#7

Close the Book, but Not Fully—Permanent Beta

“The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either.”

–Friedrich Nietzsche

Fortunately or unfortunately, winning The Moth story competition back in 2014 on that windswept summer-like evening in San Francisco meant I would take part in the series’ biggest U. S. GrandSLAM final event, where ten smaller competition winners compete against each other in front of a sold-out, fourteen-hundred-person crowd. That was how I found myself on stage in such grandiose surroundings, about to lay an egg at the start of this book. The majority of the finalists were experienced stage performers, but the advantage the comedians had was clear: the top four scoring stories were also the four funniest. Three of the four were comedians. People like stories, but they tend to love funny stories. The three comedians’ superior timing on joke lines, presence on stage, and delivery were all too evident. They had done this before. They knew where the laugh lines were and they knew to give the audience time to appreciate their every one. This “they” I speak of was now a group to which I temporarily belonged.

As always, my heartbeat raced many beats above normal while waiting my turn. My palms, as ever, sweated uncontrollably. The difference now, after over a year of experiments in public speaking, was that I fully knew this was normal (minus laying an egg for most of the regular population). I was about to do something extraordinary, something cool, and something most people would likely agree that my body should think twice about. With my story reminders locked up in my memory palace, I knew I would not go blank on stage. I had told the story before, in a comedy club, to a less engaged and more demanding audience, and it had worked well. I had also told it to my friends and family, and they always seemed to enjoy it. I knew where they would likely laugh, I knew my timing, and I would leave time for some impromptu comments so it would be fun for me to tell. It was my story, and I knew it better than anyone. A process once scarier than a shark, dentist, spider, and mother-in-law rolled into one was now manageable. My nerves were well shielded from the gazing, expectant eyes in the audience.

My story was about my less-traveled, conservative Irish mother making her way to San Francisco to nurse me back to health after I suffered a serious injury. San Francisco certainly rubbed off on her. She left wearing Lululemon yoga pants accompanied by a host of new, not-so-conservative habits. Two people connected by birth but separated by many years apart got closer, as highlighted by a text—a blue text, from her new iPhone—she sent after she left, saying, “David, I know we are mother and son but now it feels like we are friends.”

My story was a big hit with the crowd, and with one storyteller left to take the stage, I was in first place, outscoring eight others. I waited to see if she would pull ahead of me, or if I’d stay in first place.

I didn’t. The story told by the last Moth GrandSLAM participant that night was fantastic and so she left me, by a whisker, to claim the runner-up spot. I know . . . you were expecting a victory. To be honest, so was I. Where is the triumphant ending? Big, splashy victories are grand, and I would have loved one here, but I learned that it wasn’t all a loss. In fact, in small losses there are often big victories, as you will find out in a few moments.

What happened to Ryan, the comedian who crushed his set, puked, snorted a pizza, and left the building in a blaze of glory? To be honest, I have no idea, but if I did, now would be the time to tell you.

Comedians will use what’s known as a Bookend Technique. This is where they reference opening jokes and stories at the conclusion of their show. This gives their performance a feeling of completion and symmetry. They are far from alone in using this technique; the best writers, movie producers, and presenters all do the same thing. It can be found just about everywhere we look. It caters to our natural curiosity and search for completion.

The Bookend Technique can connect everything together—an essential element to a great talk or presentation. You have the chance to captivate an audience with your words and get them stuck in your story until its natural conclusion. There is no more powerful end to a story than when the audience knows it’s over. They know where to applaud because the sequence of the story has delivered their cue. This is the essence of the Bookend Technique. Make sure you provide a natural conclusion to a well-glued sequence that keeps people stuck attentively until you are ready to close the book on your topic. Start with a story and close it off (or refer back to it) at the end. Business speakers and other presenters can utilize this approach by referring to their opening personal story in their closing remarks. This is essentially where you tie the start of your story to the end.

