Speaking
Bring John to your event.
A preacher's timing, a businessman's plain talk, and a story that has been fifty years in the making.
I have spent my life in two kinds of rooms. I have stood in the wings of a theater calling the cues that make a show come alive, and I have stood in a pulpit trying to point a congregation toward something they cannot see but can feel. I have run surgery centers, made payroll, lost businesses, buried people I loved, and spent thirty years politely declining a call I could not shake.
What I talk about is the thing underneath all of it — the quiet, stubborn pull toward a larger life that almost everybody feels and almost nobody obeys. I call it the Tug.
Every talk opens with a laugh, lands on something true, and sends people out with something to actually do on Monday. Not a leap. An inch.
The Talks
Six talks, tuned to your room
1. I Sent You a Canoe
Hearing the voice you keep ignoring.
The flagship. A man on a roof waves off a canoe, a boat, and a helicopter while waiting for God to save him — and drowns. We laugh, and then we recognize ourselves. This talk is about the rescue that already arrived, and the practical art of telling the real voice apart from the noise.
Good for: almost any room. Conferences, churches, general audiences.
2. Get Off Your But
The anatomy of a leap.
In 2006 I walked away from a secure career I loved and, after thirty years of saying “not yet,” stepped into a pulpit with no credentials. I am also the man who needed six months to switch from whole milk to two percent. This talk is about how the most cautious person in the room leaps anyway — and why fear is the toll at the bridge, not a stop sign.
Good for: entrepreneurs, career-changers, leadership teams, anyone standing at an edge.
3. Don't Waste the Fire
Turning failure into foundation.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger” is on a lot of posters, and it is only half true. Pain is not a vitamin. It's raw material — and raw material can become a cathedral or a heap. My first businesses all failed. This talk is about the honesty that turns wreckage into a foundation, and why the growth is never in the surviving.
Good for: organizations in transition, recovery and support communities, anyone in a hard season.
4. No Regrets
The welded life.
I do not regret a single decision I have ever made — and I have made some poor ones. Not because they were all good, but because I cannot pull the thread I regret without unraveling the people I love most. This is the most personal talk I give, and the one that most often ends with a quiet room.
Good for: almost any audience. Best programmed as a closer.
5. Success or Significance
What actually gets read at the end.
I have stood at the front of a lot of funerals, and I have never once heard anyone read a résumé. Success is what you accumulate; significance is what you leave behind. This talk is about the ladder that turns out to be leaning on the wrong wall — and the three letters I gave back after I finally did the math.
Good for: leaders, boards, graduates, volunteers, service clubs.
6. The Curtain and the Cross
Your life is a curriculum.
Standing twelve feet above a stage on closing night, I could suddenly see the whole machine — every invisible person doing one small job at exactly the right instant. It struck me that this is not just true of a musical. Nothing in your life is wasted. Not the detour, not the dead end, not the years you think you threw away.
Good for: commencements, milestones, anyone who feels like a pile of loose threads.
Formats
However your program is built
Each talk runs a full keynote hour and can be cut to 20 or 40 minutes to fit your program. I also preach, lead retreats and half-day workshops, and speak to book clubs and small groups by video.
Every talk is tuned to the room before I walk into it — a sanctuary, a ballroom, and a graduation are three different rooms, and they should not get the same talk.
Who I've spoken to
For more than two decades I have spoken to healthcare and business audiences across the country on the work I know from the inside — I have run the centers, met the payrolls, and written the books my industry actually uses.
And for the better part of twenty years I have preached in churches all over western New York as a Commissioned Lay Pastor in the Presbytery of the Genesee Valley.
The two callings were never in competition. They are two hands of the same man, and the work has always been better for being done with both.
“Stop waiting for the thunderclap. Get in the boat.”— from The Tug
Booking
Let's talk about your event.
Tell me a little about your group, your date, and the room. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for it — and if I'm not, I'll try to point you to someone who is.