Featured Keynote Speaker: Bill John

Bill John

CEO & Co-Founder of Odyssey Teams

Bill John, Keynote Speaker at Odyssey Teams

You know those people who inspire you to be a better person, just by virtue of them being in the same room as you? Well, that’s Bill John, CEO and Co-Founder of Odyssey Teams, who along with Lain Hensley co-invented the entire philanthropic team building industry some 20 years ago.

Purpose-driven work, the “Why”, is not just a cliché to Bill. His work with Odyssey Teams has resulted in over 60,000 prosthetic hands given to amputees in 85 countries and over 23,000 bicycles to underprivledged children. Bill John demonstrates what all leaders hope to embody. It’s his life’s goal to lead you in discovering the best version of yourself and connecting you with the service and dignity of your work. The excellence of his keynote skills and knowledge is matched only by his humility.

Bill brings over 34 years of experience working with senior executives from the world’s biggest organizations such as Shell, Oracle, Kaiser Permanente, Express Scripts, Microsoft, UT Austin McCombs School of Business, UCLA Anderson School of Business, and his work is conducted around the globe with impact in over sixty countries.

When he isn’t changing lives in a program room, he is pursuing his passion of wildlife photography. His photography is what inspired the philanthropic component of our Team Mosaic Give program to protect wildlife in Africa.

Why Bill John Knocks It Out Of The Park Every Time

You’ll never hear the same keynote twice from Bill John, or for that matter, from any Odyssey Teams keynote speaker. After multiple meetings with leadership, Bill John expertly crafts a presentation that is authentic and unique to your organization and speaks directly to the needs or your company.

The Pillars of Bill’s Work

  1. Don’t downplay the importance of seeing your products and services as life-changing. To pursue anything less is sabotage to a successful business and destructive to personal virtue.
  2. People support that which they create and are far more creative than they feel.
  3. The best teams DON’T do team building. They do individual building, together.
  4. You can’t build or become anything without being a beginner. Aim for humility and curiosity over ego and knowledge.
  5. Honor that which you gave up in this moment by creating as much value as possible in the next.
  6. ‘Five more’ are ALWAYS coming in the game of change. What ‘five more’? Just wait till Bill shows you.
  7. Trust yourself more than your mind tells you not to – and other lessons to rise above self-doubt.
  8. We traded fur and claws for the Reticular Activating System. Be careful what you put in your RAS.
  9. The Big Five – Lessons of Business In The Animal Kingdom.
  10. Beyond the lens.
  11. What if we could see our business and each other more clearly? What gets in the way? Lens aberrations, poor focus, too small an aperture, poor composition.

Background and beliefs

  • Bill has a degree in Finance (long ‘I’) and not in Finance (short ‘I’). Let him tell you the difference – it changed the course of his life.
  • By all accounts, Bill should NOT be a successful speaker. He didn’t think anyone on the planet was more afraid of public speaking when he started addressing groups. They love him for it.
  • His work with at-risk executives and teens is mighty similar.
  • Bill does not support work that isn’t valuable.
  • Bill doesn’t believe in work-life balance.
  • Bill knows that ‘really difficult’ can be described as ‘really FUN’.
  • Bill is OK if people don’t care about what he has to say; he cares more about how he makes them feel; he cares most about what that feeling inspires them to do.

To bring Bill John and an awe-inspiring keynote address to your next meeting or offsite, contact Odyssey Teams:
(800) 342-1650 or kim@odysseyteams.com