01
Customer to Producer
They spent sixteen years consuming a curriculum. Nobody’s writing one for them now.
For Career Centers & Student Success Leaders
Ready for the interview.
Not for Tuesday.
You got them the degree, the resume, the internship, the offer. Then they walk in on day one and hit a second curriculum nobody handed them — the politics, the unspoken expectations, the reason some new hires rise while others quietly stall. Kevin Gosa and Bryan Horvath wrote that curriculum down. This is the live version.
60-minute keynote · 45 minutes + 15 minutes Q&A · In person or virtual · Booking Fall 2026 & Spring 2027
The Problem
The part the
syllabus skips
Your students are not underprepared. They’re differently prepared.
Four years taught them to work alone, get it perfect, follow the rubric, and wait for the grade. Every one of those habits is rewarded in a classroom. Every one of them is a liability in an office — where the work is shared, the standard is “good enough to ship,” nobody hands out a rubric, and the person who waits to be told is the person who gets passed over.
That’s not a generational failing. It’s a transition nobody owns. High school hands them to you. You hand them to an employer. The employer assumes somebody covered it. Nobody did.
“This isn’t a generation issue. It’s a transition issue. And your students have almost no way to see it coming.”
— Kevin Gosa & Bryan Horvath
Your office is the last place that can name it before it costs them. That’s what this talk does.
The Keynote
The rules
nobody told you
Why everything that made you a great student is working against you at work.
60 minutes · 45-minute keynote + 15-minute live Q&A · Auditorium, classroom, or virtual
Kevin and Bryan don’t motivate. They translate.
For an hour, they walk students through the actual mechanics of the workplace they’re about to enter — how people really get evaluated, why effort isn’t the currency they think it is, what a manager is actually asking for, and how to be visible without being obnoxious. Real stories. Sharp frameworks. Uncomfortable honesty. A room full of twenty-two-year-olds laughing at things they will recognize six months later.
The Q&A is where it lands. Students ask the questions they’ve been too embarrassed to ask anyone — about bad managers, unclear feedback, salary, burnout, and whether it’s supposed to feel like this. Kevin and Bryan answer them straight.
What students walk out with
The rewire.
The three student habits that quietly stall early careers — perfectionism, solo work, waiting for instructions — and how to drop them without losing what makes them good.
A working definition of success.
How professional environments actually assess people: visibility, relationships, and perceived value. None of which appeared on a syllabus.
One thing to do Monday.
A single concrete shift in how they show up — in a meeting, with a manager, in the first thirty days — that changes how they’re read.
Where it fits
- Senior seminars and capstone courses
- Career center signature programming
- Orientation and welcome week
- Graduating class events
- Student leadership summits
- Business school professional development series
- Alumni career programming
- Graduate and professional student onboarding
Need something longer or more hands-on? Kevin and Bryan also run extended workshop and full-class formats. Ask in the form and we’ll build it around your program.
Listen
What they sound like
Two clips from a conversation about the book. Under three minutes each. This is the room voice — no script, no slide deck, no motivational register.
02
Your Manager Isn’t Your Professor
The habits that earned your students A’s are the ones that will stall them.
Who They’ve Worked With
Twenty-five years in the room
Kevin and Bryan have facilitated hundreds of leadership retreats, strategic offsites, and organizational turning points for Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, government agencies, and universities. They’ve watched this exact transition go wrong from both sides of it.
What people say afterward
Kevin and Bryan are happy to connect you with past clients directly. Ask in the form.
Your Speakers
Kevin & Bryan
They present together. Twenty years working side by side, and it shows on stage.
Gifted in both strategy and saxophone.
Kevin Gosa
Strategic Facilitator · Co-Founder, NYC Meeting Facilitators
Kevin Gosa is a strategic facilitator and co-founder of NYC Meeting Facilitators, where he works with Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, and government agencies to navigate high-stakes conversations and build organizational alignment. He holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University of Kansas and brings 25 years of experience reading what’s really happening in a room — and helping people move through it. He previously co-authored Fire the Foosball Table.
Engineered Cadillacs. Fronted a rock band. Bakes cakes.
Bryan Horvath
Entrepreneur · Co-Founder, NYC Meeting Facilitators
Bryan Horvath is a facilitator, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Nonprofit Velocity and NYC Meeting Facilitators. He has lectured for MBA programs, led nonprofit incubators, and advised boards and C-suite leaders domestically and internationally. His background spans engineering at General Motors, touring as a front man, launching a record label, and licensing his own inventions.
The Source Material
Welcome to Work
58 Unwritten Rules for Winning at Work · Octant8 Press
You did everything right. You got the degree, landed the job, showed up ready—and then realized nobody told you how any of this actually works. Not the politics. Not the unspoken expectations. Not why some people rise fast while others stay stuck.
Welcome to Work changes that. Kevin Gosa and Bryan Horvath spent decades in strategy, leadership, and talent development watching talented people stumble over the same blind spots—and wrote the book they wish everyone had from day one. 58 practical, honest rules. No soft-skills platitudes. Just the map they never gave you.
46%
New hires who fail within 18 months
89%
Of those failures are behavioral, not technical
45+
Combined years in the room
58
Rules nobody put in a syllabus
46% and 89% from Leadership IQ’s study of 20,000+ new hires. We’re happy to walk your team through the underlying research.
Welcome to Work is well-suited for course adoption, first-year seminars, and career readiness curricula. Ask about bulk pricing, syllabus integration, and copies for attendees — plenty of programs hand one to every graduating senior.
Take What You Need
The press kit
No form, no gate. You’ll probably need to forward this to somebody.
We know how this works. You like the idea, and now you have to make the case to a dean, a department chair, or a budget committee that wasn’t on this page. The press kit is built for exactly that: speaker bios, the talk description, format and logistics, audience outcomes, and testimonials — laid out to read cleanly when it’s printed or dropped into an email.
PDF · Speaker Press Kit
Speaker Press Kit
Bios, talk overview, formats, logistics, and testimonials. Three pages, built to forward.
Need a formal proposal or a quote on institutional letterhead? Say so in the form and you’ll have it within two business days.
Let’s Do It
Check available dates
Takes about a minute. We answer everything within two business days.
Got it.
We’ll be back to you within two business days with dates and a proposal. In the meantime, the press kit is right up there.
Nothing opened? Mail us at hello@welcometowork.co — or .