Articles
People Always Ask.
Yes, I Swallow Swords.
Here’s the Point!
The audience is seated, the stage lights up, everyone is prepared and yet not entirely sure what to expect...
There I am, standing on the stage, wearing a sport coat over an unusually colorful shirt, poised and focused, a sword in my hand.
I position my body, raising the hilt high, I bring the sword to my lips.
It is at this point an audience member might exclaim, “Don’t do it!”
There is very real tension in these moments. Tension that I soon break when I look into the audience and say, “I had a desperate need for attention as a child.”...
The Magic of Mentorship: How Will Bowen Changed My Life (And My Mindset)
One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is finding mentors who nudge us toward the best version of who we can become.
For me, one of those mentors is Will Bowen — the world’s authority on complaining and the creator of the Complaint Free World movement.
Funny enough, when I first met Will, I had no idea who he was. We crossed paths at a speakers conference years ago, and we bonded over a mutual love of magic...
ARE YOU INCOMPETENT?
A sample from my forthcoming book 'The S Word'
The Peter Principle and the Power of Self-Awareness
Are you incompetent? It is a provocative question—unsettling enough to make anyone feel uneasy. Yet sometimes the most uncomfortable questions are the ones we most need to ask ourselves.
Self-awareness is the foundation of building trust. A significant part of self-awareness is honestly assessing our own competence. The "honestly" piece can be difficult but is vital. Without honesty, we risk stumbling into the Peter Principle—the idea that "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence."
From Complaints to Collaboration
One Square At A Time
One of the best parts of being a speaker is the people. I’m constantly invited into fascinating subcultures — communities filled with passionate, dedicated folks doing deeply meaningful work that many outsiders never even hear about.
This week, I had the incredible privilege of speaking at CALLERLAB’s 50th International Conference in beautiful South Carolina. For those unfamiliar, CALLERLAB is the International Association of Square Dance Callers. Yes, square dance is still very much alive — and evolving in powerful and surprising ways.
And let me tell you… these folks can call, they can sing, and they can collaborate...
30 Years, A Wrong Turn, And A Few Hours to Make It Right
Reflections on Time, Regret, and Showing Up
I just returned from speaking at this year’s South Dakota State SHRM Conference. The theme was:“So Much HR, So Little Time.”
A clever nod to the daily whirlwind HR professionals live in—but for me, it echoed something deeper the moment I saw it. Time. How much of it we waste. How little of it we think we have. How we think of it as capital. And how we sometimes let moments slip away, never knowing if we’ll get the chance to return...
Lonely Is The New Smoking
As a society we are still feeling the aftershock from the earth-shaking experience that was the pandemic. Like the 1812 New Madrid earthquake rang church bells in Boston, the pandemic recently rang a bell in the office of the United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy.
The problem, loneliness...
It's Alright To Be All Wrong
Over 20 years ago, I was inspired by something that happened so quickly, it seems impossible that I still think about it so frequently.
It was summer in San Francisco, 2002 and I was driving away from Golden Gate Park towards the Presidio. At the corner of Park Presidio Blvd and Lake St, there was a man, sitting on a bench, with a long beard, even longer hair, scruffy clothes, holding above his head...
Time For A Workplace Renaissance
The latest Gallup Report on the 2023 State of the Global Workplace is full of insights. Many of the revelations are not shocking, but are definitely important. In the past few years we have learned these things from conversations, the news and our own experiences. The long and short, an increasing number of our fellow workers in the United States are not feeling the love in their jobs and the state of employee engagement is begging for attention.
The fact that many of us have known this for a while and are seeing it now, officially, in black and white shows that nothing has changed. It reminds me of one of my favorite adages, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”...
Thoughts On Martin Short's Nine Categories
Martin Short is one of the rare breed of comedy legends who's wisdom, humanity and depth sometimes eclipses the funny man persona. Also, he is one of my personal favorite entertainers. My youth was spent enjoying Ed Grimley sketches on Saturday Night Live, wearing out the VHS copy of The Three Amigos and even renting Inner Space more times than I would like to admit. More recently, my wife and I are tremendous Only Murders In the Building fans.
Recently, I listened to him read his book, 'I Must Say - My Life As A Humble Comedy Legend'. It is a wonderful book, sweet, insightful and of course funny. In Chapter 9 he reveals his self-evaluation system, called "The Nine Categories". As a person who loves debrief and taking stock, it resonated deeply with me...
Tossing Watermelons To The Hippocampus
EEOLCAAOTGAAHB!
A few years back I gained a brilliant new friend and mentor named Paul. Since he, like me, is an early riser, we meet up at a breakfast joint before even the regulars have hit their snooze button.
It is always the same. Paul is there first, and when I walk up to our booth, he rises, we hug and I say, “How are you Paul?”
Paul never fails to respond with, “I’m Awesome But Getting Better!”
He says this every, single, time. It is less a phrase, and more like his mantra. He lives his life by it. It is his way of connecting to the person he is, and who he would like to be...
The Smell Of Dead Clowns
Dominique Jando, the acclaimed circus historian, would often walk into our training space when I was in the Clown Conservatory, with his nose held high, chin thrust forward and say in his strong French accent, “Eh, it smells like dead clowns in here.”
It wouldn’t matter what you were working on, whether it was something you thought would be brilliant, or a piece where you were struggling to find the funny; when he said those words, you did indeed die.
What was worse, was when he would walk among us, like some circus Severus Snape and say, “Make me laugh, clown.” Inevitably there would be no making him laugh. I got close once, but I also almost received a concussion from taking a folding chair to the head. It was more stadium wresting than it was circus...