Travels from New Jersey, USA
Rick Miller's speaking fee falls within range: $20,000 to $25,000
Rick Miller is one of the few accomplished business executives who has been able to translate his decades of experience into smart advice that helps other senior leaders grow their businesses and themselves. As “Go-to Chief” at the firm BEING CHIEF LLC, Miller shows leaders from Fortune 500s to startups, how to leverage their power so they can bring out the best in those around them, as well as themselves.
Deemed “one of the most brilliant business thinkers and leaders of today” by TEDxWallStreet, Miller has served as President and/or CEO in a Fortune 10, Fortune 30, a startup, and a non-profit. In each case, he took the reins at a time when the organization was crumbling. Using his Power Compass, a researched and unconventional tool he created to help leaders ask the right questions so they can make the best choices, Miller turned around poor performance at each organization, leading teams to increased revenue and new products, as well as record-high customer and employee satisfaction levels.
Since 2008, Miller has helped achieve long-term sustainable growth in numerous companies, collaborating with leaders from a wide array of industries including tech, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, automotive, media services, financial services, and non-profit organizations. He is a Senior Advisor to The Strategic Innovation Lab at Case Western Reserve University’s Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. His book has received rave reviews from Thinkers50 Marshall Goldsmith, Zappos co-founder Tony Hseih, and Chicken Soup for the Soul creator Jack Canfield, and many more thought leaders of today.
Vehement that one of a chief’s most important responsibilities is creating a better future, Miller founded a non-profit company dedicated to supporting children with diabetes.
Rick is a servant leader, a student-teacher, and a Go-to Chief. He is also an experienced and trusted confidant, an author, a sought-after speaker, and an expert at driving sustainable growth. For over 30 years, Rick served as a successful business executive in roles including President and/or CEO in a Fortune 10, a Fortune 30, a startup, and a non-profit. In each case, he was recruited from the outside to turn around poor performance in difficult times. Rick Miller is a Chief not because of his many high-ranking titles, but because of his ability to bring out the best in others—and in himself—using the choices he developed in his Power Compass.
Across different industries and facing challenges that range from a market crash to a war zone, unethical competitors, and friendly fire from inside his own company, Rick led teams that have repeatedly tripled the growth rates of million and billion dollar organizations. At the same time, these companies drove record levels of customer and employee satisfaction and loyalty.
Known for helping leaders ask the right questions, Rick has been in demand for the past ten years as a confidential adviser to many of today’s most senior executives, and is extensively connected within the global business and leadership communities. Rick continues to serve senior executives by offering broad business experience in six specific areas: customers, competitors, costs, capital, communities, and culture.
Rick began his career in 1980 as a sales trainee in the tech industry working for Sperry Corporation. There he learned important lessons about relationships, accountability, and constant change. Rick developed skills as a turnaround specialist and rose to serve as a Division VP/GM for the North America Division.
Rick left Sperry in 1995 to serve as a Corporate Officer at AT&T, running a “long-lines” unit—he was AT&T’s first outside recruit for that position in 100 years. Rick’s team tripled the growth rate to 15% and held it for three years as they built a robust $5B unit. Rick was then promoted to President of Global Services.
In 2000, Rick was recruited by the internet startup, Opus 360, to serve as President and COO. During the market crash of 2000, Rick’s team completed a successful IPO while dramatically increasing revenue and profit.
Then in 2002, Rick was recruited as the first hire of a newly-appointed Lucent Technologies CEO to turnaround sales at the $21B telecommunications provider. After the company returned to profitability, Rick was asked to serve as President of Lucent’s Government unit, which became the fastest growing unit at Lucent for the next three years.
During this period, Rick also led the non-profit organization, The Balance & Stretch Center. As President and CEO, he led the development of products used by other non-profits to help children with diabetes.
Since mid-2008, Rick has worked with senior leaders across many industries including hi-tech, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, automotive, media services, financial services, and in non-profit organizations. First at Choices & Success LLC and now at BEING CHIEF LLC, the result is always growth.
Rick also works with the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western University. Specifically, as a Senior Advisor to The Strategic Innovation Lab at The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Rick offers counsel to engage the business community in programs that lead to sustainable long-term growth.
Rick earned a bachelor’s degree from Bentley University and an MBA from Columbia. He currently lives in Morristown, NJ.
