A Visit With The Professional Summarizer

The transcription is a conversation between Steve Williams and his guest, Dale Irvin, a humorous and professional speaker. Dale talks about his journey from being a comedian to becoming a professional speaker. He shares how he got inspired to pursue speaking as a career and his experiences with National Speakers Association. They also discuss Dale's involvement in charity work and his popular YouTube series called The Friday Funnies. Overall, the conversation highlights Dale's career as a professional speaker and his passion for making people laugh. Hey y'all, this is Steve Williams, and welcome to this episode of Steve Williams and Friends. My guest and I are just going to sit back, relax, and have a talk just like we're in our rocking chairs on our front porch. And y'all are welcome to sit in and listen. Thanks for tuning in, and now, on to the show. Today's guest is a humorous and professional speaker known as The Professional Summarizer. He hosts the weekly YouTube series called The Friday Funnies, and is a co-host of the podcast, Another Day Above Ground. Please help me welcome Dale Irvin. Hey Dale, how you doing? Thanks for stopping by. I'm doing just great, Steve. I'm very happy to be on your show today. Well, I do appreciate it. It's an honor and a privilege, my friend. We're going to ask you to do a little thing we call Toastmasters the Icebreaker. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How far in detail do you want me to get? Well, you don't have to reveal anything that would be used against you in the court of public opinion, I'll put it that way. Well, that's one court. Steve, I've been a comedian since about 1980. Before that, I was in the insurance business. I was in the advertising business. Then I decided, no, I think I'd really much rather make people laugh. I started out in comedy. I eventually switched over to speaking. It's been a fun ride. Cool. That's pretty cool. What or whom inspired you to become a professional speaker in the first place, Dale? I was in the advertising business at the time. I had to go to a client's meeting, I don't know where it was, just to give them a little funny update on their advertising. It was a franchise organization. They had a speaker there, a financial guy by the name of Hal Morris, who was giving them a full-day financial seminar. He saw my little schtickle at lunch, and he said, that was very good. Have you ever thought about doing this for a living? I said, you can? He said, yes, that's what I do. He turned me on to the National Speakers Association that I joined, learned a lot from them. What I wanted to do was to do funny after-dinner speeches. But I found out that pretty much everybody and their brother is doing funny after-dinner speeches. So I decided to try a completely different plan. I studied it for a year and a half at Second City and learned the art of improv. I'm able to write a joke very fast about what just happened. So today what I do is I sit through meetings. I listen to all of their speakers. I attend all of their events. And then periodically through the conference or the convention, I give them a summary of what has happened in the form of a comedy monologue that I've written on the spot. Wow. You know, actually you have answered a few of my questions ahead of time. But I'm going to tell you one thing that I've met that really piqued my interest is when I read that you were part of the Second City. Of course, those of you out there and they're listening, the Second City is the legendary Chicago improv club that was the springboard of several people who went on to be cast members of Saturday Night Live, among other things. Quite a few. Both Belushi studied there. Dan Aykroyd studied there. A lot of people have gone through Second City. Yeah, including the late, great Chris Farley, who I tell you, speaking of Chris Farley and motivational speakers, have you ever seen his motivational speaker character, Matt Foley? Oh, absolutely. I watch it down by the river in a van down by the river. Dan, I'm Matt Foley. I'm thrice divorced. I live in a van down by the river with Lottie frickin' Dahl. Yeah, of course, being a coachmaster, I will admit, and hearing motivational speakers, it's like, that's just one of those, that's probably my favorite Chris Farley thing. It's a shame that the poor guy left us as soon as he did. But I don't want to dwell on that, man. But, you know, going back to your professional speaking, what was your first professional gig like, and how did you feel at the time? First professional gig as a speaker? Yes, sir. It was to a group of Harvestor. They make silos. And I was their after-lunch speaker. And I was, you know, basically the speech that I was doing in the early days was just my comedy act with a couple of points thrown in. So I was fairly confident that what I was doing was funny. And it went quite well. Wow, that's pretty cool. And let's talk a little bit about National Speakers Association. I'm a little bit familiar with it, again, because of my 30-plus years in Toastmasters. But for those listeners out there who may have never heard of the NSA, National Speakers Association, tell us a little something about it. Well, it's a good organization. They teach a lot. If you're just starting out or you're in the beginning throes of your career, it's a good place to learn a lot of the secrets and the techniques. And especially today with all of the modern advances in technology, it's a good place to learn that kind of stuff. One of the outcroppings of that, they used to have what they called professional emphasis groups or PIGs. And