“The end of laughter is followed by the height of listening.”
–Jeffrey Gitomer
In 2000, I was lucky enough to spend a summer on a work and travel program in the United States with a group of other Irish students. The original plan was to live in Boston, but, faced with a shortage of temporary housing at the time, we ended up in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Not quite the intellectual landscape of MIT and Harvard, but that wasn’t going to stop our good time. We quickly embraced the state motto, “Live free or die,” and set about having as much fun as possible in our new surroundings: freely living it up, pushing our boundaries, and hoping that we didn’t die.
Then one day my neighbor handed me a beer bong. It had never before occurred to me to drink beer through a funnel. Frankly, I didn’t see the point. As a culture, we Irish love a drink way too much to shoot it down our throats through a tube. Plus, Ireland only has one drinking game—it’s called life.
“Call me old-fashioned,” I said to my neighbor, looking at the outstretched funnel in his hands, “but a pint glass works just fine.”
“That’s fine. If you’re not up for it, you don’t have to.”
My eyes narrowed as my competitive streak kicked in. Ireland doesn’t win an awful lot in sports, but we are undefeated in the pursuit of Pyrrhic victories.
“Give me the funnel.”
Twelve funneled beers later, I finally bowed out. Now, anyone familiar with drinking beer from a funnel knows exactly what I looked like at this point and exactly where I was heading. It wasn’t long before the shout “Hampton Police, open the door!” came, as a fist on the other side of our apartment door knocked loudly. I’d seen the cultural masterpiece that is Cops, which even ran in Ireland, so I knew they needed a warrant to come in. With the funnel in one hand, I politely pulled back the curtain that covered the door and gave them a friendly wave.
The door flew open abruptly. Turns out, Cops was not an accurate representation of police protocol.
“Where’s the guy in the gray shirt?” the officer shouted as he stepped forward menacingly. Oh shit, I thought, that guy is screwed.
Looking down, I realize that I am the guy in the gray shirt.
Oh shit.
And that’s when the audience really laughs. The moment I realize that I’m the one the cops are looking for is one of my proven laugh lines. It’s a story I have told many times to friends and family, and I know where they will likely laugh.
Now that we understand the importance of crafting a good story and the ingredients involved in doing so, we need to look at adding humor. I mentioned in chapter one how my story at The Moth was funnier than all the others. Why? I had told it before in front of the most difficult kind of audience there is: those looking up at me on a stand-up comedy stage. As Jerry Seinfeld says, “No one is more judged in civilized society than a stand-up comedian. Every twelve seconds you’re rated.”
When you first tell a story at an open mic or on a comedy stage, you are forced to cut out the unnecessary pieces and tighten it up. You rapidly learn where the laugh lines are and how to get to them as quickly as possible. Great business speakers do the same thing. The only way to learn where your best laugh lines are is through trial and error, but when you hit on one you will remember it. Your audience’s laughter burns a mental Post-it note in your mind because it feels good to make people laugh.
When asked whether they would like to be funnier, most people say they would. Who wouldn’t? Everybody loves a good joke. It helps us in every walk of life, both personally and professionally. Those who use humor connect more deeply, build better relationships, increase personal productivity, earn more, motivate more effectively, get referred more, are more memorable, stand out, and have more fun!
“A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, or getting along with people, of getting things done,” said Dwight D. Eisenhower.13 As Martha Craumer wrote in the Harvard Communication Letter, “People who use [humor], particularly in stressful or seemingly one-down positions, are viewed as being on top of things, being in charge and in control, whether they are in fact or not.”14
In their best-selling book, Multipliers, Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown describe how they found that nearly every great manager has a great sense of humor. A good salesperson, marketer, community manager, leader, or business development manager needs to know how to create a connection, and the fastest way of doing that is by making someone laugh.
Even if you’re not a manager, it can help you in your job, starting with gaining employment: 98 percent of CEOs prefer job candidates with a sense of humor.15 That said, when I told my old boss that I had more chance of getting myself pregnant than becoming an expert in nanotechnology, aerospace, and photonics (the three sectors she had me down to advise clients on), she spent the rest of the year trying to get me fired. She was the 2 percent. On a more positive note, 84 percent of those CEOs think that candidates with a sense of humor do better work.16 (She was also the 16 percent.)
