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Garrison Wynn

Garrison Wynn

Comedian, Best-selling Author, Provides Industry Specific Business Content

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Fee Range: 10000-19999
  • As a teenager, worked with baseball legend Hank Aaron to promote the world’s first video gaming system.
  • Toured as professional standup comedian and shared the stage with household names and legends of Comedy.
  • At age 27 became the youngest department head in a Fortune 500 company’s history.
  • Designed processes for 38 locations nationwide and developed and marketed products still being sold in 30 countries.
  • Contributed weekly to The Washington Post, wrote two Amazon.com bestseller’s and coauthored with Stephen Covey.
  • Former Fortune 500 leader AND former professional stand-up comedian with fast-casual restaurant management experience, gives high-energy presentation combining leadership, influence, growth, change management and generational differences.

With talents that established him as a Fortune 500 leader and professional stand-up comedian, Garrison Wynn, CSP, fuses comic timing and research to deliver motivational business expertise. For 20 years, he has given keynote presentations to clients (such as American Express, Wells Fargo, Oracle and NASA) at corporate and association events. He is the author of the Amazon bestseller The Real Truth about Success, the Amazon #1 bestseller The Cowbell Principle, has been a weekly contributor to the Washington Post and featured Forbes and Inc. Magazines. In his teens he debuted the world’s first video gaming system (Odyssey) with baseball legend Hank Aaron and as a young man spent 6 years touring comedy clubs with the top names in the business. He went on to become the youngest department head in a Fortune 500 company’s history where he researched and designed processes for 38 company locations nationwide and developed & marketed products still being sold in 30 countries.

SAFETY EXPERIENCE
Garrison Wynn, CSP, fuses comic timing and research to show how anyone can help create a culture of safety. He is authentic – a guy who’s been there. Wynn is a chemical plant explosion survivor with a background in industrial instrumentation. For 20 years, he has given keynote presentations to clients such as Exxon, BASF, the National Safety Council, Behavioral Science and Technology (BST), the NFL, and NASA.

EXPERIENCE

Garrison helps people make the jump from being great at what they do to developing the qualities it takes to be consistently chosen for the job. He gets them to understand why their products, services, or leadership styles-or those of their competitors-are selected. As he says, “If the world agreed on what’s best, everybody would choose the best and nothing else would be considered. Decision making doesn’t work that way.” His presentations help people become more influential regardless of circumstances.

INSIGHT

Known for his ability to connect with any audience, Garrison delivers powerful, original content built on breakthrough research that he customizes with specifics from your industry. His gruntwork-to-great background from ditch digging (we’re not kidding!) to executive leadership, with sales, marketing, safety, manufacturing, and show biz in between means that no industry or work experience is beyond Garrison’s ability to identify with or apply insight to. He can reach the CEO and the janitor in the same audience with a consistent, relevant message. He personalizes programs to give audiences the relational and behavioral insights they’ll need if they want to influence and succeed.

IMPACT

Garrison delivers valuable tools your group can apply immediately. His down-to-earth, relatable style includes a strong mix of humor and realism that entertains as it educates. With TV and film credits to his name and six years as a touring professional stand-up comedian, Garrison expertly engages audiences, making his keynotes meaningful and memorable. Beyond the humor, he delivers high-impact, motivational programs that answer the big question that everyone wants to know: How do you get people to do what you want when you want?

RESEARCH

Research Results from Top Performers

The information we deliver is based on research, not theory. It started with a Gallup Institute study that surveyed 80,000 managers and one million employees to discover how employee opinion affects productivity. In addition, we have assembled the results from Wynn Solutions’ ten-year study of 5,000 leaders in 323 organizations and 21 industries that identified what the most successful have in common. All our programs include the “beyond-best” practices from Wynn Solutions’ survey of top performers.

In Demand How To Make Sure People See Your Value

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are or how much value you offer if no one wants what you have. Leadership, change management, sales, customer service, marketing, and safety all have one thing in common: they require a specific level of personal influence to be sustainably successful. This customized keynote session combines humorous storytelling with serious takeaways that will bring all the elements of your conference together for maximum impact.

The Heroes Of Zero What The Most Successful Safety Leaders Do Differently

We hear the term “employee engagement” a lot these days. We also hear how recognition, goal alignment and a clear path to success can create it. But how can engagement produce a sustainable culture of safety as we strive for zero incidents? Drawing from Gallup research across 46 countries, this highly entertaining session reveals how skilled leaders at all levels create safety: They give employees what they value most—the feeling that they are valued. From this session, leaders acquire specific communication tools they can use to dramatically reduce resistance to change and to create a safer work environment. The impact of this program reaches far beyond the session itself, creating an emotional shift that fuels immediate implementation.

