“Those who can’t do, teach” is the kind of nonsense said by anyone without an understanding of teaching.
Teaching, like plumbing or making a soufflé that doesn’t look like Tommy Lee Jones’s face after a bender, is a skill. After a decade teaching seventh and eighth grade kids on the West Side of Chicago how to sing and play clarinets, I have that skill and the experience to back it up.
I’ve taught workshops on everything from Branding Your Business with Events to Improv Comedy Training with a room full of advertising executives. Most popular are my Storytelling Workshops for Business.
At the end of thirty years leading workshops for everyone to corporate cogs to artistic outliers, my conclusion is that an effective class is less about the specific information presented than it is about how the audience uses it within the time given.
I strive to tailor each workshop to reflect both the values of the company and the essential skills required with plenty of real-world experience for illustration.
Below are a few of the tried and true.
EVENTS AS MARKETING
Co-presenter, PMDMC (2018)
Events Design & Strategy (with Tony Bol)
In Person
Workshop Presenter: Live Events for Public Media
Rocky Mountain Community Radio Coalition Conference (2018)
Digital Presentation
“Everyone raved about Don Hall's session on events and sponsorship.
He teed up a fun, fast-packed kickoff to our annual conference and brought thorough, tested evidence from throughout his career.
As a conference organizer, I got thanked more for Don's session than anything else we lined up.”
Gavin Dahl
President, Rocky Mountain Community Radio Coalition
General Manager, KDNK Radio
Workshop CO-Presenter:
OPTIMIZING YOUR BRAND THROUGH EVENTS
NFCB Community Media Conference (2019)
STORYTELLING
Storytelling is an essential part of both business and life. I teach workshops for companies seeking to boost the natural narrative powers of employees as well as to private folks just looking to be better at this most important skill.
From which story to tell, knowing your audience, how to structure your story, microphone technique, active metaphors, and how to combine stories to create more expansive work, by the time you finish even a three-hour workshop, you will be further equipped to own your audience and be one of those storytellers people remember for years to come.
IMPROV FOR ANYONE
I worked for Second City Chicago for a bit and then ran a small improv and sketch comedy based theater for fifteen years. As a five year veteran of Chicago ComedySportz, I own the fundamentals of the Whose Line Is It, Anyway? style as well as the Del Close Long-Form thing.
If learning to improvise onstage (or in your business) is a desire for communication or fun, I’m your guy.