Having a sense of humor also makes you look more attractive in the dating pool. Recent data from online dating site eHarmony found that neither men nor women are interested in boring people. Site users listed “I must have someone who is sharp and can enjoy the humorous side of life” as their most important Must Have.
If you are single, unemployed, and reading this, then a bulb should be going off around now.
Andrew Tarvin is an international project manager turned humor engineer and TEDx speaker. Through his company, Humor That Works, Andrew teaches people how to be more productive, less stressed, and happier by using humor. In his words, “Humor is a competitive advantage. All of the companies stuck in the old mindset that work is work and shouldn’t be fun are getting left in the dust by the companies who embrace a fundamental truth: their employees are humans, and humans respond to humor.”17
How far can a good collection of funny stories and humor get you?
When asked during the 1984 presidential debates if, at seventy-three, he was too old to be president, Ronald Reagan quipped, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”18 The line, a timeless example of Reagan’s sense of humor, even roused a laugh from his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale. The Republican actor-turned-statesman and famed storyteller won reelection in the most lopsided victory in the history of American presidential politics.
“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
–Mark Twain
People love a funny story. As our good friend science tells us, we are wired to appreciate it. We are wired to love laughter. Our brains make this so by releasing dopamine. Dopamine feels awesome, so by making your audience laugh during your presentation or speaking event, you can actually make your audience feel good, giving your speech a natural, endorphinfueled evolutionary advantage over those who opted for a typical, boring business presentation.
The most powerful thing you can do in comedy and in public speaking is deliver material that both you and your audience can connect to. What stories do you like to tell? What embarrassing and funny things do you typically talk about when in relaxed company? What mistakes have you made in your life that once were painful but now you are okay talking about?
According to comedian Ricky Gervais, “You should write about what you know because people can connect to it more easily.” If you don’t know what you are talking about, you cannot expand on it, go deep into the topic, and play with it like you actually care about it. If you don’t care about it, nobody else will, either. But if you connect well with it, then your audience can as well.
“The whole object of comedy is to be yourself and the closer to that you get, the funnier you will be.”
–Jerry Seinfeld
Comedian, writer, and actress Rita Rudner has the longest-running solo comedy show in Las Vegas. When explaining comedy on an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, she says, “There’s nothing funny about a confident person who’s doing well.” Rita’s explanation links well to the often-quoted words of American television personality, writer, and comedian Steve Allen, speaking about the origins of comedic material:
When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.) he said, “Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment?” The answer is “No, but they will be pretty soon.”
Man jokes about the things that depress him, but he usually waits till a certain amount of time has passed . . . I guess you can make a mathematical formula out of it. Tragedy plus time equals comedy.19
Go back and complete the exercise at the end of the last chapter now if you have not done so. You need to build a story list to work with. Remember, this is not a magic book. It requires action. The laughs will be worth the work.
In a storytelling night, social event, or written long-form piece, there is time and space for lots of details and really painting a picture. At a business event or presentation, there is not. As speakers and presenters, we are on the clock, and the stories we tell can’t take precedent over the information we are there to deliver. Stories are the method with which we deliver the important stuff. The more entertaining you can be, the more time you earn from your audience to be serious.
Often it works to simply listen and repeat. “Many funny things are said and done in your presence that are wholly original and can be used as a humorous illustration in your stories or speech,” says Pat Hazell, one of the original writers for NBC’s Seinfeld, a Tonight Show veteran, and declared by Showtime to be one of the five funniest people in America. “I overheard my kids arguing during a candy exchange after Halloween that was a wonderful message about value in negotiations. My oldest son Tucker said, ‘I hate dark chocolate!’ To which his brother responded, ‘It’s still candy, you got to respect that.’ I use the dialogue verbatim because it is so pure and to the point.”
Another great example of this comes from multiple New York Times best-selling author Jon Acuff. Jon is one of the best business speakers I have ever heard, perfectly lacing his talks with humor. Opening up a recent keynote to a packed conference, Jon spoke about how fast the world is changing:
One night at dinner my daughter said, “Dad, today at school the internet was down. We had to do everything . . . old fashioned.” And I said, “Old fashioned, what does that mean?” and she said, “Well we were supposed to draw the state flag of Tennessee, but we couldn’t Google it up, so we had to walk to the library . . . and look it up in a book.” And I said, “With your legs? The whole way?”
