Posts
Change? Laugh or Cry; Your Choice.
Selected Posts from Brad’s Past
We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.
It isn’t always this easy, but it is (nearly) always this simple. When we as organizations or individuals deal with change there are two certainties. First, it’s going to be something new. Duh. Second, it’s going to happen whether we want it to or not.
Got a new organizational structure? Has has the shape, structure and content of your workforce changed? Or your uncertain about exactly how YOU will fit in with all these changes?
I’ve got a couple of thoughts about it for you, but they both start with the concept that it’s time to stop complaining, stop worrying, and start doing something that can help you. It’s time to start learning to laugh at change.
In my job as a motivational speaker I’m often asked to address the subject of change for my client’s audience. And my theory can be summed up quickly:
“Change? You might as well learn to laugh at it. It’s one of the few choices you have.” — Brad Montgomery
There’s an age-old law of humor and comedy, which goes something like:
Tragedy + Time = Funny
And it doesn’t take much thought to realize it’s true. That disaster family vacation in your teens? Hilarious! The time crazy Uncle Larry got his foot stuck in the chair and was howling in pain? Ha ha ha! The Thanksgiving dinner when the turkey was raw, the side dishes cold, and the in-laws psycho? Ooh, my sides hurt from laughing.
They were all lousy times. (Tragedy.) They were all a long time ago. (Time.) But now they are funny.
My suggestion is that all of the lousy things you are dealing with now are probably going to be funny if you let enough time pass. For some of you, that’s going to mean a LOT of time.
But my suggestion is simple: if it’s going to be funny later, why not (at least try to) see the “funny” in it now. See if you can shorten the “Time” variable in the equation from 20 years to 20 minutes.
Next time you are freaking out about something new at work, ask yourself if you’ll really care about this change in five years. Now go one teensy little step further and ask yourself if you think this change might be funny in a month or a week or a decade. If the answer is yes, you’re an idiot to dwell too hard on it.
It’s time to start laughing. Now.
Yes, it’s a simple concept. Which doesn’t mean it’s an easy concept. That new software package you’re sorting through IS a pain in the neck. The uncertainty of the merger IS a stress. The recent layoffs (or rapid growth) are difficult. But so what? Are you really going to let these things ruin your day? Your job? Your life?
Again, if the answer is yes, you’re a fool.
As a change motivational speaker, I teach my audiences this wildly simple concept, and then give them some simple — but seriously effective — techniques and strategies that they can start to implement right away.
The best way to deliver these messages of levity, humor and hope? Through generous doses of laughter.
If we make your group laugh — and laugh HARD — at some really funny and relevant discussions of change, they’ll listen. And because it is so much fun, it will help it stick. Making it funny helps with retention.
Looking for a change motivational speaker? You’ve found him. Contact us here and we’ll strategize the best way to get your folks laughing back their way to health.
Brad Montgomery
Change Motivational Speaker, Funny Guy, Humor Strategist
We now present the fourth in a series of articles about:
How to work with your motivational keynote speaker to get the most from your conference investment
Selected Posts from Brad’s Past
We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.
Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.
Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Loves to Multi-Task
Related Articles and Videos:
Getting more bang for your buck with Motivational Speaker Brad
Hear what happened when keynote speaker Brad Montgomery multi-tasked in Wyoming
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For those folks who would rather read than watch, here is the video transcript:
Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com with another tip or suggestion on getting the most return on an investment from your motivational or inspirational speaker. Well today the plan is find a speaker who can do more than one thing for you. So that means can your speaker do multiple things for you at your single event?
So why is this important? Well I think it’s important for two reasons. One, I think it’s an easy way to get a huge increase in value with only a minimal increase in investment. So what do I mean? I’m talking about if you hire a speaker to do a keynote speech, what else can they do? Are they an MC? Can they be a Master of Ceremonies? Can they do entertainment after dinner?
One of the things I do is a little energy boost, game show segments to help boost the energy throughout the day. I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas about team building, doing lunches and dinners. I’ve got a million ideas because I’ve been at this so long, just kind of whole big back of tricks. So some of my favorite clients are the ones that say, “Brad, we’ve got you here; how can we get more out of you?” And the result is really fun.
So the first benefit is you save a lot of money ‘cause you’ve already got your speaker there, you’ve paid for the travel and the increase really is not that much. So in other words, if you have one speaker do two things you’re not paying twice as much. It’s like Costco.
Get The Most Out Of Brad While He’s Already At Your Event!
All right, but the other reason why this is such a great idea is once your motivational speaker or keynote speaker has connected with your audience and your audience has connected with them, it’s really cool to follow up with that connection and get the most out of that connection.
