Two Time USA Memory Champion and Memory Keynote Speaker Ron White shares his journey around the world teaching memory training seminars for YPO around the world:
Today I am typing this from a hotel lobby in Asheville, North Carolina. I spoke for my good friend, Craig Lawn’s sales conference today. I will be sleeping in a hotel room 38 of the next 44 days teaching seminars in San Diego, North Carolina, San Francisco and Miami. Then I head off to Africa and speak in Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mauritius. Then to Asia for the last part of April speaking in Indonesia, Bangkok, Malaysia and Singapore.
All of my talks in April will be for an organization known as YPO (Young Presidents Organization).
YPO is a worldwide organization of CEOs who meet in chapters around the world. They meet for friendships with fellow CEOs, business connections and wisdom they can share with one another as they are all experiencing the same types of challenges as their companies grow.
It has been a fun experiencing speaking for this group of CEOs. My first real entry into this world was with the speakers bureau Gail Davis and Associates. Gail suggested I speak for YPO in Barcelona at their GLC (Global Leadership Conference). It was a risk. The cost for me was $2,000 for the right to speak to the group for 15 minutes, airfare to Barcelona and hotel stay in Barcelona. Yet, in the 15 minutes I must have really captured their attention because one year later I have been around the world speaking on the power of a trained memory to these CEOs.
Why would a CEO need to improve their memory? One of the CEOs has 900 employees and he wanted to be on a first names basis with all 900 and I ended up being his personal memory coach. Another saw value in what I did and wanted me to come to his company and teach his employees how to remember product knowledge. The theme of my talks for YPO tend to center around how to remember names and faces, how to give speeches from memory, how to memorize chapters of books or key points from a seminar.
And I have some good news! These ultra successful men and women seem to struggle with the same challenges as you and I and one of those challenges is having a poor memory. So YPO and I have found a great partnership. I help them with their memory training and they pay me well to travel the world speaking for their organization. As a matter of fact, YPO is keeping me so busy right now my number one desire is just to go home and sleep in my own bed….
With that said, this is a once in a life time opportunity to be connected with YPO and I am thoroughly enjoying it. If you are a high powered CEO I would encourage you to look into YPO for the lifetime friendships and relationships that you can build. And if you are breathing I would encourage you to look into memory training for the health of your brain and business!
Now if you will excuse me I am sure I have a flight to catch or hotel room somewhere to check into…..
Hi Ron
I belong to an organisation called EO (Entrepreneur Organisation). We are affiliated to YPO but we comprize mainly of entrepreneurs. We would love to have you at one of our events in Cape Town and are wondering if you are planning another trip to South Africa again. Please let us know.
Thank you.
Lesley
YPO is an amazing organization. I really enjoyed speaking for the Polish chapter about approaching risk in a sense of dealing with non-negotiable chalenges, measuring success to match level of risk and moving to more stable engagement after you’ve done all the extras.
I used to climb the Seven Summits and strted in a specific context of being blind.
Thinking about the memory context I do remeber the most moments when I had to take the most personal decisions, explane something to someone. The interesting case for me is the fact that I must use my memory more intensively for notebooks or even a smarthpone are not that practical for taking notes or looking things up.
Best greetings,
Pawel Urbanski