Montecito Bank & Trust’s Ventura Event
Lively and engaged conversations took place during the networking portion of the evening while enjoying wine and hors d’oeuvres. Local business owners and managers along with executives of nonprofits had the opportunity to visit with business resource organizations and companies who had table displays, including the Small Business Administration, Women’s Economic Ventures, National Association of Women Business Owners, WSI Global Marketing, Antioch University, Disruptive Sales Insights, and Montecito Bank & Trust.
Marni Brook, Ventura Community President for Montecito Bank & Trust, welcomed the audience as the keynote presentation got underway. She shared that it is Montecito Bank & Trust’s goal to bring relevant and informative educational events to local businesses in addition to offering depository and cash management services, and financing solutions. The topics for this year’s B2B seminar series came as a result of completed business seminar topic surveys from local business owners and nonprofit executive directors. After a brief history of Montecito Bank & Trust, Ms. Brook introduced John Rodriguez, the keynote speaker for the evening.
Mr. Rodriguez, Principal Consultant for The Table Group, Inc., has worked closely with Patrick Lencioni in the writing of over a half dozen books including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team which has sold over two million copies worldwide. Their latest collaborative book endeavor, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business is now available to the public, and was at the heart of the evening’s address entitled, Your Blueprint for a Healthy Team. Mr. Rodriguez’s high energy and humorous style resonated with the audience as he spoke about business success through strengthening your organization. He prescribes that there are two requirements for a successful organization; having leadership focused on being smart, and even more important he advocates is having a healthy team. Mr. Rodriguez believes that the health of a business or nonprofit team is essential to success, but that managers spend so very little time on this less quantifiable side of the team success ledger.
John explained that, “Our ideas and approach are very simple, and this might be why so many leaders do not invest the time to really develop strong teams – however, we believe imbedding the healthy side in with the smart side is the last great competitive advantage – more so than technology, best practices, innovation, or any other discipline in business today. Montecito Bank & Trust always runs excellent programs, so it is great to be a part of their B2B series. I enjoyed talking with so many business leaders at the event and clearly seeing their interest in improving their own teams”
He provided a helpful approach and spoke at length of the four disciplines needed for a healthy organization and key behaviors to building a strong team. What seems to be relatively simple in theory often eludes business teams to the detriment of bottom line results or even business survival. There was no shortage of questions for Mr. Rodriguez and feedback was very positive as the evening concluded.
The second B2B evening event will be held on Thursday, November 1 featuring Kyle Enger, Founding Partner and Principal, BBI Financial, Inc. with his keynote address: Preparing Your Business for the Future. A smaller limited seating morning session workshop entitled, Diagnose the Financial Heath of Your Business Rx, will be facilitated by Mr. Enger on that same date.
The third and final B2B 2012 event will be held on Wednesday, November 7 featuring Matt Hicks, former Facebook Communications Manager and Current Advisor, R to Z Studios. Mr. Hicks’ evening keynote address is entitled, Thinking Beyond “Likes”. A smaller limited seating workshop, Facebook 101 for Business, will be held that morning and facilitated by Lorrie Thomas Ross and Justin Seely, both successful lynda.com authors.
The second and third seminar and morning workshop events will be held at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort. In addition to the evening keynote addresses, guests will have plenty of time to network with each other over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and visit related business service providers. To register visit: click here.