Speaking
Leadership. Life. And Laughter.
What do you want from a speaker?
You want someone who understands your business and understands the people in the seats in front of him. You need someone who understands you and what you’re trying to communicate to those people. What you want them to think and feel and believe.
You want someone who can tell you something you don’t know, something you haven’t heard a hundred times before. Or, even better, recall them to a truth they’ve always known but lost sight of. You want authority on the key topics every business leader has to master. How to build a culture of innovation. How to turn innovation into a game-changing advantage. How to create disruptive execution that gets your ideas to market faster, cheaper and better than your competition. How to build an organization that lives up to your brand promises, a company that’s branded to the bone. You want someone who can make your audience laugh. Make them think. Make them want to get up out of those chairs and go change the world.
Well guess what? You got him. Dain has entertained audiences at South By Southwest. At universities. At corporate events. And at international conferences. He’ll frame your story and move your team.
what people are saying
“Thank you for doing such a great job at Ocean Exchange. You did an outstanding job of bringing in insights just at the right time so the delegates were learning all along the way. Whenever I see such a seamless, calm and interesting speaker as you, I know it is because of the great prep they have done.”
“Dain is talented in many areas and he helped us to make our production engaging, trendy and valuable. With his keynote speech he motivated our crowd toward greater innovation. Dain also got everyone focused on the need to understand the convergence of trends and how urgent it is that we ‘get there’ before our customers do. Outstanding result.”
“Dain’s message is clear and motivating: it’s not enough to build better teams and better companies, we can use our companies to build a better world!”
“That you were able to keep the crowd interested and attentive at 4:00 pm after two long days of presentations was amazing! It is a testament to your ability to explain your well-researched ideas and insights in a lively and vivid way, with real life stories and examples that we could relate to.”
Essentiality: Leading a Company That Lasts
Dain hosts the annual Ocean Exchange conference, leading the conversation on sustainable innovation for shipping and for the blue economy. This talk was on secret of companies that last a long, long time is what we call Essentiality, the idea that companies that move from short-term thinking to generational thinking make better contributions to the economy, to society and to the environment.
Leadership Presence
The communication of leadership is the most important job you can do in an organization. Get that right and everything follows. Great leaders have to be great communicators in all contexts. What are the keys to getting your message across? It starts with listening. Learning what you don’t know. And communicating with love — that is, a sense of empathy for your audience — that allows them to trust you and your message. This keynote was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2016 Cicero Awards. A powerful and moving message for leaders at all levels.
The Stand: How to Speak Like You Mean Business
The communication of leadership is the most important job you can do in an organization. Get that right and everything follows. Great leaders have to be great communicators in all contexts. What are the keys to getting your message across? It starts with listening. Learning what you don’t know. And communicating with love — that is, a sense of empathy for your audience — that allows them to trust you and your message. This keynote was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2016 Cicero Awards. A powerful and moving message for leaders at all levels.
Innovate or Perish
In the new world we’re part of, a business will have only two choices: Innovate or Perish. You have to be out there with your eyes open looking for the trends everyone else is missing. You have to get into the heads of your employees and your customers. You have to get into the head of your competition. You have to find ways to innovate new ways of adding value to the lives of others, in a way that disrupts the marketplace. Because if you don’t someone else will.
Using case studies from the ground-breaking book, Nanovation, Dain makes the case for building an organization that lives at the intersection of trends and knows what’s next before your customers do.
Disruptive Execution
While most companies are looking for disruptive innovation, great companies are looking for disruptive execution. They’re searching for processes to make them more efficient and more effective; searching for ways to take dollars out of the walls of their business so they can put them where the customer can see them; searching for the agile organization that can respond faster, with pin-point accuracy. Dain draws from 25 years of experience helping leaders create cultures of execution and uses case studies to help your team focus on how disruptive execution can make them game-changers.
Branded to the Bone
Great companies are branded to the bone, true to their promise at every touch point. That means if you promise a better life to your customers, that promise has to be just as true for your employees, for your suppliers and for your community. As true for those who come in the back door as it is for those who come in the front. As true for those who invest their money as it is for those who invest their careers. True at every touch point. Not branded by an advertising agency. Branded to the bone. How can you build a company and a culture that’s branded to the bone? Dain uses case studies of those who’ve done it to get you on your way.