So what do I mean? Let me give you an example. If, for example, I work in the morning as your keynote speaker. Then we laugh and we’re going to make that audience just crack up and they’re going to start to know me and they’ll know how I think and how I feel and they’ll start to understand my sense of humor. Which means that if I come back an hour and a half later to introduce the next speaker or to head up some sort of team building experience or to even just do the like housekeeping notes, just deliver those boring items but in a really fun and upbeat way, what the audience thinks to themselves is, “Oh goodie, he’s back. This guy’s funny,” and it raises the energy in the room. And the reason the energy increase is important is ‘cause it makes sure that your people are ready to learn and ready to receive value from your meeting or your conference not just during the keynote speech, but all the way through. Pretty cool idea, huh?
The other advantage to using one speaker for multiple events is it saves time and it’s sort of a complex thought, so stick with me. As a motivational speaker one of the most important parts of my job is the first few minutes of any speech because that’s when the audience is sizing me up. That’s when I really need to make sure that they understand me and get me. And only after they understand me and trust me can I start to teach them. And if you think about it, that appeals to your common sense. It’s always that way no matter who you’re learning from. First you have to trust your teacher, and only then do you start to learn.
Brad entertaining an audience in Las Vegas
Well once we have invested that time and energy to get your audience to know me and trust me and like me, that means each additional time I’m in front of that audience we get to start way ahead. We don’t have to start back at the beginning; we can just start at the point after they already know me and trust me and they’re ready to laugh and learn. So it’s a really cool way to get a little bit of extra time. You get it?
So here’s a very specific example. If I give a keynote speech, the first 10 or 15 minutes really is getting them to know me and like me and trust me. But then if we follow it with a breakout session, we can start out the breakout session on minute one for some hard hitting, you know, techniques and ideas that they can implement right away ‘cause we don’t have to do that warm up. We can just say, “Hey, it’s good to have you here. I’m flattered that the room is full. Lets start.” And you can. You don’t have to do the blah, blah, blah. All right, I like the blah, blah, blah. Because that’s where the jokes are usually. But I know that you want return on your investment when you’re hiring a motivational speaker, and that’s why you’re looking at this video.
All right, I hope that was helpful. My name is Brad Montgomery, and I’d love to be part of your team and I’d love to be helping you to get a huge return on your speaker investment. So give us a call. You can find us at bradmontgomery.com. Or funnymotivationalspeakers.com. You can click the links down there. I don’t know where they are. You’ll find them. Have a great day.
How to Choose the Best Motivational Speaker
I just finished working for the State of Wyoming Department of Transportation or WYDOT, and I was struck with an epiphany when my meeting planner told me how he judges success for his professional speakers – the people that he hires. And here’s the deal, it was a surprise to me. What they hired me to do is the same thing that they hired every professional speaker that they work with to do which is first, to start with a motivational, inspirational keynote speech to open the convention. So, I did that on Tuesday’s afternoon and then on Wednesday, they asked me to return to do two different breakout sessions twice which was pretty cool.
Selected Posts from Brad’s Past
We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.
How do you judge success for your professional speakers?
I did Breakout Session A, two times and then I did, after lunch, Breakout Session B, two times. And by the way, as an aside, I really love it when my clients work hard to get more value and more return on their investment when they hire me and having me do multiple programs is a great idea. So, anyway, back to how you can tell if your motivational or inspirational speaker is any good.
The client told me that they judge success based on the attendance at the following day’s breakout sessions. So, that means they look in the room and the chairs are full, they know the speaker was well-received, and if the chairs are empty, they know that the speaker was horrible.
So, happily, today it was great. We had lines and the room was packed and, again, lines was a great sign. The client told me when he saw people lined up waiting for the breakout session to begin, he knew that he had chosen the right speaker which, of course, was very flattering. But, I had never thought about that as a barometer for success.
One of the things that I ask of my clients before the event is how do you judge success? And I think that’s a good question because sometimes they want me to make sure the audience is happy. Other meeting planners don’t care if the audience is happy, they want to make sure that their boss is happy, and if you think about it, that’s a pretty big difference.
Sometimes, I’m called in to deliver a message the audience doesn’t necessarily want to hear. So, theoretically, it’s quite possible that you could do a great job for the boss and the audience wouldn’t like you. Well, you know, and conversely, it’s important to know that if your job is to get the audience going and the audience happy and not the boss, well, that’s important to know. But, I had never once thought that my primary mission was to make sure that the room is full the next day for my returning breakout sessions. Pretty cool, huh?
So, if you’re looking for a motivational, inspirational speaker, I’d love to be your guy. If you’re looking for a speaker who can do a keynote and then come back and do some breakout sessions, I’d love to be your guy. And most of all, if you’d like to hire an inspirational speaker who can guarantee that the next day, people will choose to come to my breakout sessions as opposed to going to other ones, well, I’d love to be your guy too.
