Successful Meetings - January 2009 - (Page 30)

PLANNER’S WORKSHOP mouth for sale Dayna Steele offers attendees a pep talk from the deejay booth Let’s Rock and Roll By Kinley Levack, kinley.levack@nielsen.com I f you’re looking for a standard motivational keynote, “then you don’t want me,” says Dayna Steele. Steele, who spent years as a music radio host, is the author of Rock to the Top: What I Learned About Success from the World’s Greatest Rock Stars. “When I left rock radio and formed a couple of successful businesses, people started inviting me on the speaking circuit. They wanted me to talk about business,” she explains. So she’d get on stage and run through the speech and “I’d be bored and they’d be bored and it would be excruciatingly painful for everyone involved,” she says. “So I started asking if there were questions. It didn’t matter the crowd—how old, how young, how welldressed, the ratio of men to women— the first question was always something along the lines of ‘Did you ever meet Van Halen?’ ” Well, she had met Van Halen, and Steele started incorporating not only anecdotes about her run-ins with rock’s biggest names, but insights as “ 30 Passion gets you over the big bumps and the little bumps. to how these men and women are some of the best businesspeople she’d ever known. The response was tremendous. People started saying, “You have so motivated me,” she says. Her discussion is centered around a return to business star at anything, so basics and how to long as you ensure cultivate an entrethat the four corners preneurial spirit, of your “stage” are based around stories supported: passion, of the greatest rock networking, knowlstars’ varied interedge, and appreciaests: Sammy Hagar, tion. “Check those formerly of Van pillars and keep them Halen, is a restaurastrong, or your stage teur and creator of is going to fall down,” Cabo Wabo tequila, Steele explains. which recently sold “Sometimes we get so for $80 million; wrapped up in the Carlos Santana minutia that we forFee: $5,000 dayna@daynasteele.com founded Carlos by get the basics.” www.DaynaSteele.com Carlos Santana Shoes; Steele’s favorite Jon Bon Jovi is founder and primary example of the power of passion in busiowner of the Philadelphia Soul arena ness involves the band Def Leppard. In football league. 1984, Def Leppard’s drummer, Rick “The crowd is anticipating yet anoth- Allen, severed his left arm in a car accier boring motivational speech that their dent—an injury that should have ended company has put them through year his career—but he was able to remain an after year. I come out in my jeans and incredibly successful drummer. “Passion boots and have fun and tell stories and gets you over the big bumps and the little bumps,” says Steele. “The lesson is that you have to love what you do because it’s not always going to be great.” Steele has encountered some resistance from planners who think that because their attendees are successful, a show pictures,” she says of why groups rock-and-roll-based presentation won’t enjoy her talks, adding that music is a cut it. To them, Steele says that “It’s universal language, and the bands in okay to have fun and learn. And it’s her presentation are not limited in their time to go back to basics sometimes.” appeal to one demographic. She adds of her presentation: “I guaranHer message is that you can be a rock tee you it will be good. I will rock.” SM ” I SM I January 2009 I SuccessfulMeetings.com http://www.DaynaSteele.com http://www.SuccessfulMeetings.com

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