Dr. Kevin Freiberg and Dr. Jackie Freiberg are two of our favorite speakers – because (1) they’re good, cool people, and (2) they are great assets to individuals and organizations who want to go “BOOM!” and break the mold of business-as-usual. We’re happy to share this special message from them for everyone who wants to build their personal brand as a go-to, get-it-done, well-connected, indispensable employee. Please share and help people hang on to their jobs in these challenging times!

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We’re at a twenty-five year high, but sadly it is not a good high! Conservative data suggests there are 5.7 million people unemployed in the United States, and the number is expected to grow over the next few months. With statistics like that looming on the horizon, we suspect that everyone is looking for ways to hold on tight to their jobs.

However, if through uncontrollable circumstances you do find yourself in the growing pool of the unemployed, there’s no better time to build your personal brand and increase your marketability.

Here are a few ideas…

We challenge you to start by taking Nike’s slogan to heart…. “Just do it!”

Get good at telling your story. Let people know what you are working on and the value you have added to the department, the team, the business, or even the value you have added to clients.

Take personal inventory. Create a summary of your projects and accomplishments over the last few months. If you don’t have much to summarize and celebrate, it’s time to make s_ _t happen!

Collaborate. Create a list of your ongoing projects and invite others to collaborate and offer feedback and insight. Cross-functional collaboration will make you more visible, will grow your network, and will give you more cross-functional experience.

Make your presence known. Be a player; be willing to arrive early or stay late, or put in some extra time over the weekend. Take a project home and work on it remotely. If you are trying to avoid the axe by being invisible and working in the shadows, be careful, it may backfire! Invisible might lead to dispensable.

Volunteer. Help a department or a project that is limping along. In the short run, yes, it may stretch you and even stress you. But in the long run, it will benefit you by growing your reputation as a go-to, get-it-done, well-connected person.

Get Focused. Rally your team and ask this question, “What can we ALL do to become more focused and more purposeful in realizing our strategy or marketing our business?” Then hold each other accountable and do it! Measure your progress and share your successes with your boss. Perhaps even share your success in your online newsletter or in-house publication. Your story may give other teams valuable ideas.

Be more efficient. Host a working lunch and brainstorm creative cost savings ideas… remember each idea holds a value; every penny counts and they will add up! Ask everyone on your team to come up with at least one way to:

• Stretch company resources
• Cut costs
• Improve efficiencies
• Grow your market
• Expand your customer base
• Help others who are struggling

Again, hold each other accountable, measure your progress, and tell your story.

Think LESS and temporary! Suggest cost savings ideas to your boss. Can you and others “temporarily” cut back your hours to get through a tough time? Can you hire a temp for the summer (think student)? Can you bring on an intern? Can you work remotely? Can the office cut back by 1 or 2 hours a day? Suggest “summer hours”; people might enjoy the freedom! Maybe offer half-day Fridays just for the summer?  You might discover that people actually get more focused and get more done in less time!

Reach out. Expand your network and get connected. Have lunch with colleagues from different parts of the business. Set goals, try and meet or reconnect with one new person a week. Shake it up when you reconnect; make it a healthy WALKING lunch. Summer is the best time to get out and get fit.

Remember, it’s not just about you! Check in with your boss more frequently (make it purposeful and efficient). Ask how you can help meet certain goals or fuel special projects. Check in on your boss’s major stressors and find ways to be helpful, perhaps even ease the stress.

Don’t be shy. Talk to company executives and ask them relevant questions about the business. Be engaging and knowledgeable. Demonstrate through your conversation that you are informed (make sure you are) and involved (let them know what you are working on and how it relates to the success of the business). Show that you are doing your part to get through these crazy times.

Audit your performance. Be objective. No one is paying you today for what you did yesterday, last week, or last month. Track your contributions and your impact as a player in the business. Are you an MVP? Are you consistently inconsistent? Are you benched? Are you on the DL? Self evaluate, then set goals and start training to become a better player.

Monitor your style. Don’t be a whiner. Whining adds no value. Don’t SUCK… the life, energy, and motivation out of everyone you work with; it is toxic. Instead, make life at work more fun. Choose to be a problem solver, not a moaner. Choose to see the good in others, not the flaws. Choose to listen more than you talk. Choose to give more than you take. Choose to be more optimistic and hopeful; it’s contagious!