Jeanne Robertson stands six-foot-two, but she is anything but intimidating. Specializing in hilarious stories based on her life experiences, Jeanne is an award-winning humorist, member of the National Speakers Association’s Hall of Fame, and recipient of Toastmasters International’s Golden Gavel award (a big deal in the world of public speaking).
According to Jeanne, “Humor is not about one-liners or being able to tell jokes. It’s about accepting things about yourself that can’t be changed and finding the humor in situations around you. Things happen on a daily basis that are really funny, but people often let the funny stuff get away, either because they don’t notice it as funny, or they don’t make it a priority to look for it.”20
We are going to prioritize looking for it, then hone it down and punch it up.
Just like my unfortunate drinking challenge in New Hampshire, the process of adding humor to your stories involves a funnel—only one with much less potential for getting arrested.
The Joke Funnel
The Joke Funnel means we start as wide as we can to make our story relatable and relevant to the audience, then get specific. In other words, we make the story relevant to everybody with a general topic, and then we make it relevant to us by connecting it to our own personal story. For example: Say you have a funny story like mine about being in China (statistically a lot more probable if you’re Chinese). Few of your listeners are likely to have visited China, so to start the story and grab maximum attention, make it more relatable. For example, “Sometimes being in a new place can be challenging” is relatable to many, whereas “I was in China last year” is specific to you. Many people will never have traveled overseas, many will never have been to China, but all will have been in a new place at some stage in their lives. Invite the audience into your story. Give them something they can relate to. Remember, the most powerful thing you can do with story is to allow the audience to see themselves within it.
“Invite the audience into your story. Give them something they can relate to. Remember, the most powerful thing you can do with story is to allow the audience to see themselves within it.”
Once you have identified a personal story that connects to your general topic, it’s time to start cutting out words. Now you can get to the details—in comedy the funny part is always in the details. Identify the story’s key details and trim out unnecessary information that gets in their way. We want to narrow the story down as much as we can to draw out the funny. Keep the following rule of thumb in mind when you are telling a story in front of an audience and building toward a punch line: a three-line span with nothing funny said is too much.
The point is to not drag the story out on your way to the funny part the way, say, my aunt does:
I went up to visit Mary, and she was fine. It was a warm day. I like warm days. They are much better than cold days. Do you remember that really cold day last year? It was freezing. I had to wear two jackets. One was the pink one. And I couldn’t find my gloves. I like gloves. [Ten minutes later:] And then I found Mary, she was drunk out of her mind singing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to a cow!
When my aunt tells me one of her stories, I don’t usually realize that I’ve nodded off until I snore audibly and that startles me awake. “. . . Wait, what? . . . Me? Drunk singing to a cow?”
Entertaining or not, speakers who find themselves muddied in the details likely have lost their audience by the time they get to the funny part. Just like my aunt does. Take too long to introduce a laugh or reach the point of your story, and you’ll probably find your laugh lines get met with a few chuckles or, worse yet, snores in a sea of smartphone screens.
We need to identify the key funny parts in our stories and get there as quickly and effectively as possible. We can do this without losing the story format by using the joke structure, which will allow us to deliver the same story in its shortest, most effective form. Let’s look at my aunt’s example.
“Take too long to introduce a laugh or reach the point of your story and you’ll probably find your laugh lines get met with a few chuckles or, worse yet, snores, in a sea of smartphone screens.”
Once we identify the key funny part—my aunt finding Mary drunkenly singing to a cow (hopefully not a regular pastime for Mary’s sake)—we need to get there as quickly as possible. Stand-up comedians, top TED speakers, and even presidents tend to follow the same joke format for this: (1) setup, (2) punch line, and then (3) taglines.
The setup establishes the premise of the joke by providing the audience with the necessary background information. It should use as few words as possible.
The punch line is essentially the laugh line. The setup leads the audience in one direction and the punch line surprises them by suddenly going off in a different direction. That twist, that element of surprise, is a punch line’s chief ingredient.
