Q&A with Michael Lyons - NEXT 2020 keynote speaker

Discover what he’s learned during his nearly 50-year career in the industry and what you can do to stay relevant in your career

With an interactive keynote session featuring live polling to get the audience engaged, Michael Lyons will offer his insight on what he’s learned through a nearly 50-year career in the hospitality and meetings industry at MPI-CAC’s education and tech conference NEXT.

With a new half-day format, NEXT will be held from 8 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, at Convene in Chicago.

Lyons – who is a professional speaker, author, actor and hospitality industry consultant – will offer his invaluable lessons during his keynote session called “Connecting the Dots: How to Stay Relevant and Position Yourself for Career Success” from 9:30-10:15 a.m.

Below is a short Q&A of what Lyons had to say regarding his upcoming session at NEXT.

Heather Warthen: How did you find your way into hospitality and events?

Michael Lyons: What’s interesting is that when I went to Notre Dame and got out of there in 1973, nearly 47 years ago, I had no plan. I had no idea what I was going to do, not unlike a lot of other people that go to college. I came back home and the first job I got was working for a building materials company. A few months into the job the boss walked in and said, ‘We’re holding a sales meeting in Nassau in the Bahamas for our sales people, about 150 people. Put all the arrangements together.’ Well this is 1973, meeting planning wasn’t even a profession then. In fact MPI, was only a year old and you just had to do it. I made a lot of mistakes, but what I learned in the process was that I loved, I truly loved, the business of serving people in the hospitality business. Here we are 47 years and I’m still involved and actively participating in the meetings industry from that random accidental start.

HW: What can you tell us about your keynote without giving all of the bells and whistles away?

ML: I think the most import thing that I have learned over the years and what I’ve observed in the last 5 to 10 years in particular as our society has changed and as computers and personal devices have entered into the mainstream, what I feel is sometimes missing is that we have to be paying attention to all of the different things that position us so we an continue to move up and be successful in our career. The gist of this talk is really getting people to realize that they have to focus on and pay attention to a lot of the different things simultaneously that we kind of all instinctively know we should be paying attention to but because we live in this crazy, fast-paced world, it’s very very difficult. It’s really things like our soft skills - you know because when we talk about our soft skills, are we good as communicators? Can we speak intelligently and articulately without using the word ‘like’ every third word or ‘she goes’ or ‘you know’ or ‘um’ because as professionals, we have to get up to speak in front of people ... whether it be in a sales situation or in front of our peers in a conference room, or presenting to our boss, or with MPI as a chapter leader to get up and address a crowd. Those skills of learning how to communicate not just verbally but also effectively communicating written is very, very important. The main thing that I’m going to touch on is the fact that we also have a personal brand, Heather, and I think we all know that, but just like corporate brands are very, very important in how they position and get the messaging out about their brands and it’s why you and I as a consumer will go to certain brands and count on certain brands we trust, we ourselves as people in our careers have to make sure that we’re constantly polishing our personal brand. What does that mean? Well the brand is really about our personal appearance, how do we dress, what kind of a personality do we have - are we likable people or do people think we are jerks or that we’re not nice or not friendly? How are we communicating? How are we differentiating ourselves so our brand is really in three simple words, our total perceived value on the part of people that see us everyday. Whether we like it or not, we are being judged on all of these little things that make up our personal brand, and a lot of the talk is geared toward making folks aware that you have to pay attention to your personal brand. Then the other thing I want to touch on is the fact that you have to map out your career plan as best you can because we sometimes sit at our jobs and we may or may not be happy – in fact a lot of people are unhappy – but they just keep going to work everyday and they don’t have a plan. So I say to people, ‘If you’re not passionate about the work that you are doing, and it may be that the folks in the room at NEXT all love the hospitality industry or the meetings industry and they want to stay in it, but maybe they are just in the wrong place.’ Maybe they work for a DMC and they’d rather work for a hotel or vice versa. Or may they’d be better suited to work for the convention and visitors bureau at Choose Chicago or any number of careers within the hospitality business. But finding the right match that matches up with your passion and your skill set and there, too, I know this from stats and research that I’ve done, the majority of people don’t have a written career plan. So if you’re hoping to move up in your career and make more money, get a better job, more responsibility and get paid more money, are you just letting that happen randomly or do you have a written plan with deadlines and task lists assigned to it? That’s another important part of it that is one of the highlights of the talk itself. Tying into that, too, is how are we out there networking? Are we volunteering with organizations like MPI? This all ties into our personal brand - how people look at us, how people perceive us and I spend a little bit of time on having a very strong LinkedIn profile because today that’s like our own personal website and how we build and develop that is very, very important.

Registration is still available for NEXT. To register, click here 

About the Author: Heather Warthen is Chief Events Officer and Chief Marketing Officer for 22nd Century Media, an award- winning media company specializing in hyperlocal content in Chicagoland. Hired as its first employee in 2005, she is a former award-winning journalist and photographer who now manages the planning, logistics, marketing and executing of more than a dozen community events and expos. She serves on the 2019-2020 MPI-CAC Board of Directors as Director of Marketing & Public Relations.