Category: Professionally Speaking

If Disney ran your Speakers Bureau

Bags of sugar
Great leaders don’t sugar coat anything. Photo from Internet, source unknown.

 

If Disney ran your Speakers Bureau, your experience would be different than the current industry standards.

And second, your Disney experience would vary depending on who the Disney leader is.

It’s insanely easy for a large, growing, and reputable organization to rest on their laurels.

Responding to client emails within 24 hours is not a standard when you are building your business and your brand, it’s the standard, everyday, all day.

Forgetting that is the beginning of an insidious cultural decline that may prove overwhelming.

 

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On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.

This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.

 

To provoke thinking and facilitate discovery is to earn my keep

Cedar Crest College sign
Many people believe a higher degree will lead to greater opportunity. Do the math. (photo: Last week while running in Allentown, PA)

 

This week will be interesting because today is the first work Monday after the long holiday break. Expecting to hear updates on several important business conversations that got placed on hold for the past 10 days.

Patience, confidence, and optimism are real things when it’s your business. Otherwise, they are merely theories we’ve studied.

This has me thinking about insights that can be gathered from observing where colleagues, who were receiving their company subsidized MBA’s, were seven years ago and where they are now.

No one liked my comments that MBA’s are generally a false hope and an insanely time and energy intensive commitment with literally zero ROI.

i say this with deep respect and admiration for every individual. i also say this because my primary function, and obligation, as a teacher is to provoke people to .think .differently

 

__________

 

On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.

This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.

 

Only 364 days left to gather more business

2016 iPhone calendar screen shot
The little red dot says there are still 364 days of business left this year.

 

My cousin asked how business was going yesterday, January 1. In hind sight, i wish i hadn’t gone on such a riff giving him so many specifics; maybe a simple, “It’s going really well.”, would have sufficed:

  • One signed Keynote speech contract
  • One Keynote speech contract awaiting signature
  • Two Keynote contracts looking very good
  • A verbal agreement for a 1.5 day engagement, with additional contract layers probable
  • Another client getting closer to a multi-layered cultural transformation engagement
  • And finally, several big, former Disney Institute fans who are seriously interested in working together this year

Riff over.

 

__________

 

On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.

This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.

 

Time off is challenging when you love what you do

Apple watch screen shot
Upper right corner, December 24th Yesterday.

 

Will i work between Christmas and New Year’s Day?

Time will tell.

 

__________

 

On April Fool’s Day 2009, jeff noel began writing five daily, differently-themed blogs (on five different sites). It was to be a 100-day self-imposed “writer’s bootcamp”, in preparation for writing his first book. He hasn’t missed a single day since.

This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.

i am not the only expert in the room

Creative facilitation techniques
One of many classroom activities that reduces the “speaker-to-listener” ratio.

 

i am not the only expert in the room.

But i am the only Disney expert in the room.

Have you had the good fortune to be at a conference where there’s an astonishing ripple-effect buzz from one of the presentations?

What allows that to happen?

My job is to keep the audience – no matter the size or demographic – so engaged, they never have a chance to be bored, distracted, or disengaged.

My job is to have everyone walking out of the room .thinking . differently than they did when they entered.

May i be so bold as to say that expertise goes beyond content? Expertise in this arena is rare – the expertise to involve all the other experts in the room.

 

__________

 

This website is about our career health. To leave this site to read today’s post on my home health website, click here.