Ross Shafer

Six-time Emmy Award-winning comedian, writer, and game-show host
Customer Service Guru
Inspires High Performance

Programs

Nobody Moved Your Cheese!

Based on Shafer's book of the same name, this daringly edgy yet side-splitting motivational program challenges the likes of Anthony Robbins, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Spencer Johnson, Ken Blanchard, Jack Welch, and many others. Because he averages over 100 speeches a year, Shafer is often on the "bill" with bestselling authors and speakers. After analyzing these so called "success experts," Shafer concludes that you can't depend on bestselling "icons" to fix your life. Using a dynamic multimedia approach, Shafer inspires his audiences to ignore popular "experts" and rely upon themselves to reach new heights of personal responsibility, accountability, creativity-under-pressure, and achievement.

The Customer Shouts Back!

Customers don't want "customer service." They want your love, instead. After 11 years of writing and producing human resource training films, Shafer has applied his independent research to this fresh, enlightening, and entertaining keynote program. Even with exhaustive HR training, Shafer has discovered that managers have been treating the symptoms, rather than curing the core problems, of horrific customer service. Now, customers are shouting back. They want us to stop performing "mandatory service" and actually understand how they are feeling before, during and after the transaction. Too many businesses are blinded by hopeful sales goals, operational procedures, technology solutions, mission statements, and corporate "vision." Instead, smart managers need to put their energy into teaching their people how to respond to their customers' emotional reactions. Even in a globally detached economy, business people who have their ear to their customers' hearts can quite easily outrun their competition. The result: a reversal of customer erosion, and the creation of customers for life. The Customer Shouts Back! offers 10 Big Changes You Need To Make If You Want Their Lifetime Loyalty!

Most Valuable MC

Because he is a trained talk and game show host who has hosted over 1,000 network broadcasts, Shafer is the perfect choice for moderating your executive panel discussions and complicated award banquets. He keeps the programs lively and on task, drawing on his lightening quick wit and experience in every possible situation. Finally, Shafer has found great success in hosting custom game and talk shows. Not only do these formats lend themselves to imparting important information about your company in a fun way, participation of the whole audience is easily employed. Let us show you how to create a custom "TV" show for you.

Speaker Information

Six-time Emmy award winner Ross Shafer is known to millions of television viewers as a host of "The Match Game" and "Days End" on ABC, "The Late Show" on FOX, and "Love Me, Love Me Not" on the USA Network. A popular comedian, he performs in Las Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City, and at major comedy clubs throughout North America. He's also the funniest motivational speaker and emcee you've ever heard.

With the release of his book, Nobody Moved Your Cheese! How to Ignore the "Experts" and Trust Your Gut, Shafer took motivational speaking to a daring new level. In the book, he champions employee accountability while hilariously challenging the "success experts" of our culture. As The Los Angeles Times says, "Ross Shafer marries perfect humor with the take home message American business craves." In his corresponding presentation, Shafer underscores the importance of passion, work ethics, and high performance standards in a way that inspires attendees to look beyond mediocrity forever.

Shafer's own rise to success is hilarious - he rose from a small town pet store manager to Network TV talk show host in less than seven years. Despite the failure of his day job - a retail store called America's Only Stereo and Pet Shop - Shafer's comedy performances still managed to get laughs. In fact, he won the 1983 Showtime Comedy Laugh Off...and virtually overnight (six grueling years) major nightclubs and corporations were duped into hiring him to open shows for Dionne Warwick, Eddie Rabbitt, Crystal Gayle, Neil Sedaka, and other famous people with good voices.

In the summer of 1984, a Seattle television station had the notion to produce a weekly comedy/talk show called, "Almost Live with Ross Shafer." In the four years he was at the helm of "Almost Live," the show collected almost 40 Emmy Awards - six going to Shafer for his work as host, actor, and writer - and the prestigious IRIS award for the "Best Entertainment Series" in the United States.

For a while, critics claimed that with his massive head of hair, Shafer looked more like a game show host than a comedian. So, in a semi-hostile takeover, the USA Network hired him to host their game show, "Love Me, Love Me Not." He also taped game show pilots for NBC and ABC. A disturbing and almost profitable pattern was developing. Under the illusion that game shows were somehow culturally important, Shafer was offered two Ross Shafer Comedy TV Specials, plus a recurring role on FOX Television's "21 Jump Street."

About the same time, the FOX network lost Joan Rivers as the host of their flagship late night program, "The Late Show." It competed against Johnny Carson and David Letterman and came complete with scenery, a band, and comfortable talk show seating for six. After a bevy of rotating hosts, Shafer was hired as the permanent guy. He chatted up celebrities and enjoyed an upscale daily cheese tray. He also continued to perfect his stand-up act and told jokes on "Evening at the Improv," "Comic Strip Live," "The A List," and a cavalcade of others. Next came "Days End," a nightly ABC entertainment magazine co-hosted by Shafer and Matt Lauer. The show lasted 6 months, and he has always wondered whatever became of Matt. Oh yes, and there was the successful run as the host of ABC-TV's "New Match Game." The show still plays every morning on the Game Show Network.

All along, Shafer has continued to perform for corporate audiences worldwide. Two new careers came from his corporate exposure. He found that many top company executives are plagued with stage fright. So, Shafer is frequently asked to work one-on-one as an executive public speaking coach. Secondly, he has taken a focused interest in the decay of customer service in this country. With as much traveling as he has done, he found that good customer service was as rare as a five-legged chicken. So, rather than complain about it, he has written and produced fourteen funny Human Resources training films on the subject, which are now distributed all over the world.

Shafer's first book was the comedy cookbook, "Cook Like a Stud," which included 38 recipes men can prepare in the garage using their own tools. And he wrote and produced the highly acclaimed comedy CD, "Inside the First Family," a send- up of the Clinton Scandals. His 2005 book release, The Customer Shouts Back!, is a result of eleven years of customer response research. He is now convinced the reason customer service hasn't improved is because we haven't tried to understand the customers' emotional state before, during, and after the transaction. Either that, or they get cranky listening to Muzak's incessant playing of accordion tunes.