Month: November 2018

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The Dodgers, The Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Football Club—what do they all have in common? Peter Guber is at the helm of their ships. Not only has Guber dipped his toes into all the most popular sports (baseball, basketball, soccer), but he also breached the world of online gaming and esports with Team Liquid and AXiomatic. After taking ownership of an all-star team in almost every sport, Guber is restless to find new avenues for growth in the sports world.

Guber recently released his plans for an 18,000-seat stadium to be built in 2019. It will be privately funded and located in the Mission Bay area of San Francisco. The Chase Center will be home to Guber’s NBA team, The Golden State Warriors, moving them from their home base at the Oracle Arena in Oakland. While it will be primarily used for basketball, it will have a theater configuration and a view overlooking the water of the bay. Construction started in 2016 and it is estimated to be finished by 2020 at the latest.

This isn’t the first time Guber took on a sports arena. To accompany his new L.A. Football Club, Guber backed a $350 million soccer stadium for Major League Soccer in downtown L.A last year. This was the first open-air stadium the city has seen since the 1960s.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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When Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus developed the Siri application, it was quickly snatched up by Steve Jobs to be included with the iPhone. Siri debuted on the iPhone 4S in 2011 and entirely changed the world. Or not.

While Apple may have changed our productivity (or lack of) with smartphone apps, they dropped the ball on voice apps. Seven years later, you can’t do much more than open up applications, send a text, or ask for a song to be played. Not exactly groundbreaking.

In an interview with Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, Dag Kittlaus revealed that’s all about to change. The wide world of voice apps is coming to a Samsung smartphone near you. Since leaving Apple, Kittlaus and Cheyer developed a more advanced voice app called Bixby, which can be found on Samsung phones.

Now Kittlaus and Cheyer are opening up the Bixby voice app to third-party developers, much in the same way that Apple opened up the iPhone apps to third-party developers. Kittlaus expects an explosion of new voice-activated apps and a change in the way we interact with our phones.

“It’s absolutely going to happen,” he said. “Once you use that, you don’t go back to the old way.”

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Our own BigSpeak team member, Daria Wagganer, joined Robyn Benincasa’s annual Project Athena trip to the Florida Keys to push her limits alongside other women overcoming medical and traumatic setbacks. The nonprofit, Project Athena, was founded by Benincasa to help women find their inner goddesses and achieve their biggest adventure goals in the face of any hardship.

The Florida Keys to Recovery trip took place November 15-19, lasting three days and covering 120 miles of the Floridian coastline. The team of 24 Athenas and volunteers started in Key Largo; then kayaked and cycled to Key West, while camping on the beach and enjoying local cuisine on the way. Through grants and fundraising, Project Athena adventures are available to anyone with a dream to live extreme.

BigSpeak’s daring sales consultant and bureau liaison Daria shared her personal motivations after her first day of the three-day venture.

First and foremost, I am doing this for three inspiring “Athenas” in my life—my grandmother, my mom and my sister…all cancer survivors (though my grandmother is no longer with us, she lived with non-Hodgkins lymphoma for 17 years before she died). My mom is a 12 year survivor of the same type of lymphoma, and my baby sister was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer this past year. All three of them, and all of the Athenas on Robyn’s trip to the Keys this week are so inspiring—and making me appreciate my own health.

Second, I wanted to tackle something like this just to get out of my comfort zone, to try new sports, to appreciate the capabilities that my body has (while it still has them!). There’s nothing in the world like a concentrated dose of Robyn’s magic to make you feel unstoppable! Still, have two more days and “miles to go before we sleep,” but I’m feeling strong and optimistic rather than anxious and worried. That change alone was worth the whole trip!

Robyn Benincasa is a 2014 CNN Hero, San Diego Firefighter, ten-time Ironman Finisher, World Champion Adventure Racer, and three-time Guinness Endurance Paddling World Record holder.

