Fayetteville (N.C.)Observer
Wednesday, December 29, 1999

Speaker captures audience’s interest
By Jay Woodard
Staff writer

Energy flowed from the podium. And not a minute too soon.
The stakes were high as Denise Ryan took part in the 1998 presentation for Smith Advertising & Associates before the tourist-promotion board in Asheville.
Things were not looking good.

	Denise Ryan speaks at a Chamber of Commerce Coffee Club meeting.

“The body language in that room was like this,’’ Ryan recalled, demonstrating an arms-folded slumped-in-a-chair attitude.

The Smith company representatives were trying for Asheville’s $1.5 million tourist-promotion contract. If they could win, it would be one of the Smith company’s largest accounts.

“It was going slower than we wanted,’’ Todd Smith, vice president of Smith Advertising, recalls. “I said to Denise, ‘We’ve got to get them fired up.’ ’’

No problem.

Ryan can get people’s attention. Because of that ability, she formed her own company in July, called FireStar, and became a motivational speaker and trainer.

But on that day in 1998 in Asheville, she stood before the tourist board and made the “raise the roof ’’ sign.

“We want to raise your roof. We want to raise the number of people coming to Asheville.’’

Suddenly she was speaking their language. They not only began to show some interest but actually began making the raise-the-roof sign when she led them into it.

“That helped energize the other team members,’’ Ryan said.

The others spoke, as Ryan had, about Smith Advertising’s 26 years in the business and its roster of clients which include the convention and visitors bureaus in Pinehurst and in Sarasota, Fla.; the state Port Authority; Standard International Tobacco; and the Westin Innisbrook Resort in Florida.

Smith Advertising whipped the two rival companies for the contract. “She was a big contributor to that presentation,’’ Todd Smith said.Ryan has put her abilities to elicit responses from groups to a number of uses.

A magna cum laude graduate of the University of South Carolina, she spent a number of years in what she calls the hardest sell of all, fund-raising. She drummed up money for art museums, zoos, performing arts groups and volunteer agencies.

She also has worked in sales. During a call for a pager company, the customer asked the frequency of the tower transmitting the signal.

“I told him I didn’t know but would try to find out,’’ Ryan recalled. He then replied that he thought she was the only sales person who’d called on him who told the truth and that he would buy whatever she was selling.

She moved to Fayetteville when her husband was transferred to Fort Bragg.

Local and state Republicans praised her for her efforts in making the Cumberland County chapter of Young Republicans the largest in the state. Ryan looked for fellow members in Chamber of Commerce functions, popular Fayetteville bars and the gym where she worked out.

The membership drive went “great guns because of Denise’s energy,’’ City Councilman Wick Smith said in March.

With those experiences to draw on, Ryan began thinking about suggestions made by friends that she start her own motivational-speaker company.

She read that many speakers had found help at community colleges. It worked for her.

“I’ve had the most wonderful mentor in Larry Lancaster,’’ Ryan said. Lancaster, director of the Small Business Center at Fayetteville Technical Community College, has put her in touch with college officials.

“I go to all the community colleges,’’ Ryan said. “That’s been a very good base.’’

Her master’s in business administration has been a help in setting up her business. While working on that degree, she was a consultant in the small business center at the University of South Carolina. There she helped clients develop business plans, make financial projections and put together marketing programs.

As for the topics of her presentations, such vivid titles as ‘‘Tigers Starve Last in the Jungle’’ are her own idea.The tiger presentation, by the way, is aimed at those who sell a service and includes ways to generate leads, get referral business and establish credibility. Being smart, patient and aggressive is better than spending a lot of hard-earned money, according to the promotional material.

Those in that field might do well to pay attention.
“She has an unbelievable ability to get people fired up,’’ Smith Advertising’s Todd Smith said.

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