Retool. Don’t wait for the company to train, recertify, or retool you. Take responsibility for your own professional development and let your boss know what you’re doing to stretch, grow, and gain skills.

Stay alert. Become a junction box for knowledge. Set Google alerts for your company and industry to help you stay informed and current. If you discover helpful information, get in the habit of forwarding it to colleagues and your boss as, “good info to know.”

Things to avoid!

• Don’t think and act like you’re entitled to keep your job because of tenure and loyalty. An entitlement mentality will get you nothing but a pink slip these days. Tenure and loyalty used to be valued. Contribution and ROI are what matter these days.
• Don’t ask for a raise; instead find a way to justify your salary! What contributions have you made lately? What cost savings have you championed? What business have you developed? What is the ROI in you?
• Don’t ask for a promotion. Now is the time to do more than is expected without any extra compensation and a bigger, better office suite.
• Don’t ask for paid time off.
• Don’t ask for more benefits, in fact, now is the time to celebrate whatever benefits you still have.
• Don’t gossip and don’t participate in rumors. Stop them.
• Don’t do social networking and personal net surfing. That means avoid Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, texting, personal blogs, etc! Let’s face it; we are at a place and time where these things are becoming major (wait… did we say MAJOR!!) distractions to our efficiency and productivity at work. Any time a boss or supervisor approaches and you are clicking out of a program or you have your cell phone in your hand, it is NOT a good sign!
• Don’t be fooled. Yeah, there is some pretty cool press about the job offers happening on Facebook and Twitter. But one must remember, these people have been laid off! Perhaps they wouldn’t have lost their job in the first place had they left the social networking for personal time!

Relax! You’re normal if these ideas are making you nervous. But you’re crazy if you don’t embrace any of them. Times are insane and everything about the way we engage in business is changing. As tough as it is for us to write and for you to read, businesses are expecting more from everyone, and everyone has to work harder than ever before. You want to hang on to your job? You want to be indispensable? Then it’s time to think survival of the fittest! Embrace these ideas and you’ll build your personal brand. Share them and you’ll build your business brand.

About Dr. Kevin Freiberg and Dr. Jackie Freiberg: World-class speakers, thought leaders, and authors of the best-seller NUTS!, its sequel GUTS! and recently BOOM! The Freibergs’ messages inspire and equip individuals and organization to build distinguished Brands recognized for accountability, commitment, innovation, performance and a reputation that blows the doors off-business-as-usual!

Posted under Leadership Development, Motivational Speakers, Organizational Excellence

photo credit: Wesley Fryer

So you’re booking speakers for your event and you find that your budget just won’t stretch as far as it used to. Maybe it’s because of cutbacks related to the economy. Maybe it’s because the speaker you want just had a #1 bestseller which caused a spike in demand and, as a result, keynote fees. Whatever the reason, it can be a frustrating predicament. What do you do?

There are two obvious approaches to your situation:

1. Try to negotiate a lower fee with speakers.
2. Shift your search to speakers whose fees are already in your budget range.

Both have spotty rates of success, though. As a better alternative, look for speakers who have made either temporary adjustments to their fee schedules in light of the challenges facing meeting planners today. For example, Vince Poscente, a best-selling author and one of the most popular motivational keynote speakers on the event circuit recently reduced his fee from $25,000 to $12,500 for an indefinite term. Also, Dr. Jackie Freiberg and Dr. Kevin Freiberg have offered “limited-time-only” (until May 31, 2009) discounts of 25-44% on their keynote fees. These instances are rare and not always well-publicized, but a speakers bureau partner can help you stay informed. If you are able to take advantage of these special deals, it’s a great way to meet your budget as well as your audience members’ high expectations.

While reducing your speaker expenditure is the most obvious way to address your budget constraints, it is not your only option. The other approach is to build additional value into your speaker engagement rather than just cut dollars off the top. “But I only have $X to spend. I can’t ignore that!” Of course not. But consider this:

Jackie Freiberg, mentioned above, has a keynote coming up with a corporate client and to increase the value of their engagement, she has taped six video segments that are being presented, one per month via internal webcast, to meeting attendees as a preview and teaser of coming attractions. The client finds that this adds to the educational value of the engagement and also helps to boost attendance at the meeting.

