Joshua Routh helps organizations create workplaces people love, cultures people trust, and experiences people remember.
A Certified Speaking Professional, author, and founder of Circus Kaput, Joshua brings a rare combination of business insight, stagecraft, and lived leadership to every audience he serves. He has spent decades leading performers, building teams, and creating memorable experiences for clients across the country. Along the way, he discovered something powerful: culture is not built through slogans or surface-level positivity. It is built through sincerity, connection, trust, and the way people show up for one another every day.
That idea is now at the center of Joshua’s keynote work.
Through keynote programs like The S Word, Wielding Humanity, and A Complaint Free World, Joshua helps leaders and teams move beyond performative culture and create environments where people feel seen, valued, and motivated to contribute. His programs blend practical ideas, unforgettable stories, humor, and real-world tools that audiences can put to work immediately.
Joshua is also the founder of Circus Kaput, one of the largest variety arts agencies in America, with a roster of more than 50 performers producing hundreds of events each year. As a business owner, entertainer, and team leader, he does not just speak about engagement and culture. He lives it.
He has worked with organizations such as Google, Wells Fargo, Edward Jones, and many others, and has appeared in venues ranging from TEDx St. Louis to the Smithsonian. He is also one of only around 100 sword swallowers in the world, which is unusual enough to get attention, but it is his message about sincerity, leadership, and human connection that audiences remember long after the applause.
If you are looking for a keynote speaker who is thoughtful, original, entertaining, and deeply committed to helping people build stronger cultures, Joshua Routh is the speaker clients call when they want more than inspiration. They want impact.
THE LONGER VERSION
With Bill Clinton while working the Florida Fire of 1998. Joshua is on the upper far right, second from the end.
Joshua Routh’s career has never followed a conventional path, and that is exactly what makes his perspective so valuable.
He began performing at age 12 after taking a clown class at a community college and quickly discovered that making people laugh, feel seen, and feel lighter was not just something he enjoyed. It was something he was meant to do. That early passion led him into hospitals, nursing homes, theaters, circus spaces, and community events, where he began to understand the deeper power of human connection.
Over time, Joshua built a life at the intersection of performance, leadership, and service.
He traveled and trained with mentor Jeff Lefton, studied team development and outdoor leadership, and later immersed himself in circus arts in San Francisco, where he trained at the San Francisco Circus Center and worked with Master Lu Yi of the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe. There, he sharpened the performance instincts that still shape his speaking today: attention matters, trust matters, and people remember how you make them feel.
In 1998, Joshua stepped away from performing for a season to serve in AmeriCorps, working alongside FEMA, SEMA, and the U.S. Forest Service on disaster response efforts. He helped communities recover from fires, hurricanes, and other crises, and even created ClownCorps, a group that brought joy and relief to underserved communities in difficult moments. That experience reinforced something he still teaches now: in high-pressure situations, people need more than systems. They need one another.
Joshua later brought those lessons into corporate team building, facilitation, and leadership development. He helped guide wilderness and ropes-course experiences, led circus-based team-building programs, and eventually built a thriving business that depends on trust, collaboration, and consistency at scale.
Today, Joshua is the founder of Circus Kaput, one of the most successful variety arts agencies in America. With a roster of more than 50 performers and hundreds of events each year, he has built a business around creating memorable experiences and leading people well. That work gave him a front-row seat to what makes teams thrive and what causes cultures to break down.
Those lessons now fuel his keynote platform.
As a keynote speaker and author, Joshua speaks on sincerity, culture transformation, human connection, joy, engagement, and the power of showing up well in a world full of performance. His keynote The S Word explores how sincerity builds trust in workplaces and relationships. His other programs help leaders reduce complaint-driven cultures, strengthen engagement, and create experiences people genuinely feel.
Joshua’s work has taken him to TEDx St. Louis, the Smithsonian, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, television commercials, theater stages, corporate events, and major live productions. He has entertained for iconic brands, worked with respected organizations, and shared his ideas with audiences across the country. He is also the author of Mind Blowing Presentations and The S Word, and one of fewer than 100 professional sword swallowers in the world.
But titles and unusual credentials are not the point.
What matters most is that Joshua helps people reconnect to what is real: trust, presence, service, courage, joy, and the kind of leadership that people can actually feel. His work is memorable because it is entertaining, but it is meaningful because it is sincere.
