NSA Wisconsin

NSA Wisconsin: Your Source for Professional Speakers

Welcome to the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Speakers Association. The home of over 70 speakers, trainers and consultants based in Wisconsin.

If you are a meeting planner, you will find the perfect match for your next event. Our Find a Speaker links are located in the top left corner of each page. Many of our speakers have online video demos for you to preview.

If you are a speaker, trainer or consultant and want to become part of our association, please browse the Member Benefits area of this site. Even if you're not sure about joining, we invite you to attend one of our Professional Development Seminars and see firsthand why our association is on the cutting edge of this highly unique, entrepreneurial and innovative business we call professional speaking.

I look forward to welcoming you at our next event.
Continued Success,

Robert Ian
2007-2008 President
National Speakers Association - Wisconsin Chapter

Welcome to the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Speakers Association. The home of over 70 speakers, trainers and consultants based in Wisconsin.

If you are a meeting planner, you will find the perfect match for your next event. Our Find a Speaker links are located in the top left corner of each page. Many of our speakers have online video demos for you to preview.

If you are a speaker, trainer or consultant and want to become part of our association, please browse the Member Benefits area of this site. Even if you're not sure about joining, we invite you to attend one of our Professional Development Seminars and see firsthand why our association is on the cutting edge of this highly unique, entrepreneurial and innovative business we call professional speaking.

I look forward to welcoming you at our next event.
Continued Success,

Robert Ian
2007-2008 President
National Speakers Association - Wisconsin Chapter

Learn Performance Secrets from Second City

You know of the Second City from their legendary theatres, Emmy-Award winning TV shows and the countless stars they’ve helped create over nearly 50 years. On June 4th, The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) chapter in Madison is bringing in Second City Communications to teach performance secrets on the platform.

Improvisation is all about responding to change quickly and this workshop teaches you how. You’ll learn how to use key techniques of improvisation to successfully adjust and navigate through times of change and you’ll learn how to:

• Increase the ability to be flexible and adapt to change
• Respond to unexpected changes “in the moment”
• Create effective solutions to manage long-term changes

Click here for all of the event details.

Writing that First Book

PR pros well-equipped for the job
By Steve Busalacchi, PRSA Board of Directors

Writing. We do it every day at work, often times for other people, under their name. Why not do some writing with your name on the cover?

The truth is it’s easier than ever for those of us with writing and promotion skills to crank out a top-notch book and sell it. The latter is crucial because many authors make the mistake of hanging it up once the book is written. In reality, the only chance an author has to make his or her book a commercial success is to get out there and promote it—relentlessly.

Before we get into promotion, here’s just a bit about my literary journey. In late January, my first book rolled off the presses after three and a half years of work. It’s a 590-page hardcover oral history featuring several dozen extraordinary physicians, entitled White Coat Wisdom. To date, more than 1,100 copies have sold, primarily in Wisconsin, though national publicity efforts are currently underway. Moreover, Barnes & Noble will carry the book nationally in late spring, about when national reviews might begin to appear.

How did I get this far? The first thing I had to do was flesh out my idea, which I had tossed around for more than 15 years. I had come to know so many intriguing and eloquent physicians over the years as a medical reporter and later, as the Wisconsin Medical Society’s PR Director, that I knew they would have some fascinating stories to share. And they did! I started making lists of doctors I would ask to participate and drew up a basic outline. Then I attended some excellent workshops at UW Madison.

The traditional route to publication is through a literary agent or by proposing your idea directly to a publisher. It’s a tremendous challenge to interest either party, as they are besieged with manuscript queries and prefer dealing with big name authors with a proven track record. However, if you have a good idea, there is no reason not to give it a try.

As you might expect, the Internet is changing the rules of publishing, as well. It made all the difference in my ability to get my book out to the public in a reasonable amount of time. I abandoned my quest for a publisher after a few months, reasoning that I would better spend my time and energy on the manuscript itself rather than trying to convince somebody else my idea was worthwhile and saleable. Even if I had found a publisher, it would have been easily 3-5 years before the book would have been printed.

