Dave Caperton

Dave Caperton's Speech Descriptions

We can’t always control what happens to us in life, but we can control how we cope. Offering a variety of presentations that are a unique blend of stand-up comedy and motivational coaching, Dave Caperton shows how humor and joy can help us manage life’s hurdles and flourish on a daily basis. You’ll laugh as you learn Dave’s “joy strategies” for communicating, handling stress, and dealing with difficult people.

While most of Dave’s programs are particularly geared to businesses, healthcare settings, and educational settings, Dave can design customized seminars and humor to meet any group’s needs.

Your Mission: Change the World
We′ve all heard the old adage, "perception is reality," which means your world is what you perceive it to be. But what you perceive owes as much to the choices you make as to your senses. Your commitment to joy, your sense of humor, your focus, even your physiology, shapes your perceptions. Consciously making positive choices leads to healthy perceptions about your life, work and relationships. And when you change your perceptions, you change your world.

Stress Mastery
Stress is one of the most talked about yet least understood threats to our success and health. Uncontrolled stress is a sure road to burnout and unhappiness. Unchecked stress depresses immune function, leads to illness and absenteeism and erodes energy and effectiveness. Combing humor and solid research to explore the stress response, Dave provides real solutions for coping successfully and thriving in times of change and challenge.

Healing Humor
Laughter doesn′t just feel good, it′s good for you. Besides providing a release for stress, a sense of humor has also been associated with improved immune function, pain relief, lowered blood pressure and is a proven predictor of longevity. This program presents the healing benefits of humor both for self-care and to minister to the needs of others. Healing Humor is perfect for healthcare audiences or any group interested in healthy living through laughter.

Laughter and Learning
It may seem counterintuitive that emotion, not rational processes, are the key to learning, but that is what brain research shows. In short, negative emotions stimulate limbic response (e.g. fight or flight) while positive emotion enhances cortical alertness. Learn ways to make compassionate humor a useful tool in the learning experience and join your students in enjoying increased learning and lowered stress.

Dealing with Difficult People
Everyone has to deal with an unpleasant person from time to time. But when we have to cope with toxic attitudes on an ongoing basis, the resulting stress can erode our joy and undermine our success. This program provides solutions to dealing with difficult people by taking a three-pronged approach:

1. What Makes Difficult People so Difficult? Understanding the underlying reasons for negative behaviors can foster tolerance and even compassion.

2. Techniques and Strategies. We can′t change others. We can only change how we respond to them. We′ll discuss communication strategies to minimize conflict and create more positive outcomes.
3. Coping Skills. Dealing with difficult people takes a toll. In this part we′ll discover how to hone healthy humor and other stress-reducing techniques to innoculate oneself from exposure to toxic personalities.

Drive Sales- but first find your keys

Does your sales team know the number one factor that makes a buyer say "yes"? Learn the secret that drives sales and the 8 keys that every salesperson should practice to shift sales into high gear. You′ll also learn one simple habit that will take you from sales rep to expert consultant with loyal repeat customers.

The Fezziwig Principle: Joyful, Compassionate Leadership

From Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens gave us some of the most memorable characters in literature. One minor character in A Christmas Carol represents a standard for joyful and people-centered leadership: Scrooge′s old boss, Mr Fezziwig. Fezziwig is jolly, kind, beloved by his employees and successful. In short, he is in every way the leader that Scrooge is not. Still, old Scrooge displays nothing but admiration for his old boss. When the Spirit remarks that Fezziwig has spent very little to make the people so full of gratitude, Scrooge replies: "It isn′t that, Spirit. He had the power to render us happy or unhappy; to ; make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up, what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

In Dave′s new program, The Fezziwig Principle, you′ll learn how the 9 principles that create the employee loyalty evident in Dickens′ classic tale are still powerful and available today, and the keys to creating the kind of work environment where real success is just the by product of doing the right things for the right reasons. This program will give your leadership team valuable tools for building loyalty as the foundation for success!

Special Programs
In addition to Dave′s regular topics, he also offers special customized presentations specifically designed for your group′s needs including customized humor, communication workshops and a number of special in-service programs for educators.