Challenge:

Open ground provides a supportive environment that nurtures Year 13 students' entrepreneurial skills, encourages their personal growth, and equips them with the confidence and knowledge needed to pursue their entrepreneurial endeavors. It provides practical experience by creating and running actual business ventures - each student is tasked with creating a product or service, and they had a dragons den event upcoming where they had to pitch for legitimate funding. 

Deliverables:

I was engaged to help the boys use stories to sell their products. I took them through some story structures and helped them create a story that introduced their product and the problem it solved.  I provided ongoing online coaching for those that wanted post-workshop help. The Dragons Den event is in June 2025, so I'll update you about the winner and why the dragons chose them (hopefully because of their story).

Outcome:

Openground Director, Ant Ford 1 May 2025

"Well done today, John. You exceeded my expectations. The boys were engaged and delighted to learn the principles of storytelling."

Challenge:

Roma is an insurance risk adviser, and she collaborated with a lawyer, real estate agent and mortgage adviser in a first home buyers' event in 2024 where the audience would learn about strategies to purchase their first home. She was worried about connecting with her audience because insurance can be boring.

Deliverables:

I worked with Roma for 8 weeks to develop audience engagement, storytelling, slide presentation and her public speaking skills.   

Outcome:

She delivered her presentation confidently and won five clients from speaking on the stage.

Challenge:

Simon is the director of Elevate Sales and he wanted the direction and confidence to show up on video on LinkedIn. He knew that if he was to grow his business, he needed to invest in video to help his audience understand the value he could provide.  

Deliverables:

I worked with Simon for 8 weeks on the fundamentals of video, including content planning, scripting, rehearsal, mobile phone and production set-up and editing. 

Outcome:

Simon released his first video and received huge engagement from his first post and has subsequently gone on to consistently post videos to LinkedIn. 

Challenge:

A program by Cheil, Samsung's global marketing agency, aimed to put sales ambassadors into retail environments like JB HiFi, One NZ, Noel Leeming, Harvey Norman, Spark and 2 Degrees, to educate and sell products direct to the public. For the categories of TV and mobile.  

Deliverables:

I was engaged to deliver this training on the back of my successful campaigns training brand ambassadors for Sony, LG and Huawei, and again I trained 65+ young people in face-to-face sales and engagement over three days. This started with the S24 mobile model and the 2024 range of TVs.

I incorporated storytelling into the training with games, exercises and training structures to ensure they were retail-ready.  This training has continued throughout 2024/2025. 

Outcome:

Retail Experience Director at Cheil, Annette Loughnane, 18 Jan 2024

"Day one concluded here in NZ for the S24 and the brand ambassadors have been welcomed overwhelmingly positively by the stores. They integrated well and have made some amazing pre-sales.

Samsung visited the stores and the feedback has been positive. They tested them and their product and sales knowledge was second to none, thanks to you. Some stores now have a TV expert and a mobile brand ambassador, and they are bonding well. A fantastic result given the challenges of you training them online in India with the technology we faced along the way. You have again helped with a great result - thank you"

Retail Experience Director at Cheil, Annette Loughnane, 9 July 2024

"I just wanted to say thank you for delivering the sales & engagement training for the Samsung experts last week. You were honestly amazing, and the brand ambassadors absolutely loved you. The expertise in your work is exceptional."  

Retail Experience Director at Cheil, Annette Loughnane, 27 September 2024

"Thanks again John for your outstanding training this week for the Galaxy phone launch. Your content and knowledge is amazing, and the brand ambassadors love you. 45 of the 53 ambassadors rated you 10/10. Congratulations". 

Retail Experience Director at Cheil, Annette Loughnane, 20 December 2024

"Superior skills and always an honour to have John leading our Cheil/Samsung BA program coaching the team and teaching them to master sales and engagement in stores".   

Retail Experience Director at Cheil, Annette Loughnane, 30 January 2025

"You have a unique skill of building a rapport with our brand ambassadors, and you have them eating out of your hand. All 65 of them. They ranked your training 8.5 out of 10. With an average of 9.5. "There are not enough words to say how impressed the team are by your training".

Challenge:

Russell Clark was a feature presenter at the 2023 Auckland Home Show, and he wanted to get his presentation right. 

Deliverables:

Over 8 weeks, I helped Russell with the structure of his talk, which included storytelling, audience engagement and public speaker training. 

Outcome:

Watch the video below but he garnered over 100 leads from his stand and stage presentation, which was over 5 million dollars in business growth.  

Challenge:

In late 2022, well-established NZ accountancy firm Gilligan Sheppard wanted to use podcasting as a tool to deliver their expertise online to their future and current customers. But they didn't know where to start. 

Deliverables:

Over 12 weeks, I worked with their marketing team on planning, studio set-up with microphones and recording equipment, editing, presenting and distribution, so they had a plan to deliver one 30-minute podcast per week.  

Outcome:

Hosted by Lisa Garrud, they delivered 52 podcast episodes of their podcast Boxers & Briefs. 

Challenge:

Phil Hall was the 2024 President of Eden Rugby, and he wasn't confident when he talked to members every Saturday after the game. 

Deliverables:

Over 6-8 weeks, I helped Phil develop the right content that would resonate with his members, to share stories of members and his overall public speaking skills, so he was both confident and engaging.  

Outcome:

Watch Phil talk about some of his challenges prior to working with me and the outcome he has moving forward.  

Challenge:

A mix of under-grad, post-grad and business community students pitched their proposed business to a panel of eight judges in the six-week Velocity program, and they needed help with their presentation. 

Deliverables:

A storytelling and presentation workshop for 30 students to help them uncover their "why" or "insight" stories to better connect them and their business idea with the panel and some practical presentation tools to use on the day of their pitch.  

Outcome:

The students all had time in front of the room telling their personal insight stories. They did group work to record their stories and we finished with exercises on warming up, gestures, body language, voice, breathing and pausing.  

Challenge:

Help the Connector community experts better understand each other so they connect with each other on a deeper level.  

Deliverables:

A two-hour storytelling workshop where I helped the 14 experts tell personal stories to help them bond. 

Outcome:

Team members emotionally connected with each other and the measure of success was delivered due to an uplift in member meetings. 

Challenge:

Help the finance team at AUT tell stories for connection and understanding.  

Deliverables: 

A one-hour workshop with exercises, games and interplay to help communicate the value of storytelling and teach the participants simple frameworks for how to tell stories for better business outcomes.

Outcome:

The 25 in-house finance, CA's and department heads left with a framework to share stories in a complex world of accounting and finance.