May 22, 2025 • 33 mins
Roxanne Derhodge is joined by Allan Moore to delve into the intersection of leadership and comedy. Allan shares his journey into leadership and how he merges humor with professional presentations. The discussion touches on his new book and Roxanne's academic experiences, emphasizing audience engagement and the intriguing concept of party crashing. They explore ways to encourage younger generations in career exploration, discussing career paths and teaching leadership. The conversation highlights the importance of identifying and nurturing hidden talents and creating a psychologically safe work environment. The episode concludes with insights into Allan Moore's services and upcoming projects, along with closing remarks and takeaways.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Authentic Living with Roxanne, aplace where we have conscious conversations
about things that really matter in our lives.
And now here's your host, Roxanne Durhaj.
(00:40):
Hi everyone, it's Roxanne Durhoch.
Thanks for tuning in again this week withAuthentic Living with Roxanne.
Today I have a colleague, Alan Moore, who hasspent a lot of time in different parts of the
world.
And Alan, thanks for coming in again.
We had a little bit of a faux pas, but we'llget into that, where Alan actually recorded and
we lost the recording and now we're here again.
(01:00):
So thanks for taking the time again.
Oh, my pleasure, Roxanne.
I enjoyed it so much the first time.
I'm happy to come back and
do decided to spend some time together.
The universe helped us.
Perfect.
So I can tell you a little bit about Alan,we're going to just jump into what he's doing
out there in the world of leadership andspeaking.
He's traveled over 50 countries and he'sculturally fluent.
(01:22):
He also is a stand up comic, which we were justchitchatting a little bit about.
And he has a master's degree in leadership andhas been in leadership for basically dealing
experience in environment and health andsafety, which is so important today, has been
always for about twenty years.
He speaks Mandarin and he's basically worked inTaiwan, China, obviously Canada and The US.
(01:48):
He has a new book coming out, which is calledParty Crash Your Career and Be Bold, Risk
Safely, and Succeed Without an Invitation.
So, Alan, thanks for spending the time with usagain today.
My pleasure.
So tell us about what you do out there inleadership and kind of what got you into the
(02:11):
like we were talking just before we got onlineand you just recently done a couple of keynotes
in The US and what kind of got you from healthand safety, which is, and kind of living all
different parts of the world to what you'redoing today?
Yeah, absolutely.
I, with the leadership question, I was kind ofa reluctant leader.
(02:32):
Different companies that I worked for,different sports teams that I played for would
just bestow this upon me.
And sometimes it was some attribute that Idemonstrated.
And sometimes I think it was actually just kindof what Woody Allen says, nine tenths of
success is just showing up.
And especially with showing up with wrinkles,people think that you know what's going on.
So I eventually decided I'm going to legitimizethis and go do a master's in leadership.
(02:57):
With regards to the safety thing, I'm still inthe safety space.
And I just found after years of being a safetypractitioner and being in leadership positions
that the two are merged.
They're very compatible with each other.
And so I decided to create a keynote, a numberof keynote presentations that are safety
leadership based.
(03:18):
And that's kind of how I've come about that.
So tell us about the Mandarin, because I knowlast time I was very intrigued that you spoke
Mandarin.
And do you at times bring that into the spaceon stage using different languages?
I know Alan just shared that he, because of thecomedic background, I can tell you as a keynote
speaker, you're always looking for thoseelements within your speech to pepper it in,
(03:43):
not to become a comedian, but to be able to doregardless of what you're talking about.
And of course, with safety, I mean, those canbe some tough with compliance and all those
things, those can be tough conversations.
But to be able to sprinkle in those elements oflevity is really what I think captivates,
holds, teaches and delivers, I would say.
(04:04):
So tell us a little bit about what you do onstage with some of the personas and also a bit
about your background speaking Mandarin.
Well, the Mandarin makes its way into one myspeeches, but obviously I'm speaking mostly to
English speaking audiences.
There was a client right when COVID hitactually, I got offered three consecutive gigs
(04:24):
in China, One in Beijing, Two in Beijing andone in Xi'an.
And of course COVID just completely shut thatdown.
So, was going to deliver those in Mandarin.
So, that was pretty exciting.
But those drifted off and they haven't quitemigrated back in yet.
But really, Mandarin is not a huge part of whatI do on stage, but the comedy is.
Obviously, like you said, I like the way youput it where you talk about sprinkling it in.
(04:47):
We need to talk like when I'm talking aboutsafety leadership or sometimes I'm just doing a
leadership speech.
So I do both.
You're really trying to talk about the nuts andbolts, the mechanism, the gears of how that
should work in a workplace setting.
I'm really trying to be kind of serious andtalking about that in a serious way.
But of course, an audience is just so much moreengaged if they get an opportunity to laugh,
(05:11):
they get an opportunity for levity, as youmentioned.
They just brighten up and I can just tell rightacross the room those faces that were kind of
like at the beginning, maybe I'm the closingkeynote.
It's been a long day of compliance.
Maybe the Ministry of Minds or something hascome and spoke for an hour and a half and
everyone's like, oh my goodness.
And I've got to kind of bring a little bit ofexcitement to kind of bring them out.
(05:35):
So the storytelling, the comedy and people lovethe accents, too.
Do these.
That was part of my comedic profile was theaccents.
That's why I just pepper those in there wherethey're needed.
I don't go over the top, but where I feelthey're needed, just to bring people out a
little more.
Yeah.
And ultimately, like to your point, like Ithink of when I was in the employee assistance
(05:58):
world, safety, obviously, you're sitting onthose boards with, you know, health and safety,
occupational health and safety, labormanagement.
You know, oftentimes if you're in amanufacturing environment, bad things happen,
unfortunately, when accidents happen.
So you're talking about significant accidentsthat have happened and within forty eight hours
having someone in and 72 doing a debriefing.
(06:21):
It's really, really big stuff.
So to your point, you want people there arecertain things you want people to walk away
with.
But in that you want them you know, I thinkwhen we play or we laugh or get light, we take
in that much more with messaging.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I fully agree.
Yeah.
So let's talk let's jump right into the book.
Talk about that.
(06:41):
And tell us about the concept of the book andkind of what are you out there trying to
achieve with the book in leadership?
Mhmm.
Well, basically, the book is part memoir, partself help.
And it's kind of tracking my journey along fromwhen I failed grade 12, which is pretty hard to
(07:01):
fail, especially when you're taking all theeasiest courses.
Was the school jock.
I was the basketball player, the soccer player.
I didn't care about school.
And I ended up failing one of the easiestcourses that's available.
So, to go from there to just consistently beable to get into spaces where I would never be
invited.
Taiwan, going over there learning Mandarin.
(07:23):
I was never invited to Taiwan.
People always ask me this, Oh, did you work fora kind of a Fortune 500 company and you showed
you demonstrated some talent over here?
Or they plucked you right out of a biguniversity and sent you over there?
I was like, No, I just bought a plane ticket.
I went over there.
I learned how to speak Mandarin on my own dime.
And I just managed to party crash.
(07:45):
Eventually, I came up with the metaphor ofparty crash.
Now, I don't try to sneak past bouncers andactually party crash or wedding crash or
anything like that.
It's purely a metaphor.
But I noticed as I was working with my bookwriting consultant, we were trying to come up
with a concept.
He kept asking me questions about the differentstories.
And he said, oh, so you went and played semipro soccer in Scotland.
(08:07):
You must have been invited to that.
They must have scouts must have flown over.
No, I just saw a cheap ticket to Scotland,Three Ninety Nine to Glasgow returned.
