Ep. 204 The Big Secret to Being Funny

Mark Brown, you know the story. If you know me at all, you know, I tell a story of walking into a comedy club back in Worcester, Massachusetts, naive, trying to work up the courage just to talk to a real life comedian. And I walk up to this headliner after the show. His name was Chris McGuire. And if you know the story, I said, hi, my name is Darren. I want to try this. What do I need to do? And he asked me a question. He said, are you funny? I said, no, I didn't know that was a good thing, to be honest like that. And then he gave me advice of you got to go to open mic nights, you got to get the book. And to be able to have him hear himself as a guest and what he's accomplished is amazing since the old days of standup comedy in Boston. Mark, maybe you could give us a little background on his accomplishments.

Well, like you and the audience, I'm eager to meet somebody who has been a showrunner, producer, work with names like Martha Stewart, Snoop Dogg, Arsenio Hall. I mean this. He has done pretty much everything in field of entertainment and I can't wait to get to know him and have our audience or listeners and viewers get to meet him as well. Let's do this, Darren.

His background leads into the big secret to being funny.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix and Darren Lecroy.

Stagetime, Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. Ahas, let's dive right in.

And Mark to be, you know, we mentioned that he works with these people, but to write comedy humor for someone else, not even yourself, that is amazing and I'm psyched. Chris McGuire, welcome to Unforgettable Presentations podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. I'm very intimidated because you guys have spectacular backgrounds and I'm going to have somebody come in and install a personality. No.

So excited to have you here, Chris. And for people who don't know you like that story is one I've been telling for. Well, that was 1992. I don't know if you remember way back then. So that's like 30 years ago.

I don't remember that night. But you told me that story recently and I remember saying, what was I an a hole? Ask me the question. No, oh, no, was. I mean, I wanted to be. I was like, please don't have me be me.

No, absolutely. The reason I'm here now is you started the trajectory. Had you not said, go to open mic nights, don't compare yourself to others, had you not given me advice on the Judy Carter book from the place of, this is what you did, and this is how you do it. And you were so approachable and in the Boston comedy world, one of the great guys. And I literally would probably not be here if you didn't start my trajectory. So thank you.

Well, thank you. And I'm sure the people that you paid money to for your monitor in the background in your coach chair appreciate my contribution.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm glad I got you on a good night. I had no idea that there was another side of Chris. Okay, so it was Martha and Snoop's potluck party. What was it?

Dinner party. Dinner party.

Dinner party. So that's a long way to go from the old days of Boston. So tell us a little bit about how you got started in comedy and how you got to be a writer in la, producer in la.

Okay. Well, I got into comedy because I was, you know, I was basically a shy person, and there were a lot of. I tried a lot of things to sort of confront, you know, my. My discomfort of, like, getting up in front of people, you know, and. And I thought stand up was probably the scariest thing. So. Yeah, so I. I was do. I was actually doing a. One of those murder mystery dinner shows.

Really?

Where I was. Yeah, I was. I was like the detective. And it was one of those improv things where somebody, you know, somebody in the audience gets killed and the detective comes in to solve the thing. It was. It was funny, but, you know, very cheesy and all that stuff. And I was doing it at a comedy club, and I didn't have a place to live, and I moved in with a guy. Didn't know his name was Tom Cotter.

Oh, really?

Went on to. Yeah, went on to do America's Got Talent, a hilarious comic. And he came and saw my show and. And he was like, hey, you're funny. We should sit down and you should do stand up. And he helped me write my first five minutes, and I went up and did my. I did my first five minutes in Providence, Rhode island, and I did really well, which is unusual. I think if I didn't do well, I would have never done it again. But after that, I probably chased that high for six months because I think I Bombed for six months after that. I don't know why I did well that night, but I did for some crazy reason. And then I. I moved to L. A After, you know, working in Boston for whatever that eight years or whatever to sort of pursue a career in entertainment. I toured the country doing stand up and eventually ended up in the comedy central writers room. So, like, I ended up in a bunch of these writers rooms where it would be like, you know, someone like a Jeff Ross or a Nikki Glazer or Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope where you go and, you know, write for them on their, like, half hour show. That was, whatever, what. That came from their personality. And then I got a job working on the comedy central roasts and I ended up doing nine of those, I believe, and then eventually became a head writer. I did a stint in late night working with Arsenio hall and writing for George Lopez, became a showrunner eventually and did a show with Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg called Martha and Snoop's Apollo dinner party, which is kind of a hybrid talk, late night type of show.

And Chris, pause for real quick. For those of you watching the YouTube version of this, we got some pictures here.

There she is.

Me and Martha, Chris and Martha. Love it. And this is on the set, I assume?

Yeah, this is on the set.

Nice. And I know I, I'm. I was just curious about this picture because.

This was. I was about to go into surgery. No, I. That was during the pandemic. And I was doing a clip show with. For Snoop and there was just a comedy bit where. With a. With a giant rabbit. And I asked my staff who wanted to do it, and nobody would do it, so I did it. So that's me in the, in the rabbit suit. And it was probably 90 something degrees out. It was. Wow. Yeah.

