Every speech is a journey — a journey for the audience and a journey for the speaker.  For the audience, the journey may be headed in a specific direction, or it can be rather obscure and vague, with the eventual outcome uncertain.  The speaker should know in advance the roadway he or she expects to take, and where he or she wants to be when the journey ends.  The speaker should be keenly aware of the material to be covered, time available for the "trip," and most importantly, the vehicle he or she will use to escort the audience to its destination.  This metaphor deals with what I feel is the most important part of this journey: the vehicle or combination of vehicles to be used along the way.  A speech, like a trip, is best when it is exciting and interesting, as well as informative.  And, in order for the trip to be all those things it must be well-planned.  As a platform professional with more than 3,500 paid appearances, the vehicles I use to take my audience on our journey together are clean humor, football stories based on my 15 years from my life as a National Football League official, and appropriate anecdotes from my life as a business and family man.  I also use some poetry in my presentations. It is this combination of vehicles that I employ to take my audience along with me on a journey that will, I hope, lead my audience to a place of new understanding and inspiration.

Humor Soothes The Way!
For 37 years I lived in Peoria, Illinois, the world headquarters of the Caterpillar Tractor Company. Caterpillar is the world leader in earth moving equipment. They make bulldozers of all sizes, including back hoes for digging holes and ditches and many more pieces of of big equipment designed to reshape the world. The specific piece of equipment I want to refer to here is the motor grader. This is the machine whose tires can tilt one way or the other and which has a blade to smooth a roadbed for a proposed highway or perhaps a building site.

"Well," you may ask, "what does all this have to do with speaking?" My answer to you is this. To me, humor is the motor grader that smoothes out the bumps and ruts of life and makes it livable. God made us the only animal with the ability to laugh. He must have figured that if we couldn't laugh at some of our foibles, failures, and frustrations, we'd all end up in the loony bin!

Humor is a very delicate and serious thing. It can be, as my speaker colleague Dr. Charlie Jarvis so succinctly has defined it, "a painful thing told playfully." Witness the jokes or humorous stories we have heard told about death or illness. For example, this Henny Youngman line: "A doctor gave a man six months to live. He didn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months!"

I use the following story when talking about being able to laugh at yourself when things don't go as you planned. "Just to be nice, I sent flowers to a friend of mine who opened up a new branch of his business. I went out to congratulate him and, naturally I looked for my flowers. What I found was a wreath with a bow on it that said, 'Rest in Peace.' I left in a huff, called the florist and said, 'I sent a guy flowers to wish him well in his new business and you sent him a wreath with a bow on it that says 'Rest in Peace!' The florist said "I'm not worried about you, Art. But someplace in this town, there's a guy being buried, and he's got a big bouquet of roses with a sash that says, 'Good luck in your new location!'

This story allows me to make a serious point. Sometimes our best intentions go down the drain. So, the selection of humor is not just a matter of whether or not it is funny; it is also a matter of whether it is relevant to the message.

In another example of humor, I may be talking about why knowledge is so important for the sales or management person. I will use a comparison between NFL football and life.

When a football player comes to pre-season camp, he is expected to be in good physical condition. Before anything else happens, he receives a rigid physical examination. The number one priority in football, as it should be in any line of work, is to be physically capable to perform. After the physical exam, the player gets a playbook. That's the beginning of the knowledge factor. Complete knowledge of the plays and what the player is expected to do on each play is pre-supposed; the same as physical conditioning is pre-supposed.

I follow this information by saying something like this, "Knowledge isn't everything, but it is tremendously important." Then I tell how I was working a pre-season game in Memphis when a player cussed me. I whirled and yelled, "What did you call me?" He said "Guess. You've guessed at everything else today!"

After that anecdote, I say to my audience: "You cannot guess; you've got to know. The key issue is, how do we use what we know to solve somebody else's or our own problems?" That little vignette is used to point out the relationship between knowledge and problem solving.

The true test of any speaker is his or her ability to relate to any audience, no matter how large or small. Art Holst has spoken to groups from 15 to 15,000. Of course, the icing on the cake is when the group invites him back for more. 60-75% of Art's engagements are encore performances.


