213: Brad Lomenick on Creating World-Class Events, 3 Characteristics of Great Leaders, and Lessons Learned from some of the Top Leaders in the World

By December 10, 2018Podcast

In today’s episode, you’ll hear our interview with Brad Lomenick. In the interview you’ll hear Brad talk about his leadership journey, creating and leading world-class events, what he’s learned from being around some of the world’s greatest leaders, his book, H3 Leadership, and much more!

To view a transcription of this interview, go here!

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Brad Lomenick

Brad Lomenick

ABOUT BRAD LOMENICK:

Brad Lomenick is passionate about raising up great leaders around the globe. He is a renowned speaker, writer, leadership advisor and founder of Blinc Consulting, and has built a reputation as a strategic connector and convener of America’s most respected and sought-after leaders over the last two decades. For more than 10 years, he served as the lead visionary and president of Catalyst, one of America’s largest and most influential conference movements of young leaders, convening hundreds of thousands of leaders through high energy and experiential conferences across the United States. Lomenick is largely credited with growing the organization into one of the largest and most recognized leadership brands and conference gatherings in the world.

He currently serves in a Strategic Advisor role for a number of organizations and key leaders, while also spending more time speaking, writing, traveling and playing a broader role within the larger global leadership conversation.

Brad is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Catalyst Leader: Eight Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker, as well as his most recent leadership book entitled H3 Leadership: Be Humble, Stay Hungry, Always Hustle, both from Thomas Nelson.

He has more than two decades of experience working alongside thought-leaders, CEO’s and start-up entrepreneurs. Prior to running Catalyst, Brad spent several years working for legendary leadership author John Maxwell and also served in a number of roles within the leadership organizations INJOY and Giant Impact. He also spent five years involved in the growth of the nationally acclaimed Life@Work magazine and was a management consultant with Cornerstone Group, where he worked with a variety of companies, organizations, and nonprofit enterprises. Before that, he served as foreman for Lost Valley Ranch, a four-diamond working guest ranch in the mountains of Colorado, where he was responsible for managing 150 horses, 200 head of cattle, 100 guests and helping lead 60 employees.

Brad has had the privilege of interviewing and interacting with dozens of the world’s leading thinkers—including Malcolm Gladwell, Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Rick Warren, Jack Dorsey, Adam Grant, Tony Dungy, Dave Ramsey, Mark Burnett, Patrick Lencioni, Simon Sinek, Nancy Duarte, Marcus Buckingham, Andy Stanley, Tony Hawk, Charles Duhigg, Bill Hybels, Pat Summit, Francis Chan, Jacqueline Fuller, Donald Miller, John Wooden, Daniel Pink, Henry Cloud and more—through different media and event outlets. He writes and blogs about leadership, the next generation, creativity, innovation, teamwork, and personal growth, and has been featured in notable outlets such as TIME, Fast Company, INC, Business Insider, CNN.com, Relevant, Washington Post, Fox News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, and Leadership Journal.

Brad serves on the advisory boards for the A21 Campaign, Red Eye Inc., Values Partnerships, No Losing, Fuller Youth Institute, Alpha USA, and Praxis. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma and currently resides just outside of Atlanta. Lomenick once played American football in Australia and New Zealand was in a rap group in high school and is an outdoorsman who loves hunting, fishing, and snow skiing. He hopes to have his own hunting show someday, and possibly try out for the Senior PGA golf tour.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  • Your job as a leader is to empower them and to give them what is helpful to them
  • Start preparing now what you want to be doing later so that your now is creating opportunities for your next.
  • The people closest to you need the best from you.
  • The ability for us to do something significant in the long term is way more possible for us to do something incredible in the short-term.
  • You never get to the point where the people who know you well don’t have the right to call you out and speak into your life.
  • When you get a place where you can no longer receive feedback, that is a really dangerous place to be as a leader.
  • Aim small, miss small when it comes to knowing your audience.
  • For creating and managing events in today’s world, it’s about creating community, not content.
  • What can I provide in a conference community that is different than what others can experience anywhere else?
  • Community, connection, and conversation are what’s important at events today.
  • Go niche with what you’re practically providing people with.
  • The cycle of a conference: telling a story, selling a story, getting revenue, creating an experience, and retaining people.
  • We knew we couldn’t get to know 30,000 people, but we could get to know 3,000 people. That’s what we focused on.
  • When you’re big, you have to act small. When you’re small, you need to act big.
  • Personalize people’s experience.
  • Be Humble, Stay Hungry, Always Hustle
  • 3 parts of purpose: Identity, who you are,  calling, why you are here, and assignment – what you do
  • Don’t let your assignment become your identity or calling
  • Our job is simply our assignment in the season we’re in. We’ll likely have 10-20 assignments in our lifetime.
  • The best leaders notice people and pull the best out of people.
  • When you get to the top of the food chain, don’t start acting like you belong to be there.
  • It’s one thing to build your own platform, the next level is to help build the platform of others.

PEOPLE MENTIONED:

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