Nice.

And then so sometimes you got to step up. That's me on the backstage at Martha and Snoop with one of my producers. And this was just during the taping of the show. And right, right behind me was a teleprompter which I would run back to and make changes on the fly, you know, as, you know, sort of guide the show because it was kind of shot more like a reality show than a. Than a late night show. So we did. It was very. It was very improvisational. That's me and Arsenio.

Arsenio is.

Yes, that. That was. He's holding up a cue card that says 158, which is the number of shows we did. Wow. Together on his show.

Wow.

And we would. And that's where we sat every morning across from each other, where I present him material for the day. Wow. Yeah.

And then of course, there's Snoop.

Yeah, obviously doggy dog. That's Snoop. Yeah.

And because this is just my own selfish. I'm curious for. When you're working with Arsenio, you're the head writer there, what's it like being in a comedy writing room? I'm just curious. People joking around or is it boring? And they're. What's it like?

It really depends on the room. Sometimes it's. Look, when it's great, when it's great, it's a lot of fun. But it can go either way. Where. Where it could be like too rigid because you're, you're trying to stay on a schedule and it's hard. Like doing a daily show is really hard because the day starts very early and goes very late. And, you know, you have to basically put up something, an hour of something new every day and sometimes two, two shows a day. So those can be hard. But then other ones I've had have been absolute chaos to the point where you can't get anything done. And so somewhere in between is kind of the best. Where you have professional writers who are just really good and they understand you got to get things done, but, you know, you're having a great time while you're doing. My favorite thing in the world is the. Is the part of the day where I read jokes where everybody kind of turns in their assignment and then I. And if we're all doing it together, I'll have everybody read their own jokes.

And so they'll read it and then Is it like a committee decision? Well, yeah. This one's in, this one's not. Or is the.

I mean, ultimately it's. Ultimately it's the host decision. But I generally, depending on the show, there's usually some kind of on the filter on the person that they trust to go, like, I'm not going to read 30 pages of jokes, you know, show me to, you know, so, you know. But on other shows, like on Jimmy Kimmel show, I think he reads everything.

Interesting.

Gary, you know, reminds me, I saw a clip from a series called the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Yeah.

In the writer's room. And I can see what you mean, Chris, how you get idea. Give me your best to go. And they give you two, like, okay, what you got? It just seemed to me so fascinating because we see the end result in a late night talk show.

Yeah.

Something goes into it. The process is really interesting.

You know, yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, usually there's some kind of assignment and sometimes it's about the news of the day or some kind of sketch that you're writing or something like that. And people go off and generally in the shows that I do, people go off and kind of work individually and then you have some kind of a meeting where everything is collated by the writer's assistant and then it's presented. And like I said, I learned this from Jeff Ross. Jeff Ross really liked writers to read their own material because it's very easy for me to botch it up, you.

Know what I mean?

Or somebody reading it to botch it up. So it's best that you're presenting your own stuff. And then it's just fun because usually those people have some kind of performance background. A lot of standups in late night. So I love that because you're working with funny people and sometimes it's like it's stuff that's not right for the show, but it's super hilarious and at least you're having a great time while you're going through it. And then you just sort of filter out the best of and present it to, depending on how busy and invested the host is.

You know, Chris, you said two things in the last minute or so, and I want to key on real quickly for our listeners and viewers. Some might say, well, that's great for comedy. I don't do comedy. But you said two things. One, you said we have to be aware of the news of the day. What that said to me was, as a presenter, I can work on a presentation, but to stay current, particularly if I use the same talk over and over again to stay current, I need to be aware of the news of the day. And the other thing, the last thing you said was you have to filter out what is best. So I'm going to ask you a question on the spot, Chris, in terms of presenters and speakers and they get material, they search their life and they look around them and the day, what advice would you give to speakers regarding filtering out the best material for your presentation?

Okay, this. That's a great question. And it's something that I. Because I write for people, you know what I mean? I'm not writing for a character, I write for people. So that's the raw material. So if you're a speaker, you're writing for yourself and your raw material is you. Right? And the best way to be successful and make life easy for. It's the old adage of write what, you know, you know what I mean? But it's basically like when, I'll tell you, from the television aspect, when I'm writing for a person, what I always start with is I watch as much and learn as much about the person as possible. And then I write on, I write down a list of the things that it looks like they're most comfortable talking about and what they have the most experience in. So if it's, you know, George Lopez, it might be, you know, growing up Mexican American or if it's Martha Stewart, it's, it's absolutely cooking or lifestyle. But Snoop Dog about, maybe it's about growing up in Long beach or, you know, being from the hood or whatever. And then if it's, you go, if it's comedian, you go through their material and then you go like, oh, they like to talk about family, they like to talk about dating, they like to talk about, you know, some specific job they used to have. And for like a person, you do the same thing. You're like, what are my life experiences? So when I'm running for someone else, I take that list, I put each thing on a card and I put those cards up on a wall and then I bring the writers in and say, does anybody have anything to add to this? And if they don't, I'll say, that's the show. Pitch 80% in there and 20% outside of it. So you're always growing. But, but if you pitch any more outside of it, we're not leaning into what the person's good at, what their experience is, what they're comfortable with. And I would say the same thing for a speaker is if you, most of your experiences in a particular profession or particular field or, and you have, or you have interests outside that you can speak to, those are the most important things. And if there's something else you have a passing interest in, well, see if you can tie it in. But for the most part, I'd lean into what, what your life skills are.

