Employer Blueprint Podcast

Self Awareness and Being Unapologetic w. Davide Di Giorgio

Who are you? Should you be apologizing for who you are? On today’s episode of The Employer Blueprint Podcast we are proud to present Davide Di Giorgio. Davide started his career as a Composer and Musical Director who had his first show at age 16, and published a musical at age 19. In the beginning Davide followed his passion for theatre by running his own theatre production company while also teaching, before his own self awareness allowed him to pursue a path to helping others. After looking at his own life and the complications with relationships and family that he had, Davide had the revelation that he was the problem and in recognizing that, realized that he was also the solution. 

As Davide states in the interview, “What if I started to change who I was being to the world.. What if being unapologetic.. was the key?” 

This became the inspiration for Davide’s international best selling book Being Unapologetic, Empowering You to Become an Influential Speaker and Visionary Leader. Through out the podcast, Kyle and Davide have an amazing conversation in which Davide shares personal stories about his journey, as well as some tips about being accountable to who you are so that you can realize that you are also the solution. This is critical for anyone in a leadership role and can be very empowering to be able to lead with confidence. As well as being an Author, Davide is a Motivational Keynote Speaker, Ambassador, Expert, and Consultant. You can find out more about Davide by way of his website www.beingunapologetic.com as well as all social media platforms. In the podcast Davide specifically mentions Instagram, where he replies to everyone personally, and encourages others to reach out and start a conversation. Enjoy today’s episode of The Employer Blueprint Podcast, and please make sure to subscribe, and leave a comment or rating. 

Open Communication and the 4 strategies of Organizational Development w. Paul Comfort

At the Employer Blueprint Podcast we love talking about team building. In this episode we’re going to break down a lot of information as we talk about building a team and what you do once you have the team in place. Today’s guest has experience in both the private and public sector and there are so many things that are transferable when it comes to team building and getting the right people around you. One of the things that becomes a common thread during this episode is communication. This includes the need to communicate and the ability to communicate at all levels. One thing that tends to happen to those in leadership roles is that communication tends to work its way down but fails to work its way back up to the leaders of the organization. 

The Employer Blueprint Podcast is excited to present The VP of Business Development at Trapeze Group, Author of Full Throttle: Living Life to the Max with No Regrets, and Host of Transit Unplugged Podcast, Paul Comfort. For the last 30 years Paul has been serving by way of a career in Public Transit and government and most recently served as the CEO of the Maryland Transit Administration. Paul is also a keynote speaker with expertise in Leadership and Management, and Organizational Improvement. Through a career that started with running for public office and a chance meeting during his first step into politics, Paul was given the opportunity as a young man in his twenties to pursue public transportation. This was a very successful venture that lasted 30 years, and according to Paul, it was only possible through the people he had around him. This career in public transportation took Paul to many parts of the country, to achieving a Law Degree, and eventually back to public office. After running for State’s Attorney and losing, one more time Paul was presented with an opportunity. Paul was given the opportunity to become County Administrator, and he had the responsibility of overseeing the budget of the County Attorney’s office. Then in 2014 Paul ran for office again, when he ran for County Commissioner and won, before ending up where he is now, working for Trapeze as the the Vice President of Business Development. Through out his career, Paul has been very successful, and he attributes his success to the ability to build great teams, and in this episode of the Employer Blueprint Podcast, Kyle and Paul dive into the many areas of discussion regarding team building and development. Enjoy the episode and please subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. 