Change = Success: Creating Transition without Revolution

Success is almost always about working well with others to get the best possible results. The issue is that not everyone agrees on what is important, and it becomes difficult to get everyone on board when change is required to create or maintain success. Also, some people are so set in their ways and resistant to change that they see everything through a filter of suspicion. Or worse, things get overly dramatic or stressful and can develop into a “blame distribution” environment that affects morale and productivity.

In this entertaining and inspirational research-based session, best-selling author Garrison Wynn shows how leaders, managers, and supervisors can achieve cohesion without manipulation, and to create clear, unified actions to quickly resolve conflicts. You’ll find out how to make sure people value your opinion, respect your decisions (and the organization’s new way), and quickly turn resistance into workable collaborations.

Millennial Loyalty: Keeping and Attracting Top Young Talent

People in their 20s don’t want what their parents wanted from a job. They are also more likely to live at home and less likely to put up with a work environment that cramps their style. What a shift in mindset! Attracting the young people needed to replace your retiring workforce (and making sure they stay long enough to make a difference) is crucial for your organization’s future. This entertaining yet heavily researched program shows business owners, leaders and managers how to adapt their organization into a company young people want to work for and how to establish a culture they do not want to leave. Besides actually having a work force 10 years from now, the benefits include improved performance and heightened accountability from the millennials who represent your company’s future.

The Truth About Customer Service: Being the Best vs. Being Consistently Chosen

Success is more than being good at what you do; it’s about being consistently chosen to do it. This entertaining, customer service keynote will address several key behavioral practices that will separate the customer service your clients receive from that of your competition.

We’ve all heard the importance of customer satisfaction and loyalty; but why is it that customers who spend the most money can be lured away by organizations that don’t appear to provide much service and have a higher price? This session provides original research on managing expectations and emotions and shows that there really is more to customer service than just showing you care.

Best practices, being able to master the skills of your job is very important. To be consistently chosen over the competition we must learn to move beyond best practices. Garrison will discuss the importance of making an impact that leaves a lasting impression on the customer in the first five seconds of the encounter.

He will discuss the importance of not making the customer wrong. To move beyond best practices your employees must understand the importance of making the customer feel heard and feel that their wants and needs are important. Garrison helps people to understand why their products, services, or presentation styles – or those of their competitors – are selected.

People don’t necessarily choose what’s best; they choose what they are most comfortable with. This program contains original research on managing expectations and emotions, understanding the importance of great body language, people skills and customer focused listening practices that proves there really is more to success than being the best.

Key points in Garrison’s customer service keynote:

  • How to be right without making your customers wrong
  • The truth about trust: Gaining influence with difficult people
  • What customers really want: Solutions to well defined problems
  • How to make customers feel important and heard in 30 seconds
  • How to get customers/clients to listen to you
  • What the most successful do differently: What 5000 top customer service providers have in common
  • Showing the value of your service
Customer Service Is Dying and I'm Not Feeling So Good Myself!

Have you ever called a company and been greeted with “Hold, please”? How do they know you can hold? They don’t even know who you are. Maybe you can’t hold; maybe you have 10 seconds of juice left on your cell phone and your hair is on fire. Then you finally get someone on the phone, only to be told, “I can’t actually help you; I’m just paid to apologize, and I’m really sorry about that.”

Being frustrated by a lack of customer service is nothing new. It just seems that in the last few years, companies have become more innovative at not helping you solve your problems.

We are as busy as we have ever been, and many younger people were not brought up in the traditional culture of customer service. But none of these excuses will protect your business in today’s challenging economy where customers question value even with companies they have known for years.

Maybe it’s time to get back to basics and make service a real priority. Sure, plenty of
companies claim to offer great customer care. But raising your service standards requires more than a promise; you need to set concrete goals and establish effective procedures to meet them. Whether you own the company, handle key accounts, or just accidentally encounter your customers, this session will be of interest to you.

This program is also available as a breakout session.

Customer Service Keynote (or breakout session) for Generation X and Y Employees

Customer Service Is Dying–and I’m Not Feeling So Good Myself 
Great customer service involves more than fixing problems; it requires a sympathetic attitude that makes customers feel valued. Your voice and attentiveness speak volumes, especially when the phone’s your only way to convey customer care. But for many younger workers, striking that sympathetic tone seems phony: “I resolve complaints fast… Do I really have to make nice, too?” This entertaining, research-based program helps young service providers understand that they’re judged not just on their skills and intelligence but on how they ultimately make people feel. Attendees learn how to establish the kind of trust that can dramatically improve the customer’s perception of the encounter. They’ll also learn the importance of managing expectations and emotions so customers stay satisfied and loyal.

