Strategy from Jeroen de Flander

I just found out about this strategy specialist. Very interesting reading. Here some of his slides. He is right (I do believe the same) that to convey and pass on a message to a team, it is much more efficient to use storytelling. And this is where I can help as speaker about my expeditions. My stories are real and do usually inspire people, even if most of the people cannot have all the empathy with me.

If an audience can remember a feeling I do express (a pain, a fear), they would connect even more to me, to my experience, hence remembering the story and of course the key message.

My job consists in trying to make them entering my world and feel what I was feeling. In this way, if they agree with the message, they will adopt it and really start acting towards the goals of the management.

So what is important for a speaker to meet the strategy, hence be a leader ?

• find the proper message in line with the strategy, easy to put in place (the what)
• wrap the message around a story everyone with understand and remember (the how)
• connect with the audience to create the social movement, the inspiration that leads to motivation and action. (the why)

One of my Engineering school teacher told me an engineer should be able to answer 3 questions: Why, How (much/many), How ? We are not far from it.

Branding assignment

Starting a business from scratch is not easy, especially if you have not a common knowledge of the web, of general business and best selling and marketing practices. This is the case for Gadiel, he is a world expert in Jungle knowledge, he could survive months alone, simple he guided someone for 2 years in the jungle. If you never heard of the documentary Walking the Amazon, just do an internet search about it.

So Gadiel had no web presence, no branding. We discussed priorities and I set-up his website, facebook fan page and we are now developing the first tours. The focus was on consistency of his identity, with colors and a theme that suits him. The solution was to use blogger as host as it's easy to manage and SEO friendly (logic for a google service). The importance to sell his tours is to be found!

If you want an incredible jungle holiday, drop him a line.

And oh yeah, we designed also some visit cards (big and clear for his older clients). These cards are of 4 type, each with a different tree. Gadiel loves protecting the Amazonian forest!