Tommy Spaulding

Tommy Spaulding's career is built on valuable, authentic relationships. More than an expert on networking, he inspires his audiences through his personal stories of connecting with individuals on a level that is more than "business-card" deep.

Spaulding is president of The Spaulding Companies LLC, a national leadership development, consulting, and speaking organization.  A world-renowned speaker on leadership, Spaulding has spoken to hundreds of organizations, associations, schools, and corporations around the globe. His new book, It’s Not Just Who You Know (Transform Your Life and Your Organization by Turning Colleagues and Contacts into Lasting, Genuine Relationships), published by Random House, is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today national bestseller. 

Spaulding rose to become the youngest president and CEO of the world-renowned leadership organization, Up with People (2005-2008).  In 2000, Tommy Spaulding had founded Leader’s Challenge, which grew to become the largest high-school civic and leadership program in the state of Colorado. He is also the founder & president of the Spaulding Leadership Institute, a non-profit leadership development organization which runs the National Leadership Academy, a national high school summer leadership academy, as well as Kid’s Challenge, Global Challenge and Colorado Close-Up. 

Spaulding received a BA in Political Science from East Carolina University, an MBA from Bond University in Australia, and an MA in Non-Profit Management from Regis University.  In 2007, Spaulding received an Honorary PhD in Humanities from the Art Institute of Colorado. Spaulding is a graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, and a graduate of Leadership Denver.  In 2002, he received the prestigious Denver Business Journal’s Forty Under Forty Award.

In 2006, Spaulding was awarded East Carolina University’s “Outstanding Alumni Award,” the highest distinction awarded to an alumnus of the university.  Spaulding is the Chairman of East Carolina University’s External Leadership Advisory Board and is the university’s first “Leader in Residence.”

Tommy's Blog Entries:

How a Fifth Floor Culture Changed a Life - And A Company

• Custom Tailor: Request a custom keynote address drawing on different aspects of the keynote topics above that interest you

  Tommy Spaulding is known for walking his talk—in other words, he likes to build relationships with his clients. No canned speeches allowed! Feel free to let us know if you have a specific interest area or would like to mix it up and merge topics. Tommy prides himself in creating a keynote that fits the audience.

• Achieving organizational excellence: Empower and elevate yourself and others around you by transforming your attitudepproach with people

  This is not a keynote address that espouses the merits of good networking. In fact, it discourages it. Spaulding provides real examples and strategies for elevating your current personal and business relationships and how to launch new ones in the spirit of giving rather than taking. In this keynote, Spaulding explores the nine essential traits that empower audiences to reach their full potential through a bold approach called “netgiving.” Netgiving is about intentionally making business personal and as a result, facilitating personal performance and realization of goals.

  Spaulding has been the keynote speaker at dozens of high school and college graduations and has presented to hundreds of youth organizations around the world. His powerful, personal stories about how he has overcome obstacles and his message of servant leadership have captured the imaginations of the young people in his audiences and inspired them to make their own contribution in the world.
  
  Spaulding has long tapped the power of relationships not only to surmount personal challenges but also to help young people from all walks of life achieve new heights of success. His childhood dream was to go to law school and become governor of New York. But after struggling in high school with dyslexia, he was advised by his high-school guidance counselor to attend a trade school and forgo higher education. Undaunted, he completed a degree at East Carolina University and then applied to 37 law schools—only to be rejected by all of them.
  
  Spaulding refused to be discouraged. He went on to build a rich, satisfying, and generous career—by leveraging his natural ability to connect with people to form meaningful, authentic relationships. From this foundation of relational competence, he has articulated the ideas that form the core of his speeches and his book.
  
  Spaulding maintains that learning how to build authentic relationships is key for young men and women seeking to become effective leaders. In his presentations and his book, he explains the importance of moving beyond transactional relationships ("What can you do for me?") to transformational ones built on core practices such as trust, generosity, and empathy. This is the heart of Spaulding's message to young people and the secret to his own success: Invest unselfishly in the lives of others, and you generate success on both the personal and professional fronts.

