Story Coaching for Performance

I can teach you how to develop funny, relatable stories for the stage/performance. Maybe you’ve got a wedding toast to give or a funeral coming up. Or you want to win a Moth SLAM, crush it at Toastmasters, or take a series of jokes and turn them into something deeper that you use to build an hour of standup.

If your public speaking skills are nascent or rusty I can coach you into confidence, quick.

If you're a comedian who wants to develop stories are more memorable than 5-10 minutes of setups and punchlines, I'm your guy.

If you're a storyteller who isn't sure if the audience is silent because they're thoughtfully engaged or because they're totally bored, I can show you how to maximize your laughs.

My performing clients have appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon," "The Daily Show," Comedy Central's "This Is Not Happening," and "Ramy" on Hulu. I work with performers at all levels, from complete beginners to nationally touring headliners.

PRIVATE COACHING
One-on-one coaching can be focused, efficient, and conform to meet your needs completely. Maybe the story you want to develop doesn't map specifically to a group workshop. Or you want to keep new material under wraps for a little while so you can drop it hard and leave a crater later. It could be that you know you want to make something awful into something inspiring and funny and you're understandably shy.

Maybe your story is bigger than you thought and you're trying to make sense of it and the jokes are good but man, it's dragging in between the punchlines.

Contact me to learn more about 1:1 coaching for story performance.

GROUP WORKSHOPS You learn a lot when you share with other people. Getting notes from a group, sharing your input and developing a shared language for a story fast-forwards your development - and at a lonely, difficult time it's a lot of fun!

Join my mailing list here and you'll get announcements as soon as the next round of workshops is open. Now that the world is learning online, you can take the class from London, Australia and McMurdo Station if you want!

Contact me to learn more about upcoming workshops.

There are a lot of "storytelling coaches" out there, "brand story experts," etc. Most of them got up at the Moth twice and now spend more time on their Instagram profiles than their writing and performing.

If you want to sound like an inspirational yoga mat, I'm not your guy.

If you want someone who's spent twelve years getting New Yorkers to stop texting and start laughing, read on.

There are maybe ten storytelling coaches in the United States who reliably and consistently get onstage and put in the work to grow as writers and performers themselves. Five of those people took my classes.

Look, it's only bragging if you can't back up the claim. You can check out my albums of standup and storytelling here and see video of a live performance here:

I’d been performing stand-up for a few years, and was starting to get into storytelling. I felt comfortable with the stage aspect but I wanted more help with the structure. I wanted to know how to consistently put together the funny moments in my life into story format. Jeff taught me the value in, and the process of, finding what’s driving a story forward, and how to use that information to help you create a well-crafted tale. But more so, he gave me the tools to be able to do that with any of the funny things that happen in my life.

Want to win a Moth, tighten a closing bit for your set, or just be more entertaining at your dinner parties? You need to see Jeff.

Ro Reddick, New York University

We brought Jeff in to lead a series of storytelling workshops for the 12 students in our Creative Career Design Fellowship. Our goal with the workshops was to build the student’s communication skills so that they would become better at sharing their strengths and differentiating qualities as artists.

Jeff was able to successfully translate that goal into an actionable lesson plan built around his framework for storytelling. The curriculum balanced lecture, group work, and 1:1 feedback that allowed each student to apply their learnings and receive developmental feedback.

We found Jeff to be professional, open, and communicative during the planning process, incorporating our feedback into his curriculum. The students loved his workshops. In the end of program assessment, the students rated Jeff’s work as one of the top three most valuable activities during the semester long program.

The workshops were engaging, well structured -- and fun! We wouldn’t hesitate to bring Jeff back in the future.

When I started in Jeff's class I really wanted to stop being so serious, get out of my own head as a storyteller, and bring joy into my storytelling. I got really valuable input on what makes a story a great story, which will be useful for all storytellers, seasoned or not, and real tips on how to bring humor and lightness into my stories. I felt the difference immediately in the story I ended up telling for the showcase.

Two months after taking Jeff's class, I used part of the story we workshopped in class for another story for a special showcase with The Moth and which ended up on the Moth Radio Hour on NPR!

Andie Grace, Burning Man Project
Jeff and I worked together at the beginning of my new role in storytelling and content production at Burning Man. Now that the coronavirus has ended mass gathering events, stories are more important than ever to keep our cultural community connected around the world.

I've been a writer and communications professional for more than 20 years, but in just one session, Jeff gave me an entirely new framework for thinking about storytelling strategically, in the specific context of our nonprofit's needs.

I'd always thought that one must have a natural talent for storytelling to be good at it, but Jeff's theories and approach accelerated my understanding of the structure of a successful story, and how storytelling strategy can be implemented for a culture-bearing organization such as ours.

I'd recommend Jeff's trainings for any business or individual seeking deeper awareness of how a well-told story moves and motivates the listener into understanding—and action.

I'm a standup comic and storyteller whose stories have appeared on Risk!, This American Life, The Moth‘s podcast, PBS’ Stories From the Stage and in written form in The Paris Review Daily and Newsweek.

My latest album of standup and storytelling is called "Why You Should Be Happy" and was released on May 5, 2020, by Eight Hundred Pound Gorilla Records and is available wherever the very finest digital music and comedy is sold. My previous album, And I Am Not Lying, was released in June 2017 and reached #1 on the iTunes comedy charts. It was pressed onto pink vinyl and is distributed by Dischord Records.

My performing clients have appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Comedy Central's "This Is Not Happening," and "Ramy" on Hulu.

Business and educational clients include NYU and Burning Man.

Prior to my work as a performer and story coach, I worked for five years as the Director of Digital Communications for Time Warner Cable where I developed crisis communications, developed overall story and messaging arcs and edited/developed the official company blog.