Keys To Leadership Seminar Series

For someone who’s supposed to be self employed, and also someone who’s created some products, I don’t talk about them all that often. I rarely do it on my business blog, which is geared towards those particular products, and I rarely do it here, even though this is my more popular blog. Time to change that up a bit; please stick with me.

Keys To Leadership

Even though I don’t market my items all that often, I’m often referencing my first book on leadership titled Embrace The Lead and my second book on leadership titled Leadership Is/Isn’t Easy. These are the first two products I have over there to the left, and I’m proud of them; everyone should be proud of something they create. 🙂

One of the products I don’t talk about all that often is my two-part seminar series titled Keys To Leadership, which I recorded in January 2004, and is also over there on the left. I feel it deserves a mention because it’s not all that bad (I go back & listen to it from time to time), I’m as proud of it as I am of all the things I’ve created, and it comes with a pretty funny backstory.

Keys To Leadership is my live seminar series that I recorded in January 2004 here in the Syracuse area. As you should know by now, not everything comes easy for me, even those things that should be really easy. If they did, I’d never have stories to tell. Let me tell you the story about these CDs, after I tell you briefly about the CDs themselves.

First, the cover I’m sharing isn’t the original cover. They were created years later by a lady named Vernessa Taylor, and I felt it was way more colorful than anything I could have produced. Thanks again Vernessa!

The first CD is called What Makes Leaders, and in this presentation I talked about stories that highlighted what I feel leadership is all about. The second CD is called Communications/Nine Direct Management Points, and it obviously begins with my talking about the art of having good leadership communication skills, followed by nine points I feel are needed in order to be a good leader, with stories of course. If there’s anything I think I’m pretty good at, it’s telling a story.

This is nothing when compared to our norm…

The one thing you should never do when you live in the Syracuse, NY area is schedule anything of importance in either January or February, unless it has something to do with winter. It’s not that people won’t come if they can; it’s whether they have the ability to come.

I scheduled three consecutive Wednesdays of seminars in January, all on leadership and management, but with a different focus for each session. I charged for them, though not a lot, and they were advertised fairly well as I had a great connection at the Syracuse newspaper who always helped me out. The day of the first one I also killed a long term contract for subcontracting work that I wasn’t enjoying. My hope was that the seminar series would help my mindset and help jump start another side of my business.

What didn’t help me out was the weather. The first week it was 15 below zero (that’s Fahrenheit; -26C) and snowing heavily. It had been snowing fairly heavy for 3 days already, and this would be the final night for this particular storm, though it wouldn’t be the final night of snow during a period where it showed 44 days in a row (you read that right).

The second week we experienced storm number two, and all the major highways were closed. I ended up canceling that one, as only two people besides me dared brave the trip. We still talked about a few things but I didn’t charge anyone and the two people who came got to go home with a lot of cookies. 🙂

The third week we were having storm number three, which was the least amount of snow of the three storms. But there was so much snow already on the ground that there wasn’t anywhere to put new snow. The snowbanks around my house were over seven feet; that’s pretty scary. The snowbanks at the location of the seminar were much higher. There were few spaces left for cars in the parking lot, but that was a common event all over the city.

As you can probably imagine, this means that none of the seminars were well attended. The first week I got 7 people; I already told you about week two. The third week I got 5 people. But I plowed through anyway, and those people who came seemed to enjoy it.

My friend Kelvin said he was surprised that not only could I get up in front of a group and give a full presentation, but I did it without notes, as I memorized my topics and the general gist of what I wanted to speak on, then just went at it. As a professional speaker, I pride myself on rehearsing so that I’ll come in on time; after all, money is time, right?

I generally got positive feedback from the folks who showed up, which was nice. Actually, I got positive feedback from everyone, even the one guy who wanted to debate me on the concept of whether leaders were born or not. But he was a good guy just the same.

That’s my backstory, and my introduction to seminar series, which I now market via immediate download (mp3). I hope you at least take a look at how I’m marketing them, and if you’ve seen any of my business YouTube videos and thought they weren’t all that bad, you might enjoy the seminars.

If you want to take a look at all the products I’ve created (which are more than what I have on this site) you can look at them on my business products page. I hope you will; enjoy!
 

8 thoughts on “Keys To Leadership Seminar Series”

  1. Mitch, I had no idea you had so many books on leadership. Wow! How come you don’t share them more on social media?

    You do a great job on the videos I must say. I can see why you could speak without notes.

    I’m almost there. I did a class today in front of a group on Zoom with no notes and because I knew the topic well it was easy. It’s nice when that happens but it takes years I believe to get there, right? I’m still nervous when in person though. Were you?

    1. Thanks Lisa. I do more promoting of me than I do my products. They’re starting to age, and even though I think they have worth, you know how people are when it comes to older stuff. That’s why it’s always good to look back at some of your older content to see if it’s worthy of being updated and re-released.

      Truthfully, I’ve never been nervous speaking in front of people. Remember, I was a wedding singer for 14 years. I played in recitals and in front of Mom’s friends. I’ve only ever been nervous in front of a crowd once, and that was at a bowling tournament when I was 13 or 14.

      It’s not a bad thing to have notes. My friend’s in Toastmasters and they encourage that for many of their speakers. I’d be better on my videos if I could walk around like I was talking in front of an audience, but I’ll take what I can get. 🙂

  2. Hey Mitch! Clicking on some of your links now on leadership. Quite a few of them – going to check out your nine management points! Do you have your books on Amazon as well?

    1. No, I only sell them on my site. If I sold through Amazon I’d get a penance of what I’m charging. I’m not greedy but, at least for the 1st book, I paid for printing. lol

  3. I am not sure for how many years I have been a reader of your blog, probably close to 10. And yeah, you rarely talk about your books, though you give everybody great tips on so many topics and of course leadership.
    Regarding your YouTube channel, it is very underrated, you always produce great content. I admire your consistency, my friend.

    1. It’s actually been 10 years; good call Carl! lol Thanks for the kind words about the topics I talk about. I’m an okay marketer, but I’m bad at pushing it. Still, no one can accuse me of never creating anything.

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