Taglines are optional. They are essentially additional punch lines delivered after the initial punch line. Sometimes they build on the original joke and sometimes they add a twist and a surprising new direction.
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
–William Shakespeare
Remember: Always keep the punch line in mind.
Beginning with the setup, determine which details are essential for introducing your story. If it doesn’t directly set up your punch line, cut it. In my aunt’s story, the only relevant introductory information is, “I went up to visit Mary, and she was fine.” Be ruthless as you edit. Treat it like an irrelevant-detail fire sale; every worthless piece of information must go!
In March 2014, AJ Jacobs gave a TED talk on his use of genealogy websites and the unexpected links that make us all, however distantly, related. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, and humor. His talks are always funny and engaging, and examples like the following, highlighting this joke structure and ruthless editing, can be found throughout:
Setup: On researching family genealogy: “It’s not all good news. I found a link to Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer.”
Punch line: “But I will say that that’s on my wife’s side.”
Tagline: “So . . . I want to make that clear. Sorry, honey.”
Joke structure is the key to getting to the funny as quickly as possible. The root of every good joke really is the surprise element, the punch line. And the punch line often releases an intentionally built-up tension.
A great example of this tension comes from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. In this book, Jim details a speech delivered by the ex-CEO of Kimberly-Clark, Darwin Smith, a man described by CNN as one of the ten greatest company leaders of all time. Smith stood up and commenced his talk by saying, “Okay. I want everybody to rise and give a moment of silence.” Everybody looked around confused, wondering who had died. They looked down uncomfortably and stared at their shoes in silence. Darwin allowed this process to continue for a period of time. Then he looked down at the group and said in the somber tone, “That was a moment of silence for Procter & Gamble.” The place went bananas. At the time, Procter & Gamble was Kimberly-Clark’s biggest competitor. Intentionally building up the tension created the laughter that followed, which was essentially a nervous release of energy.
The punch line shatters the intentionally built-up interest and expectation. According to corporate humorist John Kinde, “A funny line is sometimes said to be like a train wreck. You know where the train (your train of thought) has been, you think you know where it’s going, but then you’re surprised when it goes off track.”21
As outlined by Mel Helitzer and Mark Shartz in their best-selling book, Comedy Writing Secrets, this can be summarized as:
P = Preparation (the situation setup)
A = Anticipation (this can be often achieved with just a timely pause)
P = Punch line (story/joke payoff)
The importance of holding the surprise phrasing to the last possible moment cannot be overemphasized.
London-born Matt Kirshen’s precision wit has earned him an impressive reputation on the international comedy circuit with accompanying appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and a spot as finalist on NBC’s Last Comic Standing. His best bit of comedic advice to business speakers: Put the word the joke hinges on at the end of the sentence. For example, if the fact it’s a cat is the surprise or twist, don’t say, “There was a cat in the box.” Say, “In that box was a cat.” That way you’re not still talking when then audience is meant to be laughing.
When President Obama stood before Congress in 2011, he gave his “favorite example” of how messy the government can be (the setup/introduction). “The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater,” Obama said. “I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.”22 Not exactly viral hilarity by stand-up comedy standards, but it certainly was in comparison to the usual speeches given in Congress. Placing the impact word at the end of the sentence is not just important for comedic effect; it applies to all key points. If your company wants to highlight its year-on-year growth figure of 80 percent, then you should go out of your way to put this metric at the end of the sentence. Not “We had 80 percent growth year on year,” but “We had a year-on-year growth rate of 80 percent.”
At the time of writing, creativity expert Ken Robinson has the most viewed talk on TED with more than thirty-six million views. His talk challenges the way we’re educating our children and champions a radical rethink of our school systems by cultivating creativity and acknowledging multiple types of intelligence. Make no doubt about it, it is a serious topic, but its masterful delivery is laced with humorous stories and anecdotes. Here is an example of one of them.
We moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about the transition. My son didn’t want to come; I’ve got two kids, he’s twenty-one now, and my daughter is sixteen. He didn’t want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This was the love of his life. Sarah. He’d known her for a month. Mind you, they’d had their fourth anniversary, because it’s a long time when you are sixteen. He was really upset on the plane. He said, “I’ll never find another girl like Sarah.” And we were rather pleased about that, frankly. Because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.
