KMG Consultants Meet The Team- Xavier Fust

KMG Consultants Inc, a marketing and sales firm located in Roseville, Minnesota, we believe that our ability to work as a team will help the company and our team achieve professional and personal goals. Each member in the office works closely together and in this atmosphere created by the team, each member has the opportunity to step up and lead. We take a moment each month to recognize one person who decides to go the extra mile and give them recognition. This month Xavier Fust has earned this feature.

Xavier is a Minneapolis native who attended Totino-Grace Highschool and then attended Gustavus Adolphus College where he majored in Business Management. Once Xavier graduated, he looked to gain experience where he landed a corporate job. After working there for 14 months, he was looking for something different. After interviewing at KMG Consultants Inc., Xavier liked the opportunities at the company and joined the team. He liked that the company gives him the opportunity to gain skills in leadership and that he has the opportunity to develop his own team. In that, he aims to help KMG Consultants Inc. grow the team to help end the 2016 year strong. We also are excited to have his help in a 2017 office expansion.

KMG Consultants Meet the Team- Jason Spars

K.M.G. Consultants, Inc. works with one of the largest online office supply retailers and is based in Roseville, MN.  Based on our client’s investment and growth expectation, we are focused on developing our team members, both professionally and personally.  Our goal is to help our staff gain not only sales and customer service experience, but the leadership and management skills that will allow for advancement in the industry.  It’s with this responsibility that having members of our team willing to step into leadership roles are crucial. Each month, the management team at K.M.G. Consultants, Inc. celebrates the members of our team who step up in “Meet the Team.” For October, the company is featuring Jason Spars!

Jason, who is a recent addition to the K.M.G. Consultants Inc. personally recruited by Leah Iverson, leadership team, has a background in restaurant and catering management. Being able to work in a fast paced environment combined with his experience in training others proved useful when he moved into sales and K.M.G. Consultants Inc. management development program. Jason is focusing on developing the new comers to the office. For November, Jason aims to have 2 of the company’s entry level account managers earn their first promotion in the Management Development program. He also aims to aide Sam, K.M.G. Consultants Inc.’s president, in building and maintaining every team member’s consistency and performance using metrics the company defines as the trend. Jason wants to dominate the northern markets and is working towards opening an office in Minneapolis in the next year.

Meet The Team-Angie Jo Lockwood

Every month, the leadership at KMG Consultants Inc. selects one of our peers to feature in “Meet the Team”. For the month of October, Angie Jo Lockwood receives the honor. Angie has been featured on the client’s top 50 club multiple times and also was the KMG Top Rep in August.

Angie joined the only just this summer and has already made an immense impact on the team. Before joining KMG Consultants Inc, Angie worked in both the restaurant and medical fields. She was able to channel her experience from both industries to quickly learn the ins and outs of being successful at KMG Consultants. The inviting atmosphere and opportunity to grow and lead as a business professional drew her starting her career at KMG Consultants. She was able to move quickly through the Leadership Development Program and has also become an integral part of the training team. In the next month, Angie plans to mentor and on board two account executives and also aims to top the client’s top 50 club before the year ends. She is also committed to helping KMG Consultants Inc. expand to three new locations by 2018.

“I love how hard we work and how we constantly motivate each other. The job is not easy but the people that we work with make it worth it. Compassion, brutal honesty, and resilience is why I love KMG!”

-Angie Jo Lockwood

Angie studied and obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Saint Catherine University. She has a passion for child care and one of her long term goals is to open a clinic for foster children. Before joining the KMG Consultants team, Angie was a yoga instructor. 

Meet the Team- Leah Iverson

K.M.G. Consultants Inc., located in Roseville, MN, Partners with the largest office supplies retailer in the nation. As such, it’s important that the team at K.M.G. Consultants Inc. is able to take lead and show professionalism. The team at our Minneapolis, MN location exceeds our expectations and the client’s as well. We are able to train and develop a fantastic team, in most part, due to our great leaders at our office. One of these top leaders at K.M.G. Consultants is newcomer Leah Iverson, who came in and took charge as a top performer.

Leah, who joined K.M.G. Consultants this past summer, has incredibly diverse experience in the education, business administration, real estate, and interior design fields. She was able to mesh this experience with the training that K.M.G. Consultants Inc. provides and was able to become a top performer that K.M.G. Consultants’ can rely on. With her ability to learn the position quickly, Leah was also able start training and developing new team members as well.

“I value the chance to grow within a company within a short amount of time with out climbing the corporate ladder for 10-15 years before getting to a place of ownership.”

