Many of you have supported us in the past in attending our speaking events, and for that, I am ever so thankful.  We have had many great workshops and have met so many loyal readers over the years.  We appreciate all of you and we recognize PCBDaily wouldn’t be what it is without you.  🙂 Now that I’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, here comes the solicitation!

This year’s final Lunch and Learn is Wednesday, November 28th and I really want you to come.  I’ll be speaking on Failure and how essential it is to learn the things you need to know in order to succeed.  

I’m not the only speaker – there will actually be four of us – read below.

There is a cost, but I can assure you, you’ll be glad you came – it’s $20 per person if you’re a Chamber member (Beach) and $25 per person if you’re not a member (remember, we are serving lunch).

I’d say you could just show up, but we need to get an idea on how many people we are feeding!

Please call Marta at (850) 235-1159 and let her know you’re coming.  Or you can email her here at Marta@pcbeach.org

The Lunch and Learn will be held at Gulf Coast State College private dining room / Student Union East (behind the student cafeteria) from 11:30 am to 1 pm.

Beach Chamber’s Navigator Committee is evolving.

I was invited to participate in the Panama City Beach Chamber of Commerce’s Navigator committee nearly 2 years after it was conceived.  This committee has been instrumental in small business instruction and motivation over the years, but in the sprit of change–in my first meeting, no doubt–we began conceptualizing a fresh direction in which to take this committee. While the lunch and learn format had been considered to be a success, many committee members expressed that they wanted to see something different, based on their input from the community.

Over the last two years there have been many great speakers but many members felt like it was time for a change.  Change is good, right?  Yes! With this meeting a new direction was briefly defined and subsequent meetings were setup to give this direction some substance and solidarity. Along with this new direction sparked a new idea for regular get-togethers in a “socially-learning” environment, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Final Lunch and Learn – The Challenge of Change

Presented by Southwest Airlines and sponsored by Gulf Coast Chiropractic, this event will be a blast and fuel you with the ideas you need to send you back to work energized. Plus – you’ll have a chance to win a free Southwest Airlines ticket!

This Wednesday is the Chamber’s final Lunch and Learn of 2012 before the new direction takes action in January.  And this workshop will serve as a segway to what you can expect from this committee in 2013. Titled The Challenge of Change, the speakers (myself included) are going to talk about “their insights on tools to help navigate the challenges of change, including a discussion on mastermind groups, goal-setting, managing time, and how failure can instigate change…and success.”

Press Release

In this presentation, four speakers will share their insights on tools to help navigate the challenges of change, including a discussion on mastermind groups, goal-setting, managing time, and how failure can instigate change…and success.

James Johnson from Gulf Coast Chiropractic & Rehab will speak on Mastermind Groups and the power in these “like-minded brainstorming sessions.” From having the initial conversa¬tion, to seeing a vision and taking action together, the possibilities are abundant.

Brent Garrison from North Florida Financial will present Five Principles of Goal Setting, where he’ll outline a few simple rules to follow when setting and tracking goals. “If you don’t know where you’re going,” he states, “you’ll undoubtedly end up someplace else.”

David Balmer from Dale Carnegie Training of the Emerald Coast will discuss strategies, tools and techniques for Managing Time and “identifying and overcoming time-wasters.”

I’ll be talking about failure and how important it is to success. This is one of my favorite topics to speak on as literally every success is a direct derivative of some failure we’ve had and what we learned from it.

Probably one of the simplest depictions of how important failure is was portrayed in Walt Disney’s Meet the Robinsons, where they coined the phrase, “Keep Moving Forward,” describing that after failure you need to keep faith and continue to move forward. I just heard a quote in a sales book that said, “thank you for telling me ‘no’, as that is one ‘no’ closer to a yes, and I have to have so many ‘no’s’ before I get to a ‘yes.'”

IdeaWorks IdeaCamp, coming soon.

The next evolutionary step from the Lunch and Learns will be the IdeaCamp – a platform in which attendees can take turns speaking about things they want to share that can help motivate, encourage or spark ideas for those listening.  The “presentations” are ideally success driven experiences that are business related and goaled with giving everyone ideas on how they can improve their business in one way or another.

If you’re familiar with the BarCamp structure, then this will be a very similar feel.

The IdeaCamps will be held in the evening times in a social gathering and volunteer speakers will sign up for 15 minute slots at the beginning of the evening.  You know I’ll be speaking at everyone.  😉

Here are some of the things I’ll speak on in the coming months: 

• PCBDaily.com – How I did it.
• Sales 101 – How to Create something from scratch.
• Case Study – Email marketing for our vacation rental company.
• Case Study – Direct mail marketing for our vacation rental company.

So, please come to our final Lunch and Learn tomorrow!