Recently, I was thrilled to be invited to speak at the conferences for people who put on conferences (!) – CONFEX, held at London’s Olympia. Given I’ve been a professional Motivational Speaker for over ten years, I was hugely excited to talk to the geniuses who put on events around the world, some of which I get to present at! When I arrived, I saw that the stage was set up with a holographic screen, which was totally stunning – it used the same technique as the old vaudeville trick, ‘Dr Pepper’s Ghost’. I also noticed that becasue of the […]
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Here’s a quick and easy biog sheet for Shed Simove, professional keynote speaker on creativity, innovation, sales and guerilla marketing…
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Thanks to all the Team at The Drum for this wonderful article and for having Shed speak at their event.
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Recently I was thrilled to be invited to speak to the exciting bright minds at Kingston University. One of the VIP attendees, a fabulous chap called Aaron, wrote a blog about his day, and included a review of my speech on creativity, sales and marketing. You can read his blog by clicking here. It was such a thrill to mix with some of the next generation of business people, entrepreneurs and mover-shakers – and it always excites me how many thrilling possibilities there are for young people – and in fact, for all of us – these days. With the […]
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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, said Franklin Delano Roosevelt once upon a time in America. In his 1932 inaugural address, the newly elected 32nd President of the United States aimed to instill faith in his countrymen that he could lead them out of the Great Depression’s dusty shadow into an era of renewed prosperity. If anyone could have conceivably been excused for muttering, ‘That’s because none of you has had to explain your plan to repair a crippled economy while hiding your debilitating paralytic illness from a desperate nation that elected you president,’ it would […]
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Legendary professional wrestling personality Jim Cornette is always ready to espouse a succinct, long-held personal conviction about infusing in-ring drama with excessive levity. ‘Funny don’t make money’, the Louisville Lip decisively tells his podcast listeners and obsessively devoted fans. Angling for the occasional chuckle is one thing. Turning a method-acted craft into a Vaudeville sideshow is nothing short of mockery, something he and many others among his generation of dedicated carny players take pretty damn personally. For the record, let that stand as one more reason so many men and women eschew breaking their bodies inside the squared circle in […]
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What Is An Elevator Pitch? An elevator pitch straddles the line between being a simple concept to understand and a challenging art form to truly master in practice. The name says it all: pique a prospective benefactor’s interest in your idea, product, business plan or even candidacy for a job within roughly the span of an average elevator ride. Instead of memorizing a Shakespearean script, you only have to tell a witty cocktail party story. That’s where the elementary simplicity of the elevator pitch ends. You then have to narrow your spiel down to the essential enticing details you can […]
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If you want to know how to make a square video from a landscape video, then you’re not alone! I wanted this too! WHY MAKE A SQUARE VIDEO ANYWAY? Square videos, (1:1 ratio) that are posted on social media feeds like Facebook and Instagram have a much higher engagement than landscape videos (16:9 ratio). Here are some stats: A square video takes up 78% more real estate in a person’s newsfeed than a landscape video. (Source: http://bit.ly/squarevideoproof) A recent study showed that view rates for square are 28 percent higher, and consumers are 67 percent more likely to complete […]
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Ah, networking. Whether you dismiss it as disingenuous glad-handing or relish a human game of chess, all ambitious professionals inevitably encounter scenarios in which the outcomes hinges not on what but who they know. That reality takes nothing away from the value of demonstrable talent and an unimpeachable work ethic. At the same time, making friends in the right places can open up singular opportunities to exhibit those virtues in a rarefied spotlight rather than quietly behind the scenes and far from the people receiving credit for your effectiveness. Nobody wins this calculating game without judicious attention to detail or […]
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If successful at-home entrepreneurship was as comparatively straightforward as being someone else’s exemplary employee, every company’s superstar hired hands would inevitably jump ship and build thriving brands of their own. To the more realistic contrary, every intrepid entrepreneur whose financial freedom began with an ambitious cottage industry stands among countless defeated peers who realized only too late that they had dove into self-employment much too far over their heads to survive for long. Forsake those fanciful daydreams of earning a living in constant comfort on Easy Street by camping out in pajamas on a couch all day. Those ambitions of […]