-Leah Iverson

Leah’s goal with the team is to help develop and grow the team by five new members in the next month and aims to head up an expansion team by February 2017. Leah’s hobbies include yoga and meditating. She also enjoys being outdoors and exploring. She has the best rescue dog ever. Learn more about the team at K.M.G. Consultants Inc. and the training and management development program here. 

Meet the Team: Bailey Lund

At KMG Consultants, we are driven to outperform for our clients and provide our people the best resources and development. We also know that our people are our best resource and by helping them reach their full potential, they help our firm become best in the nation. Last month, KMG Consultants brought on Bailey Lund as a full time Summer intern while on break from the University of Minnesota. When she joined the team, Bailey took the training provided and has since become a top performer.
Bailey, who is from Moorhead, MN, is currently a Junior at University of Minnesota and is studying economics. She is involved in Colleges Against Cancer, Women in Business, the Economic Student Organization, and she volunteers with the YMCA mentoring program. She choose to work with KMG Consultants for her internship because she enjoyed the laid back yet serious atmosphere. She also liked that she and the team had fun and got along really well. In the office, she is known as the Keurig queen. Her passions include shopping and volleyball.

Bailey plans to keep outperforming for our firm and learning as much as possible while she continues her internship. She is starting to learn how to talent scout and on-board new team members along with learning how to train. She aims to personally train and develop at least one new team member before her internship ends. She aims to continue gaining her degree in Economics and achieve a 4.0.

 

KMG Consultants Inc. January 2016 Newsletter

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We had an excellent 2015 here at KMG Consultants Inc.!

Many of our staff was able to travel to a wide variety of places around the country for business trips. Cities that we traveled to included Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, IL, Nashville, TN, and Cancun, Mexico. You can bet we had a blast with all of the travel!

KMG Consultants Inc. also had some great promotions. The new members of our team excelled, and worked hard to reach leadership positions. Congratulations to Bill for his promotion to Management, and Aaron for his promotion to Assistant Manager. Our leadership promotions included Amber, Collin, Steven, Daniel, Shannon, and Jennifer. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to making KMG Consultants Inc. one of the best companies to work for in Southfield, MI!

Our family grew this year, and we’re looking forward to where we’re headed in 2016. Here’s to another year of success, and making KMG Consultants Inc. the premiere business consulting firm in the Metro Detroit area.

Learn more by viewing the KMG Consultants January 2016 Newsletter here:KMG-Consultants-January-2016-Newsletter

Networking Strategies for Introverts

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Sometimes networking isn’t a choice. Your job may require you to make networking connections as part of your regular duties. Introverts are made uneasy about social tasks in general and possibly more so when they’re a requirement.

Don’t panic. We’ve assembled some strategies that will help introverts become more comfortable at networking events. Give them a try and start improving your skills this week.

Practice Networking Techniques

The anticipation of a networking event is often more painful for introverts than attending the actual event. Reduce your fears by getting them out of your head with a trial run. Set up a practice session with friends, family, and coworkers. What are you most afraid of? Act out your nightmares and you will reduce your fearful anticipation to manageable levels by developing coping responses before hand. You may not eliminate your fear, but you will reduce it.

Have Short Conversations

Networking is frightening for introverts because the worst situations we’ve imagined feature long conversations with lots of different people we don’t know. Relax, you don’t have to have a lot of long conversations. It’s perfectly reasonable to approach people at the event to say hello and request their business card and offer yours and then move on by simply explaining that your time is limited. People will appreciate your efficiency. Let them know that you’ll contact them later and then remember to follow up within the next day or two with an email, a useful resource, or an invitation for a cup of coffee.

Write Open-Ended Questions

Develop a few questions in advance based on the event topic to develop conversations starters. Write out your questions on cards and become familiar with them before the event. You can add some bullet points related to these questions for further discussion. Your goal is to develop familiarity and ease with your topics before the event. Practice asking the questions and answering them out loud to increase your comfort levels.

Identify Preferred Contacts

It’s often possible to use your existing contacts or to contact the event’s organizers to find out who will be presenting at or attending the event. Use this information to craft a list of people who you would like to meet. Pick a number from one-to-ten and decide to meet only the number of people you’re honestly comfortable meeting. Be honest with yourself. If you can only handle one person at a time then only plan to introduce yourself to one person. If you attend 4 networking events in one month then that means you’ve made 4 new contacts.

Build Social Links Before You Network

Introverts find social media to be great tool when they want to reach out to colleagues, coworkers, and contacts without increase the stress created at face-to-face events. Use LinkedIn or Facebook to reach out to your friends if you want an introduction to someone at an upcoming event. Connecting through social media allows you to start a conversation before the event that you can continue when you meet in person. The hard part is already done!