I and I went there and I knocked on some doorsand I sat in a pub and I said, do you know
anybody who knows a guy who knows a guy?
And I just kind of party crashed.
And he eventually, he was like, I came up withthe metaphor party crash.
(08:27):
He goes, that's it.
You've never been invited to anything.
Life as a grade 12 failure.
I eventually went back and I graduated.
Don't worry.
No invites were going to be extended to me inlife at all from anywhere.
Not from trades, from universities, not fromindustry, nowhere.
So I had to party crash.
What I learned from it is that pretty mucheverybody, no matter what stage you are in your
(08:52):
career, you have the opportunity to risksafely.
Now I'm not talking about these massive riskswhere you go and buy a plane ticket to to try
and do your thing.
If you have no kids, like I had no kids at thetime, go ahead.
But now I have kids and there's been times inmy career where it's kind of gone stagnant.
And I'm thinking, Okay, what do I got to do?
(09:12):
I got to do something.
Something's got to happen.
Either a vertical move or a lateral move.
Something has to break the ice here.
And that's when I kind of came up with, I'm nowrisking safely.
And even Scotland was risking safely.
I had saved up all kinds of money.
I'd worked on the oil rigs at that time.
Before then, I'd saved up all kinds of money.
And a $399 to Glasgow, whether I fail and Ispend two months there, I get to see a couple
(09:38):
of cool castles, I come back, it's fine.
So, everything I've done, people go, Woah, youmust be really risk averse.
Woah, you get up on stage and speak.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm terrified to speak.
I was terrified to go over to Scotland.
I don't want to make a fool of myself.
But the thing that gets me is like Les Browns.
When he talks about the ghosts that are aroundyour bed, your deathbed, saying to you, I came
(10:01):
to you in life.
I told you what to do and you ignored me.
And now here you are on your deathbed.
So for me, it's those two opposing things.
Whenever I feel too much fear over here, Ithink about what Les Brown said and I say, I
have to do it.
And that's what it's about.
And it's really about risking.
And I think a lot for different reasons, likeyou said.
(10:23):
Like, I probably took a different route thanyou, right?
Like, I did everything early.
But I wasn't the you know, I think of the Iwent to already academically inclined school.
I had to do well, but then I coasted, right?
Like, I was a teenager.
And I'll never forget this, and I remember thisis embarrassing, but I might as well tell you
because this is in alignment with what you'retalking about.
Every year, our report cards was a book and itwould be handwritten, I'm dating myself, and it
(10:51):
would be sent to the house.
Now there was six of us, right?
Six children.
They were all coming from different schools.
Older sister and I were in the same school, butwe would retrieve it from the postman you know,
and then hide it sometimes because we thoughtif we got it too early, that would impact,
well, quote unquote, our summer in Trinidad tobe summer holidays anyway.
(11:13):
And I remember that was a big thing for us.
This is funny because my siblings would laughabout it, right?
And sometimes you're like, Oh, this is good.
I should tell my parents I might have a bettersummer.
But I remember in Trinidad, it's GCEs, which isBritish from London.
And we wrote exams and you did the formalexams, right?
And we do a mock exam before we do the actualexam, right?
(11:36):
Which is like the real thing.
And I remember I did my mock exams and I thinkI did okay, nothing great.
And my principal and any of the girls listeningto this that know me would giggle, she wrote in
my book to my parents.
She said, Mr.
And Mrs.
Ramatah, I suggest you take all that money thatyou're going to spend on Roxanne and for the
(11:59):
world.
That was written in my book, honestly, Ellen.
And I'm like, I'm now 16 years old, right?
And I remember that burned in my head, right?
So, you know, of course, I'm 21 years old withmy first degree and I see her.
I see the principal in Toronto.
And I make a point.
(12:21):
Now we're petrified of her as teenage girls,right?
Because she was so strict.
And she woke me up.
She basically said, You you're coming from aprivileged family, basically.
I think inadvertently as an adult now.
And I made sure I went and I caught up with herand I said, By the way, I'm Roxanne Rauwouta,
(12:41):
and she just looked at me and she nodded inthat notchalong way.
I go, I just wanted to let you know I got mydegree.
She goes, Lovely.
But it's so interesting, like some of theselittle stories, right?
Because I'm not that was harsh in retrospect,but I really, as a 16 year old, that I had
acumen, it woke me up.
(13:02):
Right?
Like I really, really challenged myself, likeyou, in different ways.
Like you said, you kind of realized coming outof grade 12, like, I got to do something here.
And with her little tap to be, here I was 21years old with my degree in a different
country, all that stuff, doing what I wanted todo anyway.
So sometimes those little taps, to your point,gives you the opportunity to make changes.
(13:28):
Do you find that when you're talking to peoplelike that and, you know, you're talking about
the ghosts kind of around your bed or my storyeven or even yours, that a lot of people come
up to you after and say, Oh my goodness, Alan,I so could see myself in that story?
Absolutely.
So almost everybody has this type of story.
(13:49):
There's very few LeBron James's.
There's very few Adell's, Madonna's, whoeverOprah's.
Well, actually even Oprah.
No, Oprah had to party crash too.
She's not the great example.
There's so few of these people that are justwhere the beam of light shines down.
By the time they're 12 years old, we all nodand go, yeah, this one.
There's so few of those.
(14:10):
They're less than 0.0001.
So the rest of us kind of have to party crash.
And one of the things is that you're takingthat initiative yourself and in your story,
that person, that principle that came up toyou, they actually become an ally.
They're a little bit of a gatekeeper tosomewhat.
And when you can impress upon them by kind ofshowing the world by getting off out in front
(14:36):
of Netflix, off your couch and out there intothe world to be seen by somebody like that,
they become your ally.
Sometimes, if you're lucky, they become amentor.
But even if it's a one day thing, like in yourcase, they can say, no, not that path, that
path.
And somebody of that, like that's a subjectmatter expert, right?
(14:57):
Believing, seeing something in you andbelieving in you and pushing on the path.
So really, a party crasher, you have to getout, be seen and kind of put yourself in front
of the Simon Cowells of the world, so to speak,because they'll say nah, or yeah, or over
there.
And I think a lot of times, like you think ofwhere we are in the world right now with all
(15:18):
the fear and everything, right?
It's real.
It's real.
But that could be debilitating if you thinkabout it, right?
If you think of the new generation coming innow to the workforce, I forget how old your
children are, but my son is 23.
And you'll hear the kids around that agesaying, You guys had it so good.
(15:39):
I don't know if you've heard that, Right?
You got out of school.
You know, you got jobs.
You know, you have people that go on.
They worked for companies for thirty, thirtyfive years.
They come home with pensions.
We don't have those opportunities.
So that whole concept of party crashing, Ithink, makes people think it through.
Because really, I think we're in a phenomenaltime.
Yes, we have a lot of geopolitical thingsmoving around.
(16:02):
Yes, I'm not negating that.
But that whole concept of that you gotta kindof, I don't say you gotta step off the
sidewalk.
You might get smacked.
Who hasn't been smacked?
But you gotta get up again and dust off andkind of start going.
But when you're talking to the, when you're inthere or out there speaking, coaching, or in
the different conversations that you're havingand you're speaking to a younger person, how
(16:25):
might you deliver this concept in a way thatmakes them think through things a bit
differently?
Yeah.
Great.
Great question.
I have two teenage daughters.
One's 18, one's turning 16 in July.
And so, they're going through this kind ofprocess right now.
And the one thing that I tell them is, don'tworry.
