Phil D'Agostino

 After living his first years in middle class New York City, fate played a hand on Phil's family. Difficult circumstances forced them to move south and his family to splinter. As a result, he spent most of his youth struggling in a small, impoverished town in North Carolina.

Phil excelled in school and qualified for several academic scholarships. He eventually attended and graduated from High Point College with degrees in Chemistry and Biology, planning to attend medical school. But after college and teaching high school science as a certified instructor for the State of North Carolina, he began a new educational odyssey in business, moving through five different industries over the next fifteen years. Phil began his first company, Genesis Design and Marketing, with his own patented product in the early eighties. Through this company, he learned the ins and outs of product design, manufacturing and sales. He also began to consult with attorneys and others regarding patentability and success potential for the designs of products. This developed into a business consulting about copyrights, trademarks and other intellectual property issues.

He then bought a retail and service franchise, which he grew into a profitable business and then sold six years later. During this period, he also started a successful desktop publishing and resume service and bought an advertising specialty franchise. But Phil's entrepreneurial interests were not easily satisfied.

It was during this time that he began to speak to others about their own potential. Groups as diverse as church social clubs to business clubs for the rich and famous all sought to hear Phil's ideas about personal growth and achievement. He became a regular guest on one of the largest AM radio stations in North Carolina and was heard as often as three times a week for more than three and a half years. He also hosted television talk show programs and published articles across two countries.

He attended the University of North Carolina and earned his graduate degree in psychological counseling and began helping people with various psychological problems, while running his other business concerns and continuing his speaking profession.

More and more, his counseling practice began to focus on relationships. He found that there is very little difference between the relationships of the family and those in the work place. He created his first courses, Conflict Inside Out and Get-A-Grip, and began providing training programs to companies on how to do a better job with conflict resolution, employee empowerment and communication skills.

For more than six years, Phil worked with and became the top trainer in five subjects for the country's largest seminar company, CareerTrack, until their buyout and dissolution in 1999. He launched their highly successful conflict resolution program and delivered it more than six hundred times to nearly 70,000 participants in two countries. Over the last half-dozen years, Phil has delivered nearly 1000 seminars and speeches and spoken to over 100,000 in classrooms and banquet halls in virtually every major market.

Presentation Topics

The Power of Courage
Effective Interpersonal Communication Skills
Achieving Exceptional Customer Service
Management for Managers
Conflict Inside Out: An Approach Like You've Never Seen Before
Maintaining Balance in the Workplace (aka: Stress Management in Today's Workplace)
E2T: Employee Empowerment for Teams
E2: Employee Empowerment
Creating a Positive Work Environment
Negotiating Like a Pro
Decision Making and Problem Solving
Leadership Skills for Non-Supervisors
Leadership Skills for Supervisors and Managers
Flagstones to Visionary Leadership