios. I don't think anybody's life is best case scenarios. So to talk about that for an hour, about the best case scenarios is like, well you're just living in a fantasy world. And then of course, the only thing they could compare it to is the worst possible things that would never happen, and I wanted to live in that space in the middle where everyday folks have to deal with things. And so a realist guide is what really happens, how to actually handle things, without all the fluff, without all the magic. It's just about hey, and not magic in a bad way, I know you're a magician Tom, I don't want to... Tom: Actually, I used to be a magician. Now I am a ventriloquist.


Craig: Oh, so you're a reformed magician. Tom: Yes. I went from magician to what some people consider the bottom of the entertainment scale, but it's actually... Craig: You're a juggler? Tom: No. But some people think ventriloquist is pretty darn low. And then they remember, oh hey, you know Jeff Dunham is right now the most popular comedian in the world, and you got Terry Fator and Paul Zerdin, both who won America's Got Talent. So it's looking up for me. Craig: Yeah, but I think, small doses. I think, they really, those are the three guys in the world. Tom: Well, I usually tell people when I walk on stage. I say, you know, I'm considered one of the top ten ventriloquists in the world, but when you stop to consider there's only eight of us, you could pick it up tomorrow and be with me. Craig: There you go. All's you have to make sure is you don't have a really weird like old ruffy look up dummy. I hate to call them "dummies," because they're your partner. But you know, usually, you can tell a good quality ventriloquist by how well they take care of their partner. Tom: Yes. Craig: So if they've got grease stains and they've got salsa stains on them, you know like, "Oh, well this guy really is not going to be that good." Tom: Absolutely love that, and yeah, I see a lot of bad ventriloquists. But let's not get into that! Let's get back to our audience. Craig: Yeah, but a realist guide like I said, I feel is more about actual things you can work with, versus the magical one-time has-to-go perfect situation. So I deal in the realm of reality, versus what could be the best thing happening. Tom: Okay. Now one of the things that really stood out to me is you have the realist guide on negativity and you're known as a negative guy. Craig: Yeah, no I have no problem with that, and I think a lot of people are afraid of the word "negative." I think a lot of people are negative folks, but that doesn't mean they're mean, or awful, or miserable, or angry, or curmudgeonly.


Negative is just how people see certain things, and they can still be sweet, nice, caring folks. So I think that word, "negative," has a negative connotation. But I try to embrace it, because that's what it is. I ran into a guy, he's like, "Oh, it's not problems, they're just challenges." No, no. Video games have challenges, the crossword puzzle's a challenge. I have problems. And I don't mind saying I have problems, because problems get solved. And I need to solve the problems, and if I don't face them to what they are, and it's try to make them feel better, to me, as a person, and I know a lot of people feel this way. It just doesn't...it sounds hokey. I would rather deal with it straight on and call it what it is, and it's negativity, and like I said, not, negativity can be very, very useful, and it can come from people who are very, very sweet and pleasant. Tom: Yeah, I absolutely love that, because I have problems myself, and I'm sure we all do. I just love the way you phrase that. One of the headlines on your site is, and it starts out with the word "is," "is negative thinking causing problems for your team? It may be because you're not using all that negative thinking to your advantage." Now advantage is not a word that I've ever considered when relating to negativity. So talk to us a little bit about this. Craig: So we just talked about how people change the word, and reframe things to make it sound better. So if I had said, "How can you use all that critical thinking?" All of a sudden, "Oh, well that sounds pretty good, because thinking is critical, right?" Yeah, okay. Well, negative thinking is just how people see events and see the world. So if they're looking for issues, they can often prevent issues from happening. So if your team, usually the negative stuff from a team is because no one's listening to them. They have concerns, they have, sometimes valid, sometimes not. They have concerns, they have questions, they have issues they want to deal with, and nobody's really either taking them seriously, or listening to them. So they're really saying, "Hey, look, this is a big problem," and people are going, "Oh, that's just Dave, he's negative." And then what happens is Dave is right, and things go badly, and so they still don't want to hear that. It's in this corporate culture, we've had a hundred years of Norman Vincent Peale's "Power of Positive Thinking," and it's kind of seeped into the corporate world. It's getting a little better. But people are not, they can't be afraid to look at problems in advance. I think people are too reactive to problems, and not proactive. And so what I tell them is, I try to show, how do we can look at someone's, if Dave always looks at the


