Ep. 246 Get More Laughs With Chris McGuire

Hey there, Mark Brown. So I gotta tell you, I went back to a principle I used to do early on, and I have a secret. A secret of getting more laughs quickly. The quickest, fastest way to get more laughs. I put it to the test because I was under pressure. We just finished Game Changers. I was off to Spain to speak to an industry I've never spoken to. Automotive after parts, CEOs in Spain.

Aftermarket parts. Okay, gotcha.

Auto parts. And. And I just. I was like, okay, I need to connect because I'm on the outsider, so what can I do to connect and get some laughs up front? So in the old days when I didn't have enough content, I would overcompensate by doing my homework. Well, here's the situation. I didn't have time to do that homework that I usually like to do because I was so busy. I did interview them two or three times, had meetings, got websites, etc. But this is my favorite humor secret. Let's check it out.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. 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 Lacroix.

Stage time.

Stage time.

Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation? Ahas. Let's dive right in.

All right. Mark Brown, welcome. And welcome Chris McGuire. My secret, my human secret.

How are you, Chris?

I'm good. How are you guys doing?

Doing great.

So great. She got company today too, because I guess a partner today. Beside you.

My cat. Can you. Can you see my cat?

There we go.

There she is.

Yep.

She'll get a writing credit. So cool.

Yeah, it's my writing partner.

So I was a little overstressed. This, to be honest, this was a big. My highest paid speech to date. I was excited. It was international. There's a lot going. And I remember back to my early days. What did I do when I really wanted to customize? I wanted to get some humor right up front. Because, Mark, you know, I say that until we connect, we must connect first before we can educate, entertain, or inspire. So I'm speaking to a group of CEOs after dinner, which isn't my favorite time to give content. So I knew I had to bring in some levity. So in the old days, I hired this woman expert, I think you know her, Chris. Katie Grady. And she did some Writing for me. And what was cool is I have my comedy mindset. But she came from a different angle. She saw it from a different angle. So knowing the stress and the pressure, I said, you know what? I gotta call in the expert. So I called Chris McGuire. I'm like, Chris, here's a situation. I need some custom humor. So I want to connect up front. I want to connect to their industry. I want to connect to the location. And then I'll go into my content, still connecting it back to then. But connecting is critical. And when you can do it with laughs and humor, it's beautiful. So, Chris McGuire, let's just walk people through the process. So we get industry and we get location. How can we get more laughs? What did you go through? And then I have a recording of it with my slides. I don't have video, but I have the slides that I chose showed, and I was wearing a wire. I'm still waiting for video clips to come in. But anyway, so I'll show you. I'll show everyone the end results. But, Chris, what's the process?

Well, I always start with. The way I look at it is like, what does everybody in the room have in common? They're all in the same industry. They're all in the same place. So you're all in Spain. You drill down. So you start super high up. You're all in Spain. You're in this little town called. Is it sit Jazz? Is that how you pronounce it?

Yeah. I had to learn. And I had to say it 32 times before I said it. Right. Sieges, which is. There's no. There's a T. I didn't know how to stieges.

So. So there's. You're in Spain. Barcelona is there. We didn't even need to get to that. Stages. And then there's the venue. And so you were at a very specific venue that had some historical relevance. And then everybody in the room is in the extremely hilarious aftermarket car parts industry. So let me share for a second. I'll show you sort of like what. What I did. So basically, you start with where you are, right? So I gave you this little thing up front because I also knew you were busy. So I did, you know, you start with some research. What is there significant about stages? What is significant about the venue you're at? So do a little quick research. So I gave you bullet points. You could understand the jokes, number one and number two, maybe they would inspire you. So I'm going to move the cat. Maybe they inspire you. To something else. So these were just the bullet points on stages. It's very old. They have a horror and science fiction film festival every year. It's very progressive artist community. Beautiful. You know, you google it, you see what it looks like. It's known for its beaches. The venue was. Now how do you pronounce this? Finca mas Solaire?

Yeah, you got me. I still don't know how to pronounce that one.

