Liz Bohannon
- Bestselling author of Beginner’s Pluck
- Passionate about building community and helping others build lives and businesses of purpose, passion, and impact
Liz Bohannon Speaker Biography
Organizations continue to face rapidly changing work environments, sales teams who are stuck in analysis paralysis, and the urgent need to rethink business models, products, and services to meet the changing needs of their customers. But what Plucky Leaders know is that inside these challenges you can find the greatest opportunity to pivot, progress, and innovate, and that’s exactly what Founder and CEO of Sseko Designs did and how she and her team created a massively successful turnaround story in the height of the pandemic.
Like many businesses experienced, March 2020 showed record low sales and revenue for Sseko Designs. But by May, not only was Sseko back up to baseline, they had surpassed their revenue goals by over 100%. How was this possible?!?! By taking her team through the principles in her Bestselling Book, Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose & Impact Now, Liz helped her team reclaim their Pluck by choosing to get curious and tap their inner beginner. Organizations around the world are using Plucky Principles like Dream Small and Own Your Average to smash sales goals, drive innovation, and build teams focused on passion, purpose, and impact.
Liz Bohannon is the Founder and CEO of socially conscious fashion brand Sseko Designs, which she founded in 2008 as a way to provide educational and economic opportunities for women in East Africa.
Liz shares the lessons learned from her 10-year journey growing Sseko from three women under a mango tree, into a successful international fashion brand that provides employment, educational and entrepreneurial opportunities to thousands of women across the globe.
Her story is filled with lessons for success that are grounded in the principle of having a beginner’s mind, which Liz sums up in her new book, Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose and Impact Now. In it, as in her presentations, she shares uncommon ideas toward success like, Own Your Average, Stop Trying to Find Your Passion…Create It, and Dream Small so you can do big things. Liz continues to channel her inner beginner as she manages 100s of employees across multiple continents, and her mindset sets her apart as a courageous, creative and effective leader.
The Sseko story has been featured in dozens of publications including, Vogue Magazine, Redbook Magazine, O Magazine, Inc., Fortune and others. Sseko has appeared on national broadcasts including ABC’s Shark Tank and Good Morning America.
Among other notable honors, Liz was named a Top Three Transformation Leader by John Maxwell, Forbes listed her as a top 20 public speaker in the U.S. and Bloomberg Businessweek named Sseko as a top social enterprise to watch.
Liz now splits her time between Uganda and Portland, Oregon, where she and her husband Ben run Sseko Designs and raise their two young sons.
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Speech Topics
Investing in the future takes a good deal of conviction and purposefulness which many people are seeking as we emerge from the past few challenging years, but where to begin? Besides being the Founder and CEO of socially conscious fashion brand Sseko Designs, Liz Bohanan is a difference maker in this world. By sharing her unique story of applying a Beginner’s Mind to everything she does, Liz shows how this mindset will help you escape the normal constraints that hold you back and give you new pathways to pivot, innovate and ultimately transform toward any goal. The power of her personal story building a multi-million dollar, socially conscious brand with purpose and impact will inspire you and motivate you to take action!
By exploring some of the key principles from her Bestselling Book, Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose & Impact Now, Liz will challenge you to dream small so you can start doing instead of dreaming, and show how curiosity over criticism fuels innovation. She sets the stage for your personal journey down the ultimate path of success by weaving passion & purpose into every goal. The three words she lives by are purpose, passion and impact and you can learn to make these a part of your everyday thinking as well.
Key Takeaways
- Become a Problem Finder – Turn your world inside out. By challenging your Inner Beginner, you’ll become less overwhelmed with finding the solution and you find new power by first starting with identifying the most interesting problems facing your customers and your community.
- Dream Small / Achieve BIG – Counterintuitively, when we give ourselves and our people permission to dream small and ACT on those dreams, we create the momentum we need to do BIG things in the world.
- Reconnect With Your Purpose – Purpose is the “why” that should always be considered first and foremost. When unexpected curveballs are thrown your way, the strongest unifier and innovation-inducer is going back to the basics and embracing a renewed sense of purpose. You don’t find your purpose, you build it. And Liz will teach you how.
Drawing on her experiences as a successful entrepreneur and founder of Sseko Designs, Liz Bohannon understands the pressures that leaders face to have all the answers and make hard choices in a complex and quickly changing landscape. She’s seen what a leader support system can provide: more educated decision-making, improved team dynamics, and increased mental health for leaders and society at large. Walk away from this talk ready to embrace vulnerability in a new way and build authentic connections and a community that can support you in the challenges ahead.
Key Takeaways
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Actively identify your personal “Board of Directors”: how to surround yourself with people that will support and inspire you
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Learn the difference between community and culture and why both are important
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Gain a new perspective on why positive mental health matters
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Learn how to better manage the sacrifices you may be making in pursuit of success