After replacing both hips, the doctors told Robyn she would never be able to live the physically demanding life she was accustomed to, but Benincasa didn’t accept that fate. She continued to push her extreme limits and created the Project Athena Foundation. Her mission now is to inspire every Survivor she encounters to realize that it’s not about the setback, it’s about the comeback.

Her motivational speaking brings this tenacity to the business world by helping create unbreakable team bonds that will get your company through any challenge and inspire innovation by teaching audiences how to push the boundaries.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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This article was originally published by David K. William at Forbes

This week I had the chance to visit with Adam Markel, former attorney, entrepreneur and CEOof More Love Media. He’s also a bestselling author of the book “Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life.”

The book is an excellent read that re-examines the concept of “pivoting.” In my own life and career I have made several pivots. Each was painful but was also a vital step on the path of reaching my highest fulfillment and goals. As I look back on these events, I realize the greatest experiences of my life would not have occurred if I had not lived and learned from the phases of unexpected change and disappointment as well.

Adam Markel is a bestselling author, speaker and expert onperformance and leadership skillsMORE LOVE MEDIA

In business, the concept of the pivot is a frequent and even expected occurrence: “We created a gaming system. It works! But the market didn’t respond in the way we’d have liked, so the pivot is ….” (and the company moves to Plan B). Granted, there is much more to a successful business pivot than simply re-assigning a target, but failing fast, learning from missteps and moving forward with clarity is a concept I love.

In particular, Markel and I discussed his thoughts on resilience. As a principle, I regard resilience so highly that it is one of the key principles in my own book, “The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning.” There are aspects of Markel’s thinking, however, that turn the world’s typical view of resilience on its head.

As Markel sees it, there are three main steps in resilience. When a challenge arises, you must do the following:

1. 1. Reframe. The art and science of framing a situation is a masterful skill. “This is a disaster,” “I suck at this,” and “We’ll never survive this” can be replaced by “This is our opportunity to learn and share a better story.” “Other companies are facing this, too,” and my personal favorite, “So what did this just open up for us?” For example, consider the story of Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson upon hearing that two African American men stepped into a Starbucks store to use the restroom and were subsequently arrested. It was an unexpected call of the kind no CEO would want to receive. In the heat of emotion, he could have dealt with the scenario in a variety of ways. Lawyers and others might have advised him to deflect blame, shield the company’s reputation and blame and fire the manager, or blame the two gentlemen or the police. Instead, he went on national TV the next morning and owned the entire situation. He took personal responsibility and vowed to find out the root cause of the situation and make it better. Weeks later the company resolved the situation legally and amicably with the two men who’d been improperly treated. Two months later, 8,000 Starbucks stores were closed for 4 hours for all staff to receive training on unconscious bias. It was not an instantaneous cure, but an admirable step in the right direction in the face of a threat that could have erupted in loss of stock valuation and departure of talent. Instead, he reframed the occurrence in a way that was costly, of course, but that would bring about more loyalty to the company and brand. He allowed the world to see Starbucks as an organization doing its best to learn and move forward.
   2. Mine for Insight. Markel talks about his grandmother Edith, a great cook who made tiny cakes the size of a half dollar. When Markel asked her about the tiny size of the cakes, she said, “Little things in life can have a very big impact.” She called the cakes “little gems.” This is a vital principle in resilience as well. We must find the little gems in any situation. Ask yourself…What is the lesson, the hidden opportunity, and the ultimate benefit the hard situation can bring?
   3. Recover. This principle is the one Markel emphasizes most strongly to the companies he advises, he said, that turns our traditional thinking about resilience on its head. Most leaders and businesses think about resilience as a form of endurance: “We’ve gotta muscle through this, survive on less sleep, earn the night owl award, roll up our sleeves and be a model of endurance.” Yes, the ability to rise up and endure is a component of resilience. But equally important and often ignored is recovery—the need to restore our strength and reserves after a period when our highest grit is required. Think of Rocky Balboa in the original Rocky Movie, Markel says. He notes a series of Harvard Business Review articles that studied top performing athletes. Those who do the best, he notes, are not necessarily the ones who practice the longest or who endure the most pain. The top athletes, research has concluded are those who recover more quickly. They have mastered self-care. They have recovery rituals to regain their internal and external strength, and they build these rituals into the process of performance.