There are so few party crashers out there thatthey've allowed this avenue for you to be the
(16:51):
one.
And generation by generation, and I don't likejudging generations, I'm not really into it,
but there are certain things that kind of thereare certain threads and themes and themes.
And one that I found with party crashing is inmy generation Gen X, there was very fewer and
fewer party crashes.
Boomers, baby boomers, tons of party crashes.
(17:11):
People like yourself coming over to a differentcountry being like, Okay, I got to figure this
out.
And you have no choice but to figure it out.
And so you have to party crash.
But I tell young people, I'm like, you got anamazing opportunity as everybody's looking for,
you know, this is kind of a work life balanceand I want a beanbag chair or I want a
treadmill at my workstation or whatever it isthereafter.
(17:33):
You have this opportunity to be the one andonly party crasher or only a handful of party
crashers.
If you execute on this plan, you really don'thave anybody standing in your way.
For example, I played university soccer here inCanada and I was probably the fourth best on my
team, maybe fifth.
And I was like, well, nobody else on my teamwent to Scotland.
(17:58):
If they had of, and if every other universityteam went to Scotland or England or Germany or
whatever, then there wouldn't be an opportunityfor me.
Big thanks to all the people who are moretalented and more intelligent than me, there
are so many, for not actually pushing theenvelope and party crashing, thanks to them.
No, because
it's all But that was like, I call it feelingup in a way, right?
(18:20):
I would say that academically, I was prettysmart.
But some of the girls that I went to school,one's a pediatric surgeon, the other one's a
judge.
And this is me.
I'm like, well, I'm not going go into medical.
I don't think I want to be a lawyer.
I don't want to become a nurse or an engineer.
What do you do?
Right?
There's me, and then I found my path.
I want talk to people and help people.
(18:43):
I wonder if they have a degree in somethinglike that.
You know, and back then, and I'm talking backin my first degree was 1987.
That was like a concept, especially in TheCaribbean too.
Not that people don't speak, but it wasn't asopen as North America or Europe, those types of
things.
And then I just stumbled forge, to your point.
I was like, Okay, well, I'll see what'savailable out there.
(19:04):
And then I go to school, go to U of T, get apsychology degree, and then went on further.
But you're right, because at first I'm like,don't fit.
Where do I fit academically?
Because this was so academically streamed.
But then realize now, all these years later,that there is a path for each one of us, but
it's like being brave enough to say, I wonderif I can.
(19:25):
And worst case scenario, you find out there'snothing there for me and you deviate and go to
a different path, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And that's another thing I tell my kids, likemy daughter, I'm very proud of her decision.
She's decided to go into the electrical programat the Southern Alberta Institute of
Technology.
A great school, great program.
But I told her, said, that might not be foryou.
(19:47):
Especially when you get out there on aresidential site that's half built, you're
pulling wire and minus 40.
You might find that's not for you, right?
Yeah.
You know, I worked in minus 40 on the oil rigsand I was like, this isn't for me.
I did one winter and then I moved on.
Tell young people, I say, I was 43 when I foundout for sure what I wanted to do.
(20:08):
And that was being a keynote speaker.
Forty three.
And I went and I tried all kinds of differentthings.
Trial and error, trial and error.
And some people get lucky.
My wife, she knew she was a teacher by the timeshe was 15.
She got out of school, did her four years,boom, into teaching.
And she's the most marvelous teacher ever.
So, knows.
Lucky her.
But for the rest of us, you just have to keepcrashing in.
(20:30):
And with each crash, it's not a waste of time.
There's this kind of sunk cost fallacy thatgoes on in our heads.
I spent four years at this degree.
I did a Bachelor of Science.
So I got to go in the science stream.
Not necessarily.
That science that you built things while youwere doing that.
You built time management skills and theability to do things that you weren't
(20:53):
comfortable with and to talk to a professorinto maybe getting a retake on a test.
Whatever you did, you can apply that to thenext one.
And you go and crash there.
It's not the right one.
You go and crash there.
You're building.
These are little building blocks.
And by the time I was ready to get on stage, Ihad all these building blocks, all these
stories that I could fall back on.
(21:14):
So, it really is a journey.
And I think it's listening.
I often, with my son's name is RJ, I'll say RJ,this is when we talk now, right?
Because I'm steeped in my career and startedthe cycle and I was lucky to be able to have
found something.
So in my 20s, was in frontline trauma with thepolice.
And then I went along, then went intocorporate, loved speaking and training
(21:36):
corporately, then went on and flipped over.
But of course, the speaking business withkeynotes and stuff, that's a whole other
iteration from corporate.
He said, Mom, how did you end up there?
I say to young people or to him when he willallow me to have a perspective, I say, Follow
the pebbles in the road, I said, Because I cantell you all the things I've tried and I can
(21:58):
tell you what I didn't like.
And what all it allowed me to do was to say, SoI didn't I taught grad school.
I liked it?
Yeah, not so much.
But when I did corporate teaching, I loved,loved it, right?
Because there were experiential teaching, thosetypes of things.
So I said, when you're starting off, like toyour point with your daughter, just go out and
try it.
What's the worst that can happen?
(22:20):
You're gonna go, dad was right.
Maybe I should have thought about thetemperature a bit, but she's gonna learn how to
work in that environment.
It's going to be a lot of male dominated kindof environment if she's going into that.
She's going get skills from being around thatenvironment to what it means to be a female in
those environments.
She's going to learn lots of different skillsto be able to function I'd probably apply that
and go somewhere else, or you never know, she'dbe staying in it.
(22:43):
But I always say it's we don't know when we're21, right?
Like, do you know?
You think you know, right?
And now you look back and you go, boy, Ithought I had everything figured out.
And now at this point, I realize to your pointabout party crashing, it's really about like
you're like testing things to see, okay, thisis good, this is not good, oh my goodness,
(23:05):
never again, Or I want a whole lot more ofthis.
So I wonder with this concept, Alan, and I lovethe concept, if we think about different
environments, like corporate environments andthings like that, how do you or do you, or
maybe something that you're thinking aboutdoing, give this concept to leaders.
Because I think if, as a leader, right, ifyou're leading teams or business units or
(23:29):
whatever, you're trying to bring out this outof everybody around you.
Right?
You're wanting them to tinker, to play, to makemistakes.
So how do you kind of teach those concepts inleadership?
Because I think that would be a fascinatingapproach on how you bring that out in others.
Yeah, that's a great question.
(23:51):
And I think that a lot of leaders, modernleaders, they think they want this.
They think that they want somebody who's justentered their organization to be innovative and
to bring their talents to the forefront.
And I think they think they want that becausethey've probably been to that Cirque du Soleil,
the former president of Cirque du Soleil, wherethey talked about how they set up their shows.
(24:13):
I don't know if you've ever have you seen oneof their shows?
Oh, I've been to several.
I love
them.
Marvelous.
Sometimes.
Yes.
Apparently I went to, you know, when a speechthat was the former director, I can't remember,
Cirque du Soleil was going around the circuitdoing the speaking business and said that she
interviews people and says, what can you do?
(24:34):
And the person comes in and say, I'm acontortionist.
The other person comes in, they say, I'm on amotorcycle with no hands juggling chainsaws.
That's what I do.
Then they try to, they're like, that's so cool.
It has to be in our show.
And they try to build this weird story aroundall of these interesting people.
The person on the ribbon who's upside downspinning around.
And they just that's why the story is a littlebit odd.
(24:55):
And her point was your organization shouldfunction like this.