Thanks to some colleagues at the Wisconsin Speakers Association who encouraged me, many of whom are authors, I looked into self-publishing options. The Godfather of this movement is Dan Poynter, whose book, Self-Publishing Manual, is the one that led me through this process. Among the advantages of publishing yourself is that you don’t need anybody’s permission to pursue your idea. You just do it. Now.

At its most basic, a publisher is simply the entity that pays for the printing and distribution of your book. But even if one gets a publisher, the author is still responsible for promoting the book. So if the success of the book is really up to the author anyway, why not just publish yourself and reap more of the profit?

(For more tips on self-publishing, read the rest of Stephen's article here: http://www.prsamadison.org/membercolumns.html)

Stephen J. Busalacchi is the author of White Coat Wisdom (whitecoatwisdom.com), Extraordinary doctors talk about what they do, how they got there and why medicine is so much more than a job. Busalacchi owns his own Madison-based health communications consulting firm.

McKinley hit it out of the park again, with a home-run presentation!

by Larry Cockerel
Professional Member

The real deal and the real “WOW” factor took place at our last NSA Wisconsin Session on March 6 at the Country Inn & Suites. If you where there, then you know right what I’m talking about, Mike McKinley, CSP, CPAE Alive and in person! This session was at the point of standing room only, because when our own, Wisconsin based Professional Speakers come to share, people come to listen and learn.

Planning, Preparing, Presenting and Promoting Your Unique Style of Speaking, was the theme and the content was excellent, presented by one of the best. When talking on the above subject you better be ready to represent all the pieces from the planning and preparation for the session to your own unique style, to not only share, but demonstrate all the above in action. And that’s what Mike did; his program was powerful with content and mind-opening with the demonstrations from his introduction, to the PowerPoint presentation on ways to be unique with your presentation.

McKinley’s program went deep, when he led us into the section on, “Looking Inside Myself”, four key questions to help you identify, questions like; What makes me different? And why should anyone hire me? These type questions make you think and grow. From looking inside Mike led us to the area of, “Mistakes I’ve made as a presenter, or have seen other presenters make” If you’re not making mistakes maybe you’re not taking risk. I know that I’ve made my share of mistakes, but that’s just opportunity to get better.

Mike’s PowerPoint presentation with all the pictures where great, and gave me many new ideas on how I can deliver my message in a different way to be unique. Mike shared how for many years he has collected pictures and set up a “picture filing system” to track all the shots and organize so to be ready to add to the right program with the right purpose. Well, I went right home and started setting up my “picture filing system’ to get organized by topic. Mike inspired most, if not all of us in the room that day, and that’s the power and Return-On-Investment of our NSA Wisconsin Professional Speakers Development Programs. The room was full of experience, a few past Presidents of the Chapter, five first timers, three new Professional Members and one new Candidate Member, not counting many Professional Members that come to network, met new members, past members, and gain new ideas to keep the firing burning inside.

Mr. McKinley, thank you again from all of us at Wisconsin Professional Speakers for an excellent session full of humor, dynamic content and key disciplines that we can take back to our businesses and put into action. I’ve personally seen and participated in this same program over five years ago, and each time I hear the message and see Mike in action I understand his success and effectiveness towards his audience, and where I want to go with my business of making a little difference in a big world.

Please allow me to take you back in time to your early years, back when greens where something you were made to eat! First was pre-K, then K, Middle, Junior High, High School and for you lucky ones a great University. At NSA Wisconsin we don’t want you to stop learning and growing, that’s why we have developed our Speaker U, yes more schooling. We believe that the best way to build your Speaking business is to be involved with an environment developed around growing your Speaking business, and our Dean of Speaker U Eliz Greene can help guide you through the process. Just connect with Eliz and discover how you can kick your Speaking business in gear through the benefits of Speaker U. It’s never too late to get back to getting more stuff to help you do more stuff for your business and clients. If Speaker U is for you, then contact with Eliz Greene today.

