Every booking starts with an advance call. I want to know your audience, your venue, your run of show, and the inside jokes I can weave into the set. I’d rather over-prepare for your event than wing it and hope it lands.

Every volunteer opts in. Every volunteer can stop. I say this on stage, deliberately, in every show. Nothing I do is built to embarrass a student on Monday or a CFO at the next board meeting.

If I’m not the right fit for you event, I’ll tell you. If I think a keynote is stronger than the show for your room, I’ll tell you that too. You hire me, you get a straight answer about what’s going to work.

Somewhere along the way I figured out that the single most useful sentence I know is “do it nervous.” It’s three words I’ve been telling myself since that first magic show at nine. It’s what I tell the software engineers I coach. It’s what I tell the volunteers right before they walk on stage.

And it’s the heart of my motivational keynote, When the Curtain Rises. The talk is the story of how I learned that the nerves aren’t the problem. They’re the signal that you’re close to something that matters. I deliver it for corporate audiences as a keynote, and for students grades 5 through 12 as a school assembly.

When I’m not performing, I’m usually writing code, coaching a team, or doing the non-glamorous work of running a small business from my home office in Lansing. I’m married, I’m a dad, and I spend a ridiculous amount of time on the road between shows and school board approvals.

I’m also the person answering your email. There’s no assistant (real or AI!), no booking agency taking a cut, no team of reps. If you fill out the form on this site, I see it, and I’m the one writing back.