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The Ultimate “Springboard” Careers For Transitions To Entrepreneurship The path of a successful entrepreneur rarely unfolds into a perfectly straight line. If seizing direct control over one’s financial destiny was guaranteed to always be so simple, who would ever settle for eking out a lifelong living in someone else’s employ? For every Donald Trump to ever seek fortune and fame with but a meager million-dollar loan from a generous patriarch, the annals of both success and failure in business are riddled with men and women mapped the ins and outs of their professions starting from the grittiest ground floor. Before […]
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Shed Simove has been described as a ‘Marketing God’ – he’s a motivational speaker on sales and innovation, comedian, entrepreneur and author of the bestselling business book, ‘Success Or Your Money Back’. Here, he describes the evolution and reaction to a surprising dating app he launched, and the marvellous mischief he created to market it… Noise. Disruption. Going Viral. Right now, these are the business buzzwords and holy grails that businesses and entrepreneurs across the globe eagerly chase. Many of us face the challenge of creating a product or service that aims to achieve the second one (disruption) in order […]
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Las Vegas wasn’t always America’s glitziest playground. In fact, it was established in 1905 by opportunistic entrepreneurs and organized criminals as an escapist haven for federal construction crews building what would eventually become Hoover Dam across the Colorado River. Decades before Nevada’s unfathomably profitable 1931 legalization of casino gambling and a post-World War II tide of Americans letting the good times roll after six years invested in fighting for the future of the free world, Sin City embodied calculated entrepreneurial risk as a shimmering entertainment hub smack in the middle of a sprawling desert. As prime settings for team-building exercises […]
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Anyone can succeed at nearly anything. Someone with no remarkable stock of innate aptitude, intelligence or prodigal talent could one day rise to shift the Earth on its axis as plausibly as an individual with every natural advantageous adaptation for exceptional achievement who amounts to an unremarkable, forgettable existence. We know this to be true, precisely because the length and breadth of all human endeavor has proven it time and again. Success is no lottery of capricious, chaotic luck. Concurrently, failure is not the manifestation of some sadistic, omnipotent overlord who revels in human disappointment and suffering. The former is […]
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Denizens of Los Angeles often bristle when compared to New Yorkers, and vice-versa. Aside from a few generational sour grapes here and there about the Dodgers abandoning Brooklyn for the City of Angeles 60 years ago, it’s usually nothing personal. It’s truer to say that the residents of the east and west coasts’ respective apex cities simply lead starkly disparate lives that cultivate distinctly opposed day-to-day metropolitan rhythms: stereotypically, the no-nonsense perpetual momentum of the Big Apple and the laid-back worldly chill of the City of Angels. You would never assume that from looking closely at each city’s overall trends […]
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A poorly prepared, uninformative presentation to an initially receptive audience will vaporize your credibility more quickly than the sun evaporates a single raindrop before it can strike the Arizona desert. Does that mean there’s only one way to botch a potentially eye-opening lecture? Hardly. On the contrary, padding your talk with an absurd volume of disposable minutiae and visual razzle-dazzle will slowly grind your assembled crowd’s collective patience into submission as they desperately attempt to glean your actual intended takeaway from mountains of showy padding. There are a few proven ‘right’ ways to structure any presentation. There are enough ‘wrong’ […]
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(Hello there, Valued Reader… If you follow this space closely, you might recognize this as a ‘sequel’ to a recent musing about the horizons for viral marketing among the biggest businesses to call the Los Angeles area home. A few examples praised certain successful campaigns or approaches that their associated companies followed up with…well, let’s be generous and call them ‘less-spectacular’ results. That might have caused some confusion as to whether we know certain anatomical areas from holes in the ground. Permit us to clarify. This ongoing series will shine a light on viral and guerrilla marketing tactics alone. Sometimes, […]
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Online marketing hasn’t decisively ‘killed’ traditional advertising channels, but the insular virtual landscapes created by customers determined to shut out intrusive shrills and sales pitches at any cost have certainly stripped the old dogs of some teeth. Once they crafted forums where unfiltered rants, raves and experiences could flow freely in borderless real time, the internet’s masses realized they deserved better than being ‘told’ what would make their lives better. They no longer had to settle for less than earnest two-way dialogue from anyone who would value their money. That’s exactly what viral marketing campaigns – yes, even failed ones […]