• Team building: Improve employee morale, reduce turnover and mobilize your teams

  Unengaged employees cost companies and organizations billions of dollars. Research tells us that employees who don’t have relationships on the job will negatively impact the bottom line. If we are to build sustainable organizations in a modern economy, we must differentiate ourselves by building meaningful ties with and among employees. Spaulding demonstrates a helpful “first through fifth floor” analogy for evaluating your business relationships and has audiences looking at their workplace with a different lens—a lens that sheds new light on how to mobilize their colleagues and inspire shared success.

• Customer sales and service: What does it mean to focus on ROR instead of ROI?

  It’s impossible to build a successful client base in a silo. In other words, relationships are not optional. Though economists talk only of Return on Investment or ROI, Spaulding argues that profit and relationships are interdependent. “Return on Relationships or ROR” is the currency we should focus on rather than solely on ROI, because if we are truly focusing on relationships, the bottom line goals come more easily. In this keynote, Spaulding shares his secrets behind the notion of “Return on Relationships or ROR,” leaving audiences ready to revolutionize their old methods and reach new heights in customer stability and loyalty.

  Giving unconditionally always benefits the giver—personally and professionally. And the more we practice this principle, the deeper we embed it in our organizations' culture. In this keynote address, Spaulding explains how a selfless attitude in the workplace can—and should—extend to a company's customers and clients.
  
  When leaders and employees genuinely put customers first, they earn their respect, their love, and eventually their loyal business. That translates into a healthier bottom line in the form of lower customer acquisition and retention costs and higher revenues. Spaulding teaches his audiences how to transform customer service from a mandated "program" or "department" into an integral part of everyone's job in the organization.

• Leadership: A relationship between those who inspire and those who act

  How do we accomplish extraordinary things as leaders? The quality of our relationships determines whether we simply reach a goal or inspire greatness. The success of any organization is grounded in the formation of sustainable relationships. In this keynote, Spaulding illustrates how to build relationship capital throughout your organization so internal teams maximize their potential and external constituencies and stakeholders share your vision. Spaulding also explores ground-breaking leadership techniques such as building “Fifth Floor Teams,” and leveraging the “Laws of Influence and Elevation.”

• Tommy Spaulding bleeds passion. His energy, commitment to service and vision is contagious. He is one of Colorado's great community leaders.
  Colorado Rockies Baseball Club
• Tommy is one of the most genuine speakers I've ever heard. After a successful business career, he has built the largest youth leadership program in the State of Colorado. His message to business leaders is heartfelt and has tremendous impact.
  Pepsi Bottling Group, Colorado
• Tommy has this magic about him that brings forth effective change in an organization through his powerful message of building authentic relationships and service to others.
  Coldwell Banker of Colorado
• You are going to have people wishing that they had 15-20 more minutes of Tommy Spaulding. His message to the business community is just right on. Tommy gives it to you straight from the heart. Three years later, people are still talking about Tommy Spaulding's keynote.
  Denver Business Journal
• I've never seen anyone connect with and move an audience like Tommy does. His real-life stories—delivered with very powerful, groundbreaking ideas—are inspirational in the truest sense of the word: they breathe life into our own aspirations as leaders. Mark my words: Tommy Spaulding will soon be one of the top ten speakers in the country.
  Steve Farber, Extreme Leadership, Inc.

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  August 2010

  It's Not Just Who You Know

  In It’s Not Just Who You Know, Tommy Spaulding—the former CEO of Up With People—has written the new How to Win Friends and Influence People for the twenty-fist century. Success—in business and in life—is all about relationships.  In this powerful guide to reaching out to others, Spaulding takes Dale Carnegie’s classic philosophy to the next level—how to create lasting relationships that go well beyond mere superficial contacts and “second floor” relationships.