In Comedy Habit #1, we learned that crafting a good story means knowing where you want to take the audience. By writing the story with the punch line in mind, you will make it easy to tie the initial opening to your ultimate conclusion. Whatever closing technique you deploy, remember, if you get the chance, call on your inner comic and end your talk on an applause line that underscores a clear call to action.

This closing should be your highest-rated joke or story and should give a natural feeling of conclusion. Remember, it’s not just about the comedy. Try to follow the examples of Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, and Simon Sinek by incorporating a clear takeaway, be it a reinforced statement, a laugh line, or “one more thing.”

I’ve told you why I was standing on stage at the Castro Theatre in front of fourteen hundred expectant pairs of eyes at the start of this book. Now let me tell you what happened with my friend Arash and why my loss that night was anything but.

Two stories intertwined.

A year’s experiment in comedy left me with plenty of free time compared to the normal corporate routine. Every other week I drove Arash to his physical therapy center. It was one of the more inspirational places I have ever been. People fully focused on recovery and pushing their limits daily, for hours on end in pursuit of a dogged goal: to get back to the way they once were. So many of them had been abandoned by their insurance providers and given little chance of recovery, but they refused to give up. Many of them, like Arash, were reliant on fundraisers organized by friends to raise much-needed funds for this therapy. Along with Laura, one of Arash’s childhood friends, we wondered how similar was Arash’s predicament to that of other spinal cord injury (SCI) survivors? How many SCI survivors have been given little or no hope of recovery? How many like Arash are forced to pay out of pocket for necessities as fundamental as a wheelchair due to poor insurance? What are their experiences, and how do they deal with this life-altering condition?

To find this out, we spent the next few months conducting a survey to gather data. When the results were in, we recruited some friends well versed in the media to help get some of the more eye-opening findings out there.38 To our shock and dismay, not one media outlet or journalist was interested. We knew this story had to be told, but numbers alone were not the way to do it.

After a nearly year of public speaking experiments and storytelling events, something dawned on me with the weight of someone who just walked 100 miles in the wrong direction: to tell the story of others, you must first tell your own. Numbers that attempted to outline a story did not give it enough life, color, or engagement to grab people’s attention. Arash would have to tell his story before others would listen to him as a voice for others.

My real victory in all this came in using all I had learned to help Arash craft a talk. His first audience was to be three hundred CEOs, alongside top speakers like author and former chief evangelist of Apple, Guy Kawasaki. Arash started in the action by telling his own story in its shortest, most effective form, paused in all the right places, used the Rule of 3, built in callbacks, and left them with a bookended powerful message: life is about celebrating the small milestones that we often forget to acknowledge on the road to bigger goals—what he called “Little Big Steps,” before showing a few of his own. He finished with an image of himself doing something doctors told him he would not be able to do: standing for a few minutes on his own two feet, temporarily free from his so-hated wheelchair, atop an old wooden pier on the shores of deep blue Lake Tahoe, to propose eye to eye to his beautiful girlfriend. Unfortunately, she said, no . . . just kidding, she of course said yes. “Little Big Steps,” he reminded them, before he said, “Thank you,” leaving them to stand and applaud for the next twenty seconds.

His second talk got a mention in Forbes for the memory palace techniques he used, which I’d passed on from my comedian friend Richard Sarvate’s animated sushi chefs and sombrero-wearing Krishna.39 Now very much a motivational speaker by circumstance, Arash’s third talk was set to be even more high level.

Why am I telling you all this? “It’s not relevant to funny public speaking,” I hear you say. And you are right, in part. But not every story has to be funny. Often a story alone in its most naked, personal, impassioned form is plenty to move mountains and alter people’s lives. To you, the teller, you are just telling a story . . . like I was on that hardwood stage in such grand surroundings to fourteen hundred people. But to the listeners, something in that shared experience or moment of temporary magic—which can make the most distant of circumstances seem tailor fit to them—can alter the course of their lives. You may not remember all fourteen hundred people, but if you do a good job and deliver your talk using many of the techniques comedians know only too well, whether it’s four or fourteen hundred people, they will remember you.

 

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Too serious a topic for humor?

