Don Yaeger - The Speaker of Champions
Would you like to have your team perform like world champions? They can, but only if they understand what makes those winners win, what makes the Great ones Great! Don has shared deeply in the lives of many of the greatest winners of our time and knows exactly what those characteristics are...
Most speakers have only one life to share – theirs! But Don will bring to your audience stories from the lives of winners like Michael Jordan, Walter Payton, Dot Richardson, John Wooden, Shaquille O’Neal and Jimmy Connors, to name a few. His stories come from interaction with the very list of speakers most corporations, associations and universities wish they could have speak at their event. But this articulate best-selling author and dynamic keynote speaker will share personal stories from his time with each of them and show your audience how to apply those lessons to their lives.
He customizes each speech to meet the needs of his audience, but the topics he is most asked to discuss include:
What Makes the Great Ones Great
Don has had a front-row seat with some of the greatest winners in athletics. They are legends in their own right, but does anyone believe the athletes mentioned above are really the GREATEST athletes of their time, physically? Remember, Jordan wasn’t even the first pick of the draft. O’Neal didn’t make his high school varsity team until he was a junior. Payton had to go to a small black college because bigger schools didn’t want to risk a scholarship on him. Connors, at 5-10, 155 pounds, was dwarfed by most of his competitors. But each became a champion through strengths and skills that had nothing to do with physical prowess.
Using rich, personal accounts gathered from more than 20 years of interviews with many of today’s sports legends and business leaders, Don has distilled Sixteen Consistent Characteristics of Greatness. He will share with the audience these characteristics - in how they think, how they prepare, how they work and how they live – that truly make the great ones great. Then he’ll explain how every audience member can apply these characteristics to their personal and professional lives.
Don works with every organization to customize his presentation by determining which characteristics and stories to discuss. Depending on the theme of your event and the needs of the audience, he may choose to tell the story of John Wooden and how he demonstrated the Value of Association or how Michael Jordan showed him that hating to lose is more important than loving to win, among many others.
To name just a few of the winners that Don has worked with:
- Michael Jordan
- John Wooden
- Ed Bradley
- Dick and Rick Hoyt
- Warrick Dunn
- Swen Nader
- Shaquille O'Neal
- Dale Brown
Some of these keynotes can be re-crafted as breakout sessions. Other breakout sessions Don is asked to lead include:
- Institutional Reputation Management
- Deepen your Customer Relations by Building Your PERSONAL BRAND
- The Discipline of Writing
- When the Media Comes Calling
- Building Tomorrow's Leaders
- Crisis Management
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