Speaker Spotlight
She Built a Construction Company Where No Employee Has Ever Voluntarily Quit. That Is the Whole Keynote.
Chelsea Husum — Founder and CEO of American GPR & Coring · Bestselling Author of Real Vibes Only · 2024 Denver Business Journal Outstanding Woman in Business
Chelsea Husum founded and runs American GPR & Coring, a company she built in the male-dominated construction industry. Along the way she produced a retention record most organizations would consider impossible.
No employee has ever voluntarily quit. Not a low turnover rate. None.
Whatever you think of that as a headline, it is the kind of claim a leadership audience will interrogate, and it is why her keynote is a practical session about buy-in rather than a talk about culture in the abstract.
Retention Is the Metric Everyone Is Chasing Right Now
Turnover is the expensive problem sitting underneath most of the workforce research published this year. Our own look at first-year nurse turnover found that the decisive window is early and the levers are largely cultural rather than financial. The same pattern shows up in sales, in trades and in frontline work generally.
What makes Chelsea useful to that conversation is that she is not presenting research. She is presenting an operating result from a company she still runs, in an industry where crews leave for a dollar an hour. That is a different kind of authority than a consultant brings, and it plays particularly well to construction, manufacturing, skilled trades and finance audiences who are tired of being told about culture by people who have never made payroll.
Her signature keynote, Earn the Follow, is built on a three-part framework covering trust, ownership and follow-through, with an emphasis on the everyday consistency that determines whether people believe you.
The Second Keynote, and Who It Is For
Built From the Mess: The Courage to Be Seen is the more personal option, aimed at women’s conferences, association events and all-hands audiences. Its premise is that the experiences people spend years managing around are often the ones that give them credibility, and it pushes an audience to stop waiting for permission.
There is a nice piece of Amplify history in that keynote. Chelsea first told one of the hardest stories of her life standing in Amberly Lago’s living room, and that moment is part of what led to the speaking work she does now.
She has been featured on Next Level CEO with Daymond John and Go Fund Yourself, and in Business Insider, NBC, CBS and FOX. Her book Real Vibes Only reached number two on Amazon’s Women in Business list, and she hosts the podcast Lip Service & Lashes. She is based in Denver.
Book Chelsea Husum
Available for keynotes on leadership, trust and buy-in, workplace culture, retention and women in leadership, plus breakouts and workshops.