The Sweeney Agency

About Joel Zeff - Entertaining Communication Speaker:

Joel Zeff creates energy. His spontaneous humor and vital messages have thrilled audiences for years. As a national speaker and humorist, Joel captivates audiences with a unique blend of hilarious improvisational comedy and essential ideas on work and life. Corporations and organizations nationwide seek him out to motivate and energize their employees on such topics as creativity, communication, teamwork, and leadership. His recent book is Make the Right Choice: Creating a Positive, Innovative and Productive Work Life published by John Wiley & Sons.

A former newspaper journalist and public relations executive, Joel started his own consulting business in 1994. His business initially focused on helping technology and telecommunications companies with marketing, advertising and public relations. As he came in contact with so many corporate cultures, he noticed the glaring need for employees to have more fun and reenergize their creative spirit.

Since 1993, he has performed with Ad-Libs, one of the country's premier improvisational comedy troupes. Joel performs with Ad-Libs at the troupe's theater in Downtown Dallas and across the country for corporate events. As an improvisational actor, Joel studied for a short time at the famed Second City Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois.

Joel fuses his knowledge of improvisation and his experience with the corporate world to create presentations that make a difference. His humor and style create a positive and comfortable environment for his audience that allows them to take risks and explore their creativity. His funny and poignant presentations have been met with roaring approval from hundreds of companies and organizations and thousands of audience members. Joel makes audiences laugh, but he also makes them think. Participants discover for themselves how to apply his messages to become better people and better employees.

When he is not speaking, Joel explores his own creativity and communication skills as an actor and writer. In Dallas, he was co-host of The Movie Zone on UPN 21. He has appeared in commercials for Harrah's Casino, Mydiscountbroker.com, Time Warner Cable, Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Eagle Country Markets, and Extraco Bank. He has also appeared in corporate videos for Pepsi, Pier One, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, Nortel Networks, and J.C. Penney's.

What Joel Zeff Talks About:

Make the Right Choice: Taking Ownership and Responsibility for your Happiness and Success
In this presentation, Joel shares his experience and insight on creativity, communication, teamwork, passion, and fun. With wit, a sharp observational eye, and playful irreverence, he discusses the choices we all encounter in our careers. We each have the ability to take initiative and make the right choice to live a more creative, passionate, effective, and productive life.

How do your employees and managers Make the Right Choice? We all must take ownership of our work environment and create a foundation of opportunity and positive support. We can choose to be patient, supportive, and more flexible to change. We can choose to have fun in the workplace and still be productive. Joel teaches us just how easy it is to make these choices.

Make the Right Choice: Leading Teams during Change with Passion and Success
It’s hard to have fun and stay passionate at work during stressful times. Your employees build stress after each media report about economic challenges. Business today means surviving and thriving during a merger, layoff or the all encompassing “restructuring.” How do managers continue to motivate and energize employees during difficult times? Managers must help employees stay in the game; work in the moment; and take ownership of their happiness.

Joel leads the audience through a series of exercises that demonstrates how easy it is to continue working creatively, effectively and productively while dealing with change. This interactive and hilarious presentation will teach managers the importance of creating opportunity and giving positive support to their employees. Just as important, managers must allow employees to create ownership. Ownership and responsibility will allow the employee to care. And once the employee starts to care, the next step is passion.

Make the Right Choice: Energizing your Spirit with Humor
Most corporations know they need fun, they just don't know how or where to find it. Fun is the most important commodity in the workplace today: Fun increases communication, productivity, teamwork and creativity. Fun gives us the energy to reduce stress and overcome challenges. Fun produces passion for our jobs.

This keynote focuses on reducing stress, increasing creativity and creating a renewed passion for our jobs. Joel discusses the key foundations of opportunity, ownership and responsibility, flexibility to change and creating a positive environment. He highlights the importance of play in our work lives to create balance. During the session, he takes the audience on a hilarious journey using interactive audience surprises. You will walk away from his session smiling, motivated and rejuvenated.

Make the Right Choice: Communicate with Passion, Creativity and Energy
This interactive and hilarious session helps employees and managers communicate more effectively with each other and with their customers. Attendees will examine key skills such as trust, listening, teamwork, risk-taking, confidence, positive environment and openness and flexibility to change. Audience members will learn through discovery how a few easy choices can lead to more effective and successful communication.

Make the Right Choice: Learning to Think without a Script
This session on creativity and teamwork can help employees and managers with a creative jump-start. During the presentation, Joel will focus on the skills that make teams more successful. This interactive presentation uses improvisational games and exercises to have fun, increase creativity, teamwork and problem solving. This intensive session examines key team skills such as trust, listening, communication, risk-taking, confidence, positive environment and openness and flexibility to change. The session weaves the creative process into the team concept, examining the significance of working together to create ideas, solve problems and build success.