When a person comes into your organization, yousay, who are you?
What's your special gift?
Are you a keynote speaker?
My company, I've been with the same company forsixteen years.
They didn't know that I was a keynote typespeaker or even a speaker of any description
until I did it as a side gig and started mybusiness, which they approved of.
(25:17):
And they're like, wow, oh, I didn't know youcould do that.
So, it's about I think that leaders, challengeto leaders is not only saying that you want
that, but saying that you need that from youremployees.
Going in there, I mean, you've been hired to dothis one thing to, I don't know, sample the
soil in Fort McMurray.
That's your thing and I need you to do thatthing.
(25:40):
And do it forever or something.
Or if you show leadership, maybe we'll put youin leadership.
But it's this thin column and that personactually might have this incredibly broad skill
set that you wouldn't know about.
And that might be super applicable to yourcompany.
I mean, maybe they should be in sales.
Maybe they're completely in the wrong thing.
(26:01):
Business development.
Or maybe they're meant for HR.
Maybe like, what are you doing out there?
Sampling the soil.
You're a people person.
Everyone loves you and you understand peopleand you're a listener.
You're in HR.
You know what I mean?
And I think leaders want to be that person whothey think they want that.
But I don't think they actually execute in thatway.
(26:21):
If that makes sense.
Kind of scary though, right?
Because you may have such we want diversitybecause we know diversity of thought brings
innovation, right?
But sometimes you're like, woah, Alan's sodifferent, right?
I think the more you get to know someone, Italk a lot about authenticity, but once you
drill down, like I think of your story comparedto mine, grew up in Trinidad And Tobago in a
(26:45):
rural village, went to, like I said, an allgirl high school, played the steel pan, toured
Canada at age 13.
Right?
All these things.
And then when you kind of drill down and findout who people really are, which is what I
think I hear you saying, they might be theperson that's testing the soil up there, but
they have an identity and a thought map orvalues and beliefs, and you brought them onto
(27:10):
the company.
If you could drill into that depth and breadthof who that person is, like with Cirque, like
when you look at it, I sit there and go, thebrain of the person that came up with these
concepts blows my mind.
But if that's what they're drilling into, ifother leadership environments come up with
that, what could they achieve?
(27:30):
Could be fantastic.
Right?
Yeah.
And wonderful for their organizational theirorganization and wonderful for the people.
The people to say like, yeah, I'm gonna be I'mgonna party crash this thing.
I'm gonna try and figure out a way.
Because sometimes an introverted person, howare you going to know that they're meant to
speak on stage?
How are you going to know that they're meant tobe in business development or whatever facet or
(27:53):
even be a leader for that matter?
You might not know.
So it's kind of empowering the leaders to lookat their people that way.
Their year end fireside chat, professionaldevelopment review, whatever you want to call
it, is geared towards that instead of beinggeared towards what went well, what didn't go
well.
I mean, you both know what went well.
What are your three objectives for the nextfiscal year?
(28:14):
Why
do we keep doing this?
Ridiculous.
It's so silly.
I've done about 16 of them now and this isabsurd.
So, empowering the leaders, empowering them tobe party crashers to let them know that, hey,
I'm here.
We want people to be this way.
Or even if be like an open I just think youtalk fireside chat.
(28:35):
If that concept of if I had nothing to lose andI was in this psychologically safe environment,
in my position, how would I party crash?
Right?
Like, what could you pick out of someone'smind?
That could be completely absurd, but you couldprobably get a lot of potentially amazing ideas
(28:56):
that would come from people when they're justlike, oh, instead of having the annual
Christmas thing, you have a safe kind ofenvironment where we're just going to play,
right?
Which I think of party crashing as almost likeplayful thoughts, which playful thought brings
innovation, and that people would just bringsomething that you would never think about.
(29:17):
And then what would that do to your competitor?
If you had that kind of environment, with thatopenness of thought, you might probably usurp,
you know, and speed ahead that much more.
So Alan, tell us about the book.
Tell us where it's at.
I'm sure people are like, I'm going to startparty crashing, or I have been party crashing
and I want to know where I sit on, you know,where I fit in this book.
(29:38):
Tell everybody about the book, when it'scoming, where they can get it, all those types
of things.
Yeah, you bet.
I just went through the I'm going throughFriesen Press.
They're taking the book over the finish line.
The manuscript is done.
It's received
the It's received the first evaluation from theeditor.
And so now it's going into content edit andthen the artwork is being added.
(30:00):
I'm going to add some photographs and stuff.
It just kind of brightens up the stories andthings like I've got the cover done.
So it's just about putting the finishingtouches on it.
And this process, I think, takes about two anda half to three months.
Hard to believe, but just to cross the T's anddot the I's.
And so I think this book should be by, yeah,probably about June, this book should be
(30:23):
available.
And I believe we're going to probably have iton Amazon, at least, if not Kindle possibly as
well.
And I'm going to do an audiobook.
I wasn't going to at first, but enough peoplehave asked me for that and said, Hey, I don't
do the reading.
I have long distance trips every day, fortyfive minutes into the city.
Scotty, you got to have an audio book, I'mgoing to do that too.
(30:44):
Fantastic.
Closer to when you get there, maybe you'd comeback and talk a little bit before it comes out.
Obviously, other than that, you speak, you dodifferent things.
So tell the other services that you offer andwhere people get ahold of you there in the
interim till the book launches.
Absolutely.
So I've got a side business where I am akeynote speaker and I usually a closing keynote
(31:08):
speaker.
I bring a lot of energy to the stage.
If you've got one of those kind of conferencedays that's been going on and on and on and on,
I come in and I just bring the stories and thehumour, the accents and the kind of make you
think, really make people think.
And I also have the interaction too.
It's not just me as a talking head up there.
So if you're interested, AlanJamesMoore.com iswhere you can have a look at all of my videos,
(31:34):
my demo reel, information packages, brochuresabout my different keynotes.
Or I love to chat.
I love to go on LinkedIn.
I always call it the adults table because noone's throwing insults at each other.
I can't take it.
Silly Twitter or whatever, X or whatever.
I can't take this nonsense.
So I hang out on LinkedIn.
And yeah, same thing.
(31:55):
Alan James Moore, look for me there.
Hit me up.
Start a conversation.
I love to chat about safety, leadership,motivation, party crashing, whatever.
And voices.
And voices.
Yes,
I have voices in my head.
Alan, thanks so much for being here.
For everyone, thanks for hanging out again.
What am I taking away?
(32:15):
I think the concept that I love that Alan'scoming up is you can always party crash.
Just think about he talked a little bit aboutwhen you feel like you're a little bit kind of
maybe steady or maybe a little bit stagnant.
Like when you think, I need a little somethingto start to kind of look around.
And it doesn't even I think sometimes we thinkit has to be your professional life.
(32:37):
It doesn't necessarily have to just be yourprofessional life.
It could be any part of your life and think,maybe how could I party crash that particular
part of my life to add a little bit of, youknow, kind of chutzpah to what kind of is going
on out there.
So for everyone, my book, Aroir, Return onRelationships, is available.
But if you wanna know how authenticallyconnected you are in relationships, go to
(32:57):
roxanneverhodge.com for such quiz.
We'll send you back a little minute report withsome next steps if you wanna further enhance
your skills.
Alan, again, thanks so much.
And for everybody, thanks for hanging out withus.
If you like this episode, make sure you go onthere and give us a review and so we can feed
that back to Alan so he knows what an amazingjob he did.
Alright.
Take care, everyone.
(33:18):
We'll talk to you soon.