Yeah, so the venue was in a grand estate. It was kind of a renaissance themed estate. You have a casino. So immediately I'm thinking, okay, Darren's from Vegas. There's got to be a casino connection. I don't think I ever made it. But like, I, you know, I'm making connect. You're making connections. Just found a few things about it. It's. It's very close, you know, you want to know how close it is to stages. So if you reference it, the likelihood that people had been there and that the venue is old. And then on the last day, I went to the website and I read their material, man, you know, it was very dry material about the challenges the industry faces, which is basically electric cars, because electric cars don't break down like regular cars, so they sell less parts. And then there were all these EU issues that were very important to their business that I didn't really understand. But I got the sense that there was an antagonism. So I knew that if you had a punchline about the eu, it would probably get a good laugh because they're probably frustrated with them. And so they had an idea. You know, you look at the itinerary, what's happening? They had breakout sessions every. It looked like they had breakout sessions, like every two hours. So there was a lot of networking for me. I'm like, how much, how long can you talk about, you know, break pads, you know, and that was my initial thought. When you've got like, you know, breakout sessions every, like two hours, it's like, what the hell do you even talk about after 10 minutes? And then there was a field trip that they were going to take, which was to Benedictine Monastery, the Adi. It was the name of the company. So now I, you know, have a little bit of information. Last year's event was about was at Lake Como. So I thought that would be fun when, you know, I'm making associations. So when I think about Lake Como, I think about George Clooney, right. Because he lives in Lake Como. They're giving out awards. Award show jokes are like, you can make, like, you can make fun of their awards. I'm sure the people who are there are very proud that they got the awards, but it's not exactly the Oscars. So that's an area that's for fun too. So just initially I looked at this and I thought horror film sounds like fun, a fun area. Gambling. And I don't think I got any gambling jokes, but I thought that was a fun area. Generally the fact that Vegas is very new and this place is extremely old. I just started thinking about, literally about car parts and I just started thinking about their business, which is they make money when cars break down. So those are the initial things that kind of bubbled up in my head.

Mark, any thoughts from your perspective? So if you're listening to this, this is the process that Chris went through. He's looking for. He's building lists of ideas and bullet points. What was helpful to me, Chris, is seeing the bullet points right in front of me. You took all this information and summarized it, which was super helpful to me. Looking for those facts and what I'm gonna make light of and how I can use it and bring it into the conversation. So for everyone, he researched the event itself, he researched the location itself, and he researched the industry. This is something we should know. Whether we turn it into humor or not, we need to do this. But what I loved is investing in. And I literally paid you, Chris. You didn't do me a favor on this. I literally invested in Chris because it was a high paid speech and I needed to connect. So it just made sense that he could. He's got this brain. And if you don't know Chris, and I apologize. Chris, we didn't even really introduce you.

That's okay. No, no, no problem.

He's a Hollywood comedy writer. He's produced the Martha Stewart Snoop Dogg TV show, which I did use that as talking about partnerships. That was huge. That was. That was. That was fascinating in research.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just like you just want to like. I worked in late night. That's probably the most relevant thing to What I daring is I worked at late night. Every day I come in and my. The material is the news. So I research the news. I read the news stories, read top news stories of the day. Based on those stories, you write a bunch of jokes. So with this. And you can do this fast. And I mean these days, which actually.

Do it fast for us.

Yeah, I mean, but I mean, honestly, with. With the research tools that are like available to us now, like with AI and stuff like that, you could do research pretty fast. Like I think here I had, I asked it to give me a list of mainly looking for funny words. Give me a list of the most popular aftermarket auto parts and they were all start stuff that you would common sense. But I didn't need to spend 20 minutes thinking about it. I gave it to me in 45 seconds. You know, it's like tires, brakes, batteries, air filters, the exhaust systems, all that stuff. So I'm just scanning those things for what are funny words.

So Mark, what's your perspective or questions pop up at this point? We'll go deeper but.

