Speaking & Seminar Topics

Mr. Norton speaks as an expert in business, management, entrepreneurship, vision and growth. He also writes and speaks on strategy, people selection, breaking through limits and organizational development appropriate to any company's life stage.

Mr. Norton has developed and delivered the following proprietary materials in the form of keynotes, educational events and seminar presentations. All can be delivered in time frames from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Call to discuss your specific objective, audience, date and time frame.

1. Business Vision Development and Enhancement
2. Strategic Positioning For High Barriers to Entry
3. Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship
4. Modes of Management
5. Raising Angel Financing Today in a "Changed" Market
6. Startup War Stories
7. How Product Development and Launches Can Achieve a 100% Success Rate!
8. The Perfect Start-up Model
9. The Next Step
10. Attacking Giants
11. Managing Human Capital
12. Customer Service Today
13. Bootstrapping - What it Takes To Get From Raw Idea to A Fundable Startup Company
14. Custom Topics Always Available on Request

Contact Us To Discuss a Topic and Quote

Given Mr. Norton's 22 years broad experience he can also create a talk around your event or theme, with real life stories and examples that audience members will remember and learn from. It is critical that these talks are both fun and educational because fun stories are heard and allow people to more easily remember the key lessons. Each talk will generally start with a basic topic slide set and be customized for the particular audience and time slot available. For longer time slots an interactive workshop component can be added for experiential learning to burn ideas in for lifetime use.

1. Business Vision Development and Enhancement - Why a vision matters. How to develop a vision step-by-step. How to use it day-to-day for maximum organizational benefit. How to communicate it to your organization. Who has to participate and how? This talk is primarily for entrepreneurs, senior managers and higher level executives with broad product and business scope and responsibilities. Back to Top
   
   
2. Strategic Positioning For High Barriers to Entry - How to find and define a niche you can dominate for market entry and then evolve longer term barriers to entry. Using competitive intelligence and a competitive landscape map to differentiate your company, protect your margins and grow without direct competition on every sale. Go to market strategies are critical to any product's first years. This talk is best in entrepreneurial forums or for examining new product launches and extensions for larger companies. Back to Top
   
   
3. Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship - How medium and larger size companies can increase product development success by using entrepreneurial techniques. Injecting an entrepreneurial spirit into your organization is especially critical today with less differentiation, greater foreign competition and shortened product life cycles. Best for corporations and business associations with senior managers to CEOs responsible for product development and new business development. Back to Top
   
   
4. Modes of Management - How companies should adjust their management style based on their company's stage of development. Shifting gears appropriately as a company evolves. How to break through the usual plateau levels at major company development phases. Removing unseen limits so your company can continue to grow. Great talk for any management level audience that will leave managers thinking about how they acting in context and is guaranteed to improve management results quickly but getting managers out of reflex actions and into thoughtful decisions based on many factors commonly ignored. Back to Top
   
   
5. Raising Angel Financing Today in a "Changed" Market - The criteria for angels, VCs and even banks has changed. Angels are a far more critical source of capital because VCs have moved up market to more mature companies with proven traction. This talk will show business managers and entrepreneurs how to develop a financing strategy that does not feel like an obstacle course and is flexible enough to be a useful plan in a rapidly changing world. Back to Top
   
   
6. Startup War Stories - Learning from the mistakes of others! What to do and NOT do in an early-stage company. This talk is a comical study of specific cases where companies got into big trouble that was totally avoidable. The company names are left to the imagination to protect both the innocent and the guilty - not to mention me. Several case studies are available and can be presented in great depth, or with a more cursory view across several situations. Back to Top
   
   
7. How Product Development and Launches Can Achieve a 100% Success Rate! - More than 9 out of 10 product launches fail today, 95 out of 100 in some industries! How do you develop a product that is guaranteed to be warmly received by the market? Mr. Norton has launched about a dozen products with a 100% success rate. Though these were mostly built from the ground up with few resources, and even less time, these products generate well over $1 billion in annual revenue today. How do you make sure you are building a product the customer will LOVE and adjust as you go to guarantee a hit on target? How do you get people addicted to your product or service? Great for entrepreneurs and anyone with product development or improvement responsibilities. Back to Top
   
   
8. The Perfect Start-up Model - Ways to greatly increase the chances of a newly formed business by spending less, producing more and generally leveraging the advantages that a startup can use to enter the market better, faster and cheaper than any established company ever could. In a world where more than 90% of new companies and new products fail, Mr. Norton outlines a philosophy that can increase your chances of success enormously using simple techniques to listen, tune and tweak as you develop. Iterative product design, ongoing market research and the correct staff and procedures are key to success. Back to Top
   
   
9. The Next Step - Taking a company through the five stages of development without hitting a ceiling that can trap your company in a particular stage forever. Avoiding "founders disease", avoiding cognitive dissonance, making sure you really hear the truth from employees, customers and the market, changing and evolving with the market, risk management and other tactics that can help your company break through major development and growth barriers. Back to Top
   
   
10. Attacking Giants - Many small and medium size businesses will eventually face competition from larger businesses. Mr. Norton launched a raw startup directly competing with a $400 million business who was also going after that market and not only won, but even forced this business to exit the market. After this his business was the dominate player worldwide for many years. This talk reviews many strategies that can be used to go after larger markets that are attractive to large businesses by using strategies and techniques that give smaller businesses huge advantages over larger businesses. Case studies of competitive positioning, Trojan horse strategies and indirect and stealthy attacks and more are reviewed with many secrets to competing against the "big guys". Back to Top
    
    
11. Managing Human Capital - In this day and age people may be the only competitive advantage that is sustainable. Technology is copied quickly, patents are often not protectible and have a limited life. Selecting and developing your people is the most critical thing you can do. In many larger organizations some great CEOs spend more than half their time on this challenge. This talk helps define a framework to find, develop, manage and measure your most precious resource. Back to Top
    
    
12. Customer Service Today - Everyone knows it is far cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. Yet most companies fall into several common pitfalls in servicing the customer. Case studies are used with many techniques to avoid issues that cost most company customers every day. Attitudes, systems design, people training, incentive systems, monitoring systems and responsibilities are looked at throughout the corporate layers. This is a great talk for any customer facing group and their management too. Customer advocacy, avoiding cognitive dissonance and eight ways to avoid customer service problems. Back to Top
    
    
13. Bootstrapping - What it Takes To Get From Raw Idea to A Fundable Startup Company - This is a "How To" talk that lays out a roadmap for turning an idea into a company. It discusses the basics of preparing to jump, developing your team, getting market validation and developing a plan for the first year of your company when you are likely to be alone, or nearly so, and running on your own capital and "friends and family" money. What do you do to prepare to leave your job? How to you test the business proposition? How do you identify the outside skills you need and get people involved that have skills you do not have, but must rate these people's abilities anyway? This can be a 1 to 2 hour presentation. Back to Top
    
    
14. Custom Topics Always Available on Request - Mr. Norton's 23 years experience is filled with stories of both success and "war stories". Both are learning experiences, though failures often teach you more and are more memorable than getting everything right the first time. Innovation requires testing, failure and iteration towards the optimum solution and stories can be designed around your current corporate issues and breaking through old barriers. Minimum three weeks notice generally required for custom topics. Back to Top