In that case, wouldn’t it make sense, then, for some other departments or budget line items to share in the cost of hiring Jackie? Perhaps the education department, or training and development, or HR, or marketing? Jackie didn’t charge any additional fee to tape her video segments, so whatever funds the other department/line item contributes represents a direct savings for you.

Similarly, Dr. Joseph Michelli also goes “beyond the keynote” to add value to his speaking engagements. Among the bonus services he offers:

• Customized marketing support, in the form of audio or video messages produced by Dr. Michelli
• Written customized articles for inclusion in websites, newsletters, etc. to pique interest in the keynote
• Complimentary resources for participants such as free weekly podcasts and quarterly newsletters
• Complimentary post-event webinar hosted by Dr. Michelli

So again, could you get some financial support from your event’s marketing budget for Joseph’s pre-event support? Would your communications department buy into the articles he could provide? Would your training department underwrite his post-event webinar?

Many speakers are capable of doing much more than just delivering a 60-minute keynote at your meeting. When you incorporate some of these value-adds – particularly those that extend beyond the boundaries of your meeting – into your engagement, not only do you get much more “bang for your buck,” but you also uncover multiple opportunities to maximize your buying power by partnering with others in your organization.

If you would like additional insight on how to create these high-value engagements, check out The Speakers Group’s ROI Speakers initiative. You’ll find a fun, five-minute video that demonstrates the power of an “ROI” engagement versus a “regular” engagement, and you can also read a free white paper/special report about how to maximize the value of your speaker bookings.

Posted under Motivational Speakers

For our latest “In the Spotlight” speaker feature, we’re departing from our traditional interview format and featuring a guest post/case study from Drs. Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg, authors of best-selling business books such as NUTS!, GUTS!, and their latest, BOOM! Whether you are a meeting planner looking for high-impact speakers to help your audience, or whether you are a business leader looking for thought leaders who can help you improve the performance of your team and your organization, the Freibergs can deliver, as this case study with SONY testifies. Here’s the post:

WANTED… Leaders and Game-Changing Solutions!

Whether you voted for our new leader or not, the country is a buzz and oh so hungry for answers to what the future holds! Our country, without a doubt, is crying out for leadership! Our businesses, our communities, and our families need leadership. It is a new era; and to lead it, we want game changers.

There are a lot of theories and a lot of approaches to leadership today. Just try a “leadership” search; you’ll get a diversity of thought.

But let us make one thing very clear-leadership is a choice. Every day we are confronted with multiple opportunities to step into the breach and lead like a game changer. From cutting costs without compromising performance, to “up-coaching” a colleague who has become a liability to the team, to calling BS in favor of a better way, to stepping out on a limb and streamlining a process for a client. All these situations and more call for gamechanging leaders– are you up for it?

Let us introduce you to a client who is doing exactly the OPPOSITE of many other retailers. As the reports scream, “retail sales are the lowest in 40 years,” many retailers are tightening the budget, cutting expenses, and paralyzing their teams. BUT not at Sony Style Stores – they are BOOMING! Dennis Syracuse, Sr. Vice President of Sony Retail Stores, is a gamechanging leader. Even though the media is hosting a recession, Dennis RSVP’d: “Regrets, we are choosing NOT to participate!” Dennis is changing the game and leading his managers and sales associates to BOOM!

How do you get 700 people at 70 different locations around the country to hear the same message without blowing the budget and shutting down the business? In the spirit of refueling his team and giving them tools during a tough time, Dennis stepped into the breach and approved a game-changing event!

We did a 2-hour, customized BOOM! presentation at their state-of-the-art San Diego Sony Style Store. The event was video cast live via Direct TV to Sony Style Stores nationwide, and over 700 Store Managers and their teams heard the message. Talk about an innovative and economical approach to hosting a meeting!

And that’s not all…

Another game-changing move was to avoid the one shot approach – bring in a speaker and fire-up the team for a day, and then it’s back to business as usual. Nope! Not good enough for Dennis; he knows what you measure gets done. So, Sony Style Stores is using our BOOM! Formula to not only track individual and team success, but to more deeply root the message into their service culture. There is no doubt that Sony Style associates have embraced and are implementing the 7 Choices in BOOM! They are doing whatever-it-takes to keep sales up and create an unforgettable experience for their customers.

