People who have enrolled in Rick's seminars and courses give consistently high ratings because he is exceptionally dedicated, committed, enthusiastic, energetic and knowledgeable in his various fields.

His outgoing and playful personality energizes the class and stimulates higher levels of participation. Participants know that he truly cares about their growth and success, helping them to get from where they are now to where they want to be.

Rick's consistent record exemplifies his deeply rooted beliefs in helping others to grow and reach their potential -- proven leadership traits which are critically important for the challenges we face today.

Rick believes in living a very full and energized life. After enlisting with the Marine Corps, he was sent to boot camp for three months at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot located on Parris Island, South Carolina. Upon. graduation from Parris Island, the Senior Drill Instructor rated all of the 80 men from the platoon.  Rick was ranked as # 12 among the 80 Marines in his platoon.

Rick then went to Camp Lejeune for advanced training for another 3 months. After that, he trained for several months with the field artillery unit located at the 3rd Battalion, 14th Marines, based in Philadelphia. He then trained with the 4th Force Reconnaissance Platoon based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

He later trained for a few months with First Troop Philadelphia City Calvary. Established in 1774, the First Troop is the oldest continuously active military unit in the United States with its roots forming during the American Revolution.

While with them, Rick had the opportunity to enroll in training to drive and operate the M-1 Abrams Battle Tank while at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

While serving with the Marine Corps, Rick was recommended by his Commanding Officer Captain Schwalm for the Gold Congressional Award. For this program, Rick engaged in 1200+ hours of community service meeting with, helping and encouraging nursing home residents, cancer patients, runaway teens, prisoners, homeless people, and others.

After his training with the Marines, Rick became an avid skydiver with 180+ jumps from hot air balloons, helicopters, and a variety of air craft. He has made several jumps while at night, from heights of 13,000 feet using only the moonlight and street lights below for guidance. Rick received specialized training in Canopy Relative Work (parachute stacking, pictured at right), and in jumping with the sky surfboard. In his love for adventure, Rick has also enjoyed riding a sail plane in the Nevada desert, bungee jumping from a 150 foot tower, and scuba diving with sharks in the Bahamas.

Rick has run two 26-mile marathons in Philadelphia, and continues to run an hour each and every day all year round.

Rick has worked with the White House Advance Team on five presidential visits. His assignments with the Advance Team included recruiting drivers and participating in the Presidential motorcade, securing loaned vehicles from area car dealers, recruiting volunteers to serve as guides for visiting staff at special events, and administrative computer support work.
 

Rick served with eight political campaigns to include: Office of the Mayor, State Representative, District Attorney and United States Senate.

While President of the 1500 Locust Residents Association in 1993, Rick recruited, trained and mentored volunteers to start several clubs to get the residents more involved. Rick launched a cooking club, Bible study club, book of the month club, movie club, political action club, Toastmasters public speaking club and several others. Because Rick was running several things simultaneously, he did not serve in leadership roles in these clubs, but instead created them from scratch and then found volunteers to run them. He met with the new leaders and mentored them in running their club and assisted with finding new members.

Rick's Political Action Club invited candidates to come and speak at 1500 Locust, and then have an open forum where the 800 residents could ask questions of the candidates to learn their position on various political issues.

The Panorama Toastmasters Club (Club Number 9669, District 38, Area C30) for public speaking that Rick created in 1993 still exists today, some 24 years later!  Rick recruited and helped train the initial set of founding officers to launch the club, and he single handedly spent hours for several months hand delivering promotional flyers to the 800 apartments in the building, going floor by floor and door by door meeting with residents and selling them on the idea of joining the Panorama Toastmasters Club as a vehicle for enhancing their careers. They needed 20 members to officially launch the club within the Toastmasters International organization. (Rick did not know it at the time, but this would have given him DTM leadership credit later if he had listed himself as the founder on the application. At the time he was super swamped with launching and building the other clubs while President of the 1500 Locust Residents Association, and also very heavily involved as a graduate assistant with the various Dale Carnegie courses.) The Panorama Toastmasters Club finally received their official charter from Toastmasters International on November 1, 1993.

Rick was the founder and past chairman of the Philadelphia Pyramid Club's Programs Committee, one of Philadelphia's premier social and business networking clubs.