Well, first of all I stepped back. What I saw was Chris would start high level. You know, what's the industry, what's the company and what's the location? So you start high. Did you begin to drill down step by step your research on the company on the, on the physical city, on the location, what the city known for. So the process that I picked up was yeah, I know it's going to be in this town about this event and as a company but if I research each individual piece and as Chris says try to make connections and find out what's unique, what's interesting and how can I take that interesting fact or tidbit and make it funny. So that part of the process I think is great for me as a presenter who was not known to be funny, I'm pretty funny looking. But to learn from a pro who is doing this right, I know by no bad joke time somebody who's not very funny. But I realize the process is one of doing the work and digging deep. And I love what you said Darren. It need not be only about humor. The idea is if we're going to research, let's dig deep. And the best part of this for me is the idea of finding interesting or maybe little known facts about the company, the location, the city that may be interesting that you could use in a serious way way but you could also get more laughs by using it in a funny way. And I tell you one thing Chris, you said that really went thing in my brain I wrote down and you connect the location to well known celebrities and make that kind of funny. I would never have thought George Clooney and see just you know, never made that connection. But by doing research we can find unique information that will help us as presenters not only stand out and be unforgettable because of our unique approach but to find ways to uncover the funny in the midst of that that will make you unforgettable. And I'M all in. I'm learning right now. This is really, for me, quite fascinating, and I'm very eager to learn more.

Thank you. And that it is a process. It's literally you do people, places, things, events, saying places, things, places, things, events, cliches, sayings, or whatever. So you start with people, right? Well, I start with place because it's the thing everybody has in common. You're in place, so you start with place. Then when I. You always go to people, so you just go, okay, what people are associated with this thing? And it turned out it used to be a monastery, that they were going to a monastery in this place. Used to be a monastery, too. The place that Darren was speaking in.

Right.

And also I made an assumption that I was right about was that most of the attendees were going to be men.

Yes.

Right. So now I have a lot of male energy going on where it's like, you have a monastery. So the joke that I wrote, I don't know if you did it. The one was, oh, you're going. Yeah. On Sunday, you're going to go to the Montserrat Monastery, just in case you want to hang around with even more men.

Again, this is an actual clip from it. Listen up.

Thursday, you're gonna go. Tomorrow you're gonna go to the Monasteret Monastery, which is a historical location run by a group of Benedictine monks, just in case you wanted to be around more men.

Oh, you got an applause breakdown.

I think you didn't get enough of that. You know, really thought that through. That's awesome.

Yeah, that. That one killed awesome. And they know, you know what I mean? So the only thing I said to Darren was I tagged it and I said, just make sure there isn't some sensitivity because of inclusion, you know, the fact that it is all men. So I go, I. I think it's a good joke. I think people laugh. It feels pretty harmless. But just run it by the event planner so you don't have an HR problem afterwards.

Yeah, great. Great point. Always got to run it by the money person, the decision maker. And they.

If you want to come back. Yeah, yeah.

If you want the check to clear, too.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, go ahead. Really quick.

What was interesting, Chris, that I didn't even get a chance to tell you is unknown to me. They actually asked me the afternoon before, hey, we want to go through all your slides. I was like, what?

Oh, really?

But I was like, okay, at least I will see if there's a landmine. I didn't know I was going to step on. And, and they gave me one thing that enhanced it, one joke that enhanced it that I changed. I'll tell you that after. Because it was one of the on site location jokes I created. And then they. They gave me one that I should say and I didn't want to say and I let them override my gut feeling. And that was on me. That was my bad. But we'll get to that in a second.