Lean into your experience and your interests. I love that. Thanks, Darren.

I got two things, Chris. So number one for us as speakers, where you're writing for, let's say, different late night show hosts, and you say you want to get to know them or know their Persona, what they'd like to talk about, what's their background. And for us, I'm speaking on Wednesday to a group of property managers for a company. I got a list right here in front of me, A list of 10 names of people I'm going to call and Talk to to get some of their stories. I'm going to look at their website to see what their world is so I can connect my content to their world. Number two, here's when I came over from Stand up comedy into first Toastmasters and speaking. One of the greatest insights I got from Stand up that I see as speakers is they give up too soon on an idea that they have an idea and it's probably pretty funny, but they test it once. And I remember me testing new material at a Toastmaster club, and I would have one person in the back of the room at the right time go, huh? And I would be all over that. I said, yes, I'm on the right track. I just need to make it clear. I need to add something to it to bring more people in. But the average presenter will try something once and then throw it away. It's like they're giving up too soon. How would you help us with that?

Well, I think that's extremely common in business. And I would imagine in speaking in comedy, you know, you're kind of trained to know that not everything's going to work. You know, there's. You write 20 jokes to get to. I mean, if you come from the mindset of a comic, you're always trying and you're always trying new things. You always try to keep it fresh. Like what Mark was saying, I would say, I mean, this goes into, like a lot. This goes into a lot of stuff, which is basically, like, sometimes you're not going to succeed and it's. That's okay. You know what I mean? Like, within the context of your entire presentation, you will always succeed because you've worked on it, right? But along the way, if you're trying to make a point or something to kind of go off in another direction or explore something, you know, you should do that because you, you have a safety net. The safety net is your presentation in comedy all the time. We used to call them hammock, hammock jokes or hammock bits, where it would be like you have your killer joke here and your killer joke here, and then you put something in the middle. Who cares? Because you're coming out of it.

And I love your number 20 jokes to get to. And for us as presenters, we might have a story that we already tell, but always be trying to add a punchline or punch it up, that one story that we've always told. So just I love your 20. To get 2. In an average night on one of your shows, how many jokes is brought to the table? And how many actually make it onto tv.

Yeah, I mean, it's like. It's an astounding amount of material. You know, like, it depends on the show. Sometimes the monologues are very loose. You know, Martha and Snoop, they're super loose. We're literally. They're not comedians, so it would literally be like a joke or something at the top, and then something that'll get some kind of a laugh, and then it's like, today we're going to do this. And then they just start talk. They start interviewing each other is kind of what we would do. We would have them ask each other questions that would go to their life. So once again, going back to the cards, Snoop would tee up Martha to talk about something that she's got experience with. Martha will ask Snoop something that he has experience with so they're comfortable, you know what I mean? Rather than two people telling a bunch of jokes they're not connected to. Now, with a professional comic, it's different. Like an experienced. Like George Lopez. We did a long monologue on Lopez tonight, and I feel like I don't know the exact number because it's been a while. I want to say at least 15 to 19 jokes somewhere around there. Wow. And on other. Other shows, sometimes it could be five, you know, depending on how experienced the person is. But, like, somebody like Jay Leno used to do probably 20 to 30 jokes.

And how many do you think that would start with?

Oh, like hundreds.

Wow.

Yeah, hundreds. Like, on that. Well, like, the Comedy Central roast is the best example, and that's one where you actually have weeks to prepare for it. But, like, that one, in terms of ratio is insane. I always said that the garbage that the waste basket at the roast was funnier than anything else. So we would have, like, let's say we'd have eight or nine really funny writers, and you have eight. Eight or nine people on stage that you could write jokes about. And all day, people are turning out jokes, and it could be, I don't know, easy 100 a day. So I'm like, you know, looking. I could be looking at 800 a day.

Wow.

Or at least four to 800 a day or something like that. You know, it's so many. Sometimes you got to be like, just give me your best 10, you know, because you don't have time. Yeah.

And I think this is important for presenters to hear, because think of this. Eight or nine writers all writing so many jokes.

Let's call it 50, 50 on the low end, and it could be much higher.