In 1998, Rick was hired by Lord Abbett, an international financial firm then headquartered in New York City. He was tasked with creating the firm's first Technology Education Department from scratch.  He created more than 60 technology courses to teach the 500+ employees more advanced skills in computer technology.  Rick  specialized in troubleshooting blockages, and designed more than a dozen software solutions to save time and money in manpower. Such applications would often take projects that took an extensive amount of hours of manual work and thousands of dollars, and reduced such tasks to mere minutes. (As an example, one project run by the Creative Services Department took 40 hours and two staff people to manually complete each month. Rick created an automated solution that reduced that to a mere two minutes each month!)

Rick wrote several technology manuals, which can be downloaded here. Rick created the Lord Abbett Public Speaking Club, which became the most successful and most popular voluntary training program in the 70+ year history of the financial firm. The Lord Abbett auditorium was packed, and Rick would recruit and train speakers to give a 3 to 7 minute presentation, and then solicit feedback from the people in the audience. Lives were changed.

People who have attended Rick's seminars and workshops give consistently high ratings because he is exceptionally dedicated, committed, enthusiastic, energetic and knowledgeable in his various fields. His outgoing and playful personality energizes the class and stimulates higher levels of participation. Participants know that he truly cares about their growth and success, helping them to get from where they are now to where they want to be. Rick's consistent record exemplifies his deeply rooted beliefs in helping others to grow and reach their potential -- proven leadership traits which are critically important for the challenges we face today.

In 2001, while seeking to gain mastery of skills in public speaking and professional selling, Rick enrolled in and passed the Dale Carnegie Instructor Course, and the Dale Carnegie Sales Instructor Course. Rick is a recipient of the Dale Carnegie Highest Achievement Award, 1994.

Rick volunteered 700+ hours with the Dale Carnegie training staff on a part-time basis over an 8 year period of time. This background as a corporate trainer gives the experience and skill to reach and connect with audience members from all walks of society, resulting in a fun packed and entertaining performance that will reach your audiences in a remarkable and memorable way. Rick has read Dale Carnegie's book many times, "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and incorporates much of these teachings in both his motivational seminars and leadership seminars.

Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of helping members improve their communication, public speaking and leadership skills. There were more than 215,000 members and over 11,000 clubs located across the United States and in approximately 90 other countries.

As an active member of Toastmasters, Rick has won 14 First Place Ribbons for public speaking. He also won nine trophies for his speeches in public speaking contests at the local, area, and division levels of Toastmasters.

His peers voted on his speeches and frequently praised his ability to organize and structure his presentations, inject humor and enthusiasm, and project energy that stirred his listeners.

Many of Rick's speeches focus on motivating and inspiring others to live their lives to the fullest. He shares stories and lessons learned from his own experiences and many adventures. Rick has constantly sought to make his speeches, motivational seminars and magic shows full of energy, enthusiasm, animation and excitement.

Rick frequently uses Dale Carnegie's teachings to encourage people to seek their fullest potential. Rick believes that by projecting a high level of energy into the audience, that this "focused enthusiasm" is powerful and contagious.

Rick teaches that by creating a powerful emotional experience, the natural barriers drop and people are receptive to the lessons and teachings being shared with listeners.  He closes all speeches, seminars and shows with "action statements" to challenge people to live life more abundantly.

Rick uses a very unique teaching tool - implementing professional stage magic! In the world of magic and entertainment, Rick has had personalized training with some of the top award winning celebrity names in the world of professional stage magic, such as Marc DeSouza, Mio Rodriguez, Haruo Shimada, Johnny Thompson, Martin Lewis, Jeff McBride, and Rocco Silano. Rick has attended magic lectures in New York, New Jersey, Las Vegas, Pennsylvania and Florida. He has been a student of the Caroline's Professional Comedy Course of New York City. These effects have proven to be very strong attention getters making the class a very enjoyable, inspiring and educational experience, as well as providing a vehicle for driving home key points and increasing the retention of the material covered and taught.

Evidence of Rick's success and impact as a powerful speaker and presenter can be seen in his 60+ letters of recommendation. These letters are from a wide variety of industries, such as law firms, financial firms, defense contractors, manufacturers, banks, and many others. He has received high praise from employees of the largest and most prestigious seminar organization in the world today:  Dale Carnegie.

"Rick Saldan has the wit, wisdom and sorcery of a wizard. He has a dynamic personality, and all will enjoy his captivating stories, comedy and magic!"

Dennis Slaughter
Credit Suisse First Boston