Bye bye.
Thanks for tuning in to Authentic Living withRoxanne, creating the space for positive,
healthy change.
Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist,and coach.
To work with Roxanne, visitroxannederhaj.com/blueprint.
(33:42):
We'll see you next time on Authentic Livingwith Roxanne.
Welcome to Authentic Living with Roxanne, aplace where we have conscious conversations
about things that really matter in our lives.
And now here's your host, Roxanne Durhaj.
(00:40):
Hi everyone, it's Roxanne Durhoch.
Thanks for tuning in again this week withAuthentic Living with Roxanne.
Today I have a colleague, Alan Moore, who hasspent a lot of time in different parts of the
world.
And Alan, thanks for coming in again.
We had a little bit of a faux pas, but we'llget into that, where Alan actually recorded and
we lost the recording and now we're here again.
(01:00):
So thanks for taking the time again.
Oh, my pleasure, Roxanne.
I enjoyed it so much the first time.
I'm happy to come back and
do decided to spend some time together.
The universe helped us.
Perfect.
So I can tell you a little bit about Alan,we're going to just jump into what he's doing
out there in the world of leadership andspeaking.
He's traveled over 50 countries and he'sculturally fluent.
(01:22):
He also is a stand up comic, which we were justchitchatting a little bit about.
And he has a master's degree in leadership andhas been in leadership for basically dealing
experience in environment and health andsafety, which is so important today, has been
always for about twenty years.
He speaks Mandarin and he's basically worked inTaiwan, China, obviously Canada and The US.
(01:48):
He has a new book coming out, which is calledParty Crash Your Career and Be Bold, Risk
Safely, and Succeed Without an Invitation.
So, Alan, thanks for spending the time with usagain today.
My pleasure.
So tell us about what you do out there inleadership and kind of what got you into the
(02:11):
like we were talking just before we got onlineand you just recently done a couple of keynotes
in The US and what kind of got you from healthand safety, which is, and kind of living all
different parts of the world to what you'redoing today?
Yeah, absolutely.
I, with the leadership question, I was kind ofa reluctant leader.
(02:32):
Different companies that I worked for,different sports teams that I played for would
just bestow this upon me.
And sometimes it was some attribute that Idemonstrated.
And sometimes I think it was actually just kindof what Woody Allen says, nine tenths of
success is just showing up.
And especially with showing up with wrinkles,people think that you know what's going on.
So I eventually decided I'm going to legitimizethis and go do a master's in leadership.
(02:57):
With regards to the safety thing, I'm still inthe safety space.
And I just found after years of being a safetypractitioner and being in leadership positions
that the two are merged.
They're very compatible with each other.
And so I decided to create a keynote, a numberof keynote presentations that are safety
leadership based.
(03:18):
And that's kind of how I've come about that.
So tell us about the Mandarin, because I knowlast time I was very intrigued that you spoke
Mandarin.
And do you at times bring that into the spaceon stage using different languages?
I know Alan just shared that he, because of thecomedic background, I can tell you as a keynote
speaker, you're always looking for thoseelements within your speech to pepper it in,
(03:43):
not to become a comedian, but to be able to doregardless of what you're talking about.
And of course, with safety, I mean, those canbe some tough with compliance and all those
things, those can be tough conversations.
But to be able to sprinkle in those elements oflevity is really what I think captivates,
holds, teaches and delivers, I would say.
(04:04):
So tell us a little bit about what you do onstage with some of the personas and also a bit
about your background speaking Mandarin.
Well, the Mandarin makes its way into one myspeeches, but obviously I'm speaking mostly to
English speaking audiences.
There was a client right when COVID hitactually, I got offered three consecutive gigs
(04:24):
in China, One in Beijing, Two in Beijing andone in Xi'an.
And of course COVID just completely shut thatdown.
So, was going to deliver those in Mandarin.
So, that was pretty exciting.
But those drifted off and they haven't quitemigrated back in yet.
But really, Mandarin is not a huge part of whatI do on stage, but the comedy is.
Obviously, like you said, I like the way youput it where you talk about sprinkling it in.
(04:47):
We need to talk like when I'm talking aboutsafety leadership or sometimes I'm just doing a
leadership speech.
So I do both.
You're really trying to talk about the nuts andbolts, the mechanism, the gears of how that
should work in a workplace setting.
I'm really trying to be kind of serious andtalking about that in a serious way.
But of course, an audience is just so much moreengaged if they get an opportunity to laugh,
(05:11):
they get an opportunity for levity, as youmentioned.
They just brighten up and I can just tell rightacross the room those faces that were kind of
like at the beginning, maybe I'm the closingkeynote.
It's been a long day of compliance.
Maybe the Ministry of Minds or something hascome and spoke for an hour and a half and
everyone's like, oh my goodness.
And I've got to kind of bring a little bit ofexcitement to kind of bring them out.
(05:35):
So the storytelling, the comedy and people lovethe accents, too.
Do these.
That was part of my comedic profile was theaccents.
That's why I just pepper those in there wherethey're needed.
I don't go over the top, but where I feelthey're needed, just to bring people out a
little more.
Yeah.
And ultimately, like to your point, like Ithink of when I was in the employee assistance
(05:58):
world, safety, obviously, you're sitting onthose boards with, you know, health and safety,
occupational health and safety, labormanagement.
You know, oftentimes if you're in amanufacturing environment, bad things happen,
unfortunately, when accidents happen.
So you're talking about significant accidentsthat have happened and within forty eight hours
having someone in and 72 doing a debriefing.
(06:21):
It's really, really big stuff.
So to your point, you want people there arecertain things you want people to walk away
with.
But in that you want them you know, I thinkwhen we play or we laugh or get light, we take
in that much more with messaging.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I fully agree.
Yeah.
So let's talk let's jump right into the book.
Talk about that.
(06:41):
And tell us about the concept of the book andkind of what are you out there trying to
achieve with the book in leadership?
Mhmm.
Well, basically, the book is part memoir, partself help.
And it's kind of tracking my journey along fromwhen I failed grade 12, which is pretty hard to
(07:01):
fail, especially when you're taking all theeasiest courses.
Was the school jock.
I was the basketball player, the soccer player.
I didn't care about school.
And I ended up failing one of the easiestcourses that's available.
So, to go from there to just consistently beable to get into spaces where I would never be
invited.
Taiwan, going over there learning Mandarin.
(07:23):
I was never invited to Taiwan.
People always ask me this, Oh, did you work fora kind of a Fortune 500 company and you showed
you demonstrated some talent over here?
Or they plucked you right out of a biguniversity and sent you over there?
I was like, No, I just bought a plane ticket.
I went over there.
I learned how to speak Mandarin on my own dime.
And I just managed to party crash.
(07:45):
Eventually, I came up with the metaphor ofparty crash.
Now, I don't try to sneak past bouncers andactually party crash or wedding crash or
anything like that.
It's purely a metaphor.
But I noticed as I was working with my bookwriting consultant, we were trying to come up
with a concept.
He kept asking me questions about the differentstories.
And he said, oh, so you went and played semipro soccer in Scotland.
(08:07):
You must have been invited to that.
They must have scouts must have flown over.
No, I just saw a cheap ticket to Scotland,Three Ninety Nine to Glasgow returned.
I and I went there and I knocked on some doorsand I sat in a pub and I said, do you know
anybody who knows a guy who knows a guy?
And I just kind of party crashed.
And he eventually, he was like, I came up withthe metaphor party crash.
(08:27):
He goes, that's it.