And so now if you're listening to this and you're a presenter, you can't give up too soon. Get some help, take some courses on writing humor, Hire somebody to punch up your presentation. But you can't just think, ooh, I have this one idea. Let me try this one joke and see if it works or not. Like, no, that's not how it works. And by the way, Chris is gonna join me for the humor boot Camp in Vegas in August, and I would love to have you join us. We're gonna have so much fun and we're gonna bring in some of his training that he's done for decades at a much higher level than me. But we're gonna team up and have a great time at the LA Comedy Club. So check out humor boot camp.com humor boot camp.com and I have to go ahead, Mark.

I'm just saying, I, I, I know there are probably some people here who are saying, okay, this is all good material, but I want to know, at what point do we get some of Chris's inside secrets to being funny? Just hang with us a couple more minutes. It's coming. Trust me, Darren and I, I have.

To, this is just me. Again, my own curiosity. Are there any good Martha Stewart Snoop Dogg stories from behind the scenes that you can share or what was it like working with them?

Well, it was fun. I mean, the thing that, like, Martha's just fun because they're both iconic in their own way. I think the interesting thing about Martha, because we did, I was the head writer of the Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber. And it was a show that it was, it was going to be like an A plus show because we had a guy who had gone through so much controversy that the, the well of material was deep, so the people around him had to kind of rise, you know, up to that. And so Martha, we booked, Martha got pitched to us. They pitched the right, they'll all, they'll always kind of, or generally run it by the writers to see what they think when somebody's name comes up. Just to see if the writers are like, yeah, we could do something with that. And the first impression we had of Martha when they brought up her name was, oh, she's going to be too brand conscious to be, she's not going to let loose because it's, you've got to really go for it on this thing. And we were afraid she was going to be too brand conscious. And they pitch her names a couple of times. And the last time we were like, I don't know. You know, it feels like she might. It might not be right for her or whatever. And then she walked out, and one of the writers in the room said to me, you know, if she would talk about being in prison, that would be amazing. And so I, like. I was like, yes. And I immediately got up and opened the door and I yelled down the hallway to the showrunner. I'm like, tell Martha if she'll do what we write for her, we'll make her the funniest person on the roast. And that was a big promise. But, like, we just had this, like, confidence that if we could write something from that point of view where it's like, oh, it's Martha talking to Justin Bieber, giving him advice on how to stay out of prison. What the first day of prison is going to be like for Justin Bieber, like a scared straight thing.

Yeah.

Knew it would be really funny. And we prepared the material and presented. We had her read it again. It's always, have the. Read it, read it. If you're writing your own stuff, read it. You know what I mean? Like, rehearse it. And so we had Martha read it on the phone, and she was really trying to be kind of jokey about it, like, reading them, like, they were jokes. And I remember we got through it. We go, that was good, but read it again. But do it like you're doing your show. Like, literally, like, don't think about that. The jokes are messed up or dirty or whatever. Think of it like this is what's in the teleprompter at your show. And you're going to read it and say, today we're going to make creme brulee. You know what I mean? Except now you're talking about today, Justin Bieber, bright advice on his first day in prison. And then when she did it like that, it, like, came alive and. And no one expected her to. She just didn't have a reputation to be, like, up there killing the crowd. And so everybody just expected she was just be there for everybody to do jokes about. And then she went up and killed it. She just destroyed because she had faith in the material, I would argue, and herself.

And I know, Chris, one of the things you and I talked about beforehand was keeping it fresh and the idea dump and the value of notebooks. And you said you had a great story about Garry Shanling.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, first of all, everybody keeps notes. There are a few really amazing people who have it, like, right up here, you know, and it's constantly, what, Whatever. It's just how their brain works. But most of the funny people I've encountered are notebook people, you know, or they're, you know, whatever, using Evernote or their phone or whatever. So I always recommend. And this is, you know, this is. This is a secret or a. Or a system that I use, which is, you know, sometimes you're like, what. How do I freshen this up? What is a new thing I want to talk about? What is a joke I want to tell? What's a story I want to tell? Whatever. And I always tell people that to carry a notebook and set some time every day to sit down and just write three ideas and don't put any weight on them whatsoever. There are three ideas. They could be a funny observation of somebody you saw. Like, I remember once, it was something like, I thought an idea for a joke was I went into a Starbucks and I ordered some gum, and the person was using the gun to scan it, but they couldn't get it to work. And she started swearing and she, like, threw it down or whatever. And I was kind of like, maybe you shouldn't drink the stuff you're serving here. You know what I mean? So, like, it was just a germ of an idea that I just jotted down that I thought was funny. It could be something that you have an interest in. It could be. Observations are huge. And especially if you're speaking, I would imagine. Look, every joke is an argument. Every joke is a takeaway. Every joke, every monologue is a point you're trying to make. So even if it's just, I want to make this point and figure out how to do it in a humorous way. So, anyway, write these three ideas down. Maybe they're garbage. It doesn't matter, because you're going to do it the next day and the next day and the next day. And at the end of the month, you're going to have 90 ideas. They're not all gonna suck. There's gonna be gold in there. And at the end of the year, you're gonna have. What's that? A thousand ideas. Wow. So when what? It's just the tonnage of ideas. So it's the same thing as write 20 to get to 2 or write 100 to get to, you know, 10, whatever your ratio is. Some people have a better ratio, but, like, most people start with, you know, a very low material to gold ratio, but you get better at it. And so, like, the Gary Shandling thing that was amazing to me was he would show up at I used to work at the Comedy Magic Club a lot. And he would show up there and he'd have a pile of papers, like way more than this. It would be like, you know, a stack of papers like this. And they looked, it looked incredibly unorganized. It was, you know, post its like everything. And he would go through, he would sit there with his pencil or whatever and be going through that stuff every time before he went up on stage. And sometimes he walk up on stage with. But he would run it by people in the green room. And he was able to, with his personality and with his gravitas, walk up on stage with a pile of stuff. And people were just happy to see him anyway. But he always ran things by people and he always. Helping each other is an important thing. I think in comedy and I think in writing, for sure you get paid for it. But like in speaking too is getting involved with groups and having your mentors and, and peers that you can bounce things off of because it's a very few people do it a while.

