Cam Marston

 About

About Cam Marston - Generational Expert and Management Speaker:

Cam Marston is an author, advisor, radio talk show host, and top-rated keynote speaker on the trends shaping the workplace and marketplace. His presentations are informative, engaging, humorous, and full of concrete research that is tailored to his audience. Cam enlivens the data with anecdotes, tales from the real business world, attention-grabbing visuals, and quips that make the messages and actionable strategies memorable.

In 2018 Cam began a podcast called What’s Working with Cam Marston that was soon picked up by an FM radio station in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama. Cam interviews guests to understand the trends influencing their workplace, workforce and marketplace to help listeners adjust their own organizations to face similar changes. Today, with well over 225 shows behind him, the show is now broadcast in Huntsville, Birmingham, and Montgomery, as well as Mobile. In the spring of 2022 he released a book called What Works: The Ten Best Ideas from the First 200 Episodes. He's also the author of  Motivating The “What’s In It For Me?” Workforce (2005), exploring the characteristics and motivations that each generation brings to the workforce - and suggests management tactics applicable to any business setting; Generational Insights (2010) is a guide to the best practices in managing generational issues; Generational Selling Tactics That Work (2011) is the first book-length study of generational approaches to sales and marketing. His short book The Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor (updated in 2017) is a must-read in the financial services industry.

Cam also records commentaries for Alabama Public Radio called Keepin’ It Real. They’re his humorous and inspirational observations of the world around him and have won both statewide and national awards. You can find both his radio show and his commentaries on your favorite podcast app. The commentaries have recently been converted into short, subscription-based videos to be used as inspirational and motivational weekly training content for the workplace.

Cam’s expertise and acumen are the products of over 20 years of research and consultation across a wide range of industries. He has provided insight and advice to leadership at the some of the world’s most prominent corporations, including Kaiser Permanente, Charles Schwab, BASF, Nestle, Schlumberger, Fidelity, Warner Brothers, ESPN, Qualcomm, RE/MAX and Eli Lilly. He has also offered presentations and consultations for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Internal Revenue Service, NASA and the U.S. Army, as well as for major professional associations such as the American Bankers Association, the Health Care Compliance Association, FMI/The Food Industry Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the Million Dollar Round Table.

Marston’s expertise has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Chicago Tribune, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Money, FastCompany, and Forbes, as well as on Good Morning America, CNN International and the BBC. He has written a regular column for Investment Advisor and been a featured columnist in many trade journals. His blog tracks the latest changes and developments in workplace and marketplace trends.

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 Topics

What Cam Marston Talks About:

Recruiting and Retention in Historic High Turnover
High retention workplaces have become more and more rare as our new Covid-present world attempts to reenergize itself. Both job turnover and demand for workers is at historic and shocking levels. Businesses’ inability to find and keep workers, no matter the pay, perks, or seniority, is real.

The rare few workplaces that have not struggled to hire and retain all tend to have a few things in common:

They have spent years intentionally building a culture designed to address employee needs both in and out of the workplace;
Leaders have been groomed to help employees discover their own inner motivations to find purpose in their work;
They recognize their culture as a strategic differentiator in a crowded and aggressive marketplace, and they protect it at all costs. When these characteristics are in place, the organization becomes a magnet for people eager to join a workplace where they can find fulfillment.
Inherent in the leader’s ability to build and protect the culture and motivate employees is an understanding of employees’ spoken and unspoken challenges. Trusted leaders are familiar with the trends shaping the workforce, from life stages to generational characteristics to current events. Today’s employee marketplace wants to know your plans to address the latest hot topics including mental health, remote workplaces, flexible hours, workplace safety, and diversity and inclusion.

A few innovative actions by forward-looking companies can result in immediate improvements in recruiting and retention. Nontraditional recruiting ideas include showing the employee marketplace your personal side, both as an organization and as leadership. Potential employees are also drawn in by a clear plan for their growth and development: show them what will they learn in the first six weeks, then six months, then a yearly plan. Who will be involved in their growth? When and how will they be involved?

