When no single job description suffices to describe a certain someone, a hyphenate is mandatory. Nelson’s hyphenate goes something like this: writer-producer-singer-actor-creative director-brand guru-entrepreneur-filmmaker-showman.
Nelson is driven by a passion for creativity – and results. A successful and award-winning Business Leader and Senior Executive in the creative industries of advertising, marketing, design and entertainment for over 20 years, Nelson understands the challenges of maximizing the flow of creativity and innovation in individuals, teams and organizations – and that leaders can no longer accept stale and outdated thinking. Nelson believes creativity is the new primary driver of success.
Having spent the better part of his career leading creative teams and inspiring breakthrough creative thinking, he now works with business and senior executives to design, implement and hone their employees and teams to unearth higher levels of creativity. Whether helping a leader design an inspired culture of creativity or working with a team to improve their productivity, Nelson’s results have attracted clients such as TBWA\Chiat Day, The Lowe Group, SABIAN Cymbals, Latin Percussion, Hudson Creative Agency, NB Power, and Hemmings House Pictures.
Nelson is also a Creative Director, Filmmaker, Brand Innovator and Workshop Facilitator, having provided breakthrough Creative Leadership on global Fortune 500 brands such as adidas, Kellogg’s, GE, Bridgestone/Firestone, Proctor & Gamble and Toshiba.
A natural performer with strong stage presence, Nelson has been called highly creative and imaginative, but strategic and business-minded. Time and time again, clients who work with Nelson note his passion and commitment, and his personable, dynamic and no-nonsense approach to inspiring greater creativity and innovation at employee and organizational levels. Always with an eye to results, Nelson has become renowned for his use of imaginative and time-tested concepts and practices to increase creativity and innovation.
Nelson has been professionally speaking since 1989, is distinguished as a certified member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) and Canada’s professional performers union, ACTRA, and is a member of the Global Speakers Federation (GSF). Progress Magazine has named Nelson and his creative marketing firm CABRAL Creative a “Fastest Growing Company”, having recently landed #2 on the ONES TO WATCH list, with 1227% growth.
- NELSON CABRAL
International Keynote Speaker and Business Growth Expert, Nelson delivers inspiring business keynote addresses as well as training on leadership, innovation, creativity, and change.
Business Keynotes, Consulting, & Training programs can be customized from 90 minutes to half-day, full-day, and 2-3 day formats
- Topic 1: Leadership, Creativity, & Performance
Session Title: The Future of Leadership – How to Ignite Creative Leadership in Your Organization
What You Will Learn:
- How leaders can be more connected, collaborative and flexible to managing people and performance – versus traditional command and control leadership
- Actionable insights that leaders can leverage immediately to drive innovation, change, productivity, and performance
- The Nine Forces Of Creative Leadership™ to build inspirational and collaborative leadership skills, tools, and mindset
- How organizations can maximize the performance of their leaders and manage breakthrough performance in the new economy
- Topic 2 : Culture, Innovation, & Change
Session Title: Accelerating Innovation – Creating a High-Performance Culture of Innovation
What You Will Learn:
- How leaders, managers, and teams can make collaborative and systemic innovation work across their whole organization
- New techniques and practices to generate innovative ideas on demand, move business-building ideas forward, and drive winning ideas to market
- The proven process to blow away the biggest barriers to creativity in business and create a brilliant “group brain”
- The strategies to enhance your team’s creative climate and inspire employees at all levels to innovate daily and embrace change
- Topic 3: Performance, Productivity, & Time Management
Session Title: The Nelson Touch – Sparking Individual Creativity to Achieve Personal and Organizational Excellence
What You Will Learn:
- The techniques to harness your most powerful ideas and make better, smarter decisions, faster
- How to break free from the biggest blockers of creativity
- Actionable takeaways on how to apply “business creativity” on a daily basis to solve your everyday challenges, turning problems into solutions
- Practical tools to ignite more breakthroughs and get unstuck faster by making small changes to your work processes
- Topic 4: People Management, Employee Engagement, & Happiness
Session Title: The Creative Storm for Managers & Team Leaders – Nine Forces to Ignite Workplace Happiness
What You Will Learn:
- How to create happiness and use it to drive employee engagement inside your organization
- How to ramp up and keep your team’s energy fired up so they never lose their mojo
- Practical tools and strategies and to share, teach, coach, support, and appreciate your employees
- Discover triggers to consistently motivate and drive employees to become happy and fully engaged
- Topic 5: Customer Service, Sales Effectiveness, & Brand Loyalty
Session Title: The Creative Storm for Sales Professionals – Seven Ways to Blow Your Customers’ Mind, Every Day
What You Will Learn
- Having recently delivered a national “Best Customer Experience” corporate training program to Mercedes-Benz leaders and teams across Canada, Nelson can help your team earn more sales, more referrals, and build lifetime relationships
- How salespeople can use creativity to create and deliver a “unique” customer experience and “moments of delight”
- Actionable takeaways on how to build long-lasting brand loyalty and a customer-centric business
- Why the “Customer Experience” has become one of the last key differentiators as it relates to customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and retention
- Topic 6: Marketing & Branding
Session Title: The Creative Storm for Marketing Managers, Business Owners, & Entrepreneurs – How to Unleash the Beat of Your Brand
What You Will Learn:
- As the Executive Creative director, Brand Strategist, and driving force behind some of the music industry’s greatest product brands, Nelson will show you what it takes to build and sustain a successful brand
- How to out-think, out-perform, and out-maneuver the competition
- How to uncover your competitive advantages and create messages and tactics that achieve real results
- How strategic creativity can be used to attract and move people, build your brand, and win new business
“Nelson’s business keynotes and innovation consulting are thoughtful and engaging. He analyzed the issues our team was having and presented actionable tools and strategies. I was particularly impressed with his interaction with employees, always putting them at ease and encouraging them to speak freely throughout his program.”