This is a great, funny short story. The only thing a comedian may do is flip the intro with the aim of making it as relevant to everyone as possible before getting more specific (e.g., “Moving to a new place can be challenging. We moved from Stratford to LA”), then cue the rest of the story.
The daunting feeling that comes with arriving in a new place can be a very common one. It’s a feeling I know all too well. I went to China for the first time a few years ago. I was worried because the colleague who was looking after me there had previously come to visit me in San Francisco and endured quite a shock. A very conservative man, he asked me, “David, could you recommend activity most enjoyable for Chinese man in San Francisco?” I sent him to the Folsom Street Fair (the world’s biggest leather and fetish event). Not quite what he had in mind. When I went to China, he went out of his way to repay the joke.
This is my story from The Moth storytelling competition in short form. The first laugh line is, “I sent him to the Folsom Street Fair.” I know where this laugh line is from telling it to friends and colleagues alike, and I suspect it is the same with Ken’s TED talk. Knowing where the laugh will likely come improves your timing and delivery. You know when to pause to allow the audience to laugh. In my story, it’s a twist in their expectations while their mind scans through traditional tourist activities they would expect to recommend to a conservative visitor. The laugh occurs because we derail their expectations, and this causes a shock to their thoughts. This is the essence of joke structure.
“As a creator, it’s your job to make an audience as excited and fascinated about a subject as you are, and real life tends to do that.”
–Ricky Gervais
There’s always a funny or a humorous relatable element in real-life stories. The key is to tie them to your overall macro concept and get to laugh lines as quickly and effectively as possible. Keep it relevant to everybody on a macro level before going micro and adding detail. Start general, and then go to something more specific. To build a store of these humorous elements, aim to write ten new jokes a week. This sounds like a lot to start with, but as you begin to take notes and observe the world around you while looking for humor, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to find it. Every time you think of something funny or you have an observation or something that you think will be useful, make sure you write it down. If you have a smartphone, use your notes section or an app like Evernote. Otherwise, use a small pad and a pen. You’ll be surprised just how quickly you forget these thoughts, so make sure you keep track of them. You want to build a file of jokes that you can draw from and make relevant to every topic on which you’re going to present.
“There’s always a funny or a humorous relatable element in real-life stories. The key is to tie them to your overall macro concept and get to laugh lines as quickly and effectively as possible. Keep it relevant to everybody on a macro level before going micro and adding detail.”
The following example was used consistently by a top business executive and can be found online. It’s an early version of a talk that became more polished as it was given more often and had a big impact on the speaker’s career. It contains a good humorous example, and by using it, he has become known as a funny and popular speaker. In written form, it’s painful to read, but it highlights just how many unnecessary filler words are in there.
Setup:
“You know like, as Global VP for Unilever, I end up traveling a hell of a lot, you know like, I’m based in London but travel to the US every six weeks or so, and eh, it can be kind of tedious at times, like, going to always like the same place but one of the things I really enjoy are kind of like the conversations, that happen along the way, eh, and I must say that coming to JFK I always have like a story to tell about the customs, eh, officer, eh when I hand over my blue Brazilian passport, eh, it’s always like, eh, a fun story. And there was one that happened I think, it was like April, May this year. People who follow me on Twitter, Facebook, I even posted that back then.
“So I arrived there, eh, gave my passport, got the classic. ‘So what brings you here?’ . . . And I said ‘Work.’ I come here a lot for work. And then the guy said and, ‘What do you do?’ and I said, ‘Eh, I work in Marketing at Unilever.’ And he said, ‘Uni what?’ and I said, ‘I work for Dove.’ And then he said, ‘Marketing?’ And I said yes. And then he asked something that really surprised me. He asked me, ‘But why does Dove need marketing? Everyone knows Dove.’ Seriously, he did really say that.”
Laugh line:
“And eh, I laughed at first, it was kind of like a nervous laugh because I was afraid I was going to lose my job like . . . right there . . . (audience laugh here) . . . for the guy, arriving in JFK.”