Special thanks to Jim Morrison for chairing the day and helping us all to have a great day of learning and fun along the day’s journey. Congrat’s to Past President Barbara Bartlein, CSP for winning the 50/50 drawing and then giving it back to support our DECA Sponsorship, giving back is what we all do in our business and Barb, the People Pro showed us all how easy it is to give back. We want to say thank you for our first timers for joining us at our March session, and hope you’ll all come back in May for our next session and consider Wisconsin Professional Speakers as your next choice to help you build your speaking business.

Larry Cockerel
The Expert on “Aggressively Living Life”

What’s it take to be Your Best? 4 Keys to the Door of Greater Wisdom

by Larry Cockerel
Professional Member

Better than good is the objective. This message is about what it takes to be your very best, whether you’re a Professional Speaker, new and up-coming Speaker or a Client focused Meeting Planning Professional. If you’re reading this piece and you’re neither of the above mentioned titles, this could be for you just as well.

What does it take? Four simple key motivators, these four motivators are easy to kick into action. Sometimes it’s the simple things that are holding us back from being our very best. As my readers know, your best is all that you can give, as long as you are giving 100% of your very best effort and attitude at every task, request, process and relationship.

Let’s get moving with these four simple key disciplines that you can simply do to be your very best. Simple is the key, decision management is the action required.

Passionate Activation: This is a test, stop right now, grab a blank piece of paper and write down three things that you are truly passionate about. At one time in our life we all started out as a blank piece of paper, and as we developed and connected with others our blank piece of paper became the beginning of the story of our life. Each page, each chapter, others have added value, and throughout the years we have grown passionate about things that drive our motivation and inspiration that dictates who we are, and what and why we do what we do.

Passion is the key, passion helps us to care, give and be our best. Having passion about your profession allows you to share your enthusiasm with others. Passion ignites your inspiration to succeed in your profession. Passion helps you to listen to others so that you can give them your very best. Passion makes your motives global and not singular. Passion is the main key to being your best at all things you do. Your passion towards helping others is why you do what you do. It’s not all about the money, “Make your passion greater than your monetary rewards” your first key, to the door of greater wisdom.

Skill Acknowledgement: We all have goals, dreams and things that we want to do and accomplish in life. We also have certain skills that we are excellent at and others that we are so-so at, if you know what I mean. Our goals must be tied to our skills to be at our very best with the job at hand. What skills are you excellent at? Write them out and beside each one, describe why you are excellent at that skill and how you can expand on these assets. What must happen for you to get even better at the skills you have acknowledged as high value skills?

Wisdom Note: You don’t get ahead by doing the things that you aren’t the best at, but you do get ahead when you do the things that you do best. Make your mission to do whatever it takes to enhance your strengths and learn to manage your weakness, we all have them, and both are great assets. Second key to the door to greater wisdom; “Make your skills match your goals and vision.”

Decision Management: Decision Making is over-rated and “Decision Management” is under-rated. Yes that’s right, decision making is way over-rated. Examples; New Years Resolutions, Weight Management Decisions, kicking the smoking habit, I can go on and on for days. I’ve spent much time looking into my own mirror and have found that the enemy in my life is me. We all make decisions every day, up to 2500 decisions daily, and the quality of those decisions effect the quality of our life.

The ability to evaluate your decision making process, and make less decisions daily, can allow you to be much clearer and focused to the outcomes.. Making good decisions is great, but more important is learning to manage those decisions and evaluate your results daily. Third key to the door of greater wisdom; “Make your decision management greater than just making decisions.”

Life Management: Time Management is over-rated, and “Life Management” is under-rated. What do I mean with this aggressive statement you’re thinking? Everyday we hear “Time Management”, “We must manage our time better” can we really manage the time that we have? We all have the same amount of time every second of every hour each and everyday. We can get good at managing the things we do with the time that we have, but time is not ours to manage but to cherish. We can manage our life within the time clock of our day. We can get better at the things we do when we learn to not be so focused to trying to manage time as much as managing the decisions that we do with our time.

Life Management is about living life to our best possible level of excellence with the time that we are given. Not so much trying to manage the minutes or hours but managing the decisions that we make with our personal and professional life. Fourth and final key to the door of greater wisdom; "Make your life management your life time mission.”