Arash’s story is obviously a serious and hard-hitting one, and a topic you may assume is not forthcoming to humor. Quite the opposite can be true, as was the case with fellow Irishman Mark Pollock. Addressing the audience at TEDx Hollywood, he rolled out onto the stage in his wheelchair and opened with the following: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have got problems. I’m paralyzed. I’m blind. I’m bald. I’m from Northern Ireland. I’ve got problems. There is no doubt about that. I suspect some of you do also.” Mark immediately took something so severe, tragic, and unrelatable to many and made it suddenly very relatable. In situations where there is high tension, laughter often brings great relief. Maysoon Zayid uses a similar structure to great effect in her TED talk. Talking about her cerebral palsy, she says, “I got 99 problems and palsy is just one. If there was an oppression Olympics I would win the gold medal. I’m Palestinian, Muslim, I’m female, I’m disabled and . . . I live in New Jersey.” At San Francisco’s historic Geary Theater, writer, photographer, and adventurer Anya Rymer told over one thousand people at a Moth Mainstage event about her turbulent battles with AIDS. “I had at one point only eight T cells left,” she said. “I called them the Brady Bunch.”

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A Real Victory

A week after the storytelling final, a high-profile TEDx conference producer who saw my story contacted me and asked if I would like to speak at their next event. As fate would have it, I had a friend I could recommend in my place that I knew would be perfect. One who had a true inspirational story just waiting to be told. I sent the producer the link to Arash’s first talk and he booked him immediately in my place. On a blustery early fall evening in Marin County, California, Arash told his story to more than six hundred people at a sold-out TEDx event. He was the final speaker, and I watched eagerly from backstage as the audience again stood to applaud, this time for nearly fifty seconds, when he reminded them of the importance of “Little Big Steps” before standing to show a few of his own.

Stories are always said to be powerful, but I learned something else that night: to tell the story of others, you will likely need to tell yours first. Nobody is more qualified to tell it than you, and you never know what will happen when you do. Once you’ve closed the book on your story like Arash did, say, “Thank you.” Nothing more. “You have been wonderful,” “Thanks for having me,” “Great to be here,” “That’s my time,” are all unnecessary. (You can watch Arash’s talk here: http://www.tedxmarin.org/2015-speakers/arash-bayatmakou/. You can listen to my story by going to http://www.7comedyhabits.com/book-resources and also get a breakdown of the storytelling and comedic techniques mentioned in this book that I used to craft it.)

Now that we’ve just about closed the book on our story, we’re going to move on to a process of evaluation.

Watch Your Words Play

Professional comedians will continuously evaluate every performance, seeking to move from Good to Very Good to Excellent, and so should you. They keep practicing even when they’re already performing at a very high level, just like Jerry Seinfeld. Never do they say, “That’s it, I’m awesome, no point or need to prepare anymore.” They’re always seeking to develop and improve. They need to be pleased, but never satisfied, with every performance. The idea of being in Permanent Beta, that there’s always room for improvement, is a perspective that will set you up for success as a speaker.

It’s estimated that new comedians put together between five and eight new minutes of really strong material in their first year. When we say really strong material, we mean consistently high laughs all the time. Again, here, we need only a fraction of that. For our purposes, a couple of key jokes and consistently funny stories that can be inserted into our presentations is more than enough.

The value of testing.

Thomas Edison evaluated 6,000 plants before deciding to use bamboo for the filament in his exciting new invention, the electric light bulb. The lesson here? You need to test!

To do this, we’re going to continuously evaluate every performance with this scoring system taken from the book The Comedy Bible by Judy Carter. Using this system, we’ll be evaluating each bit based on laughs per minute. We’ll award:

       •    5 points for every time everybody laughs out loud and applauds

       •    4 points when there’s laughter and one or two claps

       •    3 points when there’s laughter but no applause

       •    2 points when there’s medium laughs

       •    1 point for very few laughs

Using this system, we’ll be able to eliminate personal bias (i.e., jokes or stories that we like to tell, but did not generate a favorable reaction every time). Our presentation material is always going to be a work in progress that can be improved, and we want to use this scoring system to highlight those jokes that work every time regardless of the audience we use them with.

