Most Requested · Fully CustomGeneral / Flexible Presentation
Every audience is different — and every event deserves a message that feels intentional, not generic.
Jody does not force a room into a pre-packaged title. If none of the named programs below is quite right, this is the one to book: a keynote built from scratch around your organization, your theme, your people and the outcome you need from the hour.
Before the event, Jody works with you to learn the audience, the culture, the internal language, the wins worth celebrating and the pressure the room is under. Then he builds the talk — drawing from 24 years of military leadership, Master Resilience Trainer certification, Maxwell leadership principles and a national clean comedy career — and adapts the humor, the stories and the takeaways to fit.
The same person can open your conference with leadership content in the morning, close your awards banquet with clean comedy at night, and make both feel like they were written for you. Corporate teams, educators, healthcare staff, utility crews, civic and government employees, military units, churches and community groups all get a version that fits their room.
What You Get
- A keynote written around your theme, mission and event goals, not a stock speech
- Pre-event conversation to learn your audience, culture and inside language
- Clean, generational-proof humor that works from the board table to the shop floor
- Leadership, resilience, communication, morale or pure entertainment — weighted the way you need
- Flexible length and format: opening keynote, closing session, breakout, banquet or after-dinner show
LeadershipLeadership That Lasts: Principles, People, and Purpose
Leadership isn’t a position — it’s a daily practice.
In this engaging, high-energy talk, Jody blends proven leadership principles with real-world experience from 24 years of military service and a national stage career.
Through clean humor, practical insight and relatable storytelling, audiences learn how to lead with influence, build stronger teams and create cultures rooted in trust, accountability and growth — whether they carry a title or not.
Key Outcomes
- Strengthen leadership influence at every level of the organization
- Improve communication and team connection
- Navigate conflict with clarity and confidence
- Build accountability without killing morale
- Lead with purpose that outlasts the current quarter
Teamwork & CultureOne Team, One Mission: The Power of Working as One
Nobody wins alone — and no unit survives on talent it refuses to share.
Jody learned the cost of a fractured team the hard way: in a deployed Army unit where silos and turf get people hurt. He brings that lesson back to the workplace with humor instead of a lecture.
This program is built for organizations dealing with department-versus-department friction, mergers, shift or generational divides, or a group that has simply forgotten it is on the same side. Audiences leave with a shared language for cooperation and a clearer sense of the mission they hold in common.
Key Outcomes
- Break down silos between departments, shifts, and locations
- Reconnect daily work to a mission everyone recognizes
- Build trust across roles, ranks and generations
- Replace blame culture with shared ownership
- Give teams a common vocabulary they keep using after the event
ResilienceThe Resilience Roadmap: Leadership, Laughter, and Life Lessons
Resilience isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you build — usually on a bad day.
As a U.S. Army Master Resilience Trainer and ASIST-certified speaker, Jody teaches resilience the way the Army teaches it: as a set of skills, not a slogan. Then he makes it stick with the kind of storytelling that leaves a room laughing on the way to the point.
Drawing on poverty, a lifelong stutter, three deployments to Iraq and a career built on the very thing he was told would hold him back, Jody gives audiences a practical roadmap for absorbing hardship, staying steady under pressure, and leading other people through both.
Key Outcomes
- Learn resilience as a trainable skill set, not a personality trait
- Recognize and interrupt the thinking traps that magnify setbacks
- Use humor and perspective as legitimate coping tools
- Support teammates who are struggling without overstepping
- Leave with a repeatable framework for the next hard season
Motivation & AdversityLaughing Through Life: Turning Trials into Triumph
Life doesn’t always go according to plan — but adversity doesn’t have to define the outcome.
Jody combines clean comedy with powerful storytelling to show audiences how resilience, gratitude and perspective can transform even the toughest challenges.
Drawing from his experience as a lifelong stutterer, a small-town Alabama kid and a U.S. Army veteran with three tours in Iraq, Jody delivers an unforgettable keynote that is heartfelt, hilarious and deeply encouraging. Audiences leave energized, hopeful and reminded that their story still matters.
Key Outcomes
- Reframe adversity as preparation, not punishment
- Use humor as a healthy leadership and coping tool
- Strengthen resilience in both professional and personal life
- Renew motivation for teams facing fatigue or transition
- Recognize the power of influence in everyday roles
CommunicationListen, Learn, Lead: The Heart of True Communication
In a world full of noise, real leadership begins with one simple skill: listening.
Jody blends humor, personal story and proven leadership principles to show how meaningful connection drives influence, trust and impact.
As a lifelong stutterer, U.S. Army veteran, TEDx speaker and John Maxwell Certified Speaker, Jody brings a perspective on communication that goes well beyond talking points. Through clean comedy and practical insight, audiences learn how to move from merely communicating to truly connecting.
