professional speaker
CREATING PROFITABLE RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH…INCLUSION
The sense of belonging is one of the most basic human needs. If you took freshman psychology in college, you learned about behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs Pyramid. In Maslows 1943 paper, A theory of human motivation, he identified the five areas of human needs. The first area is made up of…
Read MoreCREATING PROFITABLE RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH…CONTEXT
In 2004 my world changed. It was altered, not because of events or circumstances, but because of context. I became a husband in 2004. I became a father in 2004, then again in 2005, and once more in 2008. Finally my wife told me that if I wanted another child I would have to do…
Read MorePainting HiSTORY
Staring at the painting of the two Japanese women hanging in my mother’s house, I realize that I have stared at that picture my whole life. I first remember it on a wall in my grandparents’ house beside the upright piano that my grandfather loved to play, especially after a scotch on the rocks had…
Read MoreHOW TO WRITE AND DELIVER A FREAKING AMAZING SPEECH IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS
CHAPTER 8. POSITIONING Where you stand during your speech is a non-verbal communication between you and the audience that can make or break you as a speaker. We have all seen a speaker planted behind the lectern holding on for dear life. Sometimes standing behind the lectern is appropriate, especially if there is a fixed…
Read MoreSPEECH SERIES PART 5
HOW TO WRITE AND DELIVER A FREAKING AMAZING SPEECH IN 30 MINUTES OR LESSCHAPTER 5. To Script Or Not To Script I have had more than one person tell me that they don’t like to prepare a speech, they’d rather just wing it. When I hear that I immediately think that they are over-confident ,…
Read MoreSPEECH SERIES PART 4
HOW TO WRITE AND DELIVER A FREAKING AMAZING SPEECH IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS CHAPTER 4. The Call To Action A call to action is a polite way to tell the audience to get off of their butt and DO SOMETHING! It is also a wonderful way to create relevance and a final connection with…
Read MoreSPEECH SERIES PART 3
HOW TO WRITE AND DELIVER A FREAKING AMAZING SPEECH IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS CHAPTER 3. The Opening Line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, “Call me Ishmael”, “It was a dark and stormy night”-these are all opening lines from great novels. The importance of the first line of a novel…
Read MoreDeath of a Lawnman
My lawn man died. It took me by surprise when my mother-in-law showed me the obituary a few months ago, but there it was in black and white… Dennis was gone. Dennis was a real nice man and although I didn’t know him very well, we did have a couple of meaningful conversations leaning against…
Read MoreIT’S CALLED A SPEECH
I don’t much care for awards shows. Every now and then, however, I will see someone who impresses or even inspires me, like when Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for his role in Jerry Mcguire or when Roberto Benigni won an Oscar in 1998 for Life is Beautiful. For the most part I see…
Read MoreThe Ballad of Rusty The Roofer
Sitting in the living room of “Yellow House”, watching water drip from four different leaks in the ceiling, I decided that it was time to fix the roof. Yellow House was a rental property in Nashville that I shared with my two beautiful female roommates years ago who, despite my best efforts, still thought of…
Read More