downside of things, how can we use that, instead of trying to change him, because you're not going to change Dave. You cannot change a person. You can only sit them in a situation where they can excel in what they do. Tom: Now, I love that. You can't change people. So how do we embrace that negativity? How do we use it? Craig: You gotta identify it first. Is it coming from good intentions? Because I always tell people to focus on personality versus attitude, because attitude can change with a phone call, it can change with a whim, it's just a matter of like, he can be a super go-getter and then if something happens, a phone call, someone's mom dies, or they're having financial problems, their attitude's going to change. But their personality is pretty much fixed by the time you're 13 years old. So if you have kids, you've probably already screwed them up. But, they're locked into their personalities, but a negative person, when their personality sets in, they will look at the downside of stuff. But that doesn't mean they're going to be crippled by it. They can still have a very positive attitude and just look at things a different way, it's like, "Oh, this is going to be a problem, I need to work harder to make sure it doesn't happen." That's how a lot of the manifesting can come out of that. And I think a lot of people who have, like I said, have put negativity in a bad spot, where if they hear a whiff of it, and all of a sudden, "They're not a team player," and it's exactly the exact opposite. They're actually trying to help the team as best they can, they may not be communicating it properly. They may be a little more gruff and direct, but they're still trying to help, and usually when people ignore the help, that's where people really have problems, and that's where negativity can get out of control in the office and organization is that no one is actually addressing the issue that this person is trying to help with. Now, if they're not trying to help, some people, I'll be honest. Some people just have problems. Some people just are kind of grumpy folks. They can still be the nicest people in the world, the most positive people in the world, but they express themselves in a very grumpy way. So people will have a tendency to disregard the message, because they don't like the messenger. They're not really happy with the delivery, but what they're saying is exactly what they need to hear. There's a old FedEx commercial. IT guy was sitting there, he goes, "We need to get FedEx," and nobody was paying attention to him, and the CEO, really dramatic looking guy goes, "You know what we need to do? We need to get FedEx." And he says it in a really direct, and sticks his finger out in a very pointing way, and they're like, "Oh, that's a great idea boss," and the IT guy's, "I just said the same thing." Yeah, but you didn't say, "FedEx,"


with your finger pointed out. So it's just a matter of delivery. You can say the exact same thing, but if you say it in a gruff way, people disregard it. And that's where I want you to think about, is that negativity coming from a person who's trying to help, or is it just someone who is just a negative grumpy person? Tom: If it's coming from a negative grumpy person, how can you deal with that? What is your advice for dealing with somebody who's grumpy on a team? Is there a way to turn that around somehow? Craig: You can. You gotta to find, again, I would, what I don't want people to do is play armchair psychoanalyst, and get themselves in trouble with HR. But you can sit down and talk to them. I think that's the number one thing you need to do, and I think that's the number one thing people avoid doing with negative folks, is sit down and say, "Hey, you keep expressing this. What's going on? Tell me about it." Maybe they'll tell you why they think this problem is a problem. Maybe they'll just talk about I can't stand Susan, she's a horrible person, blah, blah, blah. And if they actually have real deep seated problems and issues, you may have to move them away from your team. But I think the actual sitting down and listening to what the issues are, and why they're acting this way, and just talking to people and getting to know them, you can find out, "Oh, he just doesn't feel like he's being heard. I need to include him more. I need to listen to him more. Maybe go out of my way just to ask him his advice. Don't have to take it, but just ask him more often. And they feel included. And the more you include them, the less negative they end up being. Tom: Okay, that's excellent advice right there. Now, that's talking in terms of the team. We have attendees who come to an event, and sometimes they're negative. And I can see sitting down with them as well. In fact, in episode one, my wife talked about trying to incorporate negative attendees into the planning of the event in the future. But one of the things on your site that really stuck out to me is the value of negative experiences, and creating success from failure. So if you've got negative experience for an attendee, can you give us some ideas on working with them to turn it into a positive?


