Scott DiGiammarino is the CEO and Founder of Reel Potential. Before creating Reel Potential, Scott was a senior executive for Ameriprise Financial (formerly American Express Financial Advisors) for 25 years.
In that time, he had record-breaking results on a consistent basis, including bringing his organization from worst to first in his first 12 months. During his tenure, he had best-in-class production, retention, profitability, leadership development and employee survey scores. Scott has achieved many awards during his career including: Leader of the Decade, the Premier Performer, and the prestigious Diamond Ring. Scott’s passion is helping people maximize their true potential. He also dedicated his entire career to the development of leaders throughout the financial services industry.
Currently, Scott is an in-demand, key-note speaker. He was recently asked to speak at TEDx RockCreekPark in May of 2013. He always uses licensed movie clips to support his messages.
THE START OF REEL POTENTIAL
When Scott came into his role at American Express in 1992, he had 31 employees. It would be an easy job to develop and grow, given that everybody was in one office. But as his scope expanded to over 200 offices, he realized that he’d have to get creative in order to continue to add value, and in doing so, get best efforts from every employee he had on a day-to-day basis.
There were massive changes in the workplace at the time: shortened attention spans, new technology, different learning styles based on different generations, a widening gap between the top 20% and everybody else, and on top of all of this, he was asked to do more, with less, and the demands on his time became overwhelming. He had to find an innovative way to communicate, engage and inspire his troops. And, he had to make it short, entertaining and memorable.
One of Scott’s principles was that he believed that if you help people develop, from a personal perspective, they would flourish in all aspects of life, including business. So, he decided to use his love for movies as his way of engaging his employees on a daily basis.
Once a day, he would choose a theme. Courage, perseverance, teamwork, hope, integrity, were just a few of them. He would then show a movie clip that pertained to the theme and would follow up with questions about people’s personal experience with the themes. The stories were incredible. And he found that the experience not only lifted the spirits of his organization, but it helped them make better, principle-based decisions, even when the boss wasn’t around, because they could remember the clip.
Scott’s success was so vast, that he decided to build a turn-key system for other companies. He started Reel Potential in 2009. His mission is to use Hollywood movie clips and the best of the web to help business leaders inspire, engage, and communicate to employees and students, worldwide.
MOVIE CLIPS
Since the inception of cinema, movies have been made to tell a story. Movies elicit an emotion from the audience. Some make us laugh…some make us cry. Some are heroic. Some get us to think more deeply. Some are motivational, while others are learning moments in life.
In many movie scenes, it’s crystal clear what the creative team wanted us to think and feel when we watch. Those clips become timeless. They deliver a message that becomes memorable. Moviegoers throughout the world reference those clips at work, at parties, in the classroom, in the locker rooms, and in their everyday lives. They get their points across by relating them to a specific movie clip.
At Reel Potential, we believe that the sum of the parts may have just as much impact, if not more, than the whole. What we mean is that there are thousands of life lessons in those movie clips.
Our goal is to harness the power of Hollywood to deliver a short, entertaining and memorable experience. We want to make a difference in the lives of millions of people across the world. And we want to do it for pennies a day. We don’t want to let price get in the way of something that could change your lives.