He knows the laugh line well, as he has delivered the talk before. His downfall is in the excessive words he uses to get to it. Over time, he has shortened the number of words it takes to get to the laugh line, but this process, like that encountered by most business speakers and those presenting infrequently, took him too long to realize. It happens all too often by trial and error. We want to make it a strategic process.
Now let’s rework this example using comedy writing techniques:
Setup:
Relevant to everyone:
Work often leads to business travel.
Specific to him:
Because I have a Brazilian passport, immigration always produces some interesting interactions.
Last time the conversation went like this:
What brings you here? (Ideally use a different voice for the officer to differentiate the characters.)
I come here a lot for work.
What do you do?
I work in Marketing at Unilever.
Uni what?
I work for Dove.
Marketing?
Yes
Does Dove need marketing? Everybody knows Dove.
Laugh line
I laughed, but it was a nervous laugh as I thought I was going to, right then and there, lose my job. (End on the laugh line. Allow the audience time to laugh. The only additional words should be extra jokes/taglines.)
Introduction: 138 vs. 18 words.
Main part of story: 95 vs. 43 words.
It took our speaker about ninety seconds to get to the funny, when it could have taken approximately forty or less. In a world where you are competing with hyperconnectivity, ever-decreasing attention spans, and shrinking time slots, this is a lot of extraneous time. Don’t get me wrong—I like him a lot as a presenter (as do the audiences). I recognize that he is not a native English speaker, and I am amazed by his talk overall. But it could be funnier and more efficient using techniques that comedians know only too well. Get to the laugh lines as quickly as you can and cut out all the unnecessary words along the way.
The main takeaways from this section are that we need to take our stories, work to extract the main funny item, and feed that into a joke structure. This is going to be a process we’re going to repeat over and over again as we prepare to build humor items into our presentations and speaking.
Ask yourself: What is the funny twist or part of your story, and how can you get there as quickly as possible without getting lost in unnecessary elements? If this story involves the police force of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, my advice would be to open the door.
Exercise: Identify the Funny and Link Stories to Topics
Go back to your list from chapter one, take your favorite stories, and write about them for ten minutes. Don’t stop to add structure; just let the words flow as much as possible. It can be a life lesson, a cool product, things that drive you crazy, insightful information from a book you are reading, whatever. Don’t focus too much on the content at this point; this is simply a writing exercise.
Here we want to identify what you like best, are already comfortable talking about, and are excited to tell people. We also want to find hidden details your mind might have temporarily misplaced.
Now work to find the key point to each story. Where is the funny anecdote, interesting bit of knowledge, or the entertaining part? Work to cut out unnecessary words and retell the best stories following the joke structure (i.e., setup, punch line, and taglines if you have any). Don’t worry if you can’t come up with anything immediately. Often this process can take a few days or even weeks. The important thing is that you begin to think about your list of stories. Most of my best ones come to me when I am out and about—letting my subconscious do the work—rather than when I am sitting at a desk.
Start to think about your stories as they connect to general topics and make a list of what areas they could be included under. Remember, the connection can be quite loose and rely on the right introduction (setup) or takeaway to make it work well in a business content that initially seems unlikely.
For example, my list, which for weeks initially had nothing at all, began to look like this:
1. Technology/New Users: My Dad sending me long emails all in the subject line.
2. Market Entry (know your competitive landscape or you may learn a painful lesson): As a child, urinating by accident on an electrical fence.
3. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs/Compensation: Getting a job offer from a startup that told me they had no budget for me but could “buy me a few nice meals.”
4. Social Media: Facebook post contrasting US positivity with Irish outlook. US comment: “Kitesurfing under the Golden Gate Bridge, that looks amazing, you are so lucky.” Irish comment: “I hope a shark bites your balls off.”
5. Experience-Based Learning: Using the Spanish word for female private parts in place of “Bless you” with a Guatemalan host family for two whole months. To make it worse the father was a local preacher.
6. Proper Planning: While working on a whale shark research boat in Honduras, instructing a group of snorkelers to swim with a whale shark that turned out to be a tiger shark (with a lot more teeth!).