Did it not work? Okay. All right, great. But yeah, so you, you have. You start with place. Because it's harmless. It's harmless. There's no, no one's going to get mad if you're telling a joke about being at this monastery or, or this town sieges. It's harmless, but. And it's connecting because everybody's there and everybody's a fish out of water. Like when we were all in Vegas for Game Changers, most of the people there were fish out of water. So everything seemed weird and fun and different. So the same thing is going to be true when you're traveling. So if you're playing the fish out of water, everyone else feels like a fish out of water. So you've got connection with that. When you go to people, people are just like. It's just another. It's not as for me, it's. It's trickier, but it's. It works. Is now you're talking about famous people is always a good one because people are, you know, fascinated by it. Usually there's some area of humor. And the other one would be, this is the dangerous one, which is the people at the event. So a lot of times you go to these things, Darren. And I don't know, Mark, if you've had this, but, you know, you've certainly had standup gigs, Darren, where they're like, oh yeah, the boss wants you to make fun of them right now that could either be a good idea or a terrible idea. But because now you're in roast territory, you know, now you're roasting and that's what I call dark magic. It's very, very tricky. I try to. In an event where I want to come back and I'm making a nice PayCheck, you know, four FIG. 4 or 5 figures, whatever it is. I would avoid that as much as possible, especially if I had 45 minutes of speech I could give Mark.

You know, that's interesting because I had for a while there I was doing trucking association conventions, and there was one, I think it was Tennessee Trucking association. And the CEO, the president, got to Know the guy, his name is Dave, had a really good time. And I was going to do it. Their breakfast opening keynote. I was going to do a joke about Dave. It was the company's like, 80th anniversary, and I was going to do a joke about Dave. The cake is here. Blow up the candles because you were here when we first got started. So how old he was. But I ran it by him first, not by somebody else. I made sure he was cool with it. I did it. It landed. He laughed, Allowed us. Everybody laughed. It was great. But I had to be careful not to offend Dave and make the old guy, who's been there for 100 years. Right.

So that was a great instinct. That's a great instinct, is if you tell. Because they're going to look at Dave. If David. I think they'll. If they look pissed off, they're going to get nervous, they're going to close up.

I didn't want a Will Smith, so I figured I'd just.

Exactly. You have to be careful about these things. Yeah, the, the, the, you know, eight. Like, when somebody's that old, that's usually a safe area. The safest areas are haircuts and what they wear.

Really?

Yeah, because you can change it. So if you're gonna make fun of my. My glasses. My glasses are big, right? Well, I can get a new pair of glasses. You don't like the pink shirt I'm wearing, I can get another shirt. I'm aware that I have no hair. You know what I mean? If somebody has somebody wears a ponytail, you can make fun of that because they can change it. So that's a. Usually an extremely safe area. If somebody's known for wearing Hawaiian shirts all the time, whatever. You know, things like that. Everybody's got a fashion sense, and it may or not lead to humor, but it's a safe place because making fun of weight. Making fun of weight is really difficult unless you've got a good sense of humor. Yeah.

So, Chris, let's go a little deeper on the horror film joke. So tell me, like, the process, because I did not see that connection at all. And I don't know if you want me to play the joke, then we go back or.

Yeah, play the joke. Play the joke first. I don't know how. I don't know how it went over. So let's see.

All right, so this is the end joke, and then we'll talk about the process. Chris. I was actually surprised. I did 10 whole minutes, 10 minutes and 5 seconds just about them before I Went into my content. I was like, that's.

That's impressive. You got your money's worth.

I probably owe you some money. All right.

I don't know. I don't know.

Okay.

And International Horror Film Festival. You might not know this, but this is actually a thing here. This is the truth. It is a thing here. That it is the home of the horror Film festival. And I started thinking about what you guys do, and I realized it must be really awkward when you go to a horror film. Check this out. Think about it. Think about this.

It was a clip from a horror film where the car wouldn't start. So it was a clip. So I literally grabbed a screen grab from Fandango.

Poltergeist, I think. Yeah.

The only people who cheer when the car won't start. We sold another one.

How cool is that?

Well, I did some research, too, in some horror films. And what were the cars? And check this out. Friday the 13th has a thing about this. Oh, by the way, one man's horror show is another man's business plan. I think you need to get them as a supplier or a partner or something. Think about that. 1970 Dodge Polara. Friday 13th, 1977 Chevy Impala. So this is educational tonight, too. So a little bit of education. And they even said it on readit.com. they said the best ads for keeping your maintenance up on your vehicles. You gotta support the horror film festival here. And we have some new suppliers. Some new suppliers. Round of applause again for our new suppliers.