You've never been invited to anything.
Life as a grade 12 failure.
I eventually went back and I graduated.
Don't worry.
No invites were going to be extended to me inlife at all from anywhere.
Not from trades, from universities, not fromindustry, nowhere.
So I had to party crash.
What I learned from it is that pretty mucheverybody, no matter what stage you are in your
(08:52):
career, you have the opportunity to risksafely.
Now I'm not talking about these massive riskswhere you go and buy a plane ticket to to try
and do your thing.
If you have no kids, like I had no kids at thetime, go ahead.
But now I have kids and there's been times inmy career where it's kind of gone stagnant.
And I'm thinking, Okay, what do I got to do?
(09:12):
I got to do something.
Something's got to happen.
Either a vertical move or a lateral move.
Something has to break the ice here.
And that's when I kind of came up with, I'm nowrisking safely.
And even Scotland was risking safely.
I had saved up all kinds of money.
I'd worked on the oil rigs at that time.
Before then, I'd saved up all kinds of money.
And a $399 to Glasgow, whether I fail and Ispend two months there, I get to see a couple
(09:38):
of cool castles, I come back, it's fine.
So, everything I've done, people go, Woah, youmust be really risk averse.
Woah, you get up on stage and speak.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm terrified to speak.
I was terrified to go over to Scotland.
I don't want to make a fool of myself.
But the thing that gets me is like Les Browns.
When he talks about the ghosts that are aroundyour bed, your deathbed, saying to you, I came
(10:01):
to you in life.
I told you what to do and you ignored me.
And now here you are on your deathbed.
So for me, it's those two opposing things.
Whenever I feel too much fear over here, Ithink about what Les Brown said and I say, I
have to do it.
And that's what it's about.
And it's really about risking.
And I think a lot for different reasons, likeyou said.
(10:23):
Like, I probably took a different route thanyou, right?
Like, I did everything early.
But I wasn't the you know, I think of the Iwent to already academically inclined school.
I had to do well, but then I coasted, right?
Like, I was a teenager.
And I'll never forget this, and I remember thisis embarrassing, but I might as well tell you
because this is in alignment with what you'retalking about.
Every year, our report cards was a book and itwould be handwritten, I'm dating myself, and it
(10:51):
would be sent to the house.
Now there was six of us, right?
Six children.
They were all coming from different schools.
Older sister and I were in the same school, butwe would retrieve it from the postman you know,
and then hide it sometimes because we thoughtif we got it too early, that would impact,
well, quote unquote, our summer in Trinidad tobe summer holidays anyway.
(11:13):
And I remember that was a big thing for us.
This is funny because my siblings would laughabout it, right?
And sometimes you're like, Oh, this is good.
I should tell my parents I might have a bettersummer.
But I remember in Trinidad, it's GCEs, which isBritish from London.
And we wrote exams and you did the formalexams, right?
And we do a mock exam before we do the actualexam, right?
(11:36):
Which is like the real thing.
And I remember I did my mock exams and I thinkI did okay, nothing great.
And my principal and any of the girls listeningto this that know me would giggle, she wrote in
my book to my parents.
She said, Mr.
And Mrs.
Ramatah, I suggest you take all that money thatyou're going to spend on Roxanne and for the
(11:59):
world.
That was written in my book, honestly, Ellen.
And I'm like, I'm now 16 years old, right?
And I remember that burned in my head, right?
So, you know, of course, I'm 21 years old withmy first degree and I see her.
I see the principal in Toronto.
And I make a point.
(12:21):
Now we're petrified of her as teenage girls,right?
Because she was so strict.
And she woke me up.
She basically said, You you're coming from aprivileged family, basically.
I think inadvertently as an adult now.
And I made sure I went and I caught up with herand I said, By the way, I'm Roxanne Rauwouta,
(12:41):
and she just looked at me and she nodded inthat notchalong way.
I go, I just wanted to let you know I got mydegree.
She goes, Lovely.
But it's so interesting, like some of theselittle stories, right?
Because I'm not that was harsh in retrospect,but I really, as a 16 year old, that I had
acumen, it woke me up.
(13:02):
Right?
Like I really, really challenged myself, likeyou, in different ways.
Like you said, you kind of realized coming outof grade 12, like, I got to do something here.
And with her little tap to be, here I was 21years old with my degree in a different
country, all that stuff, doing what I wanted todo anyway.
So sometimes those little taps, to your point,gives you the opportunity to make changes.
(13:28):
Do you find that when you're talking to peoplelike that and, you know, you're talking about
the ghosts kind of around your bed or my storyeven or even yours, that a lot of people come
up to you after and say, Oh my goodness, Alan,I so could see myself in that story?
Absolutely.
So almost everybody has this type of story.
(13:49):
There's very few LeBron James's.
There's very few Adell's, Madonna's, whoeverOprah's.
Well, actually even Oprah.
No, Oprah had to party crash too.
She's not the great example.
There's so few of these people that are justwhere the beam of light shines down.
By the time they're 12 years old, we all nodand go, yeah, this one.
There's so few of those.
(14:10):
They're less than 0.0001.
So the rest of us kind of have to party crash.
And one of the things is that you're takingthat initiative yourself and in your story,
that person, that principle that came up toyou, they actually become an ally.
They're a little bit of a gatekeeper tosomewhat.
And when you can impress upon them by kind ofshowing the world by getting off out in front
(14:36):
of Netflix, off your couch and out there intothe world to be seen by somebody like that,
they become your ally.
Sometimes, if you're lucky, they become amentor.
But even if it's a one day thing, like in yourcase, they can say, no, not that path, that
path.
And somebody of that, like that's a subjectmatter expert, right?
(14:57):
Believing, seeing something in you andbelieving in you and pushing on the path.
So really, a party crasher, you have to getout, be seen and kind of put yourself in front
of the Simon Cowells of the world, so to speak,because they'll say nah, or yeah, or over
there.
And I think a lot of times, like you think ofwhere we are in the world right now with all
(15:18):
the fear and everything, right?
It's real.
It's real.
But that could be debilitating if you thinkabout it, right?
If you think of the new generation coming innow to the workforce, I forget how old your
children are, but my son is 23.
And you'll hear the kids around that agesaying, You guys had it so good.
(15:39):
I don't know if you've heard that, Right?
You got out of school.
You know, you got jobs.
You know, you have people that go on.
They worked for companies for thirty, thirtyfive years.
They come home with pensions.
We don't have those opportunities.
So that whole concept of party crashing, Ithink, makes people think it through.
Because really, I think we're in a phenomenaltime.
Yes, we have a lot of geopolitical thingsmoving around.
(16:02):
Yes, I'm not negating that.
But that whole concept of that you gotta kindof, I don't say you gotta step off the
sidewalk.
You might get smacked.
Who hasn't been smacked?
But you gotta get up again and dust off andkind of start going.
But when you're talking to the, when you're inthere or out there speaking, coaching, or in
the different conversations that you're havingand you're speaking to a younger person, how
(16:25):
might you deliver this concept in a way thatmakes them think through things a bit
differently?
Yeah.
Great.
Great question.
I have two teenage daughters.
One's 18, one's turning 16 in July.
And so, they're going through this kind ofprocess right now.
And the one thing that I tell them is, don'tworry.
There are so few party crashers out there thatthey've allowed this avenue for you to be the
(16:51):
one.
And generation by generation, and I don't likejudging generations, I'm not really into it,
but there are certain things that kind of thereare certain threads and themes and themes.
And one that I found with party crashing is inmy generation Gen X, there was very fewer and
fewer party crashes.