Being the Best vs. Being Consistently Chosen

Success is more than being good at what you do; it’s about being consistently chosen to do it. Garrison helps people to understand why their products, services or leadership styles or those of their competitors are selected. People don’t necessarily choose what’s best; they choose what they are most comfortable with, whether it’s the best or not. We’ve all heard the importance of best practices and superior knowledge, so why aren’t the smartest people with the most information always in charge or number one in their field? This keynote provides original research on managing expectations and emotions and shows there really is more to success than being the best.

The Truth About Leadership Success: Turning Talent into Performance

This entertaining research-based keynote reveals how top performing leaders harness the power of their advantages. Business relationship expert and Amazon.com bestselling author Garrison Wynn delivers a high-impact program that answers two monumental questions: How do you get people to do what you want them to do? And how can you get better results from the difficult employees you encounter along the way? With an emphasis on what you can actually walk out of the session with and achieve tomorrow; this program shows you how to weather the perfect storm while still looking really good in a raincoat!

Managing Managers: How to Create Great Leaders

“Knowing what to do and getting people to do what they are supposed to do have very little common.” — Garrison Wynn
Often top performing employees are unable to transition their skill into leadership roles. This research-based breakout session takes a look at how to lead those new to management and provides the specific tools they need to develop high-impact leadership skills. This breakout provides take-away content to remove obstacles that prevent new managers from succeeding.

Making the Most of Difficult Situations: Changing Markets, Changing Times

This funny, insightful keynote combines relationship building with no-fluff motivation and change to deliver real solutions in uncertain times. Professional keynote speaker and business relationship expert Garrison Wynn examines the challenges we face and shows how we can laugh at our problems while using them as catalysts for success. This session covers a lot of ground and provides no-cost, easily implemented, proven solutions that your people can use right away.

The Truth About Success: Being the Best vs. Being Consistently Chosen

Success is more than being good at what you do; it’s about being consistently chosen to do it. Garrison helps people to understand why their products, services or leadership styles or those of their competitors are selected. People don’t necessarily choose what’s best; they choose what they are most comfortable with, whether it’s the best or not. We’ve all heard the importance of best practices and superior knowledge, so why aren’t the smartest people with the most information always in charge or number one in their field? This keynote provides original research on managing expectations and emotions and shows there really is more to success than being the best.

Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance

In this keynote, results from the largest management survey ever conducted are combined with real-life management and leadership solutions to get the most from your people, regardless of their skill level. Participants learn how to manage their ego-driven top producers, how to listen like leaders and make their people feel heard, how to hire for talent and turn it into top performance, how to create a culture of excellence with their most promising people and how to help their low performers fight their way to the middle.

Generations Working Better Together

This extremely informative, entertaining, solutions-based session explores why younger and older people don’t see eye to eye, and what to do about it in the workplace. From pointers on motivating, managing and retaining younger employees to ways of preventing older managers from losing their minds, this research-based program shows it’s possible for baby boomers and Gen X and Y employees to work well together.

The Real Truth About Success: What the Top 1% Do Differently and Why They Won't Tell You

A decade of Wynn Solutions research reveals what makes owners and managers of top-performing businesses so effective – and it’s not what you’d expect! If you enter this keynote session expecting to learn all about best practices and superior products, you’d better read the title again. Standout success in a difficult economy often comes from personal advantage – whether it’s cosmetic, leadership communication, personality, resources or access to privileged information. Top performers rarely acknowledge this because it tends to make their success sound less impressive or undeserved. Prepare to laugh and learn.

Dissolving Conflicts: Separating the Data from the Drama

Success is almost always about working well with others to get the best possible result. The issue is not everyone agrees on what’s important, and it becomes difficult to separate fact from fiction. Also, some people are so set-in-their-ways that they see everything through a filter of distrust. Or worse, things get overly dramatic and can develop into a “blame distribution” environment that affects morale and productivity.

This entertaining research-based session shows you how to gain agreement without manipulation and create clear, unified actions so you can quickly dissolve conflicts.You’ll find out how to make sure people value your opinion and quickly turn disputes into workable collaborations.

What The Most Influential Leaders Do Differently

This insightful keynote session delivers the specific actions that attract, create and retain top talent. Based on new research about the origins of outstanding performance and laced with Garrison’s trademark professional-grade humor – this program is high on content and low on boredom.

Influence in Action: How to Consistently Hold People Accountable

Great ideas are rarely good enough to get people to take action. Sound, well-structured logic regularly loses out to mediocre ideas from leaders who really know how to influence. This high-impact, research-based session focuses on revealing the true key to accountability: not intelligence or strategy, but an understanding of what makes people feel valuable. In this entertaining, interactive and sometimes brutally honest session, Garrison shows executives how to create a culture of accountability, even among employees at different performance levels. You’ll learn how to push your average and low performers to reach a higher level and how to hold ego-driven top performers accountable without causing them (or you) to lose the will to live.