Sweet.

And so here's a list of the suppliers. And I think you're missing one. I think you need to add a new one. The Jason mask.

All right.

That was funnier in my head. All right, that's fine.

I'm okay with that.

So if you're listening to audio, I showed a picture of all their suppliers right off of the conference website. And then I added a picture of a hockey mask. So if. If you get a chance, check out the YouTube clip. It might make a little more sense. But, Chris, so what's the thought process on that? And I didn't even connect it to suppliers. You saw that connection and blah, blah, blah. They thought I was done. And then I came back.

Well, now I remember how I did this. So right here. Well, I knew there was going to be humor in that. They're really happy when cars break down because that's their whole business. So the joke I wrote immediately, I'm thinking, oh, the joke is somebody picked you up at the airport and the car broke down on the Way to the gig. And so that was the first joke that I wrote, which was, you guys nice enough to send a car to pick me up the airport. Unfortunately, on the way here, I was stranded when the alternator broke down, which is better news for you than it was for me. So, you know, that's an okay joke. But it got me in the area of cars breaking down. And, and again then I got to. You hear that story and think, yes, we sold another one. Then Darren, you had this joke. I live in Las Vegas. Have you been? You love it. A car battery only lets last three and a half months. It's so hot in Vegas that a car battery, you know, car batteries don't last long. So they would obviously be happy about that. And then the horror film. So anyway, that just got me to the area that, that thinking got me to the area of horror films. Because in horror films or movies in general, where cars don't start in the movie, it's just a plot point. In movies, somebody gets in the car, they got to get away from somebody, and they, you know, they, they try to turn over the car that won't turn over. So I don't know, I think I might have googled something like all the times cars won't start in movies. And it came back with like all the Friday the 13th movies. It was like a Reddit thread. And so at the end of the Reddit thread somebody had a joke saying this is the best ad for, for new. New, you know, buying a new car, basically, which I thought was funny. So just based on that, I was just kind of like, oh, there's a horror film festival. You know, Friday the 13th. I just walked into it and then I'm like, oh, you guys cheer. You're the only people that cheer when the car won't start. That was basically how I got to it.

And what a great.

I was just making associations in my head.

Yeah. And Mark, I know you got a bounce to go start another speech virtual presentation. So thanks for being here, Mark. Do what you got to do. Focus. Thanks for being here.

One more, one last question for Chris and for you, Darren. I see this little by little drill down process and it may be a premature question, but how low can you go? I mean, how deep do you go? Is that how you, how deep you choose to go? Depending on how many connections you can find between the client, the association, the city, the little known facts. I wrote down people, places, things, events, sayings, which I'm sure you'll drill it down on. But you have to decide for yourself just how far you want to go, depending on how much humor come, humor you want to use and how important some of the facts are. For me, it's again a learning experience. So is there a limit or do you say, you know, I go three levels deep or what do you think? How far do you go? Chris?

Yeah, it's like Inception. You go four levels deep. No, it's. It's literally like dreams within dreams. No, I go, I look at the end of the day, it's like the deeper you go, the more likely you are to find something really special and different. But the audience isn't looking for that.

Okay?

They're looking for the surface stuff. In a gig like this, you want the surface material.

Okay.

If Darren was going to be going up after five other people that were doing jokes about the event, then I'd be going super deep. But he's the only person doing it. So you can, you can get all the low hanging fruit.

So here's the last question then based upon that. Because you may be in an event where you are you, you may be the keynote speaker, but the company president or somebody else does some humor about the location, would it be wise then to at least prepare a couple three levels deep in case somebody else hits surface or do you then switch your strategy and say, okay, my goal is to find as many commonalities between the location, the city, the event, the discomfort of the weather and the right from the airport. I mean, do I go broad or do I go deep or do I do both kind of.