Nice. And I know we're gonna get to the big. Which is one of my favorites, the big secret to being funny. But I know you and I again talked about beforehand the physical room and then the people in the room, because I noticed, like, even when we started this podcast, you teased yourself about your background versus our background to like break.

That ice and then breaking some ice.

Yeah, but what do you look for in something like that? Then we'll go to the other part.

Well, I always say there's like, this is no, there's no benefit to this other than it's just decades of observations when you, when you speak, whether you're doing comedy or something else, and you guys can speak to your experience much better than I can, obviously. But in the, in the stand up area or even, I mean, honestly, even when I'm presenting material, it's often not optimal, you know, so if you're doing stand up and you're not at like an A club, you know, I know you guys talk about the B rooms, the C rooms and stuff like that. Sometimes you walk into a place, there's no stage, there's bad lighting, the TV's on, they refute, refuse to turn it off. There's the guy who went on before you really just wrecked the room for you in some way. There's no one there to introduce you. If you're the first guy. The sound system stinks, the mic stands broken, there's a heckler that just decides to make your life miserable. The Ceiling is too high. The audience isn't seated optimally. You drove a long, depressing drive to get there. Maybe not for a lot of money. There's a small craft. Those are all things that can go wrong. If any four of them happen, you're in a hell gig. It's a hell gig. And so then it kind of. This kind of dovetails into, like, the big secret, which is it's okay to bomb. And you'll learn something from it, because these are outliers. Do you know what I'm saying? Daring. You and I talked about this. It's like, I had one gig where I listed 10 things that could go wrong. All 10 of them were wrong. And there was a new one that I didn't even never imagine in my life. And it'll. I'll never. That'll never happen again because it's an outlier. So it didn't matter. The whole thing was. It didn't matter. I'm like, well, this stinks. I'll just do the best thing I can, best I can to get through it. And in business, at least in the TV businesses, I have to pitch to the hardest audiences in the world, which are. They're busy, they're tired, and they might be scared. They're nervous. They're gonna go up and do something that's never been done in front of anybody before. How do you think that feels? You know? So for me, I always look at it like empathy for your audience. Right. You can't turn on them. I know even the guy that's heckling you and stuff like that, you do your best, but, like, if you turn on the crowd, boy, that's just not good. You know what I mean? And you know not to say that like, it's your fault if you turn on the crowd.

Yeah. And I think in the presentation world, it's very similar to the comedy world. You have to succeed in the tough rooms.

Yes.

In order to get the privilege of the easy audiences. And in the speaking world, as your fee goes up, it actually gets easier because they have teams of people to manage the room. So I think one of the lessons I learned is, look, you can't take it personally when it's a tough room. We have to educate the event planner or the person who set up the room works at the hotel, and they don't know, don't put a lectern right in the center of the stage up front. So now you have to walk around it because they were told to put a lectern on the stage. Where would you put it? Front and center. So a lot of times we got to get there early and manage as much, much as we can. To like you said, you have your list of 10 to get it down to one or two or three if possible. And then we can't take it personally if it's a tough room or tough situation.

I remember there was comedian in Boston named Mike McDonald who, who would always. He was. Most comics just show up and like, all right, I'll deal with it. You know what I mean? There are a few things where you're like, could you please turn off the TV or that guy's gonna be a problem. Please get him out of there, or can we do a mic check? You know, there's things you can do to, to mitigate all this, but I remember and it was always the rooms where you think he wouldn't care, you know, this, this comedian Mike McDonald. But he would show up and if it was an Elks club, he would go, you need to move that mic back. You need, we need a stand. We need a stool, not a chair. We need, you need to move these people up close. And he would, he, he would be very specific about what he wanted and he was a strong personality and he was usually able to get what he wanted because he would always say, I know this sounds like I'm being difficult, but I'm trying to make this show, this experience, the best it can be.

Right? Yep. We got to make it easy, educate people, make it best for the experience, and almost remind the event planner, okay, this, I'm not being, you know, you don't have to take out the green M&M's.

Right.