Let’s examine this principle more fully. In your life and in your business, recovery is a vital part of the process for becoming a high-performance individual or team. When you face a tough deadline or an impossible challenge, what are the personal and professional rituals you use to replenish and repair?

In my own businesses I have stressed the need to match hard work with hard play. Lunch hour hikes. Biking teams. Fitness classes. Touch football.

Markel notes that his own upbringing was not a life of ease or high wealth, but that every Friday his parents would take the day off of work to do what they wanted to do—visit the health food store, the chiropractor, or to schedule in some recreation and fun. The “Freedom Day” was part of their plan for success.

Sadly, this is a principle many leaders in business have lost. As the “great recession” of 2010-2012 left many organizations in the fight for their lives, participants at every level were pressed to do more with less. But in too many cases, although the economy is now stronger, the urgency and pressure to over-perform never left.

It is not the stress of business that kills us, Markel says. It’s actually the lack of recovery from exhaustion and stress. Disengagement takes over, costing our economy more than $500 billion per year. Indirectly, the stress leads to depression, self-medication and addiction, leading not only to lost revenue but loss of happiness, loss of fulfillment and in too many cases, loss of wellbeing and even of lives.

Resilience is vital to personal and business success…and recovery is a critical key.

 

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After the devastation of Hurrican Irene hit Puerto Rico in 2017, business speaker and Real Housewives of New York reality TV star Bethenny Frankel took matters into her own hands. She was shocked by the lack of aid being provided to the victims of natural disasters, so she founded the bstrong program to give private aid to the global community.

Now she is focusing bstrong’s efforts on the victims of the California wildfires. Bstrong has partnered with the Global Empowerment Mission to provide fast and effective aid to those who have been affected by the fires. Teams will be delivering cash cards and aid supplies to Southern Californians as early as this upcoming Friday, November 16, and will be supporting the Paradise area by Monday, November 19. As a California based company, BigSpeak Speakers Bureau wants to thank all the efforts that have been put into keeping our home state safe. If you’d like to help, you can donate at the bstrong website to provide victims with cash cards and you can drop off donations at 20463 Hart St., Winnetka, CA 91306.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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Jason Bradshaw learned the importance of customer experience at age 14. Jason started his own computer retail business with the goal of making enough money to subsidize buying his own computer. He soon found his business expanding into office and hardware supplies. While he couldn’t always compete on price, Jason knew he could keep customers coming back by providing an excellent experience.

In college, he learned success was really about providing an excellent employee experience. When he lost his telemarketing job for a cleaning service because the company went out of business, he started his own cleaning service. Finding good telemarketers was difficult, so he treated his telemarketers (and the rest of the staff) well so they would continue working with him. With his focus firmly on employee experience, his customers became loyal and his business flourished.

Now Jason is the Chief Customer and Marketing Officer (CCMO) at Volkswagen in Australia, a keynote speaker, and author. His new book It’s All About CEX compiles his customer and employee experience (CEX) philosophy he developed over the years while working in the telecommunications, retail, and finance industries.

Be one percent better than everyone else

At the heart of his philosophy, Jason believes the key to a great customer experience is a great employee experience. Employees are the ambassadors and evangelists for a company’s product and services. If the employees are having a great experience with the company, their positive behavior will translate into a better experience for customers. That way an employee’s bad day doesn’t become a customer’s last day with the company.

How much better do you have to be to have a great employee or customer experience? 10 percent better, 20 percent better, or a 100 percent better? Jason believes if we each aim to do just one percent better we can make a great experience for everyone: employees and customers. One percent better is an attainable goal we can all reach. So what does one percent look like?