Craig: Well, first you gotta, again, you gotta find out if it's legitimate, because I always find that, like if you go online and you look at reviews, only the really, really angry or the really, really happy people take the time out of their lives to give you feedback. And so most of the time, the majority of folks are either just happy with it, or they're not going to talk to you about it. So you're never going to quite know. So you have to be proactive. You have to ask people just out of the blue. So call up, have random feedback calls. Just call up attendees and say, "Hey, we saw that you are here for the 2016 electrician's meeting in Phoenix. How can we help it, make a better situation next year, or what was the issue?" So, it's to find out if they actually have issues? Was it something that you actually had control over? The number one complaint I see on my speaker feedback form is "the room is too cold." Now do I have any control over that as a speaker? I don't, but I can also bring that up to my meeting planners and say, "Look, I know you have to set the temperature lower for a full room, because I think a lot of people forget that, is that you set a room, so when it's full of people, giving off heat, it's not hot inside." But if that's less attendees, the less people show up, the colder the room actually gets, and the earlier they show up, the more likely they're going to cold, and they'll get used to the room. But it's one of those things where you've got to find out, is it something I can control? Were they upset with the valet at the hotel's front desk? Well, as a meeting planner, that's not 100% my fault, but I still have to go talk to the hotel about that. Because if we change venues, I have to keep that in mind. So it's really about getting feedback, making sure that it's valid, honest feedback, and then seeing if you can incorporate that down the road, and it can be just as simple as asking a question to your hotel sales manager when you set up the contract. It's like, "Oh, we've had this issue in the past where the valet's been grumpy. We want to make sure that when people pull up out of their cab, they're here for a week for a huge convention they've paid good money for, that they're enjoying themselves, and so how has the feedback been for your front staff or your valets? We want to know, because we want to make sure." So it's just a matter of keeping track of what people have said and remembering to verify it. Is it valid? Is it something that we can actually control? And then move on to see how we can incorporate that, and make sure that doesn't happen next time. Or, maybe they have great ideas, and we will incorporate them early on. If you have a board member who is consistently grumpy about the conventions, that's the person you go to first and say, "Hey, how can we fix this, how can we make this even better next year?" Then they start feeling like they're part of the solution, and you can turn that complainer around into a broadcast system, a PA


system for you, and so all of a sudden, instead of saying how awful last year's was, they're going to talk about how great this year's program is going to be, because they feel included. And nobody ever says their ideas are awful. So when they feel like their ideas are being included, they're going to tell everybody how great their idea is, and how great the event's going to be. Tom: It really makes you stop to think, exactly how many things are on the plate of the event planner, and especially checking up on the valets, because you're right. They're going to be the first point of contact. It's got to be amazing. Now let's go to understanding the grapevine. There's been a lot of events I've been to where rumors have started. I didn't do it personally. But one of the things you talk about is controlling rumors effectively. Would you mind sharing with us some examples of that? Craig: Well, rumors are nothing more than information. So, either you can participate, or you can listen, and I suggest when a rumor hits your desk or hits your ear, you just listen. You don't have to participate. So I don't expect people to pass that rumor on. But in a managerial position, in a meeting planner's position where you hear rumors about attendance, maybe there's something going on in another city that might pull attendance away from you. So as you're planning your event, people keep saying, "Oh, your competitor's meeting's going to happen to be that weekend." Well, go verify that. You want to know that, you want to be in a situation where people are telling you information versus nobody says a word, you schedule your huge expensive event, and you find out that, half your attendees are not going to go, because it's the same weekend as something else that you weren't aware of. So it's really about listening to folks. If it's personal or petty, yeah, stay away from that. Just in one ear out the other, don't even think about it again. But if it's something that you need to know about, I talk about this in an organizational manner is that, if layoffs are happening, that's the number one rumor lately, in the last couple of years is that people are worried they're going to lose their jobs. And so what happens is instead of talking to the people in charge, because they're afraid they're going to get fired right away, they're going to just update their resume and they're going to jump ship as soon as they can. Now, if those rumors are not true, you're going to lose good people for no reason. And so it's important that you talk to your folks, build trust with your folks, so you can at least hear what's going on. Again, don't participate, but hear what's going on, so you're not caught by surprise and maybe you can talk to folks and say, "Hey look, everybody thinks layoffs are coming in the next six months, because we have a new CEO.