Leadership keynote speaker and "Go-to Chief", Rick Miller illustrates that being a true "chief" has nothing to do with high ranking job titles, but rather how our actions match up with certain values. He offers the example of "Melissa", a six-year-old girl he worked with who had cerebral palsy and a dream: Melissa wanted to be able to grip a ball and put it in a net.
It took her six months to reach her goal, and every moment of that six months she was focused, disciplined, grateful, accepting of her situation, and an inspiration to those around her. "She taught me so much," Miller says, describing this young girl's relentless journey to achieve her dream. "You can never assume that those who are less fortunate are less courageous or less worthy or less able to be a real chief. She had a power, an incredible power that frankly we all have."
Drawing from decades of experience mobilizing teams in difficult circumstances, leadership keynote speaker, Rick Miller lays out an experience-tested guide for unleashing teams’ potential and revitalizing companies at every level. Tossing outdated conventional management aside, Miller demonstrates key tools for empowering your employees so that your organization can drive long-term sustainable growth, customer loyalty, and employee engagement.
Few career business executives have proven they can succeed on the front lines and deliver sustainable growth at different companies, of different sizes, in different industries, and in tough times.
Fewer have a track record of growing leaders as a primary strategy.
Very few are also servant leaders who have demonstrated an ability to help everyone in an organization increase their power.
Rick is one of the very few. With humility and humor, he works to enable every audience member to leave each session with practical growth tools that apply in companies ranging from startups to multinationals. Rick enlightens, enables, and energizes audiences.
Driving Sustainable Growth – Lessons from the Front Lines Is your organization doing all it can to build success that lasts? Conventional management theory does not drive sustainable growth. In this keynote, Rick shares the three proven keys to long-lasting success.
First, Rick describes the six strategic planning prerequisites for growth: Customers, Competition, Financial Capital, Costs, Community, and Climate.
Second, Rick shares important research linking effective Human Capital strategies to growth and offers best practices and simple tools to optimize this most critical asset.
Finally, Rick leads the audience through a self-assessment exercise that enables every attendee to leave the session with personalized plan to drive sustainable growth.
Unleashing the Power in Your Team Do individuals believe the real power in your company is at the top of your organization chart? Power is a noun with four primary definitions: ability, influence, energy, and positional authority. The biggest problem in companies today is that too many people ignore the first three definitions due to a preoccupation with the fourth.
To learn where real power lies, this keynote introduces audience members to two levels of actions to unleash an organization’s real power.
First, Rick outlines what people in positions of authority can do to improve the engagement that unlocks real power: Measure employee engagement; ensure diversity and gender-balanced leadership; consistently assess, improve, and expand employee “hard and soft” skillsets; add new skillsets when necessary; align team members around a values-based vision for the future; and build a change-adaptive culture to meet accelerating market changes and drive management’s strategy.
Second, Rick introduces audiences to his concept of Viral Engagement and what’s needed to create a self-sustaining engagement culture. This two-tiered strategy drives productivity, loyalty, innovation, and sustainable top- and bottom-line results.
SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn/take away from your presentations?
MILLER: Anyone can make simple choices to increase their power by connecting what they do to who they are. Power is defined as impact, energy, internal strength, and the ability to influence others to increase their power. Powerful people, in turn, create powerful organizations.
My presentations focus on those simple choices and offer simple tips proven to consistently help managers drive a culture of engagement, a key criteria for companies to drive sustainable growth.
SPEAKING.COM: What kind of special prep work do you do prior to an event? How do you prepare for your speaking engagements?
MILLER: I enjoy learning about the sponsor organization in general, and about the specific audience including their history, priorities, and values. This enables me to customize my presentation to meet the objectives of the event organizers.
SPEAKING.COM: Have you had any particularly memorable speaking engagements / unusual situations arise while on the road?
MILLER: Every speaking engagement has offered unique opportunities to swap stories and connect deeply with different people.
SPEAKING.COM: What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?
MILLER: Every audience can benefit from being introduced to proven tools that help them be more powerful and more engaged at work and in life.
SPEAKING.COM: Which of your keynote speaking topics are your favorites and why?
MILLER: While I truly enjoy customizing simple (“supply”) research-based tools that have been proven to help anyone be more effective AS WELL AS presenting varied case studies and insights on how specific audiences can extract and apply lessons to their own situation, my speaking topics are limited to the unifying themes that I have personally experienced as a senior business executive and Chief Coach/Confidant.
SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to start doing speaking engagements?
MILLER: Offering my services as a speaker is a natural extension of my career trajectory. In 2008, after 27 years of serving one organization at a time (from a startup to several multinationals) and using an unconventional leadership strategy, I founded my own company so I could share my approach with multiple businesses at a time. Speaking at companies and colleges was the next logical step to get this important message in more hands and I love it!
SPEAKING.COM: How do you keep your audience engaged and actively listening during your keynotes? Do you use case studies, personal stories and/or in your speeches?
MILLER: I do tons of homework ahead of time to pinpoint themes that are broadly applicable to the audience. During a presentation, I work hard to connect individually with audience members through personal stories and first-hand accounts of challenging turnarounds/case studies. I also push to attend the rest of the session after I speak to ensure audience members have many opportunities to swap stories on topics that are of interest to them.
SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the successes you’ve helped clients achieve?
MILLER: In my coaching business, I have the opportunity to very directly link my work on customers, costs, capital, competitors and communities to consistent improvements in revenue and profit growth rates, employee engagement, client loyalty scores, and climate stewardship metrics. As a speaker, that linkage is more difficult to establish. However, a large percentage of my audiences consistently report taking action and making different choices based on the information, tips, and insights gained from my presentations. In every case there are reports of an increase in viral engagement!
“Rick Miller is one of the most brilliant business thinkers and leaders of today.” – TEDxWallStreet
“I first worked with Rick on an event in Chicago for Fortune 1000 CHROs. Rick got great reviews and was a pleasure to work with. His extensive and diverse business experience as an executive combined with his humor and humility make him an informative and engaging speaker. We have continued to engage Rick for other C-Suite audiences and he consistently delivers. He is a true professional. I highly recommend Rick Miller for any of your speaking engagements.” – Dustin Davis, Director at Evanta, a CEB Company
“I have shared a stage with Rick, brainstormed a whole weekend with him and even hired him for my own leadership retreat of 300 CEOs. Rick is articulate, charismatic and a straight shooter. He delivers a simple, clear and deep discovery of self and leaves you with a roadmap as a constant reminder to keep your compass focused on the stuff that matters most!” – Stefan Swanepoel, NYT & WSJ best-selling author, CEO T3
“Rick Miller is truly a leader. He delivers great content and is a witty and skilled presenter. I have worked with him multiple times at different leadership events and he hits it out of the park every time. If you are looking for a dynamic speaker Rick is your guy. I highly recommend him.” – Darlene Lyons, President of EzEvents, Inc.
“We selected Rick to deliver the keynote at a recent Institute for Sustainable Enterprise session at Farleigh Dickinson University. What struck me most was the ease with which he connected with our diverse audience, while delivering a powerful talk and focusing on how his concepts could be applied by each participant when they left the session. I was not surprised to see great audience feedback survey results… particularly when I saw that two hours after he concluded his talk, there was still a line of students from different area colleges waiting to talk more. Highly recommended.” – Jeana Wirtenberg, President & CEO, Transitioning to Green
“We’ve used Rick repeatedly to speak at our National Publicity Summit and several other events. He’s super-knowledgeable and a very inspiring communicator, who’s also easy to work with and always over-delivers. You should see the line of attendees who want to talk with him when he’s off-stage! He never leaves until every single person gets all their questions answered. A total class act. Highly recommended.” – Bill Harrison, CEO, Bradley Communications Corp
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BE CHIEF
“The leadership values and skills of a chief need not be confined to the C-suite. Rick Miller’s outstanding new book, BE CHIEF, is a guide to ways in which you can bring your leadership skills up to the highest level, and inspire those around you to do the same. Don’t wait for someone to hand you the title—be Chief now!” – Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human
“Reading Rick’s unconventional insights and advice on leadership and how to create a winning corporate culture in today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world is like having one head slapping ah-ha moment after another. More than a business book, BE CHIEF is a valuable reference and resource guide that you will find yourself turning to time and again.” – Jim McCann, Founder and CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM
“BE CHIEF offers a simple and compelling roadmap of options for each of us to unlock our potential while being our authentic selves. As women, we have traditionally been more likely to help others succeed to be Chief rather than focus on ourselves. This special book offers valuable examples of women who do both!” – Betsy Myers, Founding Director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University, former Director of the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach, and author of Take The Lead
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