a friend of mine 20 years ago started something called the Cigar PIG, where we would get together and go to a bar and smoke cigars. And it eventually turned into a charity. And now we have raised over a million dollars in charity just from this one party that is thrown at the same time as the National Speakers Association. It's the only thing I go to anymore. I've kind of been their go-to entertainment. And like I said, we've raised a lot of money, so that's a good thing. And what has this charity benefited? A lot of it benefits the Professional Speakers Benefit Fund, which is a fund within the National Speakers Association for people who have run on hard times. But we also give generously to several other charities, one of which is my pet charity. It's called SADS, stands for Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome. And we give a lot of money to them every year. Wow. So basically a benevolent fund for fellow professional speakers and then other types of charities that you all decide on. Right. Our motto is philanthropy through fun. I like philanthropy. You know, it's kind of funny. I'm actually a member of the Lions Club. I don't know if you're familiar with Lions or not. Sure. Yeah. In fact, Lions is actually based up there in the Chicago area. It was founded by Melvin Jones in Chicago, and their headquarters is out there in Oak Brook, which I've been there before. But, yeah, but basically I'm just happy to see that we've got people out there like you who care about giving back to the community and others. Well, you know, your life is one of gaining knowledge and then of acquisition and then of giving back. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So, wow. Let's go on to let's ask, okay, say I want to become a professional speaker. I think you've already answered this question. But, again, what advice would you give, say, if I wanted to become a professional speaker? Well, it's a challenging job to get into. First of all, you've got to have something to say. The world is full of, as we just mentioned, generic motivational speakers and things like that. You've got to have something that's important that needs to be said and get out to audiences. So that's the first thing. If you think you've got something to say, okay, then you can become a speaker. Then the next step is to write a speech, throw it away, rewrite it, throw that one away, and start on the third version. And then practice it a lot, which is, you know, what a lot of people do at Toastmasters, I believe, is write their speeches. So you need a lot of that. Yeah, as a matter of fact, there are many people who Toastmasters International (Toastmasters.org) actually has a world championship of public speaking, which they hold at their international convention in August. The person that wins the world champion of public speaking title, I would say at least half, if not all of them, eventually go on to become professional speakers or otherwise try to pursue a professional speaker career themselves. And I guess professional speakers are kind of like, say, for instance, if I wanted to be a country music singer and just travel up the road here to Nashville from Atlanta, you know, I'd just be one of about, you know, a thousand, you know, millions of wannabes out there, but only a handful ever, the only ones you ever hear from, like, say, in the country music business. And I'd say the professional speaking business are the ones that have become the stars. Well, and really that just is, you know, my advice to everybody is just if you want to get into business and you want to get more business, get good before you even start. Get good practice from people who have doing this, maybe join Toastmasters. But you don't want to join Toastmasters to start. Yeah, you don't want to go out there half-baked. You want to get good when you become a speaker. Oh, absolutely. It's like if you want to become good at anything for that matter. But yeah, it's yeah, absolutely. Oh, man. So let's go on. Let's talk a little bit about your major projects. And, you know, as I said before we started recording this conversation is that I've always been a big fan of the Friday Funnies. Actually, it's a fellow Toastmaster from here in Georgia that introduced me to the Friday Funnies. He is a professional speaker in his own right. And he told me about your Funnies. And it didn't take me long to start watching. And I've been watching it probably almost every week, every Friday for several years. And I'll tell you something. I've probably never, ever told somebody that before. And, again, I guess this will be used against me in the court of public opinion because I'm saying it. Whenever I crank it up there, I love that music that you have. It just makes me feel happy dancing in my chair. You know, it's like it just sets that mood for me to. And I just love that music among other things. That music was written by my best friend from high school. He was a musician out in California. And I told him that I needed a theme for my Friday Funnies. And he came up with one. Roy Philippe? Roy Philippe, yeah. He and I went to graduate from high school together. We've been best friends for 50 years. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I mean, again, you have been so kind to feature some of my submissions, especially one. One that comes into mind is, and pardon my language, ladies and gentlemen, is a submission that I gave for Dumbass of the Week. And it was the one about the Amazon driver who looked at his GPS and somehow got on a golf cart course and got his big old van stuck in a golf cart tunnel. In fact, I provided a link to that in my latest blog, and I'll tell people how to do it later. But that's just one example of your work. Every week I look for the odd stories in the news that everybody else has ignored, because the funniest things is the unintended humor of reality. And people are out there every day doing stupid things, and somebody's got to call them on it. So that's my job. Well, you do a dang good job of it, Dale. I'll tell you that right now, sir. You are – if you talk about finding your niche in the whole public speaking thing, I think you have found your niche right there, if nothing else, brother. Well, thank you. And what I do to the – I tell people what I do to the news, I can do to your meeting. It's the same process. I just look for the odd stuff and bring it up. Wow. That's good. And everybody who's listening to your podcast can certainly subscribe to the Friday Funnies. They're absolutely free. All you have to do is go to Dale Irvin, that's D-A-L-E-I-R-V-I-N.com, and on the first page you see a little button that says Friday Funnies. Push that. Watch the latest episode and then enter your email, and I'll send them to you every week. And you do, folks. I'll vouch for Dale, and I will provide a link to – I will provide a link to your website and a description for this episode. So – and for that matter, your other projects. And, I mean, again, folks, if you're out there and you need something to cheer you up, to make you feel a little bit better about yourself, you know, you think you've got it bad, well, Dale Irvin's got the stories that will make you probably feel a little bit better or at least give you a laugh or two. And if you happen to be of a certain age, i.e. a baby boomer, I have the podcast for you to listen to. Yeah, Another Day Above Ground. Tell us about it and how you all decide. It's aimed at baby boomers, which was really a stupid demographic for me to pick because it's getting smaller every day. But it's for people who are born between 1946 and 1964. We grew up in the 50s and 60s. We've seen a lot of things. We've done a lot of things. And today we're all old and cranky. And what I do is I'm on the podcast with two friends. One is Tim Slagle, one of the funniest comedians I've known for years and years, and Carolyn Strauss, who is a speaker from Denver who kind of adds a different sensibility to the three of us. And we talk about all things that relate to baby boomers, health and finances and good times and fun things we used to do. And this week now we're plugging a new game that just came out called Boom Again. It was produced by a guy, a big game producer out on the West Coast. And it's kind of like Trivial Pursuit but only for baby boomers. It's all stuff that we saw, that we did, that we tasted, that we experienced. And it's a lot of fun. Wow. Well, that's great, Dale. So, yep, you know, talking about baby boomers, I guess I'm probably on the far end. I was born in 1964. Okay, folks, now you know how old I am. Boy, you qualify then. Well, thank you, sir. But, you know, the first time, and I didn't start listening to it until just recently. Just last week I decided, well, I'm going to check it out. And I listened to you and your friends talk about, among other things, like back in the day when before you had cell phones, answering machines and stuff like that, it's like you just answered the phone. It's like, yeah, or you had to say, oh, I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'm trying to make a call. Yeah, well, you know, I mean, of course, one thing I think technology has probably helped do is like, I mean, back in the day, it's like it's a lot easier to make a crank call. Just saying. Yeah, back then it was. Now people see who the call is coming from. So, yeah, it's a little harder to pull pranks. People do it on the Internet. They're called scams and don't ever call for them. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Scams like your 419 scams. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah, you know, somebody in Nigeria or somewhere, he has some money that he'd like to have, a million bucks that he or she would like for you to hold on to. And that is very, very big of him. I really appreciate him contacting me and offering me that. You know, I'd like to meet the guy in person. And I'd also like to meet the other fellow that calls me three times a week at 11 o'clock in the morning to tell me that my car warranty has expired. So I'd like to meet him. Oh, I hate those, man. But I don't want to dwell on the negative, you know. That's just not our speed here at Steve Williams and Friends. But still you think about, you know, you pull the humor from everything. And sometimes the worst push comes to shove, you just got to laugh, right? Absolutely. Laughter is the best defense that we have against just about everything. We're the only creature in the world with the ability to laugh. So, you know, in my beliefs, when God created us, he knew we were going to go through a lot of stuff. So he gave us the ability to laugh. And you know what, if you don't think God had a sense of humor, it's like, look at us and look at happy animals in Australia like the platypus. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, God had the day off when he invented the platypus. But if you don't think he has a sense of humor, go to Walmart. Walk around for a little while. I guarantee he has a sense of humor. Yeah, really, Walmart or just go down to Florida. The Florida files. There you go. Yeah, in fact, one of the most memorable things that I sent you was some dude down in Florida that took an Olaf doll and decided to, well, have a little fun with it. Laughter. I'm trying to be very, I'm trying to be as G or as PG rated as I can. You know what I'm saying? Laughter. Because you never know who's listening to this thing. Well, don't listen to that Steve Williams. He's nothing but a damn old pervert. Laughter. Talking about doing things to dolls in the middle of the Walmart. Well, if those people, I would ask them never, ever to listen to Another Day Above Ground. Laughter. Well, you know, that's okay. Again, if you can't take it, you know, as I said, if you can't take a joke, that's on you. Yeah, it's the same. Everybody should be able to. And of course, you know, we're not meaning to offend anybody. No, I don't mean to offend anybody when I do things. I mean, sometimes I've said a thing or two that, you know, might have offended somebody but wasn't intentional. I was listening, I have a lot of old vinyl records that I like to listen to. And I picked up one the other day. It was done in 1964, I think. It's called Hello Dummy by Don Rickles. Don Rickles. Don Rickles band. I mean, none of it would get by today. But the last five minutes of the show, he explains. He said, you know, I've made a lot of fun of a lot of different people here tonight. But when I was in the Navy, I learned one thing, and that's we're all together. We're all the same. And it was very touching. I mean, because, you know, he ridiculed every race, creed, and color out there. And then at the end, he said it was just a joke. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, Don Rickles. I've got to tell you, the man is like, the one thing that I've always got is a hockey puck. Hockey puck. Yeah, I always liked him. I got to see him live one time in Vegas. It was just a great show. It was a great show. Yeah. I mean, these days, the poor guy, nobody would want him to be performing these days, I guess. No, he's definitely not woke. You know, he's far from it. That's all right. I mean, he does this thing. I'm not going to get into it again. The thing, I don't get into politics or stuff like that. So, you know, but I agree. Well, that's true. Yeah, there's a lot of fun things in politics. But, you know, as I said, I just like doing what we're doing, just having a talk here, just like we're just chilling out here on the front porch, opening a cold one, you know, and just talking about things and mostly about you, brother. All right. Oh, wow. Well, okay. So, let's see. I'm going to go ahead and just wrap this thing up. And you've already told us a little bit about Friday Funnies and Another Day Above Ground, and we'll provide links to both. And tell us about how they can book you for a personal appearance at their next event. Well, I would highly suggest, once again, you visit Dale at DaleIrvin.com. That's my email address. And just let me know what you're looking for. I'd be happy to give you a call back, and we can chat and see if I'm a good fit for your next meeting. It's something completely different. I am the only person out there that does this. Google professional summarizer. I'm the only name that comes up. And it's an addition to a meeting that everybody seems to like to the point where they have me back, you know, several years in a row. Wow. So, if you don't mind my asking, what are one or two of the most recent events that you're going to be appearing at? And I know they're probably private events, but just curious. Well, when the pandemic hit, you know, I figured this is a sign. And I quit doing a lot of live shows, switching over to video and audio. I'm still doing, you know, a couple of meetings here and there. But for the most part, I'm doing a lot more writing now. So, I've switched over and gotten off of the road and onto the tube. Okay. Well, cool. Well, anyway, folks, if you want to book for a virtual appearance, again, go to DaleIrvin.com. We'll provide a link in the description. If you have no money, I'll show up in person, you know. Well, I'll let you and whoever contacts you work that out. You betcha. Yeah. Well, Dale, I tell you, man, it's, again, it's an honor and a privilege to be able to talk to you today. And you've always kept me laughing. And as long as you keep pumping out those Friday funnies, I'll watch them. And if I find them. Share them with everybody you know. You bet. With the Oscars coming up, I'd like to see more people laughing and less people slapping other people. Yeah, for real. Oh, boy. Well, yeah, I definitely am sharing. In fact, in my last blog post on my Subligna Valley Productions, Steve Williams and Friends blog, I actually posted about you and shared the three videos that featured the things that I've sent you. Oh, bless you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Oh, as they say at Chick-fil-A, it's my pleasure. Well, Dale, I tell you what, man, I'm going to go ahead and let you go. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to us. And all I can say is just keep us laughing, and God bless you, brother. Thank you very much, Steve, and thanks to all your listeners for listening. And I hope to talk to you again soon. All right, Dale. Well, you take care, brother. Thanks again to Dale Irvin for being our guest. To subscribe to the Friday Bunnies or book a personal or virtual appearance at your next event, please visit daleirvin.com and please listen to his podcast at anotherdayaboveground.com, especially if you're one of those baby boomers. Links are provided in the episode description. Steve Williams and Friends is a Subligna Valley production from Atlanta, Georgia, created, hosted, and produced by yours truly, Steve Williams. Thanks for listening, and until next time, peace out, y'all.