Can we address our folks with that?" And then maybe you can, and maybe you can sit there and go, "Look, this is what's the going to happen. As far as I know, this is the process we're going to be in. Everybody's job's safe, there's going to be a little turmoil, upper management, you won't have to deal with. So just relax, I'm on your side." And if you have spent the time and have built the trust with your folks in your organization, they're going to believe you. Because you're telling the truth, you're trying to help. It's when you hide things and you try to conceal things and say, or deny rumors, people will make up worse things than are actually happening if you don't interject and don't say something. And so then they end up not coming, and they end up not, they end up jumping ship before you want them to. Tom: Okay. Excellent stuff. Now Craig, you've already given us a negative experience at an event. But I'm sure you've hit some events where it's just been amazing. Maybe you were the speaker, maybe you just attended, and it could be any event across the spectrum. Is there one that really stands out in your mind as just amazing, and if so, I want to dig in a little bit and find out what made it that way for you? Craig: Well, I'm very fortunate, I get to go to a lot of events, and most of the events I go to are really good. There's some that are top-notch, but there's some that, you know, not so great. Most of them are really good events, because I think most meeting planners are really trying hard to put on the best event they can. And a lot of them succeed at that, and I think people forget that sometimes, because sometimes they only go to one kind of association thing, and they get stuck in a rut. But I find that me personally, the ones I enjoy the most are when they bring in the speakers or the events around it are relevant. I'd go to an IT conference and they bring in, no offense, a magician who doesn't say anything about IT, he's just there for entertainment, that's great to some degree, but that's, for me, I'd rather have someone who is in the industry that is relevant, that is going to tell me some great new things, versus just entertain me, and I think oftentimes, they kind of get towards the entertainment. Like Bill Clinton, yeah, he's going to be great to listen to, but is he going to be relevant to my business? No, but I think they hire him to draw attendees. The events, I don't think are going to be any better because he's there. I just think a lot of people go to them. And then I've seen some where they hire celebrities that are just not meant to speak in public. They're good on television, because they're, especially with athletes. Athletes sometimes are not all Michael Strahan who's wonderful and smooth and great.


Some of them are really rough around the edges on stage. They're not used to talking in front of people. They're hired because of who they are, and they don't give anything that's relevant. We had an issue with that with another speaker who's a celebrity. His topic was great, but had nothing to do with us, and so people got, were kind of angry that they wasted that much time, and I'm sure they were upset with the meeting planner for wasting the money to bring a celebrity in who didn't really help them out. So I always find that the best events are the ones that are relevant, that even the trips that they take are relevant to something, they're fun, but they're relevant. I did a facilities management conference one time, and then we went to, it was in Dallas, and so where did we go? To the brand-new AT&T stadium. And that was fun, because it was not just, "Hey, look at this building," it was the whole tour, they went to the, into the, we got to go on the star on the middle of the field. We got to go into the locker rooms and the press area. It was all relevant, but it was all fun, too. Tom: Again, that's an excellent insight. Now, as we wind this down, I've got to ask, are there any last thoughts, you'd like to share with our audience on your topics? Craig: Well, I just want people to be open-minded about it. I think we've been trained to disregard or assume the worst or the best. I mean, it's one of those things, we're an extremist culture. We don't...longer do we just look at somebody and go, "Oh, that's a guy's in the middle of the road." If you're a middle of the road person, you're considered weak, which is crazy, if you're, especially in politics. I don't believe we're a country full of right people and, red people and blue people. I don't believe that. I think most of us are purple. Different shades of purple, but we are in there. But if you watch television, they always take the two crazies from the opposite sides and throw them together and fight. And I think that has become the culture now, where if you don't take an extreme opposite view, then your opinions are not valid, and I think a lot of people are much more nuanced than that. And I think negativity is much, much more nuanced than just being someone who doesn't agree with somebody, who is just, they're doing it to be difficult and it's like, they're not doing it to be difficult, they're doing it to be helpful. Be open-minded to what they're actually saying, and maybe that you can actually, again, turn that negative person, in your mind, it can be just in your whole mind, that that person's not really negative, they're just being helpful in their own way. A lot of people don't think of me as a negative person. I get that all


