Emmy Award-winning television host, author and Hall of Fame Speaker Ross Shafer will be the featured speaker at the CAS Spring Meeting at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado on May 18, 2015. A highly regarded keynote speaker and seminar leader on the subjects of customer urgency and empathy, personal motivation, reinvention and market relevance, Shafer will tailor his presentation, based on his latest book, Absolutely Necessary: Bulletproof Tactics that Will Put You in High Demand, to the personal and professional development of new Associates trying to establish their careers as well as experienced actuaries. In Absolutely Necessary, Shafer shares how industry practices have changed and how leaders may need to shift their collective thinking to “reinvention mode.” Then he will present seven steps on how to become “absolutely necessary.” Audience members will take away bulletproof tactics that will put them in high demand, and they will learn how to become valued voices to any organization.
Shafer grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, where he studied business management and played varsity football. After college, he took a job as a training manager for the department store Yard Birds and eventually became a retail store owner and manager. After three years he closed the store and took a job as an advertising manager for the Squire Shops retail clothing chain in Seattle. Writing ad copy and concocting radio and TV campaigns paid the bills, but at night Shafer haunted local comedy clubs in search of a career in joke telling. After years of slogging around the comedy circuit, he won the Seattle International Comedy Competition and immediately became an opening act for performers like Crystal Gayle, Eddie Rabbitt, Nel Carter, Neil Sedaka and Dionne Warwick.
In 1985 Shafer pitched a TV show idea to KING, the NBC affiliate in Seattle, and ALMOST LIVE was born. For the next five seasons, Shafer hosted the comedy talk show while he and his team collected 36 Emmys. In l988 the Fox network wooed Shafer to take over The Late Show, a nightly talk show that competed with The Tonight Show and David Letterman. The show lasted a year and Shafer next found himself in New York co-hosting Days End on the ABC network. The next stop for Shafer was hosting the revised Match Game on the ABC network. Another game show (this time on the USA network) Love Me, Love Me Not and numerous TV pilot projects followed.
By this time, Shafer was headlining all of the leading night clubs and casinos in North America. He produced a highly acclaimed comedy album about the Clinton administration titled Inside the First Family. He also wrote a comedy cookbook that became a best seller titled, Cook Like A Stud—38 recipes Men can Prepare in the Garage with their Own Tools.
In 1994 Shafer heard Bill Gates give a speech where he said, “Someday you will all be watching television on your telephones.” Shafer took that message to heart, and he made the decision to leave TV and get back to his corporate training roots. Human nature and the human condition were always fascinating to Shafer because that’s what comedians do. They study the laughter and tears business. To date Shafer has produced 14 human resource training films on customer service, motivation, leadership and peer pressure. He has authored the business books Nobody Moved Your Cheese; Customer Empathy; The Customer Shouts Back; Are You Relevant? 12 Reasons Smart Organizations Thrive in Any Economy; and Grab More Market Share: How to Wrangle Business Away from Lazy Competitors.
Whether you want to get buy-in for new approaches to reserving or ratemaking, or want your team to become invaluable contributors to the company’s or firm’s growth, Shafer will teach you to become “absolutely necessary” to your organization by eliminating corporate tunnel vision, learning to make good decisions and remain creative even when under intense pressure, utilizing five tactics to keep an eye on your competitors, getting buy-in from your team and delivering more performance even when you have limited resources.