You only need to look at Disney for a great example of a one-percent-better customer experience. Disney had already improved the queuing experience for rides. They had posted wait times at regular intervals, managed the expectations of guests, and made the wait experience a journey rather than a nightmare. When you saw a sign it was 30 minutes or less until the ride, you could count on it being 30 minutes or less.

Then Disney noticed people were on their mobile devices while waiting in line. The wait experience had changed. So Disney decided figured out how to make it one percent better for people on devices. They created an app that entertained the guests while waiting in line. They didn’t have to do this, but that small attention to detail in all that they do is what keeps people coming back.

If you want to learn more about making a great customer and employee experience, contact BigSpeak Speakers Bureau today to book Jason Bradshaw.

Kyle Crocco is the Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and the lead singer of Duh Professors. He regularly publishes business book reviews and thought pieces on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.

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“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.” — Abraham Lincoln

BigSpeak is proud to say they did their part with 96% voter participation among staff.

BigSpeak Speakers Bureau is based in Southern California, but it’s staff are statewide and nationwide, voting in Northern California, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Texas.

You may have felt an overwhelming attention on voter turnout this year. In 2014 there was an all-time low voter turnout rate for midterm elections of 36.4%. The nation saw a 12.6% increase in voter turnout from the 2014 midterm elections to now.

BigSpeak conducted their own personal “rock the vote” campaign inside and outside of the office. While the campaign was unable to book Bono or Madonna for cool commercials, EVP Ken Sterling and the marketing department sent email reminders on voter registration and voting to the entire BigSpeak database of over 20,000 people nationwide.

Inside the office, BigSpeak President Barrett Cordero and executive staff sent personal encouragements to vote and arranged an open forum to discuss the ballot propositions at the Santa Barbara office.

BigSpeak feels it’s important for everyone to make a choice in what they believe. Not only does BigSpeak allow time for voting, but they also offer employees two paid days to donate their time for charitable causes, and often participate in matching donations to charitable campaigns.

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David Crosby, American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, is making his debut as a keynote speaker to talk about music’s effect on our world. As a counter-culture icon, his music with The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash has lead generations through uncertain times and earned him two inductions into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

After working with artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Phil Collins, Crosby has five albums that are recognized by Rolling Stone in their 500 Greatest Albums of All Times listing. After the first CS&N album was released in 1969, the band won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Crosby and Nash also produced three gold albums in the ‘70s and CS&N remained active until 2016.

Crosby is not slowing down either. In five years, he has released four albums, starting with Croz in 2014, followed by Lighthouse in 2016, and Sky Trails in 2017. His newest album, Here If You Listen, is a collaborative project and will be released on October 26, 2018.

Crosby is an emblem for the 1960’s counterculture movement and has always been an outspoken political activist. He has used his fame to speak out against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the reports from the Warren Commission’s investigation of JFK’s assassination, harsh sentencing for recreational cannabis, and most recently the social stances of the Trump administration.

After being a lifelong advocate for the legalization and decriminalization of cannabis, Crosby has recently decided to join the budding industry. In the August 2018 addition of High Times, he announced he is working on licensing his name to a cannabis company to create the suggested brand “Mighty Croz.”

After successful events at both Harvard and Syracuse, where he spoke to the general public and then went on to lecture for classes about 1960’s rock and roll, Crosby is focusing on spreading his knowledge and stories to America’s budding youth.

David Crosby Speaks On…

• The Power of Music and Our World: the power music had in his personal journey, how music changes the world, and how to engage people through music
• An Evening with David Crosby: held as a fireside chat with an acoustic performance of three songs
• Gotta Get Down to It: conversations with musician David Crosby

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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In a world where everything’s been done before, how can you push the limits and find your way into uncharted territories? Adventure-seeker Colin O’Brady wanted to push himself and our conception of impossible by taking on one of the last “world first” challenges.