When I applied this to my own stories, it made a huge difference. Patterns quickly emerged as stories I thought worked well were outscored by bits I was not as attached to. The numbers don’t lie.

Sammy Obeid is the first comedian to ever perform for 1,000 days (1,001 nights) consecutively, which he completed in September 2013, capping off his progression with an appearance on Conan (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2m7THG44tM). I was lucky enough to share the stage with him at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco recently. Sammy has long been a driven, goal-oriented perfectionist. He earned a 3.9 grade point average at the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in applied mathematics and business administration, before trying comedy, which he approached with the same rigor.

“Jokes can be very systematic,” Sammy said. “What is the right word that fits in this blank to make this equation work?” Similar to Judy’s system, as outlined above, Sammy rates jokes from D to A+. “B’s can one day turn to A’s, which can turn to A+’s. I’ve seen it happen many times. Some of my best bits have started off as a B, and then I added, trimmed, and structured and now they are at A+. My belief actually, is that any B can be an A if you find a way. Yeah, that rhymes for a reason. Work out your B’s, but make sure you choose a show that’s low pressure, in front of a crowd that isn’t too big or is at least very merciful. And have backup plans. Intersperse with A’s. I’ve been doing this for so long, so I take greater risks. I’ll do C’s interspersed with B’s, and then if I’m really losing them, throw in the A’s. How do you know if a joke is a B or an A or a C? It depends on your standards. For me, A’s kill most of the time. B’s get some laughs, but don’t really kill. C’s seem funny, but don’t really get that many laughs. D’s suck.”

What we see as funny in life is often tried and tested. This includes movies, advertisements, and comedy shows. They tend to leave little to chance and borrow a lot from structure and testing. With this in mind, we need to review our jokes and stories and allocate the relevant score to each. Take this from every performance, not just one night. We want to add up the total and divide by the total minutes on stage. This will give us a laughs per minute (LPM) score. For reference, 12–20 LPM is good for any professional comedian; 9–12 means you would be ready to get paid as a comedian but need to shorten your setups. And by shortening your setup, we mean cut out the amount of words it takes to get to the punch line (“Brevity Is Levity”). Remember, this system was designed for comedians performing in comedy venues where everybody is trying to be funny. A score of 4–9 means you will be very funny presenting in a business context, and anything over zero means you will be funnier than most other business speakers, who for the most part are not funny!

If we apply this scoring system to Ken Robinson’s talk, the most viewed on TED at the time of writing, we get (give or take a few for personal opinion) nearly 7 LPM—enough to rival an up-and-coming comedian. If we take a weighted score away from how much they laugh and just record how many times they laughed as a group we get (give or take a few for personal bad math) approximately 2.8 laughs per minute. For comparison, when the same system was reported in Forbes magazine as applied by Lovefilm, the London-based video streaming service, these were the top funniest movies of all time.40 Importantly, this does not take into account how big the laughs were—just the frequency.

Rank	Title	Laughs per Minute
1	Airplane!	3
2	The Hangover	2.4
3	Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!	2.3
4	Superbad	1.9
5	Borat	1.7
6	Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy	1.6
7	American Pie	1.5
8	Bridesmaids	1.4
9	Shaun of the Dead	1.3
10	Monty Python’s Life of Brian	1.2

On a laughs-per-minute basis, Ken is funnier than The Hangover and a hell of a lot more informative! Combine his high amount of laugher with passion and insightful, inspirational information and we have the ingredients of something really powerful. Is it any wonder we all love it? And he is not alone:

The 10 most popular general TED Talks as of this writing (not the top 10 funniest, importantly):

Rank	Title	Laughs per Minute
1	Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?	2.8
2	Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are	0.9
3	Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action	0.27
4	Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability	2.1
5	Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight	1.1
6	Mary Roach: 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm	3.4
7	Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do	1.3
8	Dan Pink: The puzzle of motivation	0.82
9	Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of Sixth Sense technology	0.44
10	David Gallo: Underwater astonishments	1.1
(12)	Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work (My own personal favorite)	2.9

