Today we’d like to introduce you to Brenda Jones.
Hi Brenda, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
In 2014, I made a decision to retire from a job I loved. At the time, I was a Global Sales Solutions Manager for FedEx Services. I had an amazing career and the opportunity to lead 2 high-performing, award-winning teams at FedEx. My work afforded me opportunities most people only dream about.
Global travel, leading multi-year corporate initiatives with ROI in the millions if not billions. I loved my work and the amazing professionals on my team. But, there was always this passion to run my own training company. In fact, my business partner, Brigitte Cooney, and I bonded and became very close friends at MCI 25 years earlier because we shared the same vision and believed in our personal brand.
It took 25 years for our work and personal lives to catch up with our vision, but here we are! NXT Generation Training, LLC became a reality on January 3, 2019!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
You know the hardest thing about being a small, minority, and woman-owned business is paperwork. I had no idea how difficult it would be to complete documents for certifications that help legitimize our business. Brigitte and I often commented about the difficulty of the business side of things and had great empathy for other business owners who never made it to the 3-year mark.
But, we also committed that we would be accountable to encourage each other. That accountability was tested with COVID-19 and the pandemic. We were committed to our initial passion and resolute to still make our business work. Instead of throwing in the towel, our way forward meant pivoting our business model from primarily in-person training to virtual and digital learning.
And, we cemented that by seeking a partnership with a major corporation. Fortunately,TTEC Corporation, one of the largest, global customer experience corporations in the world asked us to partner with them on a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) program. That collaboration changed everything for me and the business.
While a significant number of small businesses were dormant or closing, our partnership with a major corporation allowed us to curate learning scenarios, train and test their Humanify® DEI+ BOT which is an innovative AI-enabled solution focused on diversity education and trains learners on empathy, communication bias, and inclusion.
NXT Gen also provided thought-leadership for TTEC’s digital implicit bias training. I am proud of the fact that we kept our momentum and continued to find our niche’.
We’ve been impressed with NXT Generation Training, LLC and affectionately known as NXT Gen, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
NXT Gen’s focus is to take organizations and their leaders to the NXT level. We specialize in leadership and professional development. Our sweet spot is working with middle management up to C-suite combining training and coaching that takes an average or good leader and makes them “great”.
We live our mission which is “Maximizing employee talent with creative, sustainable training solutions.” What we know is training alone is not enough to move the needle. You can’t teach someone to lead high-performing teams in a 2 or 3-day session. When you reinforce training with coaching and other activities, scenarios and simulations over a period of time, the results are very powerful! NXT Gen likes to to go beneath the surface to unlock a leader’s full potential and the only way to do that is to include intentional coaching sessions.
With coaching, leaders will adopt and apply new or improved skills in the workplace at a significantly higher rate. Training + Coaching = Maximum Performance Output. It’s what made me and my business partner successful at MCI Worldcom years ago. It’s such a simple formula but missed repeatedly by so many organizations.
We all have a different ways of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
My company uses a process called Engagement Workshops. The process is to use a collaborative discussion and tools to build a deeper relationship and understand the client’s needs.
We focus on stakeholders and decision-makers with the end result being a training and development blueprint and delivering a roadmap to move the client’s organization from its current state to where the stakeholders want to be.
When we meet, we have an in-depth discussion about what success looks like for this organization and how our company will add value. To me, success is when a client says, “that’s exactly what I want”. It means we heard them and have the right solution in place.
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