the
welcome to the Eagles talent training now program i'm your host sheldon senic
today we welcome keynote speaker who truly understands humor balance and
being healthy in the workplace Claire Berger Claire welcome to our program and
thank you so much for joining us thanks so much it's good to be here uh Claire
we're going to focus our conversation today on plane communities but before we
do that I'd love to hear about your journey from second city to being a
successful keynote speaker well you know for me comedy has always been a
marketing tool as as a communicator I got out of college of the degree in
communications I knew that if I wanted to perform i would have to create my own
stage I would have to find my audiences and so becoming a speaker and becoming a
stand-up was really an organic process for me as sort of a self marketer and
second city was fantastic place for me to hone my skills I stay Chicago is the
best place to learn comedy it's just awesome how much history there oh so
much history in the second city walls there's ghosts that Thun encourage you
and help you and it's just amazing so second city was a wonderful sort of
launching pad for me and then I decided you know I'm not going to go through my
life with five brilliant people over my shoulder baby when they havin a bad
punch line so it was time to strike out on my own do stand-up and I've traveled
the world as a stand-up and as a warm-up comedian working for sitcoms like
Seinfeld and friends and Murphy Brown and that was great for me as a parent
because at that point I had young children and it was a chance for me to
keep performing but also stay home so it was good and then I realized there was a
bigger audience than people that just went to comedy clubs and television
shows that really wanted to figure out how to have fun while getting the job
done and I developed this humor consulting firm called funny works and
it sort of grown from there we have this incredible movement in the country right
now the study of happiness right and it makes me so happy because I know you
know there's all this medical data about the study of depression but
slee happiness is what sustains us as people as professionals as a world and
its really my personal mission so I'm thrilled to be able to speak about it
right uh you recently spoke for a planned community group in Texas first
some people may not know the plan community is would you talk about this
kind of audience and how important these groups are to a community well you know
the great thing about playing communities and i should say i actually
live in a planned community i live in playa vista california and for me as a
single woman to have the opportunity to live in a very warm thoughtful community
and i think that's the key to a planned community their thoughtful there well
thought out plan community sort of rise from the imagination of real estate
developers and planners and engineers and sustainable engineers and people
that really want to protect the land and the nature around it and create a sense
of home for the people that want to reside there and I think the common
misconception about planned communities is they just come into an area and just
take over and it's really not like that it's really about cherishing and
protecting what's already there and then making it a home for families because of
the various professions that are you know these plain community professionals
are filled with probably so much stress is it accurate to say that you're really
trying to inspire and renew the jury for their profession I am and you know this
is a very uncertain time for for real estate all over America plan communities
I think have a little edge because people that are attracted to living in
planned communities already sort of know what they want they already kind of have
a community targeted for themselves but that doesn't always make it easier the
real estate agents that I have met that have been in my audiences are very
enterprising they're very self-promotional but they still have
this unrelenting always coming up with a new way to attract people to the
communities and I think some of the best real estate agents can be found
representing Pretty's in planned communities but
everybody needs some inspiration everybody needs a reminder that it's
really not about selling property rights are communicating with people it's about
establishing relationships you might get caught up in that exactly exactly it's
not the bottom line it's not how many bedrooms and bathrooms a figma square
footage is that's the product but the process is really about communicating
with people um truly where they live I mean literally and metaphorically and
that's what really charges me up about these audiences so what are some areas
that you cover in your presentation you know we talked about we me and my me and
my shoulders I reckon I talk about a really my journey to find happiness and
succeed in my life I really site some really specific examples of companies
not just a real estate but companies all over the world that have figured out a
way to keep their employees happy and as a result they become great producers you
know there's that old adage that the fish stinks from the head down and a lot
of my audience are the the top producers they're the owners of these real estate
agencies there are the heads of the city planning boards if they set the tone
that this is a happy process but this is a joyful experience that this is a
community that is filled with optimism and joy it's a healthy message it's a
healthy goes down right exactly for that for the future residents for the current
residents and for the professionals that sell the community and I'm really there
is a reminder to just say look I want you to really think a little bit more
about your process I want you to kind of branch out from your own rote
memorization of how does you do things and really think about how to infuse joy
right i guess like sickness happinesses could be contagious absolutely and and
it could be and it can be learned it's not an eight you know people have said
to me oh you know you have yours is a stand up you know I don't I don't wanna
you know I don't know how to be funny it's not about being funny it's really
not and I think the world would be a very scary place if we were all standing
committee good huh but what I want to say is that it really is about
tapping into the joy that you feel the passion that you feel for your
profession and the personal ways that you can communicate that to your
potential clients and again this works in in planned communities this works
I've worked for mortgage bankers there's all kinds of people related to the real