And Chris, we kind of touched on it, but to, to get clear. Well, anything else about the people in the room?

I mean, look, for me, and this is really kind of the, the key thing in terms of, first of all, you got it. You can't be. This is the secret. The secret is you can't be afraid to fail. You have to try things and it's not the end of the world if it doesn't. The best way to do it and it'll become really part of you want to sell your level is figure out how to save it if it doesn't. If something goes a little sideways. You remember Brian Kiely? Of course, this is a guy who wrote for Conan for 19 years or something like that, and he's a terrific stand up comic and he would try new jokes every single time he went up on stage. And he was a one liner guy. And he would. He would always have four or five jokes he'd be trying at any given time, and he had. And he would make a bit out of a piece of paper. He would just keep up on the stage, and he'd look down, he'd tell the joke. If the joke didn't get a laugh, he'd go. He'd say. He wouldn't say anything. He'd just walk over and do a big scratch out on the thing, you know, like, no word. Just never do this again. And then he'd move on to the next one and always got a laugh. So, like, whatever your version is, we call them savers is. Whatever your version of. Is of a saver is going to help you, because then you always know you're going to get a laugh off of the saver. I would say the benefit for me of going up and doing those B roams for so many years, when I got to the point where I'm presenting jokes every day to a piece of talent like a George Lopez or a. Or Arsenio hall or whoever, Martha and Snoop. I would read these jokes that have never been performed before. They don't always. They're not always going to play in the room. Like I said, most people in the room are like, damn, I got to go up and I got to do a show tonight that I've never done before, and that's hard. And so I would just. I just do them, and if they didn't work, I'd make a joke out of it, and I'd move on to the next one. And. But I would just do it with confidence and determination and try to have the most fun as possible while I'm doing it, even though the room was dead, because that confidence makes them feel better. You know, you can always identify the easy laugher in the room. For me, it was always. Snoop Dogg was an easy laugh. So I feel. It was like, if I can make him laugh three times before the end of this presentation, then we're going to have a nice day, you know, so you find the person in the crowd who's friendly. You know what I mean? Make a connection with them again, empathize with the audience. It's been a long day. Maybe they're excited to be here and it doesn't matter, but maybe it was a long day and they're there and they're. They. They got to sit through this as part of the program. You know, call it out, empathize their situation. I think be persuasive quickly. Is a Huge thing. Make your point super quickly and don't. And be concise and don't beat a dead horse. Have respect people's attention spans. I know, like when I worked with. That was a huge thing for me. And you know this, Darren, like when you're writing jokes, you got to cut out all the fat, right? Because that audience wants it to come pretty quickly every now and then. Pad can work for you, but for the most part you want to cut out the fat. And when, I know when I work with George Lopez, we would be doing, we do rehearsal and then I'd have to address something in rehearsal that he'd say on stage, I don't like that, change that or something. And then I might have 30 seconds with him while he's walking to his dressing room to make a change. So. And I used to go like, why can't we sit down for 10 minutes to talk about it? He did not want to do that. He's like, I've got to get on with my day. I've got to get on with my preparation. The day is more important than that one joke or that, that bit. So it was all about, okay, be concise. And he was a very decisive person. So if you pitched him one or two other things, he was like, I'm going to sell that. Okay, Fin. And then the big thing is just, you know, if you're not feeling it, just fake it. It's the whole fake it till you make it thing.

And I knew.

You remember Tony B. From Boston, right, Darren?

Of course, yeah.

This guy, he gave me some advice about being in bad rooms that I've taken with me my entire career, which is. He goes, I like to think of difficult people, like their cartoon characters, and then I don't take them too seriously.

That's brilliant.

I, I thought that was. That is the best advice I've ever gotten. So when someone's being particularly difficult, I'm just in my head going, this is crazy, you know, whatever. And you just look at them and inside your lap, you can't laugh in their face, but inside your laugh. But if you can be almost outside of your own body looking at the situation, you won't be stressed out.

Yeah. And if you've seen my championship speech, talk to listeners here, you know that the essence of my message was being willing to fail. So that's how I became a comedian, because I was willing to fail. The big secret is just being willing to bomb if you want to be funny. Now, if you get a high paid keynote for whatever your Fee is you're not going to test new material on that audience. But up front you get a little more grace. If it's custom and about the them, then they're going to give you some more grace. They know it's not your standard material. But if you're working on a story, hey, there's toastmaster clubs, there's you know, your low fee gigs or if you do one for free, take that as opportunity that it's a low risk situation. You must use that to test. And I know, Chris, in our pre chat we talked about you said bombing and how it made me a standout writer and producer.