Boomers, baby boomers, tons of party crashes.
(17:11):
People like yourself coming over to a differentcountry being like, Okay, I got to figure this
out.
And you have no choice but to figure it out.
And so you have to party crash.
But I tell young people, I'm like, you got anamazing opportunity as everybody's looking for,
you know, this is kind of a work life balanceand I want a beanbag chair or I want a
treadmill at my workstation or whatever it isthereafter.
(17:33):
You have this opportunity to be the one andonly party crasher or only a handful of party
crashers.
If you execute on this plan, you really don'thave anybody standing in your way.
For example, I played university soccer here inCanada and I was probably the fourth best on my
team, maybe fifth.
And I was like, well, nobody else on my teamwent to Scotland.
(17:58):
If they had of, and if every other universityteam went to Scotland or England or Germany or
whatever, then there wouldn't be an opportunityfor me.
Big thanks to all the people who are moretalented and more intelligent than me, there
are so many, for not actually pushing theenvelope and party crashing, thanks to them.
No, because
it's all But that was like, I call it feelingup in a way, right?
(18:20):
I would say that academically, I was prettysmart.
But some of the girls that I went to school,one's a pediatric surgeon, the other one's a
judge.
And this is me.
I'm like, well, I'm not going go into medical.
I don't think I want to be a lawyer.
I don't want to become a nurse or an engineer.
What do you do?
Right?
There's me, and then I found my path.
I want talk to people and help people.
(18:43):
I wonder if they have a degree in somethinglike that.
You know, and back then, and I'm talking backin my first degree was 1987.
That was like a concept, especially in TheCaribbean too.
Not that people don't speak, but it wasn't asopen as North America or Europe, those types of
things.
And then I just stumbled forge, to your point.
I was like, Okay, well, I'll see what'savailable out there.
(19:04):
And then I go to school, go to U of T, get apsychology degree, and then went on further.
But you're right, because at first I'm like,don't fit.
Where do I fit academically?
Because this was so academically streamed.
But then realize now, all these years later,that there is a path for each one of us, but
it's like being brave enough to say, I wonderif I can.
(19:25):
And worst case scenario, you find out there'snothing there for me and you deviate and go to
a different path, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And that's another thing I tell my kids, likemy daughter, I'm very proud of her decision.
She's decided to go into the electrical programat the Southern Alberta Institute of
Technology.
A great school, great program.
But I told her, said, that might not be foryou.
(19:47):
Especially when you get out there on aresidential site that's half built, you're
pulling wire and minus 40.
You might find that's not for you, right?
Yeah.
You know, I worked in minus 40 on the oil rigsand I was like, this isn't for me.
I did one winter and then I moved on.
Tell young people, I say, I was 43 when I foundout for sure what I wanted to do.
(20:08):
And that was being a keynote speaker.
Forty three.
And I went and I tried all kinds of differentthings.
Trial and error, trial and error.
And some people get lucky.
My wife, she knew she was a teacher by the timeshe was 15.
She got out of school, did her four years,boom, into teaching.
And she's the most marvelous teacher ever.
So, knows.
Lucky her.
But for the rest of us, you just have to keepcrashing in.
(20:30):
And with each crash, it's not a waste of time.
There's this kind of sunk cost fallacy thatgoes on in our heads.
I spent four years at this degree.
I did a Bachelor of Science.
So I got to go in the science stream.
Not necessarily.
That science that you built things while youwere doing that.
You built time management skills and theability to do things that you weren't
(20:53):
comfortable with and to talk to a professorinto maybe getting a retake on a test.
Whatever you did, you can apply that to thenext one.
And you go and crash there.
It's not the right one.
You go and crash there.
You're building.
These are little building blocks.
And by the time I was ready to get on stage, Ihad all these building blocks, all these
stories that I could fall back on.
(21:14):
So, it really is a journey.
And I think it's listening.
I often, with my son's name is RJ, I'll say RJ,this is when we talk now, right?
Because I'm steeped in my career and startedthe cycle and I was lucky to be able to have
found something.
So in my 20s, was in frontline trauma with thepolice.
And then I went along, then went intocorporate, loved speaking and training
(21:36):
corporately, then went on and flipped over.
But of course, the speaking business withkeynotes and stuff, that's a whole other
iteration from corporate.
He said, Mom, how did you end up there?
I say to young people or to him when he willallow me to have a perspective, I say, Follow
the pebbles in the road, I said, Because I cantell you all the things I've tried and I can
(21:58):
tell you what I didn't like.
And what all it allowed me to do was to say, SoI didn't I taught grad school.
I liked it?
Yeah, not so much.
But when I did corporate teaching, I loved,loved it, right?
Because there were experiential teaching, thosetypes of things.
So I said, when you're starting off, like toyour point with your daughter, just go out and
try it.
What's the worst that can happen?
(22:20):
You're gonna go, dad was right.
Maybe I should have thought about thetemperature a bit, but she's gonna learn how to
work in that environment.
It's going to be a lot of male dominated kindof environment if she's going into that.
She's going get skills from being around thatenvironment to what it means to be a female in
those environments.
She's going to learn lots of different skillsto be able to function I'd probably apply that
and go somewhere else, or you never know, she'dbe staying in it.
(22:43):
But I always say it's we don't know when we're21, right?
Like, do you know?
You think you know, right?
And now you look back and you go, boy, Ithought I had everything figured out.
And now at this point, I realize to your pointabout party crashing, it's really about like
you're like testing things to see, okay, thisis good, this is not good, oh my goodness,
(23:05):
never again, Or I want a whole lot more ofthis.
So I wonder with this concept, Alan, and I lovethe concept, if we think about different
environments, like corporate environments andthings like that, how do you or do you, or
maybe something that you're thinking aboutdoing, give this concept to leaders.
Because I think if, as a leader, right, ifyou're leading teams or business units or
(23:29):
whatever, you're trying to bring out this outof everybody around you.
Right?
You're wanting them to tinker, to play, to makemistakes.
So how do you kind of teach those concepts inleadership?
Because I think that would be a fascinatingapproach on how you bring that out in others.
Yeah, that's a great question.
(23:51):
And I think that a lot of leaders, modernleaders, they think they want this.
They think that they want somebody who's justentered their organization to be innovative and
to bring their talents to the forefront.
And I think they think they want that becausethey've probably been to that Cirque du Soleil,
the former president of Cirque du Soleil, wherethey talked about how they set up their shows.
(24:13):
I don't know if you've ever have you seen oneof their shows?
Oh, I've been to several.
I love
them.
Marvelous.
Sometimes.
Yes.
Apparently I went to, you know, when a speechthat was the former director, I can't remember,
Cirque du Soleil was going around the circuitdoing the speaking business and said that she
interviews people and says, what can you do?
(24:34):
And the person comes in and say, I'm acontortionist.
The other person comes in, they say, I'm on amotorcycle with no hands juggling chainsaws.
That's what I do.
Then they try to, they're like, that's so cool.
It has to be in our show.
And they try to build this weird story aroundall of these interesting people.
The person on the ribbon who's upside downspinning around.
And they just that's why the story is a littlebit odd.
(24:55):
And her point was your organization shouldfunction like this.
When a person comes into your organization, yousay, who are you?
What's your special gift?
Are you a keynote speaker?
My company, I've been with the same company forsixteen years.
They didn't know that I was a keynote typespeaker or even a speaker of any description
until I did it as a side gig and started mybusiness, which they approved of.