the time when I come off stage, "You say you're negative, but you seem so nice. You seem so, you're funny, you're pleasant, you're great to hang out with." It's like, "Yeah, because being negative doesn't mean my job and my goal and my only thought is the destruction of the world and myself." I want to help people, and I want to do it the best way I can. This is how I can, and it doesn't mean I have to be a stereotype. And I think a lot of people, if they can get past what they think negative thinking is, or what they think negative people are, they can see, "Oh, I'm like that too. I worry a little bit. I always try to see where the problems are and I try to think things out ahead of time, so I don't have to deal with stuff." And all of a sudden, you realize, "Oh, Carol does that too." "But she's so sweet and helpful with..." "Yeah, but she does look at the bad things, but there's the negative thinking." And so we look at the negative thinking versus, how they act and versus their personality types. Like I said, a personality is important. That tells you how you see the world. Attitude is how you express it to other people. So you can have a negative personality and still have a very positive attitude, and I think people don't believe that's true, but if you actually sit down and think about some of the negative folks you know, you'd be like, "Oh, yeah." Because I run into married couples all the time and they're like, "Yeah, I'm married to a negative person," and I'm like, "How long you have been married?" "Forty-two years." Well, why would you put yourself through that for 42 years with a horrible, miserable awful person? And they're like, "Well, no, he's great, he's funny and I love him and he's very happy. He just looks at the downside. We balance each other out." Exactly. Every single person's personality style can help you, whether it's a positive, super positive person, and most meeting planners are super positive go-getting, got some great ideas. It's good to have that one negative thinker or two that will help you actually get stuff done. Because you have these great ideas, now you gotta implement them. How can we do it as smoothly as possible? Negative thinkers will usually help you out. Tom: Excellent. And I say excellent a lot, but I mean it. You have shared some really great stuff. Craig, if our listeners are interested in learning more about your podcast or your speaking, how can they reach out to you?


Craig: Well, there's two websites, but it's the same, two URLs. They're very easy to remember. Therealistsguide.com or Speakercraigprice.com is very easy to remember, and my podcast, which is actually somewhat unrelated to my business, it's much different. It's Realitycheckpodcast.com. I talk to people from all walks of life, because when I go to these conventions and I speak, they've got a slate of speakers on a wide variety of topics that have nothing to do with mine that I want to expose to people. I want people to hear from them. And so I'll have people from orangutan rescue, FBI agents, I will have, someone who's talking about the Affordable Care Act, and then I'll have, next week I'll have someone who's talking about sign language, and having sign language at an event. So that's Therealistguide.com for my personal professional site, and the podcast is Realitycheckpodcast.com. Tom: I appreciate that. In fact, I'm going to subscribe to your podcast and start listening to it myself. Craig, you have been a joy to talk with. Thank you so very, very much for taking the time to talk with me today. Craig: I just gotta, you have such a beautiful smooth voice. It's just been rough this whole time for me. I'm like, he sounds like, he's like, well he sounds like a ventriloquist, he sounds fantastic. And I sound like that cranky muppet that he's got on his lap. So I just want to say, you sounded great. Tom: Well, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it Craig.

episode 42 – craig price interview...

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