Master of Edutainment
Motivational Speaker Billy McLaughlin Transforms Lives and Learning through Music and Storytelling
Picture yourself attending a lecture. It’s early in the morning and you’ve had about half the sleep that you needed the night before. After about sixteen ounces of coffee and a light snack, you feel slightly more alert, but within minutes your attention begins to fade. It’s not that the topic is dull; on the contrary, it captured your interest or you wouldn’t have paid good money to be sitting where you are right now. It’s just that your mind doesn’t seem as receptive as you’d like it to be.
Now picture yourself coming home from a hard day of work and sitting down in front of the television to watch a favorite movie. Although you are tired and your mind is cluttered with remnants of the business you conducted earlier in the day, the movie draws you in. Your imagination takes you on a journey with the characters in the story and soon your distractions disappear. The last thing that you need is caffeine when the adventure begins to unfold.
Given the two scenarios, under which conditions do you think you would have retained more information? Why is it that a personal and entertaining story, especially one that stimulates our aural and visual senses engages us so dramatically? Regardless of any scientific explanation, the movie industry has been capitalizing on storytelling for years. A bigger question is why, now that audiovisual tools are easily accessible, do so many classrooms and seminars continue to rely exclusively on the lecture platform to facilitate learning?
Edutainment is the merger between education and entertainment, such as movies, stories and music. Combining lectures with entertainment enlivens our senses, which makes us more receptive to learning and increases our ability to retain what we’ve experienced. However, edutainment does more than connect with our auditory and visual senses. Edutainment invokes feelings. The next time you find yourself captured by an “ah-ha” moment, ask yourself, “Am I learning with my head or my heart? Our emotions affect how and what we learn.
Nobody knows the art of edutainment better than motivational speaker and musician Billy McLaughlin. As a guitarist and composer, Billy has mastered the art of connecting with people at a deeply emotional and spiritual level through what he calls transformative music. Through a combination of music and stories, Billy transforms people’s assumptions about what is or is not impossible. He portrays his passion for innovation and achievement in a vividly expressive way that reaches the hearts of his audience members. He inspires them to let go of their fear of failure and commit to a larger goal or purpose.
Billy McLaughlin’s performances are living proof that although you may forget the words that a person says, you never forget the way that person made you feel. The experience that Billy provides is both memorable and motivating. In a friendly, down-to-earth style, he puts life’s biggest problems into perspective as he speaks about the power of persistence and determination. Billy’s heart-felt message is sourced in his journey from being one of Billboard’s brightest stars to incurring a devastating physical malady, focal dystonia, which nearly took his musical career. Overcoming seemingly impossible odds, Billy returned back to the stage more brilliantly than ever before. His message of innovation, reinvention and redefining the impossible is strong medicine for today’s businesses. Through music and true- life stories combined with a witty sense of humor, Billy has inspired people throughout the United States, India and China to rethink the impossible as they consider their own potential.
Instead of ending his career, focal dystonia became the catalyst that transformed him from a musician focused on creating an entertainment niche to a global speaker, devoted to inspiring as many people as possible to pursue bigger goals and aspire to a higher purpose. When asked about his experience, Billy McLaughlin said, “I often say that the worst thing that ever happened to me has become, perhaps, the best thing that has ever happened. If it can be true for me, it can be true for anyone. Suddenly, I am being asked to talk and perform for companies all around the world. I did none of those things the first time around.”
Whether in concert or at a keynote address, the impression Billy McLaughlin leaves with his audience is always the same: unforgettable. With Billy, the difference between learning with your heart vs. your head becomes very clear. The value that you receive from a presentation by Billy McLaughlin does not end when he walks off stage. Rather, it’s the edutainment value you take back with you that yields the biggest return.
For information on booking an event with Billy McLaughlin, contact Hannah Day.