(25:17):
And they're like, wow, oh, I didn't know youcould do that.
So, it's about I think that leaders, challengeto leaders is not only saying that you want
that, but saying that you need that from youremployees.
Going in there, I mean, you've been hired to dothis one thing to, I don't know, sample the
soil in Fort McMurray.
That's your thing and I need you to do thatthing.
(25:40):
And do it forever or something.
Or if you show leadership, maybe we'll put youin leadership.
But it's this thin column and that personactually might have this incredibly broad skill
set that you wouldn't know about.
And that might be super applicable to yourcompany.
I mean, maybe they should be in sales.
Maybe they're completely in the wrong thing.
(26:01):
Business development.
Or maybe they're meant for HR.
Maybe like, what are you doing out there?
Sampling the soil.
You're a people person.
Everyone loves you and you understand peopleand you're a listener.
You're in HR.
You know what I mean?
And I think leaders want to be that person whothey think they want that.
But I don't think they actually execute in thatway.
(26:21):
If that makes sense.
Kind of scary though, right?
Because you may have such we want diversitybecause we know diversity of thought brings
innovation, right?
But sometimes you're like, woah, Alan's sodifferent, right?
I think the more you get to know someone, Italk a lot about authenticity, but once you
drill down, like I think of your story comparedto mine, grew up in Trinidad And Tobago in a
(26:45):
rural village, went to, like I said, an allgirl high school, played the steel pan, toured
Canada at age 13.
Right?
All these things.
And then when you kind of drill down and findout who people really are, which is what I
think I hear you saying, they might be theperson that's testing the soil up there, but
they have an identity and a thought map orvalues and beliefs, and you brought them onto
(27:10):
the company.
If you could drill into that depth and breadthof who that person is, like with Cirque, like
when you look at it, I sit there and go, thebrain of the person that came up with these
concepts blows my mind.
But if that's what they're drilling into, ifother leadership environments come up with
that, what could they achieve?
(27:30):
Could be fantastic.
Right?
Yeah.
And wonderful for their organizational theirorganization and wonderful for the people.
The people to say like, yeah, I'm gonna be I'mgonna party crash this thing.
I'm gonna try and figure out a way.
Because sometimes an introverted person, howare you going to know that they're meant to
speak on stage?
How are you going to know that they're meant tobe in business development or whatever facet or
(27:53):
even be a leader for that matter?
You might not know.
So it's kind of empowering the leaders to lookat their people that way.
Their year end fireside chat, professionaldevelopment review, whatever you want to call
it, is geared towards that instead of beinggeared towards what went well, what didn't go
well.
I mean, you both know what went well.
What are your three objectives for the nextfiscal year?
(28:14):
Why
do we keep doing this?
Ridiculous.
It's so silly.
I've done about 16 of them now and this isabsurd.
So, empowering the leaders, empowering them tobe party crashers to let them know that, hey,
I'm here.
We want people to be this way.
Or even if be like an open I just think youtalk fireside chat.
(28:35):
If that concept of if I had nothing to lose andI was in this psychologically safe environment,
in my position, how would I party crash?
Right?
Like, what could you pick out of someone'smind?
That could be completely absurd, but you couldprobably get a lot of potentially amazing ideas
(28:56):
that would come from people when they're justlike, oh, instead of having the annual
Christmas thing, you have a safe kind ofenvironment where we're just going to play,
right?
Which I think of party crashing as almost likeplayful thoughts, which playful thought brings
innovation, and that people would just bringsomething that you would never think about.
(29:17):
And then what would that do to your competitor?
If you had that kind of environment, with thatopenness of thought, you might probably usurp,
you know, and speed ahead that much more.
So Alan, tell us about the book.
Tell us where it's at.
I'm sure people are like, I'm going to startparty crashing, or I have been party crashing
and I want to know where I sit on, you know,where I fit in this book.
(29:38):
Tell everybody about the book, when it'scoming, where they can get it, all those types
of things.
Yeah, you bet.
I just went through the I'm going throughFriesen Press.
They're taking the book over the finish line.
The manuscript is done.
It's received
the It's received the first evaluation from theeditor.
And so now it's going into content edit andthen the artwork is being added.
(30:00):
I'm going to add some photographs and stuff.
It just kind of brightens up the stories andthings like I've got the cover done.
So it's just about putting the finishingtouches on it.
And this process, I think, takes about two anda half to three months.
Hard to believe, but just to cross the T's anddot the I's.
And so I think this book should be by, yeah,probably about June, this book should be
(30:23):
available.
And I believe we're going to probably have iton Amazon, at least, if not Kindle possibly as
well.
And I'm going to do an audiobook.
I wasn't going to at first, but enough peoplehave asked me for that and said, Hey, I don't
do the reading.
I have long distance trips every day, fortyfive minutes into the city.
Scotty, you got to have an audio book, I'mgoing to do that too.
(30:44):
Fantastic.
Closer to when you get there, maybe you'd comeback and talk a little bit before it comes out.
Obviously, other than that, you speak, you dodifferent things.
So tell the other services that you offer andwhere people get ahold of you there in the
interim till the book launches.
Absolutely.
So I've got a side business where I am akeynote speaker and I usually a closing keynote
(31:08):
speaker.
I bring a lot of energy to the stage.
If you've got one of those kind of conferencedays that's been going on and on and on and on,
I come in and I just bring the stories and thehumour, the accents and the kind of make you
think, really make people think.
And I also have the interaction too.
It's not just me as a talking head up there.
So if you're interested, AlanJamesMoore.com iswhere you can have a look at all of my videos,
(31:34):
my demo reel, information packages, brochuresabout my different keynotes.
Or I love to chat.
I love to go on LinkedIn.
I always call it the adults table because noone's throwing insults at each other.
I can't take it.
Silly Twitter or whatever, X or whatever.
I can't take this nonsense.
So I hang out on LinkedIn.
And yeah, same thing.
(31:55):
Alan James Moore, look for me there.
Hit me up.
Start a conversation.
I love to chat about safety, leadership,motivation, party crashing, whatever.
And voices.
And voices.
Yes,
I have voices in my head.
Alan, thanks so much for being here.
For everyone, thanks for hanging out again.
What am I taking away?
(32:15):
I think the concept that I love that Alan'scoming up is you can always party crash.
Just think about he talked a little bit aboutwhen you feel like you're a little bit kind of
maybe steady or maybe a little bit stagnant.
Like when you think, I need a little somethingto start to kind of look around.
And it doesn't even I think sometimes we thinkit has to be your professional life.
(32:37):
It doesn't necessarily have to just be yourprofessional life.
It could be any part of your life and think,maybe how could I party crash that particular
part of my life to add a little bit of, youknow, kind of chutzpah to what kind of is going
on out there.
So for everyone, my book, Aroir, Return onRelationships, is available.
But if you wanna know how authenticallyconnected you are in relationships, go to
(32:57):
roxanneverhodge.com for such quiz.
We'll send you back a little minute report withsome next steps if you wanna further enhance
your skills.
Alan, again, thanks so much.
And for everybody, thanks for hanging out withus.
If you like this episode, make sure you go onthere and give us a review and so we can feed
that back to Alan so he knows what an amazingjob he did.
Alright.
Take care, everyone.
(33:18):
We'll talk to you soon.
Bye bye.
Thanks for tuning in to Authentic Living withRoxanne, creating the space for positive,
healthy change.
Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist,and coach.
To work with Roxanne, visitroxannederhaj.com/blueprint.
(33:42):
We'll see you next time on Authentic Livingwith Roxanne.
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