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Greg McKeown

  • CEO, THIS Inc.
  • Bestselling Business Author of Essentialism
  • Business Blogger

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Greg McKeown, CEO of THIS Inc., has dedicated his career to discovering why some people break through to the next level—and others don’t. The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

McKeown is an accomplished public speaker who has spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world and whose distinctive style of speaking sets him apart from other polished speakers. He spurns slides in favor of having a conversation with participants. The interactive experience is entertaining and engaging from the first moment to the last instant. As one event organizer put it, “Not one person ever checked their phone through Greg’s keynote!”

Organizations, teams, and individuals have benefited from McKeown’s innovative perspective, which challenges conventional wisdom and defines how to break through to the next level of success and profitability. In a compelling way, Greg Mckeown’s Essentialism keynotes will ignite a conversation that revolutionizes the way your organization thinks and works.

 

Greg McKeown headshot
Past Hosts Include:
  • IDEO
  • Success Magazine
  • NFP Securities
  • World 50
  • Fiserv
  • Catalyst
  • Salient Partners
  • Loft
  • Ann Taylor
  • Goldman Sachs
Rave Reviews About Greg McKeown
“
You blew it out of the park – it was inspiring, thought provoking, and incredibly entertaining. You had participants on the edge of their seats for nearly two hours, which we all know is no small feat. We imagined a great event, but this far exceeded our expectations.

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More rave reviews

"Greg absolutely crushed it and we loved having him with us. His message was incredible!"

-Catalyst

"Participants were frankly dazzled as witnessed by a sampling of the letters they sent afterwards!"

-Stanford

"The members hung on every word of Greg’s keynote. Afterwards I had to pull him away from them in order to make his flight. We’re excited to bring him to our Global 50 summit at the beginning of November. This was a huge hit."

-World 50

"Greg tenaciously pushed us to bring clarity to what’s most important now to meet our customer needs in the face of the business demands ahead. Whether helping our Supply Chain leadership tackle their global challenges or inspiring our Store Manager build great teams, Greg has taught us how the disciplined pursuit of less is better."

-Ann Taylor

"It has been six months since we were together and I am excited to share with you that your time with us was not in vain, and that we are seeing lasting changes in behavior that are material and meaningful to our business. (Really!)"

-Cisco

"I wanted to reach out to thank you for an amazing experience at the LOFT Brand Conference in Vegas!! Thanks again for being our keynote speaker! The teams thoroughly enjoyed you and your messages really inspired everyone! It’s been a pleasure to work with you."

-Loft

"I have been part of this event for 16 years and McKeown is the best speaker we have ever had! "

-Event Organizer for Greater Public

"Thanks again for the sessions today. I heard from many participants on how impactful your message was."

-Goldman Sachs

"Absolutely fantastic. He really hit a home run with the audience."

-Fiserv

"Greg did a phenomenal job! He was very dynamic and had great presentation style."

-NFP Securities

"[Greg] delivered a fantastic presentation and there is a lot of buzz around the office this morning about him being our best speaker yet! I am very excited to help spread the Essentialist theories and to better prioritize MY life! I can’t thank you enough. I hope to work with you again soon."

-Salient Partners

"Your presentation was very engaging and the dialogue continued during the day. Essentialism is spreading."

-Google

"Greg is a total pro and added tremendous value to our summit. The presentation was very, very good."

-Apple

"Essentialism is a powerful antidote to the current craziness that plagues our organizations and our lives. Read Greg Mckeown's own words slowly, stop and think about how to apply them to your life: you will do less, do it better, and begin to feel the insanity start to slip away. "

-Robert l. Sutton, Professor at Stanford University

"ln this likeable and astute treatise on the art of doing less in order to do better…McKeown makes the content fresh and the solutions easy to implement. Following his lucid and smart directions will help readers find 'the the way of the essentialist.' "

-Success Magazine

"Great design takes us beyond the complex, the unnecessary and confusing, to the simple, clear and meaningful. This is as true for the design of a life as it is for the design of a product. With Essentialism, Greg gives us the invaluable guidebook for just such a project."

-IDEO
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Keynote - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less | VitalSmarts REACH Conf. [45:49] - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Greg McKeown
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Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

This keynote speaks to people who have ever felt motion sickness instead of momentum or felt they were making a millimeter progress in a million directions. Greg McKeown offers a way of thinking for discerning what is essential, eliminating what is not, and removing obstacles in order to make execut ...

This keynote speaks to people who have ever felt motion sickness instead of momentum or felt they were making a millimeter progress in a million directions. Greg McKeown offers a way of thinking for discerning what is essential, eliminating what is not, and removing obstacles in order to make execution as effortless as possible. The disciplined pursuit of less (but better) outlines how to break through to the next level of contribution.

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Books by Greg McKeown
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

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Press & Media
What Are You Great At? - Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper
Why You Start Things You’ll Never Finish - The New York Times
Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism (#355) - The Tim Ferriss Show
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Biography

Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people break through to the next level—and others don’t.

The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown’s latest project: the instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.  As well as frequently being the #1 Time Management book on Amazon, this book challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success.

McKeown is the CEO of THIS Inc, a company whose mission is to assist people and companies to spend 80 percent of their time on the vital few rather than the trivial many. Clients include Apple, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!.

His writing has appeared or been covered by Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, and Inc. Magazine. He is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers group: averaging a million views a month.

McKeown has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows including NPR’s All Things Considered and NBC’s Press: Here. Entrepreneur magazine voted his interview at Stanford University the #1 Must-See Video on Business, Creativity and Success.  

McKeown is an accomplished public speaker. He has spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world including in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, England, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan and Singapore.

Highlights in 2014 include speaking at SXSW, interviewing Al Gore at the Annual Conference of the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland and receiving a personal invitation from Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway, to speak to his Annual Innovation Conference.

McKeown challenges conventional wisdom in a unique and engaging style from the first moment to the last instant. As the event organizer at Greater Public said after McKeown addressed their 1,000-person conference, “I have been part of this event for 16 years and McKeown is the best speaker we have ever had!”

McKeown is an active Social Innovator, serving as a board member for Washington D.C. policy group Resolve (KONY 2012) and as a mentor with 2 Seeds, a non-profit incubator for agricultural projects in Africa. He has also been a speaker at non-profit groups including The Kauffman Fellows, Net Impact and Stanford University: he recently gave back to Stanford University by co-creating a popular class called, Designing Life, Essentially.

He serves as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.  He recently moderated a session at the “Summer Davos” in China called, “Unpacking Social Innovation Models for Maximum Impact,” served as a panelist at the “Sharpening Your Creative Edge” working session at the Forum. 

Prior to this, McKeown collaborated in the research and writing of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and worked for Heidrick & Struggles’ Global Leadership Practice assessing senior executives.

Originally from London, England, McKeown now lives in Silicon Valley with his wife and their four children. He graduated with an MBA from Stanford University.

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