Key Outcomes
- Strengthen influence through intentional listening
- Improve team communication and collaboration
- Use humor to build trust and disarm tension
- Apply practical connection principles immediately
- Create cultures where people feel seen and valued
Purpose & EngagementPurpose, Passion & Pride: Owning the Work You Were Born to Do
People don’t burn out from hard work. They burn out from work that stopped meaning anything.
This program is for the organizations whose people are competent, tenured and quietly disengaged. Jody reconnects the room to the reason the work exists — the customer, the member, the student, the patient, the neighbor on the other end of the job.
It is equal parts humor and dignity: a reminder that craftsmanship, ownership and pride are still available to anyone willing to claim them, no matter the title on the badge.
Key Outcomes
- Reconnect daily tasks to real-world impact
- Rebuild pride of workmanship across every role
- Move people from compliance to ownership
- Strengthen retention by making the work mean something again
- Celebrate the unglamorous jobs that hold the organization together
Change & TransitionTired of Adapting: Leading Yourself Through Change You Didn’t Ask For
Everybody talks about leading change. Almost nobody talks about surviving the eighth one in a row.
New system. New leadership. New structure. New expectations. Jody speaks directly to the people who are not resisting change — they are simply exhausted by it — and gives them a way to lead themselves through it with their sanity and their sense of humor intact.
Built for organizations in the middle of a merger, a reorganization, a technology rollout, a leadership turnover or a policy shift, this keynote acknowledges the fatigue honestly, then hands the room something they can actually do about it.
Key Outcomes
- Name change fatigue honestly instead of pretending it away
- Separate what you control from what you only absorb
- Steady yourself first so you can steady your team
- Keep performance up through the messy middle of a transition
- Rebuild trust with people who have heard promises before
Burnout & Well-BeingBurned Out, Not Broken: How to Refill the Tank Without Quitting Your Job
Burnout is not a character flaw. It’s a fuel problem — and fuel can be replaced.
Jody delivers this one with the credibility of a Master Resilience Trainer and the relief of a comedian: no shame, no lecture, no wellness clichés that nobody uses on Monday.
Audiences learn to spot the early signs of burnout in themselves and their coworkers, to set boundaries that survive a busy season, and to refill the tank in ways that fit a real schedule. Especially effective for healthcare, education, public safety, utilities, social services and any workforce that has run hot for years.
Key Outcomes
- Recognize burnout early — in yourself and in your team
- Set practical boundaries that hold up in a busy season
- Replace guilt-driven overwork with sustainable effort
- Give leaders language for a conversation they have been avoiding
- Leave with recovery habits that fit an actual workweek
Morale & AppreciationThe Work Matters: Restoring Morale When the Thanks Are Rare
Some jobs never get applause. They still hold everything together.
Written for the rooms full of people who keep the lights on, the buses running, the halls clean, the claims processed and the calls answered — and who rarely hear about it unless something breaks.
Jody spent 24 years in an organization full of thankless jobs, and he knows how to honor that work without sentimentality. Part morale event, part keynote, this program sends people back to work standing a little straighter. It is a natural fit for employee appreciation events, service award banquets and all-staff meetings.
Key Outcomes
- Give overlooked teams genuine, specific recognition
- Rebuild morale in departments that carry constant pressure
- Equip leaders to notice and name good work more often
- Reduce the cynicism that builds up in long-tenured staff
- Turn an appreciation event into something people actually remember
Clean ComedyThe After-Dinner Clean Comedy Show
Thirty to sixty minutes of stand-up you can play in front of your board, your pastor, and your grandmother.
The banquet headliner. Stories about small-town Alabama, Army medics and motor pools, stuttering through the drive-thru, and the joys of a big family — with your organization’s people, acronyms and running jokes worked into the set.
This is the same material Jody performs on Dry Bar Comedy and for church congregations: no profanity, no politics, no punching down. Available as a stand-alone show or as the comedy half of a keynote-and-comedy evening.
Best For
- Awards banquets, annual meetings and holiday parties
- Fundraising galas — warms the room before the ask
- Employee and volunteer appreciation nights
- Church comedy nights and men’s/women’s events
- Emcee-plus-headliner formats
Emcee & HostEmcee & Event Host
The person holding your program together should be able to read a room — and rescue one.
Jody hosts full multi-day programs: opening the general session, working the exhibit hall or marketplace, keeping transitions tight, covering for the inevitable delay and carrying the awards dinner home.
He learns your agenda, your sponsors, your award recipients and your inside jokes beforehand, so the room hears a host who belongs to the organization rather than a stranger reading cue cards. Available with or without a keynote or comedy set inside the same event.
Formats
- Conference general sessions and multi-day programs
- Awards dinners, banquets and recognition ceremonies
- Exhibit hall, marketplace and trade-show hosting
- Annual meetings, galas and fundraising programs
- Emcee plus keynote or comedy set in the same booking
