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The Promise Blog
Business

The Broken Team

  Doug sent a frantic text, Jenny replied in Slack, marketing in turn launched a premature email campaign, and customer service was immediately inundated with angry clients. Leadership meets, confusion all around, too many cooks in the kitchen, while ten people are working on the same task without being assigned to work together on any given project. The wheels are falling off the bus, or rather, they did a long time ago. In business culture, it is easy to observe where things aren’t working. Just set up a call with any employee and let them tell you the truth, once you’ve established what they say won’t be held against them. Just look at the confusion coming into customer service due to the latest mistake sent out. Just take a gander at Slack and see how well that’s being utilized. The Slack one is so frustrating I made a silly and comical song about it just to see if it would get a laugh from people in general who have complained to me about their teams not using it, showcasing how important it is.     In leadership, however we can, we must utilize our Signature Moves to inspire, lift, call

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August 12, 2026 1 Comment
Business

The Pilot and The Delay: What To Do When You’ve Broken The Promise

  The following post inspired this blog, as it is something I have talked about extensively, and you’ll love this story. I found this on LinkedIn yesterday, it is brought to you by Robert Sterling: Original Post HERE   Robert Sterling I just had the craziest experience at the airport. We are about to board a flight to Atlanta when the pilot from the incoming plane walks out of the jetway. Guy is probably late 50s, salt and pepper hair, military look. The kind of pilot you instantly feel good about seeing on your flight. Pilot walks over to the counter, gets on the PA system, and starts addressing everyone. “Folks, I’ve been doing this a long time. Flying one of these jets is easy. The hard part is looking at 130 people and telling them their flight is going to be delayed.” Audible groans throughout the boarding gate. Most people here are flying to Atlanta as a layover before another flight. 130 people just had their day become a complete mess. The pilot goes on. “I get it, trust me. But here’s the deal: During our landing, we had a small mechanical issue. I’m not your pilot for the

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May 19, 2026 4 Comments
Business

Don’t Read The Comments

If you want to feel bad about yourself, go ahead and read the comments. Truly, some of the worst days of my life have come when I accidentally stumbled upon the very public thoughts of keyboard warriors insulting me from the safety of their parent’s basement covered in Cheetos and self-righteous indignation. Want to see what I mean? Scroll through the comments on this video of my routine that gets a standing ovation at pretty much every event performance I’ve ever shared it with. LOL! “I’m not laughing.”  “Boring.”  “Move on…nothing funny here, folks.” (7 likes) “I’ve either lost my sense of Humor, or the drink minimum at that club is way too high.” (17 likes)       The comments are not always terrible. Somehow, the video with the most views (below), near half a million across multiple platforms, and the longest version of my act available online, has great comments unless you really dig to find the bad ones. And that’s a nice thing to see that it’s fairly positive.     Comments on YouTube videos are the equivalent of reviews on Amazon. People often go there first, just as they start watching the video, and then read

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March 5, 2026 4 Comments

The Final Retreat

For years, I had what was known in our home as Mentor Mondays. This was due to so many texts, emails, and phone calls from executives, hopeful speakers, and struggling entertainers to “pick my brain” over lunch. Eventually my brain had been picked, pecked, and prodded over enough soggy salads at lunches around Utah that we shifted things to say: Can you come to me and let’s talk? We funneled everyone to Mondays, into 2 hour time slots and a revolving door of mentoring that sometimes saw people from 8AM-8PM learning the craft of running a business, following their dreams, and keeping The Promise to their hopes in life. It was my best way of giving back, after I had the same experience to begin my career, where Chris Poulos had welcomed me into his home, free of charge, to sit on his couch and learn from the greatest philosopher and spiritual mentor I could have asked for outside of my own wonderful parents growing up.     For years, day and night, I came and went to the Poulos household in Orem, UT, with his lovely spouse Gail in the background doing genealogy work at the living room table,

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August 23, 2024 4 Comments
Business

The Never-Ending Thank You Gift

  Not wanting to exaggerate the numbers, I believe I’ve done about 3 mentoring calls per week for the last 15 years with those looking to become a speaker, wanting advice on business, or hoping to make it in the entertainment life of showbiz. I enjoy most of these calls, and feel it important to take every request for my time, as I had the right mentors to lead me from the beginning, while equally unable to get my heroes on the phone no matter how often I begged for their guidance. So, I made a promise a long time ago that if someone wanted to learn it would be my honor to see if I could help. Every single person who calls me thinks making a career as a Speaker, Entertainer, and Coach will be easy. Oftentimes the recommendations I suggest fall on deaf ears, as what I teach isn’t as easy of a path as the caller assumes it should be. When I say things like: Speak anywhere and everywhere for FREE until you are great enough to be paid Serve, lift, and help others get there, and they will help you as well Promise to write a

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April 19, 2024 14 Comments
Business

