Ira Blumenthal

Your Best Is Next

Whether it’s corporations, associations or even individuals, you can’t have a better tomorrow if you continue thinking about yesterday. We’ve seen chaos, a pandemic, economic challenges, business uncertainty and greater changes than ever before. We’re confused, overwhelmed, frustrated and often impatient. This is NOT business as usual. This is business as UN-usual. And so, the threshold question for us all is simple… “What’s next?” It’s clearly time for RECOVERY and pushing the RESET button on our businesses and lives. It has been said, “If you want to predict the future, create it!” This customizable program (onstage OR virtual), YOUR BEST IS NEXT, is precisely about creating the future and teaching your organization how to insure that their BEST IS truly NEXT.

Change Is Inevitable. Growth Is Optional. (Change, Re-invention)

There is one constant in life (and business)… change! Yet, change is not new. What is new is the incredible speed of change. Industries, companies and careers have gone from “distinction” to “extinction” because of their inability to adapt, adjust and master change. This session offers a high-content, high-energy, “hands on” approach to embracing, as well as capitalizing on change in business building. After all, change is to business what oxygen is to life.

Managing Brand You (Personal Branding)

What if you thought of yourself as a brand? Everyone struggles with what they stand for… or what they’d like to stand for… Each one of us is a brand. This speech focuses on the disciplines of business branding and applies them to the process of crafting, developing, extending, managing and protecting your most important brand… “Brand You!” Ideal for business executives, sales professionals, even non-business audiences… this is an interactive, high-energy, fun-filled educational (and inspirational) speech (and workshop) experience. What if you thought of yourself as a brand?

Brand-Building For Your Future (Branding)

Products are consumed. Brands are purchased. In our branded world, we make Xerox copies, blow our nose in Kleenex, snack on Jell-O, relax in the Jacuzzi and cover wounds with Band-Aids. From Nike on our hats to Tommy on our shirts to Swatch on our watches and Starbucks in our cups, branding is critical to business development. This session focuses on the philosophy, strategy, guiding principles and “best practices” to create, build, maintain and manage brand success. After all, regardless of what your title is, everyone’s a brand manager… Great examples, provocative anecdotes and purposeful humor make this a great session, especially when customized for the industry, client and event. Everyone’s a brand manager!

Balancing High-Tech and High Touch in Business-Building

In the words of Bill Gates, "Technology is a tool, an enhancement, an enabler. It can be an enormously helpful servant but a dangerous master..." Although the benefits of technology are vast, we depend too much on "high tech" communication with employees, customers, consumers, suppliers and distributors and depend too little on "high touch" communication. This interactive, action-packed, fun-filled, highly relevant speech is focused on strategies, tactics, tips and techniques designed to help business professionals connect, engage and grow mutually beneficial enterprise through dynamic interpersonal relationships.

Myths and Misses in Marketing (Marketing, Business Development)

Based on Ira’s book, “Ready, Blame, Fire!”, this energetic speech (or workshop) focuses on challenging conventional wisdom. Targeting the fourteen greatest “myths” in marketing (i.e. “Bigger Is Better!”, “Close Enough Is Good Enough,” “The First One In Wins,” “It Won’t Happen Here!,” etc.), participants learn from history (the “misses”) and gain a well-defined understanding of the “compelling imperatives” for success in a complex, highly competitive business climate. The focus of this session is on business development, quantum leap growth, alternative channels of distribution and marketing success.

"Ira has a unique knack for engaging an audience. And while the audience is engaged, he educates them. One thing you can be guaranteed with Ira is that you never know what he's going to do next. He is an incredibly dynamic and knowledgeable speaker."

- Chuck O'Dell | Division President Marriott

"If Ira Blumenthal could pitch, field, and bat as well as he communicates, I'd own his contract. He's destined for the speakers Hall of Fame."

- Mike Ilitch | Founder and Chairman, Little Caesars; Owner, Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings

"Your seminar on co-branding was definitely a hit, and helped make this year's conference our biggest and best ever. We have had tremendous comments about your presentation from our distributors and employees alike."

- J.L. Whitehurst | Manager-Marketing Department Exxon Company, USA

"Here it is ten days later and I am still energized by your presentation. How the heck do you do that on a regular basis? What kind of vitamins are you taking? I think you could tell by the extended ovation that you were well received by the footwear executives."

- Barbara Singer | Vice President of Communications Footwear Industries of America