Michelle LaBrosse Blogs

Let someone know you admire, just why you admire and appreciate them.   It’s very easy to do actually.  Start small and get the ball rolling.  By the end of the day you’ll have a whole snowman of admiration and appreciation built for those important people in your life.   And it just feels good, it expands your heart, and puts a spring in your step.   I started this by listing all the reasons why I love and appreciate our students.  For some very odd reason I was spending too much time focusing on those students who challenge me the most as a teacher.   Not sure why this is, as my students are very good people (even the challenging ones) and when I focus on their good points, this is what brings the joy to my heart of teaching.   So I thought I would shift my focus to the good of all my students.   And then it just expanded.   And once again, I am very happy and fulfilled doing my life work – teaching people how to achieve their goals fast with accelerated project management.

We call our students “Cheetah”s” and I am dedicating this day to our Cheetah’s and my team of “Cheetah’s” who help me teach project management around the world.   Here are the top ten reasons I just love our students:

1. They all want to succeed in a big way in their careers.

2. They firmly believe Cheetah Learning can help them do this (yes we believe in them too).

3. Many have a very good sense of humor and are great to have in our lives.

4. They are willing to work very diligently to achieve their goals fast.

5. They tell lots and lots of people about their experiences with us.

6. They are very respectful of us a company and individuals and recognize and appreciate we are respectful of them as capable learners as well.

7.  The majority are polite and professional.

8. Most are honest, ethical and like to play by the rules which makes it easy for us to work with them throughout the process of improving their PM skills.

9. The ones who challenge us remind us of why we bring so much value to this field.

10. They are able to tap into their innate genius in our programs and make a big difference in their worlds.

And then I extended this to my team of Cheetahs who help me run Cheetah Learning around the world:

Jean Steinmetz – the go for it gal. Whenever we need to change the way we are working, jean is the first one we change as she is able to morph and change so fast – she is a real cheetah.

Barb Mclintick – was our best student so we hired her. She has created so many fantastic courses it will now be very difficult for anyone to out barb, barb.

Rita Soto – this woman gets more work done than anyone I have ever met on the planet – I’m not sure how I ran the company before she came along. She frees me up to do what I do best – creating new courses.

Kent Dobbins – The funny thing about Kent, if I ever stopped running Cheetah,  Kent would be busier than he is now – he handles all my “not” cheetah projects. There are a lot of those.

Dave Maule – his sense of humor even with extremely challenging situations is so much fun to be around. The harder his job gets, the more he laughs.

Monica Dana – it’s a very good thing she likes to drive as we have her going all over the country doing the cheetah thing with our cheetah booth.

Elissa – trust is what comes to mind when I think of Elissa – she keeps so many balls in the air scheduling and contracting our venues. She is exceptionally organized.

Kristen – reminds me of the energizer bunny with a day timer. She sets up these systems and then keeps them running and running and running – being one of the youngest members of our team, she keeps the rest of us sticking to our commitments and staying coordinated.

All our trainers – some of these folks have been teaching for us for 8 years.

Vikram Bala – I love the way he took on the mantle of the one day class and created a version for India. His take on our approach for the unique needs of India still warms my heart today.

Kelly Baumer, I still remember how psyched she was when she passed the PMP exam in 2001. She has been such a vivacious part of our team since then, the students are so lucky to have her.

Kim Miller – I’ve known in my early dot.com days in the mid-90’s in Seattle. She has stuck with me through all types of crazy renditions of teaching for cheetah.

Norma Ribach is the sweetest woman on the planet and deeply cares about our students. Every time I talk with her about how she has helped this or that student achieve what they thought was impossible, it’s hard not to get all choked up.

Ray Strano – I knew he was destined to be a cheetah when he was the first person I ever saw do the sun salutation, including getting on the floor to do the stretching by the lockers at the prometric testing center. Rays students totally love him too.

Michael Swanson has the perfect balance of stern and loose that keeps his students happy and motivated to do the work they need to do to pass their exams.

Jeff Allen is not just a fantastic and caring teacher, he is also a very astute business man and continues to be of value consul to our students long after they leave the classroom.

Our marketing team is a pretty amazing group of people as well. I love the way we groove with each other to create some truly inspired campaigns.

Judy O’Brien leaves me rolling on the floor at all odd hours of the day and night. She has truly embellished our flex time work environment.  She is our main copy editor for our ad campaigns and does an exceptional job of crafting our newsletter every month.  Oh this reminds me, I still need to review the Dec. Newsletter for her.

Carey Earle is the earle girl extradonaire – it seems that there is one of us writing, whether I start the know how network columns or she starts it – it appears that we are always thinking along the same lines of the content, even without a conversation.

Walter just blows me away with his pluck – that guy dreams up more creative ways to connect with people than anyone I have ever met.

Marlene’s tenacity to get us exposure amazes me on a daily basis. She keeps going after promotional opportunities long after most folks would quit.

Sharene’s ability to take an abstract concept and put it into an image – that signifies class, intelligence, sophistication, and humor – it amazes me how she conveys so much with her work.

Dave LaBroad’s ability with keeping us coming up on top with the search engines and his ability at staying abreast of all the latest and greatest ways at keeping people aware of what we’re up to via the internet keeps me on my toes.

Shari Mahon must have gotten two sets of talents on this planet – tech savvy AND psychotherapy – I have seen her do amazing things with programmers and with technically phobic people alike. Plus she works with me at all hours of the day and night creating updates to our system and creates crazy last minute marketing campaigns that we pull off at Cheetah speed.

And next is our team of licensees who make the Cheetah courses available worldwide.

Peter McBride has worked with me since Jan. 2002 and was my first international licensee for our PMP program.   He soon expanded from Canada to Europe, the Mid-East, and Africa.    Peter has an endless amount of faith and trust in our system.  He took the risk and taught our first PMP class in Dubai for latest new PMP exam on the week the exam changed from the 3rd to the 4th edition.   That is confidence in us.  Peter leads a team of four inspiring teachers that travel the globe for Cheetah Learning.   These people spend more time in the air than I do.   Thank YOU.

Roberto Toledo took up the mantle for Cheetah Learning for the spanish speaking parts of the world.   He has his own PM courses he teaches as well, and translates Cheetah’s courses into spanish and delivers them throughout Latin and South America.   What I love about him is how he puts that uniquely latin spin on the work that comes out of my brain.   While I don’t completely understand what he is saying, when I’ve taught with him in Mexico City, it was obvious his students were thoroughly grasping our accelerated learning and PM concepts.

Diane Bussy in New Zealand spreads Cheetah cheer all over the South Pacific and into Asia.   Her go for it kiwi spin on the Cheetah programs is invigorating and I’ve learned quite a bit as I’ve watched her develop markets in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.   This week,  her assistant Jacqui pulled a group of US Army officers from South Korea over to Hawaii for training.  How she pulled that off is amazing – for everyone involved.

If you’d like to get into the spirit of mutual admiration day, AND take some awesome Cheetah Learning courses, for FREE visit our landing page for Mutual Admiration Day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 8:17 am and is filed under Tips for Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.