Talking with a Human

  My cell phone number is on the Home Page of my web site. It is also strewn about the internet in every place possible. For years I refused to have my number out there, due to the distraction and lack of privacy it afforded me, as well as having managers, agents, and others deal with the requests. It was helpful, as it kept me out of arm’s reach from the crazies, and there are crazies out there that will stalk you. But then I remember an issue I had that could not be resolved where I called a company and absolutely, no matter what, couldn’t get a hold of a human. The automated process was unresolvable in every way, and I could never get someone on the phone to clarify my issue. I lost a great deal of money due to this issue and never speaking to a human. It was that day I changed one of the biggest rules of my business: My cell phone was now published everywhere. The Promise in my business became COMMUNICATE as much as possible, be infinitely reachable, and even over-communicate where necessary. Suddenly, my unlisted and undiscoverable number became public record. I

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December 2, 2023 6 Comments
Business

No Tipping Allowed

In my home state, there is a new bagel shop in town that does NOT allow customers to leave a tip. The owner of Cheryl’s Bagels, Cheryl Mignone, says she was tired of having to tip someone for doing next to nothing and shaming them into tipping once the iPad was turned towards them. Here’s a link to the Story. Certainly, there are jobs that need tipping – such as when service is rendered and I know their livelihood depends on it – but I too feel the “Tipping for Everything” moment has gotten out of hand.  In fact, the other day, at a newsstand in the airport, I grabbed my own premade sandwich and drink and was suddenly faced with the obligatory How Much Do You Want to Tip question. I felt a rush of guilt, as I didn’t feel the person, who hadn’t moved and was still looking at their iPhone, had barely greeted me and simply asked, “Cash or Card?” Do you tip in this situation? For me, I have a hard time with it. I like that Cheryl, the bagel shop owner, is taking a stand in the place in which she owns and runs things.

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October 12, 2023 16 Comments
Business

The Middle Seat

“No, thank you, I will take any seat but the middle seat,” I reply to the customer service agent. “Sir, you don’t understand, you’ll be sitting in a normal seat in the back if you don’t accept this upgrade to ComfortPlus, but we don’t have a window or aisle, only a middle seat,” the agent replied. “I’m good. I only want the aisle, and don’t care if it’s in the back,” I retort. Miffed, I get on the flight, thankful to not have to sit in the middle seat.   Vs.   The flight is now delayed. Now it is deplaned. We all begrudgingly get off the plane. We wait for hours. Everyone is upset. A riot seems to be brewing in the terminal. We’ve been sent scrambling to a different gate. I plead to the new gate agent – “My flight has been delayed now 2 times, I absolutely have to get to my destination by tonight or I will miss my presentation in the morning where I am the Keynote Speaker for a very important group. I promised I’d be there. Can you do anything for me?” “Well sir, I see here on your preferences that you’ll take

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August 24, 2023 6 Comments
covid-19

To Be A Fan – Ode to Ben Folds

(I have something incredibly cool to announce, that I can barely keep a secret anymore, but must wait a little bit longer…so please watch for a SPECIAL email coming your way in the next few days.)  On to the Article! ~ My inbox just pinged me with a notification that one of my favorite artists in the world is coming to my hometown of Park City, UT. I already knew this, but hadn’t purchased tickets because I had a HOLD on the date for a client. It’s rare for me to be happy that a client changed their date, but that’s what happened, and now I just paid a fairly large sum for my wife and children to go see, LIVE and IN CONCERT, an artist I have adored for almost 30 years. Mr. Ben Folds!!! If you don’t know his work, it’s as if Billy Joel and Elton John decided to have a child with Weird Al (in terms of comedy lyrics), and Mr. Rogers (in poignancy and wisdom).  Alt-Rock, Indie-Pop, Percussive Piano…hard to explain, but the dude’s a genius, as we see in this video of him composing a piece with an entire orchestra here:     Yes,

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July 28, 2023 7 Comments
Announcements

Million Miler

  Last week I received an email from DELTA CEO, Ed Bastian, that brought me both elation and devastation in one line: Jason, Congratulations on One Million Miles! Elation because I have achieved something while chasing my dreams and making a living doing the career that I love. Devastation because it reminded me of how much I have missed of my children’s lives, family events, and precious moments to never get back. It’s 6’s. It’s the double edged sword. It’s a blessing and the reality of butt and back perma-soreness. You may wonder how it took me this long to reach such status with the amount of travel I do. The story goes that I was close to this milestone over a decade ago on DELTA, and then they lost a bag with all of my handmade costumes, gear, worth over $10,000. I had no receipts, as they were costumes made all over the world years earlier, and I couldn’t prove their value.  Devastating. To make matters worse it was the first time I had checked a bag in a long time and I had to do an event without any of my proven clothing, costumes, props. It was the

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June 4, 2023 8 Comments

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