Past Performances

Associations
    •     American Farm Bureau Association
    •     National Association of Independent Insurance Agents
    •     National Association of Wholesale Grocers
    •     National Funeral Directors
    •     National Lumber Dealers Association
    •     National Office Products Association

Automotive Industry
    •     Cadillac Motor Division
    •     Chrysler Corporation
    •     Ford Motor Company
    •     General Motors
    •     NAPA Auto Parts
    •     Oldsmobile
    •     Pontiac
    •     Rockwell International

Banking and Finance
    •     Anderson Consulting
    •     Bank Administration Institute
    •     Bank of America
    •     Illinois Bankers Association
    •     Iowa Bankers Association
    •     Kansas Bankers Association
    •     New York Bankers Association
    •     Shearson Lehman Bros.

Communications
    •     AT&T
    •     Ameritech
    •     Illinois Bell
    •     Northern Telecom
    •     NYNEX
    •     Sprint
    •     USWEST

Computers and Electronics
    •     Coulter Electronics
    •     Digital Equipment Corp.
    •     IBM
    •     Novell
    •     Xerox

Food Industry and Retailing
    •     Food Marketing Institute
    •     K-Mart
    •     Midwest Poultry Association
    •     New England  Dairy and Deli Association
    •     Rich Foods
    •     Sara Lee

Insurance
    •     Allstate Insurance Company
    •     John Hancock Insurance Company
    •     Met Life Insurance Company
    •     Physicians Mutual Insurance Company
    •     Prudential Insurance Company

Manufacturing
    •     Caterpillar Tractor Company
    •     Dow Chemical
    •     General Electric
    •     Monsanto
    •     3M
    •     Whirlpool, Inc.

Petroleum
    •     Amoco
    •     Exxon - Mobil Oil Corp.
    •     Phillips Petroleum
    •     Sunoco
    •     Shell Oil Company

Pharmaceuticals
    •     Baxter International
    •     Marion Merrell  Dow
    •     Schering Plough
    •     SmithKline Beecham

Real Estate
    •     Coldwell Banker
    •     Illinois Realtors Association
    •     Indiana Realtors Association

Transportation
    •     Allied Van Lines
    •     American Airlines
    •     Association of American Railroads
    •     Delta Airlines
    •     North American Van Lines
    •     Union Pacific Railroad


What Clients Are Saying...

"Thank you for contributing to the success of our Personnel Development Seminar! You are a dynamic speaker with an extraordinary ability to relate factual information about our company, football, management theories, stories and humor all into one. I especially appreciated the extra time you spent with me and the class prior to your presentation to get a better understanding of what the audience was looking for. You are indeed a pro. As you can see by the students' comments attached, you were the highlight of the week. Looking forward to working with you again in the near future."

"Just a quick note to thank you for your outstanding motivational presentation this past month. We have had the opportunity at Ford Motor Company to hear some of the best speakers in the world and I have to tell you, you are the best!  The time you take to incorporate our message into your presentation makes your comments so very valuable to us. Many speakers are funny, like you, but few can get the message across as you did. You have the ability to capture the hearts and minds of the audience."

"In the many years of attending and arranging speaker presentations, I have heard many who are funny and many who have a message to deliver. I have not heard one who can deliver a meaningful message with as much good humor as you did last week for the 92nd Annual Convention of the Independent Insurance Agents Association of Maine. The way in which you personalized the presentation with issues pertinent to independent insurance agents as well as using the names of some of our leadership made everyone feel that you were part and parcel to the independent agency system, and especially to ours in Maine! Thanks for a great speech. I know we will hear your name at conventions for years to come!"

"We've gotten rave reviews on our meeting and in particular your contribution to its success. We wanted to write and let you know how much everyone enjoyed your speech! It was motivational, inspirational and entertaining! You truly captured the audience! We were amazed at your ability to incorporate our products and people so easily into your presentation. You're a born entertainer! Thanks again, Art, you are the best!"