Making Employee Engagement Actually Happen

We hear the term “employee engagement” a lot these days; we also hear how recognition, goal alignment and a clear path to success can create it. But how can an individual positively influence the opinions his or her employees and coworkers have about their job? This highly entertaining session, backed by Evolve Performance Group research across 46 countries (and combined with over 70 years of Gallup survey data) shows that the thing people value most is feeling valuable! It gives the specific communication tools that anyone can use to dramatically reduce resistance to change, difficult behavior and employee turnover. The impact of this program reaches far beyond the session itself, creating an emotional shift that fuels immediate implementation.

Presentation Topics

Influence and Presentation Skills: Action and adaptability create opportunity
High-Impact Presentations: Connecting to your audience
Structure and Flow: Preparing for Individual and Public Presentations
Comedy is truth: Only faster! Finding your original humor
Speaking Like a Speaker
Presenting Like a Leader
Complete Presentation Skills Training for Financial Professionals

The REAL Truth about Success: What the most influential leaders do differently

Be prepared to laugh and learn as this research-based keynote reveals how top franchise owners and managers harness the power of their personal and organizational influence. Amazon.com No.1 bestselling author Garrison Wynn delivers a high-impact program that answers four monumental questions: How do you get people to do what you want them to do? How can you make sure you are seeing the “Big Picture” when you are running a QSR business/restaurant location? How can you identify/attract talent and create the performance you need to grow? And how can different generations help each other succeed? With an emphasis on what you can actually walk out of the session with and achieve tomorrow; this program shows you how to weather the perfect storm while still looking really good in a raincoat!

Change is Mandatory...Stress is Optional

Change is something we all have to deal with, but the stress that accompanies change is more of choice. In this heavily researched session, Garrison applies his signature humor to a very serious topic. This fun, comprehensive program offers tools and tips for getting through big change with very little stress. More importantly, it creates an emotional shift for attendees as they see how much control they have over how change affects them. This session also shows attendees how stress is more about what we believe than it is about what is actually happening. From embracing big transitions in technology to dealing with growth or downsizing, this presentation helps leaders, employees and customers implement necessary changes with minimal resistance.

Safety Topics

Safety Training Program: Communicating Safety
Safety Training: How to effectively communicate the importance of safety
Communication Training for Safety Managers: Program Agenda

US Beef
Well, back in the office, and the event is being called "The Best Ever!" by our executive team. Garrison is a pro's pro. He took our pre-con conference call, and unlike past presenters, was able to weave our theme and our core culture points of "Commitment – Humility – Respect" throughout it, and he did so with ease and continuity while entertaining the audience continuously. But like I said, not only did the audience enjoy him, but our executive team knew we made the right decision to put him on first – just as he suggested. Using our past keynote presenters as reference points, they felt Garrison was indeed the best, and able to adapt his speech to our message.
SUBWAY
Funny, fast and entertaining. I was shocked at how much information I received from just the 30 min that Garrison spoke. His energy level was way up there and the stories tied it all together! After 30 years in Subway he was one of the top 3 I have ever seen. Thanks again for being part of our team too.
United Natural Foods, Inc.
Garrison Wynn is super funny, makes meeting time go fast, and does very thorough research and review with his clients prior to presenting. He was the perfect choice. He inspired the team on how we could each go forward with all the key initiatives that management developed tools for and discussed at this year’s retreat. I had so many team members pull me aside after the talk to thank us for providing a speaker who really understood what they go through and even our industry terminology. He really did an outstanding job of teaching us to look within ourselves to find personal power and new ways to approach customers and sell products and services.
Vilore Foods
I just wanted to personally reach out and thank you for the outstanding and memorable performance you made for Vilore Foods! The team is still talking about the meeting…. It will go down as the best in Vilore history!
BakeMark USA
The meeting went very well and Garrison was quite the hit. I am told from a few of the folks that have been around BakeMark for quite some time that it was the first time they had ever seen the crowd give a standing ovation for a speaker. It was truly an enjoyable evening.
Panera Bread
Thank you again for helping make my Sales Conference so Awesome. We have had many different speakers year after year, but none have gotten such rave reviews, as you have! My Sales Managers are already asking for more Garrison next year! It was a pleasure working with you and I really appreciate the way you tied in your presentation to our Business! You took the time to research and speak with my people and it made a WORLD of difference! It is difficult to keep a group focused all day, but you did just that! Looking forward to having you present again in the very near future!
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