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Shed Simove is the Machiavelli of monkeyshines. His approach to inventing could best be compared to a boxer willing to tank four punches to land one. The U.K. born ‘Ideas Man’ has no reservations about having his Chiclets rattled by a few stinging jabs of unwanted outcomes, precisely because he possesses an entrepreneurial granite chin that buys time for those punches he eats to illustrate the perfect place and time to land a single decisive haymaker that pays instant dividends. In fact, in the time it likely took him to read that sentence, he more than likely conceived an app […]
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You’ve made it abundantly clear to both your audience and the organizers who engaged you to speak at their event just how vigorously you are driven by your visibly passionate commitment to the core subject of your talk. Congratulations, you unequivocally love what you do and take great satisfaction in imbuing others with your enthusiasm. Now, do yourself and everyone around you a favor: lighten up. Objections about your reputation possibly being biased more toward valuable information flavored with gravitas ring loud and clear. “I’m paid to educate”, a few hard-working professional public speakers might insist. “I don’t show up […]
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An invitation to deliver a keynote address is a tremendous honor to virtually any speaker, from a seasoned professional to someone with little or no professional speaking resume. It symbolizes a perception that an individual’s achievements and reputation are synonymous with some set of overarching progressive goals and principles passionately valued by a like-minded organization. Simply having one’s presence requested in such a capacity can significantly validate the values a speaker strives to inspire belief in by conveying the message, “You wield the influence to light an uncommon fire beneath both strangers and your peers alike. You could lead us […]
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Orchestrating a professional speaker’s address at your conference is never a one-way street. Between scheduling travel and lodging, preparing the actual talk and simple technical logistics, your speaker will be all the more amenable to future appearances if you assist the process by readily providing as much pertinent information about your event as possible as soon as you can and working quickly to have every presentation need met before the conference actually rolls around. The stage you provide influences the magic any keynote lecturer can work. Meet any dedicated professional you engage halfway to ensure your audience gets the maximum […]
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As a professional keynote speaker, my presentations contain a myriad of real-world examples of ideas I’ve brought to life (and the lessons learned from doing so) to show how blue chip companies, organisations and entrepreneurs can implement innovation, creativity and left-field marketing in order to achieve wondrous success. There’s nothing more fulfilling and exciting than watching an idea from your mind come to life in glorious reality, and then it’s even more thrilling if that idea then engages with people, entertains them or even (on the rare occasion!) brings in revenue. Well, maybe there’s a couple of things that come […]
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Establishing a productive relationship with an in-demand professional public speaker requires a degree of give-and-take between the lecturer and event organizers. Yes, the speakers who turn the ears of the world with their every word have no doubt each honed a handful of inspiring, informative and provocative talks ready to be delivered with great aplomb on a moment’s notice if necessary. Just don’t mistake these driven, experienced lecturers for trained monkeys happy to perform on command. Chimply the best!!! They assuredly love what they do with a unique passion that can only accompany a calling to motivate strangers toward brighter […]
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Recently, I was hugely delighted and excited to have been invited to present my motivational speech at a fabulous event in Austria. The brilliant and high flying executive who booked me made the decision to hire a professional speaker for his own company event after watching me present as a keynote speaker at a conference held in Vienna, Austria, a few months earlier. He chose me to deliver my talk at his top level conference of senior executives at an incredibly stunning location. The event was held at the Hotel Billroth in St Gillgen, which is very near Salzburg. Salzburg […]
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I’m hugely excited to appear on the bill of Brand Minds Asia with a raft of impressive professional speakers and keynote speaker, Gary Vaynerchuk. Wooop! As a professional motivational speaker who’s hired to present around the world, it’s taken me ten years of giving speeches to get to this point, and a further fifteen before that to have enough insight, business examples and knowledge to be able to present about creativity, innovation, sales and guerilla marketing, with the aim of delivering a speech that materially benefits the bright and dynamic people or Teams in the audience. So it’s taken about […]