The Value of a High Performing Team w. Kelly Anne Harris Team

On this weeks episode of the Employer Blueprint Podcast, we are excited to present The Kelly Anne Harris Team of Keller Williams Elite. 10 years ago, Kelly Anne Harris was a single mom living off credit card debt, had recently lost her job, and was about to lose her home. As she was trying to find employment during a terrible time in our country’s economy, Kelly Anne decided to become a Realtor for a best friend who was trying to find homes to flip for profit. During the first year in her new career path, as Kelly Anne recalls in the podcast, even though things were tough, she worked diligently to succeed and knocked on every door in her town. This continued until three years later Kelly Anne Harris was the number one Realtor in the area. The story of Kelly Anne Harris could end there with success and a happy ending except success wasn’t happy. In fact it was the opposite, when even though she managed to do 142 transactions that year with only herself and an assistant, Kelly Anne’s life was spinning out of control. She knew she had to do something because her health and her family life were suffering, and that was when Kelly Anne learned about a team concept being adopted by other Realtors while she was on a trip at a realtor convention. Kelly Anne decided to pursue this ideas of having a team of Realtors and she began doing research and visiting other offices who had already adopted the business model. One of Kelly Anne’s very first team members is also a guest on this weeks podcast, Kelsey Jarboe. After the addition of Kelsey, within a year and a half, the new Kelly Anne Harris Team was able to double the previous year to 242 transactions and 40 million dollars in production. The team concept has also allowed Kelly Anne to pursue other ventures such as an independent brokerage with multiple locations and a property management company. Currently the Kelly Anne Harris Team has multiple agents and two are on this weeks Employer Blueprint podcast with Kelly Anne. Kelsey Jarboe has been with the Kelly Anne Harris group since the beginnings of the team forming, and Denise Jarboe has been with the team for a year. Both Kelsey and Denise tell their stories from different perspectives on how they became involved in Real Estate and how much the Leadership of Kelly Anne Harris has changed their lives. You don’t want to miss this episode as Kyle dives into a lot of great topics while interviewing some very successful entrepreneurs who work by the motto, “you can teach skill all day, but you can’t teach hustle.” 

To find out more about Kelly Anne Harris and the Kelly Anne Harris Team, or if you are looking to potentially start a new career in Real Estate and think a team environment would be right for you, visit 

https://www.owensborokyrealty.com where you will find resources available including a careers section of the website. 

Enjoy this weeks episode and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes of The Employer Blueprint Podcast. 

Invest in Your Leadership Skills with Charmaine Hammond

Thank you or joining us on the Employer Blueprint Podcast and this week we are proud to present Charmaine Hammond. Charmaine is an Expert in Workplace Communication, Collaboration and Conflict Resolution, a Keynote Speaker, and a Trainer. Her list of certifications are impressive, as Charmaine is a Certified Speaking Professional, a TEC Canada Approved Speaker, and she also has a Master’s of Conflict Analysis and Management from Royal Roads University. As an expert in conflict resolution, Charmaine has helped numerous businesses, business owners, and business leaders deal with “people” issues in the work place. No industry is excluded from the types of businesses, non-profits, and government organizations Charmaine has helped over the last two decades. Whether through public speaking, work shops, and webinars, or one on one mentoring with company leaders, and employees, Charmaine is very passionate with a “no fluff” approach to getting results. 

As she explains in the podcast episode, Charmaine’s first career was in jail as a correctional officer. Being 19 and this being her first career, Charmaine realized she had a passion for conflict resolution, however also recognized that she had a lot to learn. After leaving that position, Charmaine went on to complete her Master’s Degree and soon after started her own Mediation Practice where she has been helping multiple types of organizations in the area of conflict resolution and mediation for the last 20 plus years. One of the issues talked about in the Employer Blueprint Podcast episode is when an employee transitions from being on a team to leading that team. Charmaine talks about problems with trust, and friendships ending from a new manager trying to manage people who were once coworkers. Kyle and Charmaine have an awesome conversation about topics that they are both very passionate about, and both love talking and learning about. You don’t want to miss this episode as they dive into people issues, workplace conflicts, why they happen, and how to resolve them. Enjoy, and please make sure you subscribe to the Employer Blueprint Podcast so you don’t miss an episode. 