The expert on “Aggressively Living Life”
Larry Cockerel

Stephen Busalacchi featured in Cap Times

Stephen Busalacchi's new book "White Coat Wisdom," was featured in the Capital Times. It's a book in which "extraordinary doctors talk about what they do, how they got there and why medicine is so much more than a job."

"White Coat Wisdom" is filled with awe-inspiring stories as physicians discuss fascinating experiences that are unique to the medical profession. Interspersed throughout is the grit necessary to overcome substantial obstacles and ultimately discover true fulfillment in one's personal and professional life.

Read the full article here. Congrats, Stephen!

A New Forum Comes to Town

by Stevie Ray
Member-NSA Minnesota Chapter

It was late at night last November and Jerome Mayne, a speaker based in Minnesota, was doing what a lot of us do. He was sitting in his office, by himself, wondering whether he was doing “the business” right. Even though he had developed his speaking business for over five years, he still felt like, in some areas, he was operating blind. Too many questions were answered by assumption instead of fact. Were his fees appropriate for his service? How could he get two engagements out of one? How could he expand his market? He made a few phone calls and sent a few emails, but didn’t hear back right away. Jerome shared the same frustration that many professional speakers face, he was alone. He worked alone in his office. Traveled alone. And spoke alone.

As a member of NSA he got a lot out of meetings and seminars, but there wasn’t always enough time to talk with other speakers. Sometimes it was impossible to attend meetings since he was often traveling to speak. He also felt like there were so many speakers to connect with from around the country or across the ocean; not just in his local chapter. He thought, “If there were only a way to communicate with all of them, I’d certainly get answers and ideas.” And he might not feel so alone in this business.

The next day he went to work on his computer and created Speakers Outpost (www.speakersoutpost.com), an online discussion forum for the speaking industry. He started contacting speakers, asking them to join. He certainly didn’t expect the response he got. Launched in early December, the forum already has over 150 members from the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Spain, Israel, Australia, South Africa, and Singapore. The forum is not affiliated with the National Speakers Association, so members include those from within NSA, as well as speakers and service providers from elsewhere in the industry.

The concept is simple. Membership is free, and after registering, members can post questions or reply to other speakers’ posts. Comments can include any subject from negotiating fees, to marketing tips, speaking internationally, client management, even attractions not to miss when speaking in a new city. The feel is informal and friendly, and as such, self-promotion is discouraged.

Part of the success of Speakers Outpost is the variety of members. You not only connect with new and experienced speakers, but service providers, speakers’ bureaus, publishers, and clients. Early response to Speakers Outpost has been very positive.

“Thanks for putting a Web 2.0 site into play for Professional Speakers. As an NSA professional member well past his 10 year pin I have to say that the site embodies the vision of the wonderful NSA members it has been my honor to meet.” Jerry Fletcher, NSA Member Portland, Oregon

The goal of all speakers is to grow their business and create an impact on the audiences they serve. What better way to do that than to connect with hundreds of fellow speakers from around the world and share-or debate-the issues that affect us all. You are encouraged to go to Speakers Outpost and share your wisdom, post a question, and help the speaking industry stay connected. Who knows? Someone from across the ocean may have an idea that gets you booked right next door.

Chip Lutz Featured in Zig Ziglar's Newsletter

NSA Wisconsin welcomes new member Charles "Chip" Lutz, MSEd, CLL. Chip recently retired from the Navy and his views on leadership were highlighted in the Zig Ziglar's latest newsletter.

Congratulations and welcome Chip!

Jim Morrison WOWS Executive Speakers School Luncheon

by Sally Anders
Professional Member

In my November article reviewing our first Executive Speaker School, I focused on our instructors. Those excellent speakers who volunteered to share their knowledge and secrets on the speaking game. This time, I want to draw your attention to our luncheon speaker, Jim Morrison. Jim taught at our wonderful learning event in the best way possible – by showing our students what a professional speaker looks like.