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Fortunately, no unspoken workplace edict has ever dictated that an effective partnership is based strictly on two or more people actually liking each other. If that were the case, every business environment from McDonald’s to Microsoft might resemble a simultaneous reenactment of every Wrestlemania event ever witnessed. That flexibility comes at the ‘cost’ of exhibiting the patience to set aside wanting to throttle certain individuals in the name of an acknowledged shared interest. That single lesson learned and relearned repeatedly among coworkers is a universally applicable benefit of spending at least a little time as part of a team: if […]
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Nerdist founder, prolific television host, comedian and holder of a degree in philosophy from UCLA, Chris Hardwick, so effectively sums up the central challenge of changing anyone’s mind about anything in his book ‘The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (in Real Life)’, with this single quote that could preface every motivational speech until the end of time… “‘Better’ often feels ‘new,’ and new situations are like jeans: they can sometimes take a bit before they start to fit right,” observed quite possibly Hollywood’s reigning ‘Hardest Working Man in Show Business’. He happens to be correct, too: if […]
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Informative public speaking is no laughing matter. A professional lecturer consummately honors the audience’s hard-earned money by remaining earnestly fixated strictly on the most personally moving, informative content. May your stoicism never falter. Your allotted time on stage is no place for jokes. Be ‘serious’. Refusal to allow your audience a lighthearted moment during your talk won’t captivate them with your unbroken intensity. Quite frankly, it will identify you as a colossal bore with a heart colder than an iceberg and all emotional relatability of table salt. Come on, now. Put yourself in their shoes: how far out of your […]
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Albert Einstein once observed, “Adversity introduces a man to himself”. Another oft-quoted worldly philosopher, Chuck Palahniuk’s nihilistic ‘Fight Club’ prophet Tyler Durden, mused two generations later, “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?” A manager stands tall amidst the rear tanks, majestically points the way and digs his feels firmly into the dirt as he commands his company forward. A leader fixes his gaze, bellows “Charge!” and advances shoulder-to-shoulder and stride-for-stride at the head of his brothers and sisters. There is a time to manage through shrewd delegation and there are moments that […]
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No degree of personal wealth can buy the kind of lasting trust and integrity that the foundation of a thriving long-term business must be built upon for that enterprise to stand a remote chance of survival. Public speaking is absolutely no different. Let’s be clear on this: anytime someone extends an invitation to deliver an event’s keynote, agrees to your quoted appearance fee or purchases a ticket to attend one of your engagements, you have been extended the benefit of a doubt that your end of that value proposition will offer an enlightening, enrichment experience that leaves each attendee’s personal […]
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At the risk of sounding overly blunt, anyone who aims to ‘make’ any product go viral might as well set out to beat up the Atlantic Ocean with bare hands. That is frankly the kind of control you can expect to have over the outcome. The Shinder dating app also conclusively proved that any product’s virality comes with its own Pandora’s Box of delicate consequences to manage. Few rollercoaster rides quite compare to the meteoric rise of a product’s notoriety on the back of instantaneous, ubiquitous visibility, but leveraging that sort of feverish chatter into long-term growth requires some mindful […]
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Few cities anywhere in the world can boast the lavish, electric atmosphere Los Angeles weaves through any event under its peerless California sunshine. That creates some inevitable dilemmas for anyone angling to harness the global entertainment epicenter innate media magnetism and refine some one-of-a-kind chatter orbiting a branded happening. Nobody is more aware of L.A.’s value as a media extravaganza backdrop than vendors and venue representatives. The City of Angels is home to a bottomless pool of athletes, entertainers and entrepreneurs spanning every possible stature in their respective fields, all of them keenly driven to land their names on lips […]
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If you haven’t tapped personally into the bold individualism and uncompromising creativity that runs through Black Rock, Nevada’s spectacular annual Burning Man festival at least once in your lifetime, assume that some competitor somewhere in your field has. If you haven’t looked at the forward-thinking societal outlooks shared among the 60,000-strong community of devoted ‘Burners’ every year and seen charismatic, pivotal sparks of ingenuity just looking for a market to disrupt, assume that any given rival around you will give at least one of them an opportunity to change not just an entire brand but an entire world on a […]