How to Get Attention w.Lorraine Ball

Before we get started today I just want to let you know that we had a little bit of a technical problem on today show at about 24 minutes in. You will hear that the audio from our guest cut out,  and we didn’t find out until we had already recorded the episode and it was in production. Unfortunately, she was in the middle of telling a great illustration. What our guest is talking about, is a headline from the 60s that reads “headless body in topless bar.” It is such a great illustration to the point she is making and we didn’t want you to miss out on it. So at 24 minutes you will hear Kyle jumping in to let you know at the part that got messed up. 

It is a busy world out there, and not just our schedules or where we have to be and when we have to be there. It’s a busy world in our social media feeds, in our email, and the way that we are connecting with people. So that raises the question for businesses, “how do we get notices, how do we get recognized, and how do we make sure the people are seeing the great information that we have out there for them?” On today’s episode we have Lorraine Ball who is going to share with us seven suggestions. Some of these include, how to form a subject line, or a headline, that will compliment the content you are putting out. Before having a great headline, you also must have great content. In order to have great content you have to understand what your customers want, and what will be beneficial for them. Your content you should be constantly adding value to your customers lives by giving them information that is helpful and important to them, and solve problems they may have. The fact is that if you put out junk content only for the purpose of hooking your potential customers in, you’ll end up losing customers in the end. So as you’re listening to today’s episode and learning ways that you can potentially gain attention with a subject line or title, also be thinking about the content. It’s important to get your potential customer’s attention however it is even more important to have content that is good enough to keep it. 

Lorraine Ball is a Digital Marketing Strategist and the owner of a company called Round Peg. Round Peg is a Marketing Agency that started out in the traditional form, and as times changed so did the company. Today Round Peg is a Digital Marketing Strategy firm that works with businesses in areas that include web design, brand, logo, and social media as well as content creation. You can find more information about Lorraine Ball and Round Peg as well as other ventures at www.roundpeg.biz.

Thanks for listening and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes of the Employer Blueprint Podcast. 

Evaluate Your Training Program with Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick

Have you ever had an amazing idea for your company that you were not able to implement on your own? You decided to bring someone in to train the people on this new initiative and you were just positive that this was going to absolutely revolutionize the way that you did business. In your head, people on your team were going to set through this training, and at the end they were all going to be cheering and excited at all of the new information they received. Everyone would go back to work and be more productive and happy to work for such an amazing company that provides such cutting edge training. And even though it wasn’t quite like what you imagined, the employees did become more productive and energized, for the first couple of months. Old habits are hard to break and even though it may have been a good training, the long term effectiveness wasn’t as good because things went back to the way they were. It happens to companies of all types. Whether it be from a company’s internal training department or an outsourced coach or trainer, a team needs to be trained in new ways of doing things when your company is moving in a new direction. What companies often fail to do, is find ways to evaluate this new training to make sure that it is actually effective. Steps should be put in place to make sure that the training actually works, and there are results that can be seen from the trainings that have been had. On today’s show you’re going to learn about a system that does just that, called the New World Kirkpatrick Model from the creator Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick is the Senior Consultant at Kirkpatrick Partners, LLC, a Keynoter Speaker, Coach, and Author. Dr. Kirkpatrick attended University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point where he received Bachelors and Masters Degrees, before attending Indiana State University where he earned his PhD in Counseling Psychology. After college, Dr. Kirkpatrick was working as a Training Director for a bank in Indianapolis Indiana, and decided to learn more about training a team from from a visiting professor from the University of Wisconsin name Don Kirkpatrick. The last name was not a coincidence because that visiting professor was his father. Don was actually the developer of the original Kirkpatrick Model of training in the 1950’s, and since then Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick has developed the New World Kirkpatrick Model, which is credited as being a very powerful training model that ultimately serves the business organization and delivers results. Kyle and Dr. Kirkpatrick have an amazing conversation in which it is explained that no training by itself can deliver results, instead there needs to be follow up and accountability in order to create the habits that deliver the best results. For hundreds of free resources and to contact Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick or his team, visit https://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com. Thank You for tuning in and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of the excited upcoming episodes of The Employer Blueprint Podcast.   