Wyoming Department of Transportation, thank you for hiring me. We had a great time in Cheyenne, Wyoming; loved being part of it. Thanks so much.
Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.
Brad Montgomery
Inspirational Speaker, Very Popular Breakout Session Leader
Fan of the Wyoming Department of Transportation
Related articles:
Choosing the Best Motivational Speaker
How to Pick a Keynote Speaker
No! You Want to be Positive….You Want to be Upbeat!
The science is clear that individuals can influence the dynamic of a group, or a team, or an organization. Scientists have created the following study: They add an individual to a team and then they measure the effect, and no surprise here, a positive upbeat person affects the team in a positive way. And a negative person influences the organization or team in a negative way. Again, not a shock. But here’s the interesting, and I think, sad part.
Selected Posts from Brad’s Past
We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.
A negative person has a much greater impact on that team than a positive person. Well, this is interesting because it begs us to ask the following question of ourselves: What impact would we like to have on our organization or our team? I think it’s a cool question because even though it’s partly rhetorical, the process of answering that question helps us to live our life in a way that leads us to more happiness and more productivity.
So what do you want your impact on your team to be? If you want it to be negative and you are the person who goes in and is miserable and makes everybody around you miserable, well then, you’re an idiot and I can’t imagine anybody would really select that as their future, as their legacy.
I guess the other choice, besides being positive, the third choice, is to be neutral. In other words, you would select to go into your team and have absolutely no impact and again, who would choose that? Who would say to themselves, “Today I hope to make absolutely no difference to the people I work with and the people I work for.” Who would choose that? Seriously, who would choose that?
So that leaves the final choice, which is, “I would like to make a positive impact on the people I’m working with on my team, on my supervisors, on the people who report to me, on my clients, on my family; whatever the organization, I’d like to make a positive impact.” Kind of cool.
So what’s my suggestion to you? My suggestion to you is you ask that question. What do you want your legacy to be? What impact do you want to have on any given organization, be that your family, your soccer team, or your work team. My guess is you don’t want to be the negative loser who tries to bring everyone down. My guess is that having sort of a net neutral effect and that you make absolutely no difference to this team is not your choice either, and of course, that leaves the obvious solution, which is you want to be positive, you want to be upbeat, and you want to move the team forward. If that’s the case, that should help dictate the way you act. It should help dictate your mood, it should dictate your style of leadership and it should dictate your attitude, which of course ought to be positive.
Choose to be a positive influence in your life!
If you’re looking for a motivational, inspirational speaker to come in to talk to your group about how to make sure people are making the right choices about being a positive influence on your team, I’d love to be your guy and I hope you’ll contact me.
Brad Montgomery
Inspirational Speaker, Motivational Expert
“The kind of guy who makes a positive effect on my team.”
Related articles:
Laugh or Cry? Your Choice.
Hire a Certified Speaking Professional to Guarantee Your Success
Okay, maybe not guarantee but definitely improve the likelihood of your meeting being awesome.
What is a CSP? Certified Speaking Professionals have earned the highest designation awarded by the National Speakers Association.
To be a CSP is a big deal. You’ve got to do way more than just fill out a form. They pretty much examine your career, they look at the number of jobs you do per year to make sure that you’ve done a lot, they look at the amount of income that you have earned through speaking to make sure that you are working professional events, and then, here’s the killer, they call an alarming number of your clients to make sure that you were delivering excellence. When I earned my CSP I was told that fewer than 7% of professional speakers worldwide have earned their CSP.
Selected Posts from Brad’s Past
We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here. So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.
What is the point? The point is is that when you’re hiring a motivational speaker you want the very best. And one easy litmus test that you could put up is to see if your prospective speaker has met the qualifications for this very straightforward designation. If they have, you know a lot about them. You know they’ve done a lot of work, you know they have a lot of experience, you know they’ve worked at a certain fee level which guarantees that they are not just working at the Optimist Club and the Lion’s Club, which by the way is important.
Just because somebody says that they’ve given a lot of speeches doesn’t mean they’ve given a lot of speeches in front of business audiences or audiences like yours. What else do you know? You know that somebody, at least one person, has checked up on the speaker to make sure that they’re not complete fluff – that it’s not just marketing. You know that this speaker has met a certain level of professional success.
Make sure your speaker has the title, CSP after their name!
Happily, I’ve earned my CSP. I’m proud of this! It took hours and hours of paperwork. My office went nuts for about six months trying to get this done. Plus, of course, it meant an absolute headache with arranging a database. But it was worth it to me because it is worth it to my clients.
Next time you’re considering hiring a speaker make sure your speaker has the initials CSP after their name.
Are you looking for a professional motivational speaker who also is a CSP, Certified Speaking Professional? I hope you will contact me here.
Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker, Certified Speaking Professional, and proud of it!
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