For the first time in history, he is attempting to cross Antarctica—solo, unsupported and unaided. He departed on November 1, 2018 from the northern coast, dragging a 400 pound sled of supplies, and is expected to reach the southern coast around January 10, 2019.

His solo journey over 1000 miles in 70 days is a true test of human limits. He has trained mentally, physically, and spiritually to conquer one of the last remaining iconic “firsts” in exploration. He completed a 30-day, 400-mile practice run with a sled in Greenland and has put on twenty pounds of muscle.

He hopes that in taking on this challenge he will inspire others to reconsider what they thought to be impossible. There are no dreams too big to warrant the title impossible.

To hear about his journey to the starting line watch his video.

Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.

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Spies were disappearing in 1985. Lots of them. While the FBI arrested eight moles in the U.S. government, the KGB eliminated eleven Soviet double agents who were giving away Russian secrets to the West. A few double agents got prison; most got a quick bullet and a cold grave.

On the surface, this might seem like the usual tit for tat in terms of espionage. But between 1985 and 1991, the Soviets kept winning the Where’s Waldo of counterintelligence. Soviet assets helping the US kept disappearing without warning. The Soviet agencies were good—but not that good. This type of winning streak could only be the result of inside information. The U.S. had a mole who was tipping off the Soviets. All the U.S. moves were being telegraphed.

The FBI was sure the mole was in the CIA. The CIA was convinced the FBI had sprung a leak. Then they put rivalries aside, formed a joint committee, and decided the traitor was in the CIA. They were wrong. After a tip-off from a Soviet defector in 2000, they finally realized the mole might be in the FBI. The evidence pointed to senior FBI agent Robert Hanssen.

Enter Eric O’Neill, the hero of the new book on the Robert Hanssen spy case, Gray Day. The story was already made into a Hollywood film Breach—starring Ryan Phillipe as Eric O’Neill and Chris Cooper as Robert Hanssen—and told in several books, but this is the first time we get the insider’s account of how O’Neill was recruited to help take down Robert Hanssen.

At the time, O’Neill was 27 and on the outside looking in on the FBI. After working five years as an FBI investigative specialist, he found himself relegated to the sidelines for marrying Julianna, a foreign national, born in East Germany. Despite the fact Germany had been reunified for more than a decade, US counterintelligence agencies were still suspicious of the motives of people from and associated with East Germany. While the FBI investigated his in-laws, O’Neill’s security clearance was suspended and he was placed to work on a computer database.

Then one cold, Sunday morning in Dec. 2000, O’Neill’s phone rang. His boss was outside in the car and wanted to talk to him. He asked O’Neill if he had heard of Robert Hanssen. When O’Neill admitted he had not heard of Hanssen, he was asked to spy on the man. His cover would be a new assignment. O’Neill would be placed in a new computer unit and work with Hanssen one on one, tasked with building up a relationship and getting dirt that would indicate that Hanssen was Gray Day, the traitor.

So begins the tense tale of the case built to capture the U.S.’s most notorious spy. O’Neill recounts how he was tasked with finding incriminating information that would link Hanssen to his spying activities while trying to maintain the appearance of a normal life. He was unable to talk to his wife or anyone else but his FBI contact about the case. As his marriage breaks down and his law school grades suffer, he tries to maintain his wits so he doesn’t make any mistakes that will tip off Hanssen.

We all know the case ends with the successful arrest of Hanssen, but the journey there is one tense tale. Well written in the first person, the book reads like a true-life John Grisham thriller that should have had a movie version starring Tom Cruise. Even if you thought you knew everything about the case, O’Neill’s personal point of view shows the personal stakes agents take every day when working undercover.

The Book was released March 26, 2019. Purchase it from

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Indie Bound

Bam! Books-A-Million

iBooks

Kyle Crocco is the Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara, and the lead singer of Duh Professors. He regularly publishes business book reviews and thought articles on Medium, Business 2 Community, and Born 2 Invest.