In this timely and engaging presentation, you will learn:

  • Trends that shape what an employee expects and needs to flourish that you must be ready to address
  • How to show your company’s personal side publicly
  • Steps to becoming a motivator for your teams
  • How to design plans for your employees’ first days on the job and for longer term growth
  • How to form the groundwork for a strong workplace culture that is attractive to recruits of all generations and in which current employees thrive and never want to leave

What’s Working: Workplace and Marketplace Trends
Extraordinary turnover. Mental health challenges leading to mental health awareness. Diversity and inclusion priorities. Supply chain nightmares. Vaccine controversy. Political divisions. Trembling stock market. Inflation forecasts. Partridge in a pear tree. Goodness.

The trends shaping today’s workplace and marketplace are, each on their own, worthy of a news cycle headline. But in today’s upheaval, they’re happening simultaneously. Which of the trends making headlines will impact the workplace and marketplace most? Which ones do employers, managers, sales leaders, and human resources executives need to keep an eye on? I have opinions on that…

In 2018, I began an old-school, interview-style, terrestrial radio show called What’s Working with Cam Marston. My goal? To interview professionals from a spectrum of industries across the country to help my listeners better understand the trends shaping their workplace, the workforce, and the marketplace. Today, about 200 broadcast episodes later (and also available as a podcast), I share the most relevant trends that I’ve uncovered in customized presentations designed to arm each audience with the skills and information needed to get ahead in their industry.

Notable trends include:

  • Mental health awareness in the workplace
  • Management and retention in flexible and remote workplaces
  • Ensuring workplace safety
  • Diversity and Inclusion deluge (and potential backlash)
  • The growing importance of mission for employees and customers
  • A future of low performing males throughout society
  • The relevance of safety and convenience to shoppers

This presentation delivers thought-provoking content curated for your specific industry. I gather best practices gained from a continuously growing body of interviews, as well as from proprietary research, to equip each audience with a list of the most important trends, their potential impact, and guidelines on how to address them.

Five Generations In The Workplace
For the first time in history, five distinct generations – Matures, Boomers, Xers, Millennials and Gen Z – are employed side by side in the workplace. With differing values and seemingly incompatible views on how the workplace should function, these generations have stirred conflict in the business world. Witness the turnover, the lack of engagement, and management incomprehension and frustration. Knowledge of and effective management of this generational divide is vital to longevity and success. In fact, it is one of the most relevant and important demands your company can make of its leaders.

In this engaging presentation, Cam Marston teaches how each generation developed its core values, how these values manifest in the workplace daily as workplace preferences, and why they can all not only operate alongside each other but do so with extraordinary success. This program provides the detailed insight, concrete examples, and specific approaches to help frustrated managers build the personal connections needed to boost employee performance and retention. Audiences will learn that success results from increased generational awareness and incremental change.

Participants will walk away from this experience knowing:

  • Common generational characteristics and core values
  • How each generation defines success
  • Specific leadership needs of each generation
  • The new definition of company loyalty
  • Fresh guidelines for team building
  • Amongst the generations, the only common ground is the intensity with which each generation holds fast to its value systems and preferences.
  • Understanding and respecting these value systems and preferences are critical to bringing out the best in every employee.

The Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor
For decades, financial services professionals have focused on demographic groups that are now moving into and past retirement. The Matures (born 1945 and prior) and the Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1964) are the generations that the financial services industry grew up with and their client relationships were defined by traditional business models. Now, new generations, Generation X and, especially, Millennials, who have different economic and cultural experiences are moving into age ranges that make them prime markets for investments, retirement planning, insurance, and other financial products.

The next generation of financial services client has arrived. They will not tolerate being treated the same way their parents were treated. Learn what they want in this exciting and impactful presentation.

You’ll learn:

  • The attitudes and expectations of the upcoming generations and what they expect from financial services providers
  • How each generation values different types of information
  • What each generation’s definition of “expert” is and how they apply it to financial professionals
  • How the Covid economy altered the way some generations perceive money and financial planning
  • What the younger generations want financial professionals to teach them
  • Each generation’s preferred communication preferences
  • Which sales tools to use, and how to use them effectively

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 Recent Publications

Thoroughly enjoyed the presentation. Very engaging and relevant. Painted me to a tee. We were all talking about the presentation afterwards and was an interesting topic of discussion over meals and at the party. I can see how understanding generational differences help us navigate how we approach patients as well as how to understand the marketplace. I would recommend Cam to others.

The Permanente Medical Group

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