Reflections on an Amazing 2017!

Even though it’s a few days past the end of 2017, there is always time to take stock and to say Thank You to people who helped my business continue to grow last year. Give me a few minutes to show my appreciation to a few of the corporations, organizations and groups that I was blessed to work with in ‘17 – I am humbled and honored to have shared some of my insights, strategies, tools and inspiration with these folks!
At the beginning of each year our goal is to improve our knowledge base, stretch our coaching and training platforms and skills, and to raise our sights on new opportunities. Here are some of the outstanding people we worked with and how they utilized our diverse (and growing!) topic and product base to help their group or company get to the next level of performance in 2017.
The breakout topic for Personal Performance Partnership this year was by far the exciting and effective communication session called Are They Hearing What You Said – or Something Completely Different?! The program was morphed into more than a dozen different formats from keynotes, to breakouts, to full blown workshops, and more. ATH got rave reviews at every stop and is now certified as a Continuing Education credit course for local SHRM chapters, HR Florida state events, the Society of Emotional Intelligence NE Florida, and is pending for several others around the country.
The journey for ATH started at the Central Florida SHRM session in Gainesville, FL in January. Thanks to Jenna White for inviting me to do the session and thanks to Joe Johnson of the Gainesville Chamber who recommended the session to Jenna for consideration. After the mini-workshop at the CFSHRM meeting, Tim Lambert immediately asked me to submit the session to the HR Florida State Conference for consideration. Tim is on their board and recognized that this deep dive communication topic is perfect for anyone in HR, management, or sales, or who wants to drastically improve their communication skills easily and quickly.
I took Tim’s advice and submitted the program and was thrilled to later be asked to present at the state conference in Orlando in August! Thanks to Terri Greene of HR Florida for inviting me to participate in one of the largest and best attended HR state meetings in the country. My session had several hundred folks and the high energy and interactive nature of the topic got the room laughing, thinking and engaged in developing better verbal, non-verbal, and intentional communication strategies. My session was rated among the best of the event and I have made some good friends and business connections as a result of the 2017 HR Florida state conference experience!
The path with ATH continued as Kelley Mannel, President of the Society of Emotional Intelligence NE Florida, asked me to present the topic at a chapter meeting. The response was again tremendous and resulted in several leads and other speaking engagements related to communication and dealing with change.
Lenny Melad of ImpactJAX also asked me to present ATH at one of the group’s meetings and the feedback was amazing. From that meeting, Brandi Kiehl encouraged me to submit ATH to the board for SQL Saturday #649 in Jacksonville – an annual event for coders and tech-ie types. She thought the topic would really help some of their attendees who know their products cold, but sometimes struggle with interacting with others in their organizations and with end users. I spoke to a capacity room at the University of North Florida where the event was held and received incredibly positive feedback again about the value of ATH.
One final major group that wanted ATH was the CoHEsion Conference Summit in Mobile, AL. Linda Griffin and Carole Wardroup saw the topic as the keynote kickoff for their two-day event and so ATH was morphed from a workshop style into a discussion keynote for over 200 people. This version of ATH frankly scared me because it hadn’t been done in a format like that before – however, the message still hit home as I received extremely positive feedback, follow up emails, and have developed several great contacts from the session.
While ATH was the hot item in 2017, our other major topics still got considerable work as well. Climbing Your Personal Mountains was featured at Keiser University for a student oriented workshop – thanks to Lisamarie Winslow, Campus President of KU for inviting me back again to her terrific institution! CYPM was also the topic of choice for Tim Delapaz of RMX Construction and their Annual Meeting held at the Jacksonville Marriott. The topic hit home for these hard working roofers and home improvement professionals and they also bought 10 copies of my Reach YOUR Peak book for sales incentives in the future.
Another popular topic for us is Advanced Time Management Strategies and one of the great events utilizing that one this year was the Infinity Financial Annual Meeting in Tampa, FL. Jimmy Summey invited me to do a mini-workshop for his key leadership team at the event and it was a great experience for them and for me.
There are always new programs and formats being developed by our company, fueled by the fact that we custom craft every presentation to the needs of the attendees. Two sessions stand out as examples of the customization and unique hands on approach that we bring to every client.
The first one was the Patel Family Retreat in Palatka, FL. This was a full day workshop on a Saturday with over two dozen folks that had come from all over the country to see their relatives in Florida. They wanted a full day of professional topics for attendees from 10 years old to over 70 years old. I was confused during our discussions leading up to the event as to what they really wanted – but eventually the light bulb went off when Harry and Chase Patel explained to me that they wanted a leadership based session for all the attendees regardless of age – because they wanted them to gain knowledge of how to become and develop as leaders. They expected the tweens, teens, young adults, adults and seniors to be open to learning and growing – even during a vacation in Florida! – and to my great surprise some of the best questions I got during the session came from a 12-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy, and from the oldest gentleman in the room. The topics included were Climbing Your Personal Mountains, Advanced Time Management Strategies, ATH, and Next Level Leadership. What an event – I am sure that I learned as much from this amazing family as they learned from me!
Another event that helped grow our topic pool came from the IIBA-NEFL group, led by Ken Perry and Paul Venditti. Their board has invited me in several times to speak and this time wanted a tailored topic on leadership to fit into their themed monthly plan of events for 2017. We talked several times and after some refining I was able to deliver a brand new topic called Leadership 2.0: STRIVE to Connect! After the session, Ken Perry called Leadership 2.0 “World Class leadership training” and the 30+ high level folks in attendance were quick to agree. And just so you know, the IIBA-NEFL is where ATH debuted back in 2015 based on their needs – this group keeps pushing my company into new areas so I expect Leadership 2.0 to gain traction in 2018 similar to what ATH did last year! (This topic was refined for the Patel Retreat into Next Level Leadership later in the year).
Consistently, two of my most popular topics are VOWELS for Jobseekers and Advanced Networking Strategies – I was privileged to share that info with CrossRoads Career Network (my 7th year of working with them), the Savvy Job Hunters Network (for the 5th time), and for Onward to Opportunity Cohorts (for the 5th year, approximately 30 total sessions). Thanks to John Gray and Chuck Petruska of CCN, Pam Ottesen of SJHN, and Patty Piazza and Anthony Bush of O2O for continuing our strong relationships and for allowing me to share my gifts and knowledge with their amazing job seeker groups!
Once again, to all the folks I got to work with this year – thank you, gracias, merci! I am humbled by your support and your trust in the programs and topics we provide. 2017 was a great year…now it’s time to go out and make 2018 even better. I hope to see you at an event soon!
Happy New Year!