Mary Roach’s talk about female orgasm generated more laughs per minute than the funniest movie ever made. (Note for the men on this one: if you are ever asked if you are familiar with Roach’s talk while in female company, and you are not, at least nod enthusiastically and fake it. Maybe even add some additional vocal appreciation.) The power of vulnerability delivered by a researcher generated more laughs per minute than all but three of the world’s funniest movies. Body Language with Amy Cuddy is not far off Life of Brian, a timeless 1979 British comedy film starring and written by a whole comedy group. Yes, these numbers are loose and are meant to be tongue in cheek, don’t factor in an allowance for the varied running times, don’t allow for the level of laughter generated (and I am sure the movies generate bigger, more laugh-out-loud lines), but the underlying point is there for all to see. Top TED speakers are using humor and some extremely well.

Our new top 5 (where Hollywood meets TED):

Rank	Title	Laughs per Minute
1	Mary Roach: 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm	3.4
2	Airplane!: What crazy people do on a plane	3
3	Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work	2.9
4	Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?	2.8
5	The Hangover: How drunk guys do wacky stuff	2.4

Expect TED the Movie: Information for an ADD Nation, featuring a host of star speakers. Coming soon to a theater near you!

Most business speakers are completely boring, so by incorporating even a few laughs and some personal stories, your presentation will stand out from the crowd like many of the best TED talks do. High laugh-per-minute accounts will translate into an entertaining and engaging presentation.

By looking through multiple public speaking performances, you will be able to quickly identify the jokes and stories and patterns that work every time regardless of the venue. The goal is to look at jokes that score 3 (B), 4 (A), and 5 (A+) consistently. The other ones we’re going to leave to one side. If your joke is scoring a 3, for example, you need to rework it a bit. There’s something funny in there, but you haven’t quite developed it to its maximum efficiency yet. If something is scoring 4 and 5, you have a really great joke that you can take out and incorporate into a presentation, knowing it will get a great response almost every time. Get systematic. The best speakers, like Ken Robinson, Mary Roach, and Sammy Obeid, always are.

Remember, continuously evaluate as you practice and perform, since there’s always room for improvement. This is Permanent Beta. Close the book on your story but never fully on your performance.

And if you happen to see a man along the way fitting Ryan’s description, do drop me a note.

 

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Exercise: Evaluation and Permanent Beta

Watch this TED talk: “Shawn Achor: The Happy Secret to Better Work.” It is one of my favorites and, like Ken Robinson’s, a great example of the power of a well-crafted story and laugh lines. Apply the scoring system to it to get a feel for the process and calculate the laughs per minute. Note his opening story, which accounts for more than 20 percent of his overall talk time.

Work back through your own evaluated joke scores. This is where we aim to link what worked in practice with what you hope to present. Whether you were practicing on friends, family, colleagues, comedy clubs, or conferences, give it a score.

List each public speaking performance in a series of columns side-by-side, filling in each joke/story you told and its allocated score.

Identify which parts led to the best reactions. This also works well for identifying interest levels. Which parts led to confused looks or questions, or had people on the edge of their seats.

Find the ones that get the highest ratings consistently.

Also note any jokes/stories that seem to work well in a certain order or where you’re able to incorporate callbacks successfully.

Highlight jokes that rate 3, 4, or 5 in busy venues or that always get at least some laughs out of a tough audience. The audience ideally should be real by this point, but if you’re not quite stage ready yet, don’t worry. You can use this system to note reactions from friends, colleagues, and strangers who hear your stories.

You will likely find that your highest-rated material follows the joke structure and often also has the fewest words.

Test different-order opening and closing variations of these jokes.

Try and work these lines into your stories and overall presentations where possible.

Look to extract your most engaging stories, best opening lines, and best closing jokes.

If you have been skimming through these exercises it might be a good time to grab that free workbook: http://7comedyhabits.com/workbook

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