Joel Zeff

Biography

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, passion and fun. His first book, Make the Right Choice: Creating a Positive, Innovative and Productive Work Life was just 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 troupes 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 Harrahs Casino, Mydiscountbroker.com, Time Warner Cable, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, 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.

Publications

Make the Right Choice:
Creating a Positive, Innovative, and Productive Work Life.

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

Joel makes readers laugh so hard that they forget about the corporate nonsense of conference calls, "strategic deliverables," PowerPoint presentations with upside-down triangles, or "paradigm shifts in a cross-functional organization." Make the Right Choice is conversational, funny, and very informative. Yes, Joel will make you laugh, but he will also make you think. This book delivers a combination of inspiration, essential business knowledge, and significant ideas to help readers reconnect with their own passion, creativity, and success.

Make the Right Choice is a Dallas Morning News bestseller and consistently ranked as one of the top Work/Life balance books on Amazon.

Titles

Make the Right Choice: Taking Ownership and Responsibility for your Happiness and Success
In Make the Right Choice, 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.

Make the Right Choice: Leading Teams during Change with Passion and Success
It is 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.

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.

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.

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. The exercises allow the participants to discover for themselves how teamwork and creativity increases productivity, makes us happier and builds personal and corporate success. In longer workshops, participants learn how to break down barriers in their creative process and how to increase their "possibility" box.

Team Building for People Who Hate Team Building
Tired of team building games that are silly? Tired of college kids leading your employees in games that have no message and no application to your business? Are you tired of building boats with cardboard and dental floss? Joel's sessions are about team skills including communication, positive support, creating opportunity, leadership, listening, trust, initiative, openness, flexibility and creativity. His sessions involve the entire audience by creating a positive and comfortable environment. He leads participants in hilarious improvisational exercises that are fun, easy and perfect for any level of employee. After each exercise, Joel creates a dialogue with the participants to discuss the messages learned and how to apply them. Joel promises there will be no boat building in this session.