Work Life balance with Joanne Victoria

Work life balance has become a bit of a buzz word, you hear it all the time. What does it really mean, and how do we know if we have a good work life balance? We are going to dive into quite a bit of that today with Joanne Victoria. There’s a lot of confusion around what work life balance really is, and what it looks like to be balanced. Some people think in terms of balance truly being equal. As if to say that because we spend this much time at work, we are expected to spend a certain amount of time away from work, doing personal endeavors, or with family. It could be ventured to say that work life balance is not something that can be evaluated on a daily or weekly period. Sometimes it would even be difficult to evaluate work life balance on a monthly timeframe. Work life balance is actually something that should be evaluated over a longer amount of time. The type of position that you have in a company, along with your responsibilities, and seasons of the year in which your responsibilities are greatest, should also be taken into account. An example of this would be someone who is an accountant or CPA. The first quarter of the year would most likely be a much busier time than one of the middle quarters of the year, and this is based on a date that the IRS determines that taxes are due. During the first quarter a person holding one of those positions would not get much personal time as they would during other times, and even though they would work long hours and be away from their personal lives, the time away would be made up once they were out of the busy season of business. It would be difficult to determine proper work life balance in the short term. 

It is very important that you’re able to look back and recognize that you’ve spent intentional quality time in all areas of your life. That means your time at work should be quality and intentional, and that also means the time with your family or in your personal life also needs to be intentional with that a lot of quality. The ability to look back after a year and recognize that there is harmony between your work and personal life based on the amount of quality time you have invested in each, is the true definition of work life balance. Most importantly when spending time away from work to focus on your personal life, or away from your personal life to focus on work, it cannot be stressed enough that it needs to be quality and intentional. If time is being spent just to make sure there are even amounts of time for each, then both your business and personal life will suffer. 

On this week’s episode of the Employer Blueprint Podcast we are excited to present Joanne Victoria. Joanne is the CEO of The Joanne Victoria Group, an Author of seven books, the Host of The San • IT Project Podcast, and a Coach to the Telecommunications, Technology, Entertainment, and Mass Media industries. As she is telling her story, one of the things you’ll find most interesting about Joanne, is that she is a woman of the people. Early in her career, after finding her way into management at a Real Estate firm, Joanne was offered a large board room to be used as her office. Joanne wasn’t comfortable with that so she decided to place herself amongst the other employees and used the board room for what she called, Pizza and Champaign Wednesdays. Of those employees, more than 30% went on to manage other real estate companies, and two went on to open their own companies, which says a lot about Joanne and her abilities as a leader. After spending much time managing others, hiring, and developing employees, Joanne decided to leave the Real Estate Industry to venture into a career in Personal Development where she would host her own work shops and seminars. After doing this for others in the real estate industry for a period of time, and after a couple of moves between California and Washington State, Joanne saw an opportunity to help others who were in a different area of business and that is the technology industry. Currently Joanne works with employees and executives to help them acquire a happier life through a better work life balance. To find out more about Joanne, her podcast, blogs, coaching, and books, visit https://askjoannevictoria.com. Thank you for tuning in to this weeks episode of the Employer Blueprint Podcast!

