Venture Management Consultants doesn’t have a sales force. Never has. When John Murphy started the executive management and training firm in 1988, the former Notre Dame quarterback envisioned a company that could not only inspire and lead change, but also deliver customer value in a way that was better, faster, easier, supported creativity and at a lower cost than any of his competitors.
The lack of a sales force was an interesting concept for a new company. Murphy’s game plan was to create a business model that would provide the kind of customer service that would prompt his customers to promote his company through referrals and word of mouth. Murphy called it “leading from the inside, out.” If his customers started feeling like he was looking out for their best interests, and not just his own, together they could build a healthy and prosperous relationship that bred other relationships.
Today, Venture directs what Murphy calls “conscious” business improvement. His client roster includes companies such as GE, Hilton, Chase, BMW, Target, Toyota, the U.S. Navy and the CIA, to name a few. Venture partners with its clients and uses best practices to improve their customer service and financial performance.
“Trust is the bedrock to any healthy relationship,” says Murphy, Venture’s founder, and CEO. “We build trust by making commitments, keeping our word and consistently walking our talk. When we build trust, we build credibility, an essential component in customer service, innovation, leadership, and teamwork. Without credibility, we have no influence. People don’t take us seriously. Customers doubt us. The best way to get customers to promote us is to give them good reason to.”
Ask any successful entrepreneur, and he will tell you that true success comes from finding the confidence to compete in any environment, the creativity to find your voice, and the courage to defy convention against all odds. Success, truth be told, is about conquering fear. “The most important secret to overcoming fear is to recognize first that it is an illusion of the mind; it is self-generated,” Murphy says. “What scares one person does not necessarily scare another.”
Creativity, Fly in the Face of Fear
As an award-winning author, speaker, and international business consultant, Murphy is all about jumping into the face of fear and screaming “boo.”
“We create fear by doubting ourselves and assuming the worst. It is also important to recognize that fear is not in the present, but always a projection of the mind into the future. The same is true for anxiety and stress. We feel afraid when we create a picture in the mind’s eye of something painful, risky or emotionally disturbing in the future. This projection, surrounded by assumption, drives us to feel anxious and afraid. We could just as easily project a confident assumption into the future and see the world in a different way. Having faith and seeing a positive outcome in advance is critical to living life with confidence, poise, and grace. That point in life is where creativity lives.”