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Past Meetings

September 22, 2009
Mike Lipkin is full of it

About ten minutes into his presentation and I’m wondering what a one-on-one conversation with Mike Lipkin would be like. Pretty one-sided, I conclude. The guy exudes enough energy to exhaust most of the hardworking stiffs at the first breakfast of the PMCQ’s 2009-2010 season. By the end there wasn’t enough energy left for a decent question. But there was a palpable sense of motivation, which is Lipkin’s number one goal — to motivate, inspire, provoke, stir, rouse, animate… well, you probably have a Thesaurus. The key is that everyone benefits from Lipkin’s side of the conversation. And that’s the aim of his recent book, One Life, One Meeting: How to Build Preeminence One Conversation at a Time.

President of Environics/Lipkin, the motivation and sales empowerment arm of Environics Research Group, Mike Lipkin is a one-man nuclear reactor who conducts seminars, workshops, focus groups, sales meetings and corporate off-sites. Energy? Mike is full of it. In 2007, he spoke to more than 100,000 people with 180 programs presented in nineteen countries. That’s a lot of conversations.

For the PMCQ, his program was entitled Ten Steps to Creating the Right Chemistry for Change — evidently Lipkin knows about pharma’s troubles. He suggests that we’re all in the business of creating opportunities and then asks, “Is your team achieving because of you or in spite of you?” It’s a loaded question that leads to self examination. What’s your archetype? For Mike Lipkin, you are one of four: the sovereign leader, who lets nature take its course; the lover, who is extraordinary at building relationships; the warrior, who pre-empts threats and neutralizes the enemy; or the alchemist, who is the wizard or the change maker. If you’re a marketer, you want to be the alchemist who transmutes problems into solutions.

So as an alchemist marketer, are you a zeitgeist meister? The most plugged-in person? The person who helps others “get it?” Mike Lipkin wants you to brand yourself as someone who knows; who identifies with people; who flatters people. If you’re the alchemist and zeitgeist meister, you need to subscribe to Lipkinism #1: In every meeting, you train people at how they can expect you to be at the next meeting. And that leads to Lipkin’s ten steps to creating the right chemistry for change:

1. Reality is your friend — embrace it.
2. Focus will set you free — keep the main thing the main thing.
3. Travel light — let go of the past and your baggage.
4. Play from your sweet spot — be yourself and stay true to your passion.
5. Be open to everything — frustration is not an option.
6. Courage is the right side of fear — don’t be afraid to let them see you sweat.
7. Declare your compassionate commitment — all the time.
8. Embrace heterarchy — horizontal links optimize success better than vertical.
9. Model what’s possible — impossible is nothing, as the ad goes.
10. Discipline yourself — perhaps the biggest change of all for some.

An hour with Mike Lipkin, one-on-one hundred, is exhausting, but in a good way. Because if you’re not inspired, motivated and re-energized when you leave the room, you weren’t in the conversation.

Mike Lipkin's presentation

Rich Hammond
rich@richhammond.com