The Value of Accountability w. Vicki Suiter

Accountability is critical to the success of any organization, but we often times don’t think of accountability the right way. We sometimes think about it almost like it’s a negative term that we’re going to hold employees accountable, that we’re going to hold people accountable. Accountability is treated as if someone may have done something wrong and there is going to be justice to what they have done. Really the way that we need to think about accountability is through the positive impact that it has on our organizational culture. This is especially true for top performers, in that it will allow them to be more successful through the positive reinforcement of accountability, while helping them reach their goals. On today’s episode of Employer Blueprint Podcast, we’re going to talk about this from an expert in the space of developing a culture of accountability, Vicki Suiter. Vicki is the owner of Suiter Business Builders and has been a business owner for an impressive 29 years. Through her company, Suiter Business Builders, Vicki Suiter is a Coach, Business Consultant, Author, and National Speaker. Suiter Business Builders works with Contractors to allow them to manage their time and efforts more efficiently, make more money, and increase over all happiness through their business. According to Vicki’s LinkedIn profile, the strategies used to help her clients are founded on one idea, “knowledge is power.” Vicki wants her clients to know where they are currently with their business, where they want their business to go, and how to get there by taking critical steps to creating a successful business. Vicki is also the author of a book called The Profit Bleed, How Managing Margin Can Save Your Contracting Business. You can find out more about Vicki Suiter, and Suiter Business Builders at Suiterbusinessbuilders.com. Also, for The Employer Blueprint Podcast listeners, you can visit www.theprofitbleed.com/free to receive a free copy of Vicki’s book, as long as you pay the shipping and handling. Thank You for listening, and if you haven’t done so, be sure to subscribe to The Employer Blueprint Podcast so that you don’t miss an episode in the future. 

How to Face Change w. Ron Carucci

We will all face change in the course of our leadership journey. Whether you have started a business, or as your business grows, you will bring in new leaders into your company, you will count on others to help your organization move forward. So much of the key to this change being successful is preparing for it on the front end, and preparing for the moment when you will need to rely on others for your success. Today’s guest Ron Carucci is an expert in this, and he has done extensive research on organizational growth and development. Ron Carucci held positions at well-known companies including PepsiCo in ADP before venturing out on his own. As he states in the podcast, he realized that he was never going to be able to fully help organizations if he continued to be a part of them. In 2004 Ron Carucci became the owner and managing partner of Navalent, a consulting firm that delivers organizational solutions to senior executives. Ron’s passion is organizational leadership and organizational behavior with the goal to create cultures within the workplace that help people fall in love with their work. Aside from being the managing partner of Navalent, Ron is also a best selling author of eight books, a coach, and has been featured on TED talks, twice. Ron has shared his experience as a contributor to the the Harvard Business Review, and to Forbes. Ron’s latest book, Rising to Power, covers many of the topics discussed in this episode of The Employer Blueprint Podcast as it relates to Transformational Leadership. Through studies discussed in the book, it was found that more than 50% of the time leaders fail in the first 18 months of their new appointment or assignment. Through that research, some differentiators of successful leaders were uncovered that set them apart. Enjoy this episode as Kyle and Ron have amazing conversations about leadership, business, and everything in between. You can find more information about Ron Carucci and Navalent at http://www.navalent.com/.  Please be sure to subscribe to the Employer Blueprint Podcast so that you don’t miss any episodes in the future. Thank you for tuning in!

Stay Focused On Your Business w. Erik Leslie

Often times the hustle and bustle of business, the busy ness of work, gets in the way of our ability to focus clearly because we are so busy working. So how do we stay focused on these tasks, how do we continue to move forward? In this article you will find five suggestions of things that you can do to help stay focused on your business whenever you’re still working in your business. All so you can continue to move forward without reaching a plateau. 

 

1. Write out all of the tasks you have so that you can see them right in front of you. 
2. Prioritize those tasks. 
3. Define what success or completion looks like for each task. Some of the tasks will be easy and checked off quickly, others will need a clearer understanding and will need to be defined. 
4. Document how you will execute on those tasks. 
5. Communicate this with your team. This will help everyone to hold themselves and each other more accountable because you told other people what is going to happen. 

 

On this week’s episode of The Employer Blueprint Podcast we are excited to present Erik Leslie. As a Keynote Speaker, Present Moment Strategist, and Mindfulness Teacher, Erik is an expert on mindfulness and getting control of our minds in business and our personal lives. To find out more about Erik please visit www.satimind.com, or www.erikleslie.com. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review at the Employer Blueprint Podcast so that you don’t miss any upcoming episodes.