they invited the whole family to come up there, and my children were left with a big impression of the importance of education. Define what type of public or motivational speaker best describes you. I consider myself an inspirational speaker not a motivational speaker. With motivational speaking sometimes you get pumped up and are left thinking, “Now what do I do?” One of my gifts, I think, is ideas. Concrete, low cost or no cost things that people can do immediately and implement in their workplace and lives. scenesarasota.com
How did you get on this path of becoming an inspirational speaker? I was a high school and college English teacher. One of my claims to fame was directing David Hasselhoff in his first high school play. When our oldest son went up to Dartmouth, I needed to help earn some extra money, and I was offered a job with a company called the Grammar Group to do a two day workshop on the English language for Fortune 500 companies, which I loved. Then a man from a company called Kaset for which I did training, consulting, and measurement in customer service, heard me and asked if I would do some contract training for them. The president of the company offered me the position as the manager of training, which I did from 1988 to 1994. I was training master trainers all over the country, started speaking at Kaset conferences, and then clients wanted me to speak at their conferences. What struck me at that time was, we were telling everybody to be good to customers but nobody was caring about the employees. And that became my passion. My belief is you will never have happy customers if you don’t have happy employees. So in 1995 I started my own company, and it’s been a miracle. I have a very strong faith. When I started the company, I really just said, “God you gave me this gift, so this is your company, and you put me where you want me to be.” I don’t do a lot of marketing other than my website, the books I’ve written, and being out there. It’s really just word of mouth. You travel a schedule that is daunting, that of a world leader. What are you seeing and feeling at your seminars and talks? There’s a lot of stress out there. I have December 2014
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