Using stories, humor and music, Jim Morrison applies his 20-plus years of management experience to delivering messages that focus on the simple solutions to common, personal and organizational problems. He is a professional member of the National Speaker's Association, as well as our chapter, which once honored him with the Chapter Member of the Year Award, and the Spirit of Service Award for long-term dedication to our chapter and the speaking industry. Getting awards is something Jim seems to excel in as he also received the Shining Star Award from United Way for having trained their loaned employees in speaking skills for more than 12 years. Jim was a great addition to our day of learning.

In telling his personal story of a life changing phone call, he made the point that we are all only one phone call from a life changing experience – demonstrating the value of sharing your stories with your audience.

Success, another of the day's themes, was put into perspective when Jim compared the earnings of Michael Jordan, who made about $40 million a year, to Bill Gates. Michael would have to save all his earnings for 270 years to equal the wealth of Bill Gates! Here Jim showed how the eloquent use of statistics can make your point so much more memorable. His point about developing your own definition of success will be remembered, thanks to Michael and Bill's example.

Jim's obvious heart felt emotion drove home the importance of recognizing how your well thought out and developed definition of success can quickly change with that life changing phone call, and the importance of being a good communicator – especially a good listener – which could help you achieve whatever your new definition of success happens to be.

Jim's strong close pulled it all together by challenging us all not to wait for that life changing phone call, but to make those all important life changes now. He challenged us to call someone today. To make some life changes without the phone call or the emergency that prompted it.

Jim shared some great, entertaining platform tips about distracting gestures like the swaying speaker, the parade rest speaker, the flasher and the fig leaf speaker. He also emphasized the importance of meeting the time frame – no matter how much it may have changed from your original agreement. But he need not have bothered telling us how a professional speaker stood or moved or filled his time slot with respect for the entire event, because he was a perfect example of what a prepared, passionate and professional speaker looks and sounds like.

Most of the attendees at our Executive Speaker School were there to learn how to give a better speech – not to turn pro. Good thing. Because all of our speakers, including our example of a great luncheon speaker who molds his message to fit the theme of the conference, Jim Morrison, clearly demonstrated the substantial difference between a "pretty good speaker" and a "professional speaker."

Well done!

Jason Kotecki is Named Rising Star

The Rising Star Award was created to recognize an individual who has achieved great success in the speaking industry early in their career and/or an individual who has shown great dedication to NSA Wisconsin and the speaking industry. Individuals in all NSA membership categories, including candidates, qualify for this award.

Jason Kotecki, aka "The Champion of Childhood," currently serves on the NSA-WI board and helps maintain the chapter web site. In December, he also hosted Podcast 101, an intimate, hands-on session designed to help members learn the ins and outs of creating a podcast. NSA-WI Presient Robert Ian presented Jason with the award in December.

Kotecki's first book, Escape Adulthood: 8 Secrets from Childhood for the Stressed-Out Grown-Up, outlines simple ways for adults of all ages to reconnect with the qualities that come naturally to children in order to reduce stress and live more fun and fulfilling lives. Jason (a professional cartoonist) teams up with his wife (a former teacher) to deliver presentations with a message (described as a cross between Dr. Phil and Mr. Rogers) that empowers busy people to use strategies from childhood to create lives with less stress and more fun. You can learn more at www.KimandJason.com

Janet Sperstad is Named Meeting Planner of the Year

The Meeting Planner of the Year Award is presented to a meeting planner who has demonstrated professionalism and support of the speaking industry. It is generally presented to the winner by a member of NSA-WI at a meeting planner’s association event.

Janet Sperstad, CMP, lead instructor for the Meeting and Event Management Degree Program at Madison Area Technical College (MATC) in Madison, Wisconsin, was presented the award by NSA-WI chapter president Robert Ian in November. Janet was also honored with the International Planner of the Year award by Meeting Planners International (MPI) in July.

While serving as a committee member on the MPI International Professional Development Strategy Group, Sperstad helped to develop a program to define the extensive body of knowledge in meeting planning, the first of its kind in the history of the profession. She has received numerous awards and recognition from her Wisconsin chapter, including being inducted into their Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement. Known for her passionate dedication to education, Sperstad helped create and develop the nation’s first and only associates degree program for Meeting and Event Management. She has written for and been featured in a variety of industry publications and has spoken at numerous industry events.