My name is Kurt Minson, and I have spent nearly 25 years investigating high-performing professional firms and interviewing their top leaders. During that time, I got close and very personal with them to see what made certain practices stronger, more dynamic and ultimately more successful than those of their competitors.

I found that the individual practice stories and brand cultures may have been very diverse and that there was always strong technical expertise in-house, but there was also always one thing that stood out boldly. The best-in-class firms, regardless of professional discipline, had a powerful internal firm culture that was deeply dedicated to individual clients or patients.

These firms delivered a memorable client experience and were committed to the process of attracting and fully engaging each client. They each had a solutions foundation that operated in concert with the needs of clients, and they made maintaining high-value relations with their clients a top priority for as long as each engagement would last.

What also became crystal-clear in the midst of these investigations was that the vast majority of High Trust Professionals (HTPs) are not born to or educated in the specific approaches that make engagement culture, related marketing strategy or advanced engagement processes function well.

And while strong technical skills and hard work will certainly move the needle for many a business, to achieve the highest levels of practice success, work-life balance and professional satisfaction, creation of an engagement culture is vital.

Engagement 1 was founded specifically to help forge, nurture and expand this type of culture through the use of 8 key services: Assessment, Ideation, Branding, Strategy, Culture, Lead Generation, Coaching/Training and Social Media/PR. When the 8 are deployed together and integrated for maximum practice success, they are referred to as the Engagement 1 System™. This Engagement 1 success platform was born out of the previously mentioned research and addressed these vital firm needs.

Further, this approach was inspired by the real lives, words, works and exploits of a number of exceptional history-making engagement exemplars. These engagement exemplars are important because each of these notable men and women truly understood how to leverage the drama and emotion of their great stories, beliefs, creativity, personal achievements, art, intellect, writings, and impact on culture to attract others and engage them.

These others included their superiors, powerful allies, wealthy patrons, business associates and the brightest luminaries of their respective times . . . as well as the societies in which they lived and beyond. I believe that these lives and the principles that fueled their successes are worthy of our understanding and modern imitation.