Read a recent exchange between SONY Sales Managers sent in an eWave (an electronic conversation).

“One Customer, One TOTAL SOLUTION for $31,000 Dollars, putting us over our daily goal by $2000, and it is not even lunch time!”

“Let’s Play to our Genius and Realize that the Customers want to be educated And that SONY has the LIFESTYLE for them.”

“FOCUS FORWARD and make the Holidays all about S O N Y.”

“WOW…the weekend warriors are out in force!”

“We have officially joined the party, BOOMing to $19,793 versus $14,613!”

“Who’s next to push the plunger down and blow the doors off business as usual!?!”

BOOM! is about building a team and a culture of ACCCOUNTABILITY, COMMITMENT and PERFORMANCE! Do you have what it takes to equip your team with ideas on how to lead like game changers, especially in a tough business environment? Do like Dennis, RSVP REGRETS! Be a game changer, be creative and host an innovative, economical meeting. Give your team a gift that will refuel commitment, strengthen accountability, and drive performance up!

We have yet to see the choices our country’s new leaders will make. But you can choose today to be a leader and inspire others to think and act like game changers too. Your choices will determine the quality of your reputation and the difference you will make. Game-changing leaders do not wait for permission; they are accountable to the team and own the success of the business.

Learn more about Drs. Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg and how they are helping companies go “BOOM!” and blow the doors off business-as-usual by viewing their profiles on The Speakers Group web site, or contact TSG speakers bureau today.

Posted under In the Spotlight, Leadership Development, Organizational Excellence, Speaker News

Popular authors and speakers Kevin and Jackie Freiberg have just announced the launch of a powerful online “Competitive Focus Survey” which will be utilized with all of their future speaking engagements.

This innovative pre-program tool adds to the Freibergs’ message customization and provides clients with measurement summaries and ideas on how to improve their teams’ performance. In addition, the summary report provides free resources for ongoing professional development. Clients who have participated in the survey have been very enthusiastic about the results.

Further boosting value to clients, all speaking engagements that are confirmed by December 31, 2008, will include 100 complimentary copies of BOOM! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual (a $2000 value). If Kevin and Jackie are booked together for the same event, 200 complimentary copies will be included.

Contact The Speakers Group today to learn more about Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, their Competitive Focus Survey, and the free book offer.

Posted under Leadership Development, Motivational Speakers, Speaker News

Not that business keynote speakers have ever been a frivolous expense, but now more than ever, the spotlight in the speaker selection process is on ROI. Sure, you want someone who is dynamic and engaging. Maybe some name recognition would be nice. But the critical question is, “What will be the lasting impact of this speaker’s presentation?”

With budgets tightening, you can’t afford the luxury of spending a few – or several – thousand dollars just to amuse your audience for an hour. You need to be sure your investment is securing you a speaker whose impact will last for not hours, days, or weeks, but for YEARS. You need a speaker whose message is so powerful and thought-provoking that it will continually find its way back to the top of your attendees’ minds. And when it does, those attendees will either think favorably of your organization for bringing them in contact with that speaker (if you plan an association annual meeting or a national client conference, for example) or those attendees will be reminded to apply what they learned which will make your organization stronger (if you plan internal programs for leadership, all employees, etc.). Either way, the thousands of dollars you invested will be continuously paying dividends. That’s what you need. Right?

So who are these “magical” speakers? Here eight who have proven their worth over and over again:

• Marcus Buckingham
• Keith Ferrazzi
• Neil Rackham
• Benjamin Zander
• Jackie Freiberg
• Kevin Freiberg
• Ron McMillan
• Jason Jennings

The added bonus with booking speakers with this kind of lasting impact? Not only are they the only type of speakers you can afford to invest in during this economic climate, but they’re the exact type of speakers who will help you create a thriving business in spite of this economic climate!

For additional high-impact speaker candidates, take a look at our up-to-date Top Five Speakers list (http://www.thespeakersgroup.com/top_five_speakers) to see the speakers who are generating the most buzz in various topic categories. Or search our speaker directory (http://www.thespeakersgroup.com/speakers) based on your unique event parameters – we’ve carefully selected all of the speakers on our roster so you can invest with confidence.

Posted under Organizational Excellence, Planner Tips, Speaker Recommendations