Yeah, I mean like basically it's like I would, I would go, you know, like look, you do, you know, in your career as a, you know, a comedian, you're gonna have, you know, unless you or had the luxury of starting out at the improv and never having to go do a bar in Huntington beach or something like that. It's like most people have to go and do the B rums or the sea rums. And once it's like survival, you learn how to do it. I think the main thing is commonality. I think you gotta, you know, find out what you have in common with. You have to find some commonality. You have to. So if it's, if it's like, hey, we're all here and this place seems like a dump or did you see on the place we. The walk the way here what the neighborhood was like or what the I made fun of my wall or whatever is some kind of commonality that everybod having a common experience about. You have to find that commonality. So you know, with. It's very easy when you're doing a TV show because the commonality is you all going to do a show like at the end of the day you got to put a show in to editor's hands, you know. And so what I think the, the key for me is again, everything. Nothing's permanent. If it's a bad day, it's a bad day, you move on. If it's a bad joke, you move on. If it's, if it's a bad moment, you're going to get through it. And so I think for me that confidence too, I'll just get through this. This will be fine. I trust my team, I trust that we'll get through this. People see that. Like I've had a bunch of people like come up to me, you know, going like, I don't know how you do that every day, like I would read a 30 minute script to Martha and Snoop and like I said, I try to get three laughs out of Snoop. That would be a big day for me. And they would. I had a number of people come up to me, go, I don't know how you do that. And I'm like, I have to. Because they have to see that I'm confident that we have a show.

Yeah. And going.

It's contagious.

Going back to that. Figuring out what you have in common. That's one of the reasons I like to go in early to an event. I'll even spend a whole day before I speak to just see what was said that was funny. What was that inciting incident that everybody's talking about in the hallway? So sometimes I'll just listen in the hallway. Oh, that was a big moment to them. And then I asked myself, how could I use that in my opening to connect with them? I had one time where all the presenters were like CEOs and managers and they had a thousand slides. So I walked up on stage and I said, I have no slides. And I literally got applause.

Yeah, that's hilarious.

And then I showed him my slides. But you know, I use that.

It's like, what's annoying to them, what it's. That's all empathy. That's empathizing with your audience, you know, and say. And doing it in a funny way. And. And sometimes without throwing yourself under the bus, being a little self deprecating is good. You still have to. You don't want to be a sad person that they're like this person, you know, but a little bit that you don't take yourself too seriously is great.

And I think, Chris, again, one insight you gave me ahead of time that I thought was brilliant for us as speakers, our ego is so important and we think this is the most important part of presentation. Most important presentation. Well, it is because it's the one you give in that day. But you had mentioned how to learn not to care.

Yeah.

How to learn not. How do you do that? How do you not care? Because we care.

Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I'm not saying like it's. I don't know exactly how to do it other than it just comes from experience and confidence and whatever you need to do as a human being to not tie yourself to whatever it is that you're afraid of, you know, because that's why. Again, that goes back to why I got into this in the first place is, you know, if you do this enough, if you practice Enough. I mean, I don't know. I would ask you guys, can you game this out? Like, I. I got to the point in comedy where I'm like, I don't know. I mean, like, one out of a hundred of these are gonna suck, or 5 out of 100 or something like that. And then when you get to them, you're like, okay, four more left this year or whatever. You know, it's not that bad.

Yep. No, that. That.

Think about all the times it's successful and all the times that all the things that work out for you, and then everything else seems a little less important.

Nice.

It's hard. It really is hard, but it's mental health. It's a bunch of stuff, but I think it's mainly, like, simple, like, going like, well, what? Concentrate on your successes. Acknowledge your. You have to acknowledge the. The failure. I mean, I hate to use that word, but you have to acknowledge it so you can maybe do something about it and become better. But I don't think you shouldn't dwell on it, ever.

A question for you, Chris, real quickly. I know our time is running out here, but I gotta ask this question for those presenters, particularly new and emerging presenters who say, well, look, I'm not funny. I keep hearing any humor in my speech. Is there one sure fire? Is there the Rosetta stone of big secret to being funny so I can just change my boring speech to funny every single time? Or is that a fallacy, man?

I don't know. Except that I do think the way to start. Look, you can. You can come to our seminar and we can tell you how to write a joke or two that'll fit into your thing. And that's like writing joke formats. There's plenty of books about that and stuff. But I honestly think authenticity is the most important thing, because it's the easiest thing because it's you. If you're an authentic person and you're being honest about. Okay, so let's say your speech is about solving a problem, right? Like you're trying to solve a problem. The problem is how to. Or how to make great presentations. We'll talk about the failures. Failures are funny. Failures can be really funny. One time, I did this one time. This is. I didn't check ahead of time and the microphone was broken, and I ended up having to go into the audience or whatever. Maybe, you know, if you have a way that you got around it, that's even better because that's a tip for somebody, you know? But I really think some of it is just, like, without making your whole speech about failures. I think that's like, authentically, how did you feel in that moment? And again, that's commonality with the audience. They'd be like, oh, damn, that would be horrible.

Nice. Chris, you don't know this, but my first coaching session with Mark on my. My final speech in the world championship competition, he read through it. It was willing to fail was the essence. And he said, do you have any. Any failures you could talk about? And I said, well, I used to do this subway joke when in my old days of standup. And I told the joke, and he's like, that's perfect. I think sometimes we don't realize the value and the humor of it and the experience for the audience of that authenticity. Like, look, I screwed up, and then, boom, you know, I'm okay.