7. Cost Cutting/Budgeting: As a student being paid to mow lawns with no grass in Nantucket.
8. Confidence: New Year’s Eve in Salvador, Brazil, I ended up drinking one too many vodka coconuts (very manly I know) and recorded a TV interview live from the beach for Brazil’s main TV station . . . in Portuguese. I didn’t speak much Portuguese at the time. I did, it seems, after vodka coconuts.
9. Getting Out of the Comfort Zone: My Australian friend, Matt, calling me when he arrived in Bogotá, Colombia, with no Spanish and telling me he was on “Calle Street” (calle in Spanish means “street”).
10. Health/Sports/Customer Service: Breaking my ankle in Greece and, in place of a doctor, getting a vet.
11. Statistics: Ireland has more Nobel Prizes than China. A true superpower?
12. Unnecessary Conversations: Guy at my local supermarket who asks me daily, “Did you find everything okay?” Of course I did. It’s a supermarket and I came here looking for food . . . what did you expect to happen?
13. Habit: My mother finding me drunkenly calling my cat’s name out the back garden. He was dead four years at the time. Something I had forgotten.
14. Asking the Right Questions: Homeless man asking me if I had a spare sandwich.
15. Innovation (needed!): Frustration of calling American automated customer service lines with an Irish accent.
16. Expectations/Operations: Rushing my mother to the accident and emergency ward in the hospital when she broke her hip, only to be informed the ward was closed.
17. False Advertising/Marketing: Philippines-based rebel group that doesn’t sound too bad to many American males: Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF for short.
18. Recruitment: Transport company Uber advertising for people within its corporate division with “the fear tolerance of a honey badger.” What do they plan on doing to employees?
19. Dyslexia/Embarrassment/Mistakes: Ending spinal cord injury fundraising emails in error with “Kind retards, Davdi.” Had to be pointed out to me by friends. Sometimes I tried to be office cool, dropped the kind part, and just signed off with “Retards.” Not good. Not good at all.
20. Leadership/HR Issues/Quotes Not to Live By: My old boss’s favorite expression at a summer job moving furniture: “The hands will heal, boys, but the furniture won’t.” He was wrong. Piano 1, David 0. My revenge came when I accidently dropped a large steel-loading ramp through the side of his truck. Rather than admitting to the twelve-inch hole it left, I used Scotch tape to cover it up and wrote on it the words, “This is not a hole.”
21. Innovation/Productivity Hacks/Strategy: Guy at the park who sat on the wall drinking beer while casting a ball to his dog via a fishing rod he had attached it to.
22. Talking to Customers/Feedback: Waiter at a local restaurant who greets me, and everyone else by saying, all in one sentence, “How are you today I am fine thanks for asking.” Giving no opportunity to respond, whatsoever.
23. Management Relations: My old boss Roberts Diane (I have spelled her name backwards to protect her identity) disliked me so much, she spent money to have me edited out of a team photo with the then Irish president that hung proudly above her desk.
24. Family and Work (very likely connected to number 23): I was responsible for the invitation list for a reception with the Irish president held at Microsoft’s headquarters. I of course added everyone I knew in the area, family included. Which was fine until the president’s speech made one very large man in the audience so emotional that he rushed the stage, amid frantic secret service agents, to hug the President. That man was my uncle . . . Not ideal.
25. Career Transition: The former rap star MC Hammer is now an active startup company angel investor. He must be a pain to have around the office. He would never let you touch anything.
26. The Sales Process: Young girl who approached me on the beach in Cambodia: “You wan hair removal?”
Eh, no, thanks.
“Why no, you hairy like monkey. You no buy from me I kill you like fruit salad.”
It’s important to add here that my stories as listed from travel overseas can get good laughs, but those that get the best reactions are the ones that come from everyday occurrences, like that time in the supermarket. Few folks, thankfully, have thrown unsuspecting tourists into the ocean to swim in error with tiger sharks. Nearly everyone, however, has been to the supermarket. More often than not, relatability wins.
Can I link the above examples to business presentations? I most certainly can, and so can you with yours. Are they more engaging and entertaining than widget examples? Most certainly. If you take nothing else from this book, please do stop defaulting to widget examples (unless you make them). Have you ever been excited to hear a presenter’s wild, entertaining, and fictional widget example? One would certainly hope not.