Yeah, you just bring up some. Also, you bring up weather, which is also like the safest topic ever. You know what I mean? So like everybody's experienced it. You know, if we're in Las Vegas, it's super hot. If we're in Spain, maybe it's rainy or it's beautiful and sunny and all this stuff. And you can make jokes about you guys are six miles from the beach, but you'd rather talk about brake pads over there, you know, like something like that. You keep it. What I would, I guess the quickest answer to your question mark is, you know, you should always have enough stuff so that you can drop jokes if somebody hits an area. So, and Darren, you know, I mean, Obviously he did 10 minutes on, on the custom jokes. That's a lot. I mean, I was really. That's a lot. That takes a lot of courage to do because you, you don't know if it's gonna work, right?

And we don't suggest that if you're new to this if you know, three minutes. And here's the cool part, you're not brought in to be funny. However, if you can add some great levity at the beginning, especially if it's about them, the location, the industry, it's about them. So it doesn't. It's about to be hysterical. If you're brought in as a comedian now, it has to be hysterical. We're just looking for that connection and to also show, hey, they did their homework.

Yeah, comedy. Comedy is generally all about the speaker, but in the speaking business, it's about the audience. So when you make the connection and you're like, hey, we're all here together, you know, I mean, and comedians do this too, by the way. It's why comedians open their acts with great to be here in Spain. You know what I mean? It's the same. It's the same thing. They're trying to make a connection. They just don't think of it that way. They, for them, they're like, I just need to get a laugh.

Well, last thought before I go, and I will go, is this, Darren, you give a nugget just now. It's good to use levity at the beginning. Start them off feeling a level of comfort, relaxation and smiling. So that's really good. And using common, like the weather is one good way. No, not night weather, but use a creative line about the weather. Again, we want to be unique. We want to be unforgettable. But being aware of our surroundings is a helpful way to do that. But the key is to get it. Get it done early enough to build that rapport, that connection, and then serve the audience. Well. For me, this has been wonderfully educational. I'll see you guys soon. Listeners, family and friends, I don't often do this, but I got to speak somewhere else in about 7.28319 minutes. I'll see you next time. Bye, guys.

Thanks, Mark.

Mark.

Me and Mark, sometimes I get a little overconfident and I, I did a few jokes. So for everyone, these are a couple jokes that I wrote there in the moment that Chris had nothing to do with. Because, Chris, I. I say that disclaimer because some of them hit and some of them didn't hit. But I don't want to put the. The ones that didn't on you. Your writing is genius. The best, and by the way, the best investment I've made is to hire you to help me with this. This is critical.

So if anything, it just gets you thinking about all the Possibilities. So when you get there, you know, like, if I had known you were going to be speaking in a tent, I would have written you a bunch of jokes about being in a tent. You know, it's just. It's just funny.

Yeah. And for everyone, it was a tent, but this was like a first class tent. This was. We were.

Yeah, it was a beautiful tent. But you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It doesn't matter. Don't make fun of it.

You can definitely make light of it, for sure. But I don't want anybody to think it was just, you know, dilapidated. That it was amazing. The AV inside, it was freaking better than most conventions. So, Chris, one of the things they said in the opening, this was super helpful. I'm an outsider. So one of the best things I did, and it was actually the event planner Manuel's idea, is he introduce me as the outsider in the opening. The opening at lunchtime on Tuesday. I'm speaking Wednesday night. And he said, I just want to introduce you this guy Darren, he's an outsider. He's not from our industry. He's going to walk around and ask you questions. Please answer them, and on Wednesday night, you'll find out why. So it's great that he set up curiosity.

Yeah. They teased it.

Curiosity without expectations. So one of the things he said in the opening, like, we're at this amazing mansion, and they told us, they warned us that there are lemon trees inside of the mansion. Lemon, wow. Inside of the mansion, they said it is illegal to pick the lemons. So, Chris, this was just that one of those gut.

That's funny.

