Greetings:

I’d like to take just a second to introduce myself to the others at this “table” of the café. This looks like a wonderful place!

I’ve given a formal introduction in the “New Arrivals” section -- click HERE if you’d like to view it.

I’m interested in any suggestions that this community has on the following situation:

--------I’ve snipped this from my intro post------------
“I conduct various corporate training programs and presentations. For years, I’ve wanted to meaningfully introduce some mentalism in my training sessions. I say meaningful, because I simply don’t want to be perceived as consultant/trainer who “does tricks”. My desire is to be able to introduce effects in my presentations that will help illustrate a point or concept, while educating and entertaining my participants. The fact is that I have not figured out how to do this -- YET.“
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My guess would be that there are others out there who have gone down this path before. Any direction or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I look forward to contributing to this community!

Thanks in advance

Mike Spremulli

http://www.chuckhickok.com/

Mike,

The above is a link to the page of a guy who does what I think you're talking about in your post. He has a video you can watch online that is a sample of his material.

If you contact him, you can use my name. That and a buck 'll get you a cup of coffee.

Peter Stone

Mike,

I cannot say how you will achieve this, but I can provide some information on how I have achieved this.

I see my job in performances in this context to be that of getting certain key points into people's minds in a memorable and entertaining way. From that starting assumption, which I have come to by agreement with the client in my conversations with them, I then proceed to the next step, which is asking them what they are trying to get across to their audience, customers, etc. I then take what I do and tailor their message into my presentations to achieve this end. I have found this particularly easy. I believe it is easier, since I don't have to contemplate and work out what the meaning of everything I'm presenting is. The meaning of everything I do in this context is now clearly defined, and I just need to present it.

I'll give a brief example of what I have done in my work. I worked for a pharmaceutical company to promote a particular drug to a group of doctors who may prescribe this medication. I was given information, key benefits, and overall message, as well as some boxes (empty) that the drugs come in as well as many business cards of the person for whom I was working. Already my mind was jumping with ideas. I have a routine of mine that centers around a choice of 1 of 3 pictures and it ends as being shown as a prediction effect. So, I used most of what I already had in place as far as presentation, humor, and even method, but instead of drawings, I use the 3 benefits of the drug and introduce it like this. "I'm here tonight to entertain, as well as to inform. I'm going to share with you, my cheat sheets about information about X (the drug). There are many benefits of this product, but the primary 3 are: Benefit 1, Benefit 2, and Benefit 3 (I actually speak about the benefits here.) Since you are a professional and are a person who is in a position to actually make decisions about this medication and who would use it, I would like you to think in your mind of a patient of yours who would benefit from the use of this product. Do you have someone in mind? (interaction here) Ok. Now consider the 3 main benefits of this medication and think of the one benefit that would be most appropriate and specific to this patient."

It goes on further from here, and I hope you get the idea. I am getting them to actually internalize the thinking of the benefits of the product and actually using them in their practice, and believe me this has been very successful. You should have seen the client looking on as I performed this countless times seeing how I had actually made some heart medication entertaining and really had the doctors paying close attention to what I was saying about their products.

I learned about what I was to present and then made my presentations about that. I've been quite successful with it so far.

Best of luck to you in your efforts.

In thoughts,
Allen