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Professional public speaking isn’t for everyone. The nonstop travel and constant meticulous creative fine-tuning can leave even seasoned lecturers wondering what dissuaded them from a less exhaustive career path. They could have taken it easy and become attorneys or neurosurgeons. Instead, they set out to walk onstage alone night after night to enthusiastically address and inform crowds of strangers willing to part with hard-earned money and precious time in exchange for a singularly inspiring learning experience. Let us suppose that you explore the paid speaking circuit and decide that the life-consuming preparation that accompanies your performance just isn’t paying the […]
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Contrary to popular phraseology, you cannot ‘demand’ any measure of respect worth claiming. Trust is a dividend invested in and earned one act at a time. Charismatic magnates such as Richard Branson, Mark Cuban and even real estate mogul-cum-President of the United States Donald Trump accrued the powerful confidence of their peers upon foundations of both superb acumen and unmistakable panache all their own, and each paved their way one deal at a time. Those who overdraw their balance of credence among colleagues find themselves with few allies when success or failure hinges on leadership that inspires unshakable faith. Fortunately, […]
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Believe it or not, there is something almost more disastrous than receiving a negative reaction to a speech: apathy. Think about it. You can work with a negative reaction. Through persistent rehearsal, rewriting and rerouted research, feedback can move you to be better once you know where and how you lost your audience’s interest. Plus, you at least know your thoughts made them think and reinforce their own views. Ultimately, however, the goal of any talk is to make a persuasive argument and move a crowd to action. Dead silence and apathy are signs your speech made no actual impact […]
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Few experiences can paralyze an otherwise knowledgeable, confident and composed individual quite like the proposition of public speaking. You would never know it from watching them onstage, but some of the world’s most sought-after lecturers would rather be just about anywhere doing anything other than addressing hundreds or even thousands of anonymous strangers at once. It takes a life-changing commitment to a process of facing fears and insecurities through methodical cycles of trial and error for an avowed introvert to build an entire self-styled personal brand around captivating one crowd after another. As fortune would have it, there’s absolutely nothing […]
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“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” -Stephen McCranie Think about how many times you’ve shot a basketball at a hoop. Account for your entire lifetime – pick-up games, school teams, even practicing in your driveway. Every shot. Make a ballpark guess. Got it? Even if your resume includes an NBA playing career, your highest estimate probably amounts to fewer shots than Michael Jordan has missed. That’s what shaped him into inarguably the most successful player to ever step onto a basketball court: he recognized early that each brick he tossed up landed in the […]
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It’s true, Corporate team building activities are proven to help boost moral because it brings employees closer together by participating in fun activities, and, it provides everyone with a much-needed break from office life. When people get to know each other better, away from work, they bond in a way that makes them more productive on the job and in their regular work activities with one another. With that said, the next step for corporate management is to plan a fun and relaxing team building trip, somewhere? Why not Los Angeles? The city has a wealth of fun and interesting […]
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No city in the world hosts entrepreneurial trade shows and educational seminars with an atmosphere quite as richly layered as Las Vegas. Yes, the glitzy ambience and nonstop indulgent entertainment of the Strip’s plush accommodations minimize how hard any arm has to be twisted before agreeing to spend a long weekend swapping ideas in America’s most famous adult sandbox. That’s simply the superficial attraction of doing business someplace where anybody would want to spend all the free time they could ordinarily not thinking about business, which validates everything from 18th-hole Fortune 500 negotiations to Michael Scott locking in a windfall […]
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Los Angeles is a target-rich and intensely competitive arena for burgeoning startups of every profile to vie for investors within, but the process behind conceiving a standout company plays out remarkably similarly to how a successful entrepreneurial enterprise would evolve in any other market, great or small. Start with a job that needs done, preferably one nobody is already doing or something no one has done particularly well. Next, draw on your own experience or compile a network of people who do possess the relevant know-how to get the job done like no one has before. Once you have your […]