I. I immediately went over to the. To the head wait staff. I said, tomorrow afternoon, I need a lemon. And so when I walked out there, I had a joke that I thought of in the. In the. In the instant, which I shouldn't have done. It was all right, but I look like Manuel, who is the president of this. Like, we look like brothers. So I kind of threw out a joke that was. That was like, okay, like, I look like him. I'm like, hey, yeah. The mystery is I'm his brother. That. That was like. But then I pulled out my lemon and I just threw it up and caught it and threw it up and caught it and threw it up and caught it. Okay, who did it? Who picked the lemon? I'll play the clip, but you'll see that it takes them. Or you hear that it takes them a second to really get it.

So.

I want to know who. I want to know who. Who picked in lemon. All right. I thought that would have been funnier. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. I'll meet you where you're at. All right.

Okay. So that did great. And that was on me.

Got that. Did anyone get on the wrong bus?

This was a joke. This is the joke that they suggested that I let. I. I let my gut tell me, because they had these buses going to the event site there. Everyone was staying in three different hotels. So they had buses going to the event site. And they said, make sure you get on the right bus, or it's going to take you to the wrong hotel. My problem, Chris, was they said, oh, you should say that. Because I asked them in the little pre meeting with the client. I said, did anyone get on the wrong bus? And they said, no. So now it's not really relevant that they got on the wrong bus. So you'll hear I asked the question in like crickets. I should have never brought it up because it wasn't emotionally relevant.

Yeah, okay, this is.

These are questions. Let's. Let's talk here.

You want to have fun?

This. This.

So I used it as, like, a save line opportunity. So that was on me.

False participation.

And then I took your joke on the battery, the idea that we had on the battery, and I tied it into Las Vegas again. This one. Okay.

I'm from Las Vegas.

I am American.

I apologize right up front. I'm sorry.

And I do have all my original.

Parts, so I'm sorry for that, too. Raise your hand if you've been to Las Vegas before. All right. If you haven't been, you would love the real Las Vegas, because it's so hot and so dry that car batteries only last six and a half months.

All right?

You got to think on some of these. Yeah, right? Yes. My Pete.

It's.

So that kind of turned into a little applause, but it took him. Took him a minute. But then I, you know, I just had fun with it.

So how far and how far into your presentation were you when you. When you did that?

Two minutes. So I haven't Also haven't done this in a long time. So I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants, and I tried to do more than maybe. Maybe I should have. But two, that really worked as one of the things you and I teach in the humor boot camp is the redefining and connecting it. Again, these were things that I wrote in the moment, and one was about the location. So what we're teaching you is that you can make light of the location or the situation. We always Teach people. What are they frustrated about? Well, it was unseasonably cold in Spain last week where we were. So check this out.

Yes, yes. It's amazing. You may not know this, but finca mas soles, and I'm sure I pronounced that incorrectly, is actually from the Catalan word meaning chilly at night. And you may not know this, but sieges is actually a Spanish word.

Loose.

So I'm going to set this up. That. Because they were going to. From the buses to the event site, these are all CEOs. A lot of them didn't want to wait around, so they all went for taxis. Well, all but many of them went for taxis. But this is a smaller town, so this one really hit, and I figured it would.

And you may not know this, but sieges is actually a Spanish word. Loosely translated means not enough taxis.

You made a connection. You made a observation that everybody else had made. So everybody feels smart.

Yeah, yeah. Whenever laughter turns into applause, it's also agreement.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, Chris, I wanted to set up the ADI joke that you wrote, because that was probably the biggest laugh that I got. The acronym.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I knew you'd like. This is a. There were a couple of things when you. When you're writing for somebody else, you just got to remember it's not you doing it, it's them doing it. So, you know, you try to make. You try to customize with their voice or their preferences or things like that. I tried to make some connections to Las Vegas because I knew Darren was from Las Vegas. And again, it's that fish out of water thing. And I also know that Darren likes acronym jokes. So I knew that if I wrote a decent acronym joke, that he definitely want to do it. So I'm sure that when you saw it on the page, you were like, oh, good, an acronym joke. I knew it would make you feel comfortable, and it establishes trust between the writer and the person performing. So that's an acronym joke, basically, should point out, is when ADI is the acronym, it means what, Auto Part Distribution, something industry, something like that. So the. The joke is that it stands for something else, and the something else is the punchline. So anyway, that's. That's where that's where we started.

