By James Robinson, CEO Robinson Speakers
Volume 1, Issue 1
Balthazar, the renowned French bistro in the middle of New York’s stars-and-models neighborhood of Soho, stands a few blocks from our office. Packed as ever by 9 a.m., every table crammed with coffee and newspapers. Ancient mirrors, their clarity long faded with age, still cover the thirty-foot long back wall. They’re not for preening. They are for atmosphere, the backdrop to a place that looks like a century old French bistro.
They are for a place where you’d half expect Papa Hemingway to be sitting in the corner sketching the bullring, his latté laced with Napoleon brandy. Waiters in black waistcoats with silver trays weaved around the clusters of patrons, and by the window furthest from the raw bar, sat a man at a four-top reading the menu. I’d seen only pictures. No mistakes here. I walked over and put out my hand.
“Mr. Jennings?”
He stood up, and smiled. “Hiya, James. Good to see you. Thanks for coming. We’ve got a lot of work to do together.”
This intriguing man is nothing less than a business soothsayer in the world of professional speakers. He’s the author of eight books, all of them bestsellers. I’d booked him, but had never met him. The grapevine in this business is small and well-trimmed. Four different clients had told me this man is the best business speaker in America.
Jason Jennings is an instantly stimulating person. I already knew he was a fit and devoted regular at his local gym at aged 58, and I found myself telling him the reason I was a minute late was down to a grueling 30-minute stint on the rowing machine, the pitiless ergometer. “I did my best,” I told him, “but the time I clocked would have got me fired from my school rowing crew. I guess I’ll never be the man I was.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “I’m twice the man I used to be… I get eight hours sleep every day. I don’t care how I get them, but I make it happen. And hit the gym without fail five times a week. Last week I bench-pressed 245 pounds five times, then my trainer timed me to do as many push-ups as I could in one-minute. I did 68, a new record.”
The man writes a new book every two years, delivers 80 speeches annually to corporations all over the world. He never misses a day in the gym. He is the original New Year’s resolution – the West Coast flag bearer for the shrewd little army of motivational speakers who possess the charm and knowledge to dazzle audiences all over this planet. Jason can motivate, reinvent businesses – he can inspire them to emulate some of the great American corporations.
“James, I love Balthazar, and you are having a full English breakfast this morning. I remember having one here ten years ago. After all, you are English, aren’t you?” We both laughed.
He wanted to know all about me… my family, where I grew up, whether I ever played cricket or rugby, which soccer team I supported. Jason had a knack for making everyone feel at ease, something I already knew from the long series of conference calls we’d had with a New York real estate conglomerate back in September. He insisted on these calls before every speech, and this was no exception. Four, separate, hour-long phones calls with C-suite executives, managers, operations guys, and marketing departments to tailor his talk. And the big themes were always about culture, how things could change, leadership, and the issues that kept people awake. It was like listening to a maestro, a man who had done it so many times before with the biggest names in global commerce, including Charles Koch. Not surprisingly, Jennings had received reviews that were nothing short of amazing.
And life was treating him well. His permanent residence was in Tiburon, situated on a peninsula that reaches south into San Francisco Bay. His vacation home is in Michigan, up on the northern shores among the moose, wolves and eagles. I’d always wondered about the West Coast, and how a business could survive the time zone difference, being three hours behind New York, eight hours behind London. “That’s not a problem for me,” said Jason. “I’m at my desk every morning at 4:30 a.m. I am always on New York time, no matter what.”
“Kind of like Zulu time.”
“Zulu time?”
“It’s what the Royal Navy does with its fleet. Every boat operates on the same time zone, no matter where they are in the world.”
A young girl in a pressed-black apron delivered coffee and orange juice, poured water into both glasses.
“If there’s a submarine snooping around the South China Sea, and another patrolling the mid-Atlantic, they are on the same time. That’s how they stay synced. With Zulu time.”
“Now that is fascinating. Where did you learn that? Your military school?”
“No… not there. I have another source. But tell me, Jason. How does a big corporation even begin to change if they are in trouble? Or if they’re losing market share?”
“That’s a very interesting question. Some of the most successful examples of this have happened after a series of small bets are tried out. Not by betting the farm, but with several manageable ideas that can be tested, then dropped if they don’t add to revenue.”
Breakfast arrived; my full English, his scrambled eggs in puff pastry. It looked delicious with the wild mushrooms and asparagus arranged beside the golden filo placed on the small mound of freshly cooked eggs.
“In my book, The Reinventors,” he continued, “I go into detail about how Howard Schultz came back to Starbucks in 2008 as CEO and implemented 140 ideas, threw out 130 of them and kept 10 that worked. The introduction of oatmeal now accounts for $500 million a year. Any company that needs to change, or gain market share must use this approach.”
Before he had finished his sentence I was thinking of little changes to implement for Robinson Speakers, and how we could steal market share from giant consulting firms like Bain and KPMG. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.
“Having this imbedded in your culture is so important. Change is something you must champion. Any time you run a business, and start to rely on the old bread winners will be the day you should prepare for bankruptcy.”
I sipped on the black coffee while he spoke, listening very carefully to his words, aware that I was in the presence of a brilliant man.
“For you, I would start with The Reinventors, followed by It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small… It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow.” You had to love the title.
Jason Jennings was a man that had studied over 200,000 companies in the last 25 years, and he had crafted a very lucrative career through helping others, and he loved what he did. He is a man who doesn’t contemplate the barriers of his world, discussing what can’t be done.
One story he told was simply amazing, about how he played the viola, a dream he’d had all his life, but never learned how. When he turned fifty years old he hired a teacher in the Bay Area to come to his house every week, and drill him. Seven years later, Jason could have held his own in a major orchestra, playing the second viola. We chatted about his life for the rest of breakfast, and his eyes beamed when he described the 56,000 lbs pizza oven he had built by hand in his backyard. I was re-writing his bio as he spoke… Jason Jennings – New York Times bestselling author, viola virtuoso, Gennaro Lombardi of the kitchen.
Then the immaculately dressed waiter arrived with the bill, and Jason insisted he paid. It was a privileged meeting, and exquisite food. We stood up and walked to the door together, and shook hands outside in the brisk morning air. Jason was off to a slew of meetings then to multiple cities, hotels, conference halls, faces and new connections… the life of a professional speaker. I was heading back to the office just along Broome Street, the southern border of Soho, where the traffic never ceased, not even for a minute.
I helped Jason flag a cab. His parting words were, “James, remember, business is like a giant hydraulic wheel, powered by a river. It takes an awful lot of effort to get those first rotations, but then it gets going, and it doesn’t require that huge effort anymore. At that point, your job is to make sure it never stops. But if you ever let it stop, it’s back to that terrible grind. Keep that wheel turning, and I will see you soon, my friend.”
With that he was off, carving north on the cobble stones of Crosby Street, past the big hotel named after its location, the one with Old Glory draped above the portico. The taxi clattered past MiN, the famous New York perfumery, leaving Bar & Books in its wake before crossing Houston Street. It eventually disappeared into the unstoppable mayhem of Manhattan.
No one doubts that Jason Jennings is right up there as one of the top speakers in America. He is generous with his time and thoughts, and extremely accessible, with a way of breaking down the complexities of modern business into simple themes about leadership, revenue growth, reinvention, speed, and employee engagement. He has a gift for clarity… something the big mirrors on Balthazar’s walls haven’t had in years.