 I'm going to talk to you today about Pro Bono and it seemed to be when I started and when I prepared this that this is a pretty simple thing, right? We just do Pro Bono, we do work for free and that's all cool. So like everything else that happens at AIN, it's not exactly like that. On the bus we got into a conversation about Pro Bono and had some really serious concerns about some of the downside of Pro Bono. We're not going to talk about that today but it may be a topic for an open space later on. But for now, I want to talk to you just a little bit about Pro Bono and how I have learned to use it and what it what it works for me. Pro Bono as you know means is short for Pro Bono publicum which means for the good of the public translated it means free. We started the idea of Pro Bono with the notion that attorneys have a duty to provide legal services for the good of the public and not always for pay. So this is the story of my journey into Pro Bono. These are my latest clients. The top group is a group of people in a memory unit read Alzheimer's at a nursing home. The bottom group is in a care facility for people with mental health and mental cognition issues. They're quite different from your typical client. One of the things that I found is very difficult in working with these people is that how often we as AIN trainers begin with, okay, everybody on your feet, not with this group. So I was really stymied at first for finding enough games and activities that you could do with non-ambulatory clients. So the AIN Facebook page helped me, probably some of you in this room, sent me suggestions for things that people could do sitting down. One of our favorite games in the memory unit is a game that they're actually playing in this picture and is called Making Faces. Is anybody ever played Making Faces? Okay, we're going to do it now for those of you who haven't. We're going to start over here on your left and my right. Everybody in each row turn to the person next to you and make a perfectly hideous ugly face. That person will then pass that same hideous ugly face onto the next person. We're going to leap the aisle and pass this ugly hideous face all the way to the person at my left or right. So ready, set, go. So there you have it, Making Faces. And I will tell you, as you can see, that my clients love Making Faces. This is a very, very fun game for them to play. Now the next game that we play very often, again, is a game that does not require anybody except the facilitator to move and that's giving gifts. And I take to each person in order and I give them an imaginary gift. And they have to open it and tell me what it is. We have had kitties, which sometimes escape and run across the room. We have had a very popular one is a box of candy. And when one of my clients chooses a box of candy as a gift that she received, I ask if we can share it with the rest of the group. And almost always they say yes. And very often, when I hand it to this person to share, she grabs it and eats it all. But it is absolutely delightful the way that we've learned these games and it is so much fun. What I look forward to every month are my times with my newest clients. They are just a delight to be with. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to tell you my, oh, yeah, I left out a slide. How much money do I get from these clients? How do I feel about that? Happy with getting absolutely nothing from these clients. I'd like to tell you my story. My story is how I discovered the value of pro bono. I'm going to tell this story using the story spine. Everybody's familiar with the story spine. I got it out of Kat Coppett's book. And where's Michael, who reminded me that I need to also give credit to the originator of the story spine whose name is Ken Adams, right? So Ken Adams has developed the story spine. Now when we get to the appropriate points in this story that I'm telling you, I'm going to ask you to help me. And I think you will understand, because you're all bright AIN people, what it is that you do to help me. So my story begins, I am a man. As you see in the program, I have enough education to cause cancer in lab rats. I have had a couple of fairly successful and enjoyable careers as a trial attorney and as a college professor, as a tire retreader. And I had a career cleaning out a chicken house at one point in my life. But that life is going along. I'm doing very well, enjoying life, raising a family, and so on. Until one day, I took an improvisational comedy class. And because of that, I was cast in Laughline's improvisational comedy company. And because of that, I started my own improvisational comedy company called The Senior Class made up entirely of actors over the age of 55. In case you hadn't noticed, I qualify for membership in that organization. And because of that, I was on the internet looking for games for my improvisational company to play. And because of that, oh, I left that out, my goodness, let's go back. And I discovered the Applied Improvisation Network. And because of that, I went to AIN Austin. I went to a session called Getting Clients 101 with Gina Trimarko. Gina, where are you? Yay, Gina. And while I was at this session with Gina, she made several important points. I remember, Gina, I even wrote it down, right? So correct me if I don't get this right. First of all, she said you should set goals. You should decide how much money you want to make. You should decide how much time you want to invest in this process. And you should decide how many clients you make. I'm sitting in the room and I'm thinking about this. She said you should set a value on what you sell. So you guys are getting this for you. You didn't go to Austin and now you're getting Gina's session for free. Pro bono. She said you should know you're genius. And that really resonated with me. I thought a lot about that. Know you're genius. And finally, she said you should identify potential clients. So, Gina, you're getting free pace here. This is pro bono, right? Everybody is going to get Gina's session from Austin for free. Well, as the story goes and the story spine, it is until finally. While I'm sitting there in that room, I realized several things. One is, while I do like to make money, I'm retired. I have a retirement income and I have a good, well-paying part-time job as an adjunct associate professor. And I often tell people that for me, laugh to learn my business. By the way, do you see I got on my business shirt? I had this logo printed on a shirt so that when I go to talk to a client, they don't think it's just some old guy working out of his spare bedroom. He's got company shirts and all my employees have to wear their company shirt, which is me. But I often tell people that laugh to learn with the money I make from laugh to learn, I buy beer, not bread. This is like supplemental income for me. And right there in the room, I wrote down on my notebook, do I really, really, really want to pursue this as a business? And I decided that I was going to continue to do it as a business. I'm going to continue to accept paying clients. I'm not going to work very hard to get new ones. I still get a lot of referrals and repeat clients, but I just hate marketing. I hate, hate, hate, hate marketing. My genius is not sitting at my computer composing email messages to send out in constant contact. My genius is standing up in front of people and helping them laugh and enjoy life and get better. So that's when I decided that I was going to begin to do pro bono. And that's where I discovered all of these new clients that I've talked to you about. Your story can begin with until one day I went to the AIN conference in Montreal, and I heard this old dude get up and talk about pro bono. And because of that, I learned that I can work for love as well as for money.