Between Seeing

Looking for a Speaker?

My business partner Jeff and I love to speak about the work we do. We have developed some presentations that have received the highest marks, in excess of 95% approval, from participants. We do this by actively involving the audience in the presentation. Some of the talks include “The 7 Entrepreneurial Skills for Financial Planners”, “The Power of Stories and Vision Stories” and “Finding your Better Way to Live and Work.” We have also developed a 2 day seminar called “Vision Stories” that has been delivered across the country.

If you would like a dynamic keynote speaker, please let me know. Our highest dream is to partner with groups and associations that want to offer our work to their members.

Here are three case studies of speeches.

A Whole New Mind - What the World is Calling for

I have been fortunate in my life to be on the beginning side of significant trends in America and the world. In the early 70s I foresaw the need for more humane living settings for the handicapped and worked in that industry. In the 80s I was a pioneer in selling HMO services to seniors. In the late 80s our company was the leader in packaging and selling desktop video - the marriage of computers and video. In 1996, my partner and I formed one of the first Internet companies in Minnesota and today it has 300 employees.

7 Entrepreneurial Skills

I. Building Vision, Faith & Commitment
Confidence in your vision and knowing that this is your path—along with the commitment to make it real in the face of those who doubt or question what you are creating (especially you)—is essential to making your vision real.
1. Creating a vision
2. Believing your work is your calling
3. Having confidence and belief in yourself
4. Contributing to something greater than yourself

II. Utilizing Your Strengths
Knowing and understanding your strengths allows you to focus on what you do best in the service of your vision and purpose and find ways to support the areas outside your core competencies.
1. Building on your strengths and passions
2. Acknowledging weaknesses
3. Commitment to professional development

III. Creating a Niche
By creating your niche through choice, you can focus your energies and resources in one area so that people can identify with who you are and whom you serve.
1. Finding one thing you love and being the best at it
2. Maintaining a clear, compelling focus on your target market
3. Becoming established as an expert—creating a name for yourself

IV. Planning & Follow Through
Creating a clear business plan that includes financial projections accompanied by follow through and accountability to yourself and others brings vision to life.
1. Creating a living business plan with written goals
2. Committing to your word by following through
3. Establishing accountability with yourself and others

V. Engaging Risk & Reality
Risk taking without assessing reality is just stupidity or naiveté. Efforts to assess reality with total
accuracy is a recipe for paralysis. There are no guarantees. You must engage both risk and reality
simultaneously to strike a balance that enables you to move forward with faith.
1. Practicing financial discipline
2. Embracing failure
3. Trusting your gut

VI. Partnering
The ability to ask for help and to create synergistic relationships is essential to being a successful entrepreneur—your business success depends on a network of relationships.
1. Building relationships
2. Asking for and getting help
3. Being a resource

VII. Negotiating
Being clear about what your services are worth and the ability to ask for it, without hesitation, are the heart of the ability to negotiate.
1. Knowing your value proposition
2. Creating win-win agreements
3. Knowing your bottom line/Being willing to walk away

Here is a copy of the 7 Entrepreneurial Skills you can download  Download 7es_generic_skills_2005.pdf

 

Cultural Creatives and the Spiral

My friend Clive pointed out the following correlation between Cultural Creatives and Spiral Dynamics. Obviously this is a generalization but my experience is that it holds pretty much true to form

Traditionalists = Blue
Modernists = Orange
Cultural Creatives = Green

Entrepreneurial Skills : What Everyone Needs in the New Economy

You don't have to start a company to be entrepreneurial. What is an entrepreneur? Entrepreneur is defined as someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it. Over the last 30 years the image of an entrepreneur has been one of Stephen Jobs building a computer in his garage, finding venture capital and starting Apple Computer. More recently, in the Internet craze, the image was of a bright 20 something from Stanford starting a company to fill an unidentified online need, getting venture capital, going public and becoming an instant millionaire. Most of us didn't fall into this category, much less have any idea what business would be a good one for the Internet and so we sat on the sidelines and watched. And we decided we were not entrepreneurs.