John Fannell Opens For BB KingStand-up Comedy Show

My concert length stand-up comedy navigates American culture, everyday life, relationships and pop culture. One might call it observational comedy, character comedy, surreal, satirical and for sure self-deprecating. I also throw in some musical comedy. For the most part you would rate it PG -13, although who really knows what that means anymore? I know my dog and cat like it.

Keynote Presentations

The Confidence Trap

If you wait long enough for the confidence you need to try something, eventually you will be dead, so it won’t matter anyway. And by the way, fear won’t kill you. It will just embarrass you to death.

For a significant part of my life, surviving meant learning to be invisible. This served me well as a child, even better in the army, and it kept me out of trouble in college. I found transitioning to the business world, where people expected you to have actual conversations, to be a truly scary and painful experience.

Somewhere along the way, I remembered always enjoying making people laugh. Eventually I went from someone content with never talking, to someone standing before strangers to get them to crack up. I still cannot fathom the transition. And by the way, I’m still afraid every day. Somehow, I’ve managed to skydive, scuba dive, run marathons and perform for thousands of people at a time. Once I even ate beets.

What is fear? What is confidence? How can you pursue your destiny when you always have too much of one and not enough of the other?

Let’s talk about it…