I'm okay. You're going to be okay, too. You know what I mean? Authenticity is. That would be. My advice is like, literally, again, go back to that thing I said about your cards, the things up on your wall that you can talk about. And you're giving advice. You're talking about how to succeed, how to overcome something. But that will be way more powerful if you can talk about the times where you didn't succeed or you had a huge roadblock. And that can be really funny.

Willing to make mistakes. And, Chris, you and I were playing around, just looking at the humor Boot camp workbook from the last one to see how we could adjust it. And Mark, Chris came up with some ways to use AI to create some. Some funny images, to be able to use them on your slides. Because, Chris, I didn't know this. I learned this from you, that when you're pitching a new TV show, you actually are bringing in slides with the images.

Absolutely. They call it a pitch deck.

Yeah, a pitch deck. Cool.

Yeah, they call it a pitch deck. They use them in, like, for business and venture capital and stuff like that when you're pitching a business. And it's the same thing in TV is you have, like, a keynote presentation and it's gotta look good. You know what I mean? Like, they've heard everything. And I do think, you know, AI is obviously a very controversial thing right now, but I don't know that it's going away. And you know things like. I just know things like midjourney made my deck so much better, because rather than going through and trying to find a funny stock thing, which always look corny, by the way, you can actually create something that is actually really crazy and funny with. Or you can help. You can ask midjourney to do it for you. You're not really.

And Chris, when we talked about the humor camp, you got, what got me excited was your excitement saying, oh, we could do this. What ideas are you gonna bring to the humor camp? If they, if anybody wants to join.

Us in terms of, in terms of like making a presentation, writing exercises, creating.

Humor that we can use again and.

Again, I feel, again, I feel like going to authenticity and saying like, rather than look, I think jokes are great and I think they're really useful tools, but you'll find the jokes coming out of your authentic stuff. And I think we can really help with that by saying, like, what, okay, what's your speech about? What's a, what's a roadblock you had that, that you overcame? What was the moment? What was the moment? That was a low point. How'd you get over it? Or just how do you live in the low point? And, you know, looking back on it, was it, you know, can you, can you laugh about it?

Nice. Well, if you're interested in spending two days with Chris and me, we're going to have some Fun at the LA Comedy Club in Las Vegas. Join us August 26th, 27th. You can check it out. Just go to humorbootcamp.com humorbootcamp.com and just see what we're doing. And we're going to literally write jokes with you, alongside you, and then coach you and what you come up with to help you get from that 20 to the 2 and test, test, test. So if you're serious about humor, join Chris and me and also Butcher Bradley will be joining us as well. So, Chris, final thoughts on how to be funny for presenters.

I mean, again, I would just say, I say it all starts with your raw material, which is you. It's literally about leaning into what you're good at, what you feel comfortable talking about. I think you, I think some soul searching about things that you had to overcome and look back on and see if you can make them humorous or tell the story in a humorous way. Not in a, oh, this was sad or this was a horrible way. Obviously, if it was something really sad or horrible, maybe not, but if it's something like that, you can, that. There's a great thing in finding comedy. When you get up on stage, the most important thing is to find that commonality with the audience, to call out the situation. Whether the commonality is where you're all staying, the city, you're all in the business, you're all there to discuss what Happened before you. That's a huge thing in comedy in Los Angeles where we have a showcase format where there's 10 comedians in a row. So much of it is something going off on something the last person did not. Ignoring what's happening in the room, empathizing with your audience, understanding what they might be going through and playing to that. Find your big laughers. Be persuasive quick, and if you're not confident, fake it until you are.

Nice. Chris, thank you for being here. If you're listening to this, check out humorbootcamp.com you could use the the discount code podpod25. Love to have you join us. Can't wait to work with you and Butch. Three Boston boys. That's.

Yeah, it'll be fun. That's gonna be a blast.

So, Mark Brown, take us home.

Well, I want to quickly give a couple of keepers.

Yes.

For those who are paying attention. And Chris may not remember this. He said early on he says, get to confront your discomfort. I like that. Confront your discomfort. Filter out the raw material and find the best you have. Lean into your experience and your interests. Write 20 jokes just to get two. And have faith in your material. Why keep a notebook and write three ideas every day? You'll get 90 every month. You get a thousand every year. Because observation is huge. Remember, it's okay to bomb. It's not the end of the world because failures are funny and authenticity is key. Think of difficult people as cartoon characters. And don't forget, be persuasively funny quickly and concisely on a heart level. Find commonality to the audience. Tap into their common experiences. And don't forget, learn to not care after a bad speech or a bad joke. Move on. Good advice, my friend. It's a lot right there.

Awesome. All right, Chris, thanks for your time. We'll let you get back to what you're doing. Wish you all the success and I cannot wait to share the stage with you and in Vegas. Thanks for being here.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. Thank you for having me, guys. This was great.

Thrilled.

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