estate business that really understand how important is to approach your
profession with a sense of personal optimistic joy well how difficult is it
these days really to balance happiness between the professional and home life
well I think at all of us have to kind of take a new approach to him you know I
think we all get in kind of a routine we work we come home we veg out and go to
sleep we wake up we do it all over again um for me you know to really plan some
real social time after work a time to reconnect the friends and family a time
to really pay attention to the people that have have put me here right you
know that make me happy that you know that really give me a reason to
understand why it is that I work so hard then when I do go to work and I really
put my you know my feet to the fire I know why I'm doing it and I think a lot
of us lose sight of that and I'm here to remind you well you know and also in
this day and age where we constantly are looking at our phones and we're
connected more so than we used to be in that work life in home life really can
sometimes collide or intersect I guess but you know when you think about a
planned community it's a rare opportunity to bring a lot of people
together in really small intimate old-fashioned ways you know one of the
things that we talk about is you know how do you recreate a sense of community
you've got all the buildings you've got that you know that the aura of the town
a small town what's where's the heart how do you find the heart and the the
recent one of the recent programs i did was a co-branding session between two
huge planned communities the woodlands in ridgeland two of the best I frankly
planned communities in the country they're joining forces
and we were trying to come up with ways you know that they could really rebrand
and come together and one of the members the audience had the most brilliant
thought because he said you know what we are we are 26.2 miles away from each
other exactly well that's the length of the marathon and suddenly we came up
with this amazing idea of doing a marathon to connect the communities
literally chasing the people from what ha but not with like it this amazing
idea for a race that could become a tradition and that's the other thing we
talked about is really how do you neighborhoods are rooted in tradition so
what are some joyful ways that we can do that that makes that increases tourism
that increases you know the opportunity for people to come to the community that
maybe don't live there and it was just it's an exciting thing for me to give
members of the real estate community permission to really do some crazy
thinking and to really infuse some new joy into some traditional marketing
approaches ah in addition to keynote presentations you also do breakout
sessions yes could you describe the benefits of a plane like a plane
community or any group that they receive from these sessions well I think what I
offer is a more intimate approach to do some improvisational exercises and that
I've learned at second city right I've sort of reconstructed to make work in
the corporate world and certainly in real estate one of the things that we do
is like i said earlier take a new look at the community and try to think about
a new way of approaching an old problem or in a challenge one of the things that
um the bridgeland woodlands community has is a brand-new sprayground that's
going to be opening this alone now i would have loved that growing up I mean
I had playgrounds free grounds so I challenged my breakout session
participants to come up with other non-traditional approaches for community
space and I think it was kind of the comfort zone that they felt it was
permission that I had given them and this is my question that I say to to
management in my audiences are you giving
your brokers are you giving your employees permission to bring fun and
joy into their work and I gave them permission and they came up with the
most amazing recreational spaces that quite frankly I had never considered and
it was inspiring for me to watch these participants their brain synapses or
their eyes were sparkling and they were really coming up with real solid ideas
that could be implemented it was great so they're really walking away with some
real important nuggets of information and creativity after your presentation
well yeah I so much and that's probably the highest compliment that I can get
from the people that invite me to speak is that they said you know you've asked
me to look at my profession a little differently you ask the problem solve
with a little bit more optimism not that crisis mode that we always drink sting
shuli get into you know how can we approach the situation and a little
different level of optimism and um and that's the highest compliment anybody
pays me like I'm going to have fun at my work you know at my workplace now I'm
going to have fun doing my job in a way that I never thought I said so what are
some things that you have learned about these groups and their challenges that
the from speaking at their engagements you know I think the biggest challenge
that people face right now is the relentless hamster wheel that we're all
on and right with the you know the just the just the opportunity that people
have to find a way to infuse joy this is what I do for a living this is not and
this is also my mission as a person I'm unlike unlike you unlike everybody I've
had challenges I've had trauma iPad health issue everybody has you know as I
tell my kids everybody gets still to have and it's what you do with that is
really what increases your health and happiness and I think that by being
really honest with my audiences they're really being honest with me and I get an
enormous amount of inspiration and optimism from the stories that my
audiences tell me and this really is a very intimate exchange of ideas and
information and inspiration I don't just stand in front of people
and lecture it's right that's just not my style everything is really
interactive I'm a huge story teller I collect stories for living that's really
what I do and the stories that I tell have tritium you know pretty an
important impact I think people tell me a lot that there's there's things I say
that stick with them when they're struggling with a problem they remember
something that I said and it just means the world to me it's great well on that
note Claire thank you so much for being with us if you're interested in bringing
Claire into your next event you can visit Eagles talent com I've been your
host Sheldon senic and this has been the Eagles talent trending now program thank
you for watching
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