Greg Chrisanthidis, Operation Manager, Mercedes-Benz Canada, Toronto Head Office
“Nelson was amazing with our team. I am actually in awe of his talent as a professional speaker and motivator. He was composed, confident, lucid in his thoughts and very personable. We learned a lot from Nelson. I have total respect for Nelson’s talent – and he is ‘The Creative Storm’!”
Gary McGuire, Vice President Brand & Communications, VODAFONE, Prague, Czech Republic, Europe
“I admit the honor of hosting Mr. Cabral at our offices in Warsaw, Poland, where he enraptured the staff and executive team with his winning formula for unlocking the hidden creative treasures within.”
John Van Kannel, CEO/Managing Director, The Lowe Group, Warsaw, Poland (Lowe GGK, PanMedia Western, GGK PR)
“Nelson facilitated and keynoted our Executive Three-day Retreat. With some recent challenges, this was an excellent way to boost morale and productivity, while squeezing in some excellent teamwork and communications skills development. Because of Nelson, this was our BEST executive event ever. A keynote from Nelson will energize your team to take on the world!”
Bruce Fitch, Minister of Justice & Consumer Affairs, Minister of Economic Development, Leader of the Official Opposition, Government of New Brunswick
“Nelson’s keynote program to our Project Managers at our North American Conference was highly engaging and he was able to convey A LOT of highly useful management skills and strategies. Here’s what I heard from our PMIers/audience members: “Loved the “Lord Nelson” approach to be innovative – I will use it for my business; Great pace and masterful delivery; Nelson was great, and I’d love to see similar speakers for our events; Nelson was a great presenter and gave our team and managers a much needed spark and boost.”
Michael G. Smith, PMP, PMI Region 3 Summit Project Manager
“We’ve held many corporate team-building executive meetings and staff training seminars led by Nelson. We look forward to these events because they were creative and different each time and always resulted in a boost in morale and new ideas that we were able to develop into our business strategy, corporate culture, and brands.”
Heidi Schaeffer, Executive Creative Director, Kaman Corporation, Global Headquarters, Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA
“Beneath Nelson’s warm and friendly demeanor exists a refined, powerful and visionary professional speaker. Nelson was the Writer, Creative Director, Brand Strategist, and dynamic force behind our nationally recognized “WIN-WIN” campaign, which garnered ALC a “Top 10 Marketer That Mattered” award from Marketing Magazine. The value of what Nelson does goes beyond his creativity – it is also passion and accountability that drives his desire to service clients and grow their business.”
Robert Stokes, Director, Strategy & Planning/Vice President, Social Responsibility and Communications, Atlantic Lottery Corporation
“Nelson is highly innovative in bringing new and never-before-seen team building experiences and corporate training to our Executive team.”
Luanne Zhu, Customer Experience Strategy Manager, Mercedes-Benz Canada, Toronto Head OfficeDirector, The Lowe Group (Lowe GGK, PanMedia Western, GGK PR)
“Nelson is a multi-talented, highly intelligent Innovation Director at the top of the North American market. He has the unique talent of understanding business analysis, priorities and imperatives; and uncovering strategies that meet the challenge. A true renaissance individual, he knows how to push the creative envelope while facilitating and presenting highly effective, real world business training and results.”
David A. McAllister, Vice President, Jam Industries Ltd, Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
“We invited Nelson to be our keynote speaker to share his experiences and inspire other entrepreneurs. The entire audience was extremely impressed with Nelson’s keynote presentation, and his high quality of delivery demonstrated that he does his research and is always well-prepared. His passionate and enthusiastic style kept us entertained while imparting high quality insights.”
Karen Robinson, Executive Director, CBDC
“We greatly enjoyed Nelson’s creative approach in offering lasting innovation and creativity skills training to our corporate safety professionals. Feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive, and training has resulted in many “aha!” moments for the team.”
Erik Matchett, Director, Corporate Relations and Communications, NB Power
“Nelson’s workshops and executive team development retreats held every year are challenging, motivating and inspiring. Love his ‘Roxercises’. Our senior team always returns from them enlightened and reinvigorated to elevate communication and performance in our teams, and make our business and culture even stronger. Even better, Nelson has the ability to help us translate inspiration into action.”
Jim Rockwell, V.P. Director of Marketing, Latin Percussion Headquarters, Garfield, New Jersey, USA
“During Nelson’s Innovation Workshop, we experienced a tireless presenter who gets exceptional results. As a team builder, he is skilled at soliciting valuable information and navigating intense emotions. His outstanding training skills and calm professionalism forced group participants to stay focused while he pulled in all points of view and presented highly relevant and strategic information in a useable way.”
John Gallo, The Corporation of The Town of Aurora, York Region, Greater Toronto Area, Ontario
“If you need help in creating synergy and elevating management effectiveness in your leaders and managers, we recommend Nelson. We loved him because of his contagious enthusiasm and willingness to genuinely listen to our management team and inspire them to drive productivity and performance. The outcome of Nelson’s work was our leaders being prepared to drive business growth, capture employee commitment, and elevate performance.”
Andrew Peters, Mercedes-Benz Canada
“Nelson’s drive to help us succeed could be felt in every business keynote he delivered and every corporate meeting he facilitated. His creative leadership and inspiration has resulted in the most innovative and successful campaigns in our company’s history.”
Stacey Montgomery-Clark, V.P. of Marketing, SABIAN Cymbals Ltd.