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Exchanging ideas with fellow entrepreneurs against the backdrop of a Las Vegas trade show or seminar talk can demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt how inventive the human mind can be when it sorts out information away from deliberate thought. Debate and deliberation happen in board rooms. Innovation sparks as far from them as possible. There’s a reason so many innovative industry-leading companies spirit their leading decision-makers and creative minds away to retreats often as distantly removed from a corporate atmosphere as possible: the theory behind consistently cultivating transformative ideas dictates that few forces can be quite so counterproductive […]
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The history of the city of Los Angeles isn’t without a certain sense of irony. For being a city synonymous with luxury and glamour that would seem to seep from its very pavement, the world’s largest free-roaming celebrity sanctuary was once the film industry’s second choice to become “the Entertainment Capital of the World.” Once upon a time in the early 1900s, New York City was the epicenter of nascent moviemaking. We can all thank Thomas Edison and his readiness to defend the holdings of his Motion Picture Patent Company with lawsuits if necessary for Paramount, Columbia, RKO and Warner […]
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Better In Business, Better Motivational Speaker The great philosopher Lau Tzu famously said, “The wise man knows what he does not know.” Were you to lock inside a room with one man convinced he has nothing left to learn and another equally steadfast in his conviction that the most profound knowledge yet awaits him, the surely self-professed most learned man alive would no doubt unfurl some florid cornucopia of accumulated facts and insights to know and tell. He would also be the more likely of the pair to bumble into some pratfall, be it merely shoving his foot down his […]
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Call me presumptuous, but I tend to believe few people set out immediately after high school on linear single-minded tracks toward careers as motivational speakers. Great speakers infuse their messages with an organic passion and urgency that isn’t born within a classroom. You might set your tinder to a timely spark of inspiration that catches your eye amidst the throes of academia, but no audience will catch fire on your words without the lingering natural smolder upon their edges of a trial or two by fire. Professors and self-help gurus and Toastmasters chapter meetings can engage you in the performance […]
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Never underestimate the philosophical threads that run deeply throughout popular culture – especially “Star Trek.” Every single generation alive today has grown up with an iteration of Gene Roddenberry’s iconic science-fiction universe. Baby boomers and their parents bonded over the three-season original series that ran on CBS from 1966 to 1969, uplifting Capt. James T. Kirk and the original crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise as transcendent heroic touchstones who inspired a pioneering fandom that borders on religious reverence. The 1987 debut of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” began an 18-year renaissance for the sci-fi institution that spawned three additional new […]
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We reach adulthood understanding creativity as a capricious lightning bolt, some willful force of nature that haphazardly strikes only who and when it sees fit with no comforting method to its madness. People either accept that chaotic notion or perceive ideas as manifestations of some cerebral voodoo, a rapport with some inscrutable ether that an individual is either blessed with or bereft of, a real-world analog to the Force. As it turns out, reasonable minds could differ as to which concept lands farther from the truth. I would more closely compare any idea to interest paid on continuous principal investments […]
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What Does an After Dinner Speech Do? After-dinner speeches are usually the very last event in a conference of seminar – once all the formal presentations have been concluded and the final networking dinner has been eaten, an after dinner speaker ultimately creates a positive and entertaining send off for all the guests. Rather than relying on PowerPoint and props, an after dinner speech relies entirely on wit, an understanding of the audience, and top-class delivery. There are no hand-outs or exercises – all of those have been completed earlier on in at the event. The purpose of the after […]
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A Motivational Speaker In Austin, Texas… I felt enormously privileged and excited to be invited to present a keynote speech at ILEA’s annual conference in Austin, Texas. ILEA is a global trade organization for the Event Industry, so the attendees were all amazing VIPS from the world of events, conferences and wedding planning. As you can imagine, when they put on a conference, it’s quite something! Not only did the talented team of event planners from ILEA put on a stimulating and thought-provoking array of inspirational and industry relevant speakers, they also threw three spectacular parties, each one carefully themed […]
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