GREG BENNICK
ABOUT GREG
Improve focus to prevent burnout
and enhance teamwork.
Greg Bennick knows about focus. Though reading about his life, you wouldn’t know that. He is a best-selling author, a keynote thought leader, a noted rare coin researcher, a TEDx speaker and speaking coach, a humanitarian philanthropist, and an influencer devoted to transforming the world by inspiring personal and social change.
For the last three decades he has traveled the world listening to people and what they most want and need. He's come to realize that people want to matter. They want to feel that they are valued and significant contributors to a meaningful idea or vision. They want to be engaged and to feel inspired. If you can capture that in them, it is like high octane fuel for teamwork.
When Greg traces back his own focus journey, he realizes that one moment, seeing a juggling ball flying aloft at twelve years old, changed everything for him. In the moment, he decided that he wanted to learn to juggle, but while learning to juggle changed his life, it wasn't until much later that he realized that it wasn't the juggling ball that was meaningful nearly as much as it was the FOCUS on the juggling ball that was meaningful. That differentiation transformed his life.
And now it gets to transform your audiences too. Here is an example: did your last keynote speaker show a Powerpoint presentation while talking about risk taking? Greg can juggles a machete while talking about risk taking. Which speaker do you think will have the full attention of your audience? We thought so.
He has also been known to balance a chair on his face in a display of the power of focus. No, we aren’t losing our minds. He really does these things. Your audiences will love it.
Author
Greg's new book Reclaim the Moment: 7 Strategies to Build a Better Now is an exploration of how to get back on track when we've been thrown off course by the world. Praise has been high for the book:
“A practical guide to getting your ‘now’ back on track, while staying true to yourself. My favorite chapters dealt with creativity and cultivating a revolutionary mindset, but all seven key strategies provide significant value.”
- Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri
“Greg gives you seven strategies but I’m just giving you one: get his book! He’s creative, insightful, and refreshingly honest. You’re welcome.”
- Larry Wilmore, TV writer/producer
“This book is a nonstop life lesson in the business of being human. Greg has a philosopher’s mind and writes with punk rock energy. Every chapter inspires reflection, inspiration, and action.”
- Andy Hurley, drummer, Fall Out Boy
Currently Greg Bennick is writing the first ever biography of philosopher, cultural anthropologist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Ernest Becker, who dedicated his life to understanding the complexities of self esteem and how it relates to our psychological well-being. Greg has been studying Becker’s work for twenty-five years and is a recognized expert on his writing. The insights Greg has drawn from Becker’s work offer hope for our increasingly turbulent world.
Film Producer
Documentaries written and produced by Greg Bennick have won awards since 2003. His projects have been screened on all seven continents. He’s brought worldwide attention to the psychology of violence with the award-winning film Flight From Death, and revealed wisdom in unlikely places with The Philosopher Kings. He connected a rural Haitian community with a film production to help bring water to a community in need with La Source. He recently examined the controversy of trophy hunting through narrating On the Wild Side, and documenting the journey of five friends pursuing their shared rock music dream on tour with Holding These Moments.
He is currently in production for a feature-length documentary about Seattle’s infamous “Teen Dance Ordinance” which prevented access to the arts in Seattle for decades for tens of thousands of people (Greg literally co-wrote the law that replaced it!). This film will be transformative to those inspired to work on issues involving teamwork and communication.
Working with Greg for your event means working with someone who has decades of real world experience to share about getting things done. Read on to find out more about his life experiences and the why behind the who and the what!
More about Greg: Philanthropy Based on Entirely a Listening/Teamwork Model
Greg is the founder and Executive Director of One Hundred For Haiti, an international humanitarian initiative focused on rural Haiti, and rooted in development, listening, and community. The core concept driving One Hundred For Haiti is to focus on people, and to prioritize the idea that people receiving humanitarian support be the ones defining the conditions of that support.
This concept of personal empowerment motivates all of their work. One Hundred For Haiti puts new roofs on houses in the northwest of Haiti, provides internet for every school in an entire region of the country, helps farmers plant crops, sends dozens of youth to school who otherwise couldn’t afford it, and makes sure water is clean and safe to drink. The organization has a track record of thirteen years of successes. One Hundred For Haiti teaches important and ongoing lessons to all involved about focus and dedication, listening and leadership, and tenacity and endurance.
In the summer of 2020, Greg co-founded the Portland Mutual Aid Network with two friends. Today, this is a group of dozens of active volunteers, working in teams, who distribute food, essential products, and survival supplies to unsheltered individuals in Portland Oregon. The group has distributed well over ten thousand meals and massive amounts of donated supplies. Find out more on their website. To be part of a strong community, we can start by recognizing the need to support the development of both hope and direction. When we help others create a stronger sense of personal value through providing organizational models and basic survival needs, we provide an essential foundation from which all growth is possible.
The Legacy Project seeks to understand healing and reconciliation. Founded in 2006 by Greg and his brilliant friend history teacher/scholar Dave Whitson, students have been led on travel-study missions to Poland, South Africa, Rwanda, and other countries struggling to reconcile legacies of aggression. With the participation in country of government officials, activists, scholars, and prominent historical figures, we work to promote an international dialogue about overcoming trauma, achieving justice, and understanding reconciliation.
Greg founded the World Leaders Project which brought him to Guyana to discuss the relationship between fear and violence with President Bharrat Jagdeo. He wanted to understand how deeper insight into that relationship can lead to a more peaceful world. Imagining that speaking with world leaders face-to-face was possible, and then writing directly to each of them until a meeting was arranged, meant a lesson learned in saying yes before we say no.
These humanitarian and philanthropic efforts emerge from hoping to discover new levels of connection and shared meaning when we focus on a goal. There has never been a better time to expand our sense of human connectedness through teamwork.