My last blog post was about the importance of customized humor for professional speakers.
It doesn’t matter if you are a comedian speaker or a trainer or a seminar leader, you’ve got to have a handle on your client’s culture, lingo, and stress points.
Here’s the video so you can see and hear what it feels like:
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I was recently speaking in Virginia with a very well-respected comedian speaker. This guy has some killer credits and some amazing stuff on his resume.
And he was funny. But his opening sucked. And in spite of his terrific skills, he never really one the crowd over.
So, what did he do wrong? [...]

(And a technique you can steal!)
A while back I did my humorist motivational speaker thing for an awesome group of tax preparers in Augusta, Georgia. (Three days later we did the same event in Las Vegas.) My client, TAX SLAYER software was terrific, and the audience was totally responsive. It [...]

Check out this YouTube video footage of me testing my jokes and humor in Minnesota at the Mayo Clinic

In my job as a motivational speaker, I feel strongly that customized humor is an CRUCIAL way to “connect” with the audience.
The following article was written (and posted at Speaker Net News) for speakers who are [...]

I’m just back from Farmington, New Mexico where I spoke to a wonderful group of staff at San Juan College. It was an in-service day, and my job was to motivate this group of hard working staffers, give them a chance to turn into a stronger team, and to facilitate some creative ideas how [...]

I was recently on a coaching call helping a fellow motivational speaker, William Reed beefing up the amount of humor he uses in his keynote speeches. What made it fun is that we did it via video conference.But what made it REALLY fun was that for a moment, the technology glitched and the video [...]

If you want to know how to be a funny professional speaker or how to be a comedian, then you’ll want to read on!
We’re nearly ready to launch The Humor College.
It’s going to be AWESOME, but I need your help and
am willing to pay for it.
[This is a new series that will teach humor [...]

How to find your own “voice.”
Those of you who read my American Idol post know read about the crucial importance of finding your own voice. Thanks to a wonderful email from a budding magician and his questions, I have a follow up to that post. His question, in a nut shell, was: [...]

An Open Letter to Crappy Magicians
I recently was hired to coach a speaker who also happened to do a bit of magic in her programs. It seems to me that the things that I told him are the same things I tell a bunch of people. Usually I’m nicer than what follows… [...]

I am just back from Seattle, Washington where I had the good luck to speak to a group of Microsoft folks.

It went well. Really well. But for me one of the coolest things was watching the audience change from the beginning to the end of my program. They ended off great, smiling, [...]