Volunteer, Organize, and Present

Networking is easier for introverts if they’re part of the event from the very beginning. By becoming part of the event as a volunteer, organizer, or presenter you are able to build connections from the inside out. Often you will be invited to participate in training events prior to the event that will allow you to practice reaching out to others in your professional community in a low-pressure situation. If you have a particular area of expertise consider leading a workshop or talk, which are both great ways to make a big impact at one event in a limited focus.

Be sure to follow KMG Consultants Inc. on LinkedIn for our latest company updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kmg-consultants-inc-

Developing a Success Mindset

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Welcome to the KMG Consultants Inc. WordPress! Learn more about more company on our Twitter: @KMGConsultants

Sometimes success can be a bad thing. If you’re a star at the start of your career it’s possible to develop an expectation of success. This mindset means that you’re not open to trying new things and that you’re resistant to risk because it introduces the possibility of failure. Having a fixed mindset means that you see challenges as threats and engage obstacles with fear, not curiosity or even excitement.

To achieve success you must develop a mindset focused on growth. You may not have gotten great grades, but you always did the work and attacked problems with enthusiasm. A growth mindset is flexible, resilient, and passionate. It doesn’t require genius because is comfortable with asking questions. You’re not afraid of people knowing you don’t have all of the answers.

Risk is Good for Business

Now that you understand the qualities of the fixed mindset and the growth mindset you probably think you’ve got everything under control. If only it were that easy! A mindset for growth can turn into a fixed mindset without you noticing the change.

As you advance in your career and are given additional assignments your growth mindset can gradually move from nimble to fixed. An increase in responsibilities comes with an increase in status, authority, income, and professional reputation. When someone has more to lose his or her response usually is to avoid risk.

Instead of imagining a variety of solutions to a problem you may chose not to act. If you’re interested in advancing in your career—or even keeping your job—you must set up an interior warning system programed to alter you when you start to reject innovative solutions.

Failure is a Gift

When you, a team member, a colleague, a boss, or an employee wants to take a risk pause for a moment to consider the pros and cons and then make a decision. And here’s the scary part—sometimes the solution you pick won’t work. Don’t panic. Don’t blame anyone.

Recognize failure as a gift and take responsibility for the outcomes. Fixing the problem provides you and your team an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. You are a person with a growth mindset and you’re able to turn failure into fortune.

Learn From Your Experience

The best strategy for managing failure is to keep a record of it. Once the project is finished and a solution is found you schedule a time for your team to review all of the successes and failures achieved on the road toward completion.

Together, you’re going to perform a post-mortem, like investigators do on detective shows. They examine what went wrong. They discuss how decisions were made. They review the resources that were available during the assignment. They search to understand what happened, why it happened, and how it happened.

They also keep an eye open for out-of-the-box thinking, bold suggestions, and creative ideas that might not have worked for now but could work at another time or in another situation.

Follow these strategies and try out some of your own and you’ll be well on your way to creating a success mindset.

KMG Consultants Inc. October 2015 Newsletter

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KMG Consultants Inc. is planning on a big October in 2015!

First up, KMG Consultants will be having an assistant manager trip to Los Angeles next week. We’re excited for the trip, and we know that Bill & Aaron are too! Business Building Blocks will also be happening soon, so be sure to check out our Twitter to learn more.

Recognition is a big aprt of our monthly newsletter, and of course we wanted to have a few birthday shoutouts to some of KMG Consultants Inc.’s finest: Jessica, Kyn, and Ryan. Happy Birthday!

Coming soon in November is the Chicago Conference, happening from November 7th through the 8th. Can’t wait to spend some times in Chicago, and have some team bonding with the rest of the team in the office!

Learn more by viewing the KMG Consultants October 2015 Newsletter here: KMG-Consultants-October-2015-Newsletter

KMG Consultants September 2015 Newsletter

The view form the pool during the KMG Consultants Cancun trip!

KMG Consultants is ready for fall! As the summer came to a close, there were many different events and activities that we were proud to attend.

The Cancun R&R trip was a blast! From the sandy beaches to relaxing at the pool, it was a worthwhile time to come together and rest up to finish the year strong. Check out our photos from the event on Facebook!

There also were some promotions at KMG Consultants! Jazzmyn has been promoted to leadership in just two short weeks. Happy Birthday to KMG Consultants Assistant Manager Aaron Birsen, which will be on September 17th.

We are also looking forward to Bill & Aaron’s trip to Los Angeles in October, as well as the next round of Business Building Blocks.

View the KMG Consultants September 2015 Newsletter by clicking here!