ABOUT VENTURE UP

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Our Story

Blast to the Past ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Newsletters

Trapped in a snowed-in chalet in Chamonix, France in 1983, the late winter storm swallowed the room in darkness as two American climbers sat by the dying flames thinking of ways to continue la belle vie.

After three days of captivity, the vote was unanimous: create an adventure company to write off traveling abroad. So when they returned to the USA, the two recent graduates of the University of Arizona started Venture Up.

A plant biochemist, co-founder David Lengyel has traveled to 50+ countries as a mountaineer, guide and consultant. He established Venture Up by leading first-time alpinists to world-famous summits and organizing climbing, caving and ropes courses in the US. Venture Up quickly grew to a team of highly-skilled (and well-educated) guides, and made its mark promoting responsible travel and cultural awareness at travel conferences in Europe, Asia and Russia.

International publicity drew widespread attention to Venture Up, and business leaders began hiring David to align their training and events with fun yet meaningful experiential activities to build trust and employee engagement.

While nearly all of Venture Up’s programs today involve corporate training and events, the path was curvy. With a motto of “Yes we do,” Venture Up was forced to create programs and practices serving many industries. In the early days, David has worked as a stand-in and consultant for films and commercials, and rigged ropes and adventure set-ups for fashion shoots.

He has delivered secret training programs to military and government groups, some of whom would arrive for payment with a suitcase full of cash. Venture Up has built portable climbing walls for trade shows and promotions, and run private programs for celebrity families and pro athletes. Today, we’re open to anything, but nearly all of our business involves corporate groups — many of whom have been with Venture Up for decades.

As a business relying on repeat business, Venture Up thrives by listening to clients. “Our clients are our business consultants. They are the driving force behind our innovation, says David. “They always want something different and something new, and we continue to deliver.”

Venture Up promotes diversity, inclusivity and social responsibility, and helps companies build team relationships and loyalty to the brand.

If you want a strong corporate culture and a happy workplace,

who ya gonna call?  (Hint: 888-305-1065)

Blast to the Past                                                         See clients in action

The Venture Up experience combines well with existing corporate training programs such at TQM, Strength Finders, and Lean Principals, or may be designed to focus on specific areas, such as:

• Team SupportMaintaining it for the long run
• DiversityBenefits for the whole team
• COMMUNICATION & COACHINGImproving skills for team efficiency
• CHANGEBreaking way to new opportunities
• TRUSTBuilding and maintaining it
• CREATIVITYDefining goals to find
• CONFLICT MANAGEMENTHealthy vs. unhealthy
• LEADERSHIPvs management
• ETIQUETTEFor everyone's success
• MANAGING UPRespect and solution oriented
• IMPACTING OTHERSSeeing the larger picture

Venture Up has a long-standing track record, serving more than 250,000 clients since we began in 1983. As corporate training technologies began shifting toward integrated learning models, Venture Up was on the forefront as one of the pioneers in corporate experiential learning.

The Venture Up experience integrates cognitive, emotional and physical awareness and perceptions. Our philosophy is rooted in the power of the individual in creating a high performance team and hence a successful organization.

At Venture Up we deal with large and small scale issues affecting organizations of all types and sizes. In motivating people toward optimum performance as team players, Venture Up provides programs to make people more aware of their abilities to effect change.

Our programs are flexible enough to be combined with existing corporate training programs, or may be designed to target clients’ objectives. The exercises of a typical program establish trust and create a positive learning environment that enables people of all professional levels to become more creative and innovative in their thinking and problem solving. We aim to remove barriers that blocked them from trying something new and inspire them to look at problems from many points of view.

Programs are designed to be fun and challenging but geared for success. Our goal is to build relationships through positive feedback, recognition and reward. The result: team players leave with an action plan and are willing to try new ideas and look for new solutions back on the job.

Quality Service
Venture Up’s focus on quality is here to stay. In an age of global competition, quality and service will remain top priorities for successful
organizations for many years to come.

We view quality as a vision of doing things right the first time for the ultimate purpose of creating and keeping customers. We adhere to the principles captured by the Harvard Business Review that caution against false goals of many activity-driven quality programs. We believe strongly in the need for measurable long-term results on the job. Anything short of exceeding customers’ expectations and impacting organizational performance is activity for activity sake and not part of the quality process.

The success of any organization is dependent on the individual commitment of each employee to a common goal. Research has overwhelmingly demonstrated the need for individuals to feel a sense of ownership and pride in their work.

We work with organizations to help them maximize individual and organizational performance. It is through the accomplishment of common goals, through combined individual talents that teams are forged and true quality is achieved.

Vision
Our vision is a workplace with individuals committed to a common goal contributing their talents with self-motivated initiative, ownership and organizational pride.

Mission
Our mission is to provide realistic job-related learning experiences which empower individuals to contribute to common goals through effective individual and team behaviors; to work with organizations and individuals to ensure long term change and applications to the job.

Results
Our success is measured by the results of our clients, and is reflected in the quality of our staff. We practice our beliefs.