And so it's a simple joke again, when you can tie into the relevancy and a frustration or something. In this case, that's emotionally great. And by the way, when I ran it by the event planner, Manuel, he laughed, like, slapped his knees like, I'm gonna hear about this for years.

Yeah. That's great.

That's how I knew I had to do it. And then real quick, too, this one again was.

It also sets up that he has to pay something for in perpetuity.

Yes. The audience loves. The audience loves. And then they did these 20 minute. I'll show this this again. Well, was one of mine. I brought it up. Now I got to do it. Where they were, actually had these little modules. Each country had their representatives in there, and they had these conversations every 20 minutes. So it was kind of like speed dating. But they sometimes they are really tough, deep business meetings. And so I asked Manuel again, is this okay to mention. So now these are heads of companies and heads of distributors, like, working it out. That if they have some challenges, they got to work it out. And now they're face to face. It's not the people at the lower levels talking da, da, da. This is the heads of the company. So anyway, people I got to talk.

To one on one. Really felt made me feel welcome, especially since my brother set me up as the mystery guy. And I just want to report this, that as a result of your speed dating.

You know what I mean? No, no.

When you're sitting and talking with each other. Okay, all right, sorry. Joke's on me. There were.

I'm happy to report that there were no fist fights.

So there you go. There's a bonus right there. Adi, I was thinking about this, and I'm watching you guys, and I'm like, what does ADI really, really stand for?

I thought about it, and I think.

It'S all drinks included. Yes. Everyone's like, no, no, no. You know, Know how much that costs?

All right. Yeah, it's a party joke. It's like, hey, we're all here. We're all having a good time. Some people are waking up for their breakout sessions in the morning, and they're hungover and all that other stuff, and it just. It's clicking into some kind of truth in the room. I knew that one was going to kill. I think I just had a feeling.

Even if you just did your homework, you got to know them better by doing your research. You're going to understand the industry better. And maybe it ties to a point. Maybe it's not even something funny, but doing a few bits of humor like this, you don't have the pressure that you're supposed to be funny. So even like a couple of those. I like one of those that we just played there, I didn't get a big laugh. That was on me. That was not on Chris and I went with it in the moment, but it's okay. It's an acknowledgement. It's about them. So this isn't quote, unquote, your content. And one of the things that I always do, Chris, is I say before we get started, and if you are watching the YouTube version, you can see if you're listening to audio. When I do custom humor, I have black backgrounds, not branded, and it's black backgrounds with white lettering. And that's almost like to create the mood. And then when I go to my content, then I go to my regular color branded slides. So it's like an emotional shift.

Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And I thought it was smart that you did. You set up a lot of your jokes on the slides because there were prompts for you. So it's a little bit of a cheat sheet. It also, a visual will add to. Can add to a punchline, you know, all that stuff. So it was smart.

Yeah, it definitely was my cheat sheet, for sure. And it also, for some of them. Now remember, these are people in different countries, all CEOs from all different countries throughout Europe. So some of them, many of them English is their second language, not their first language. So the visual, like when I said finca mas solaris, like, I can't pronounce it, they might not know what I'm talking about. It's the property that we are on. But when I put up the visual, it becomes clearer. When I set up the definition, jokes, they can read it as well as hear it, and then I show the punchline. So I've never actually done that before, Chris. This was like a. Just a new invention to give me confidence.

It was a good instinct. It was a. It was a good instinct for a multilingual audience where some people are, you know, auditory learners, some people are visual learners. So if. If you're doing that, you've got them covered on both.

Yep, definitely. It was like you said, it was a gut instinct. And for now on, I will always do that.

Yeah, it's a good idea. Chris.

I want to respect your time, and I have to jump into the event that Mark's speaking at, too. What I love about this. And, Chris, I got the question yesterday. You and I teach a humor boot camp, and we teach an event called Find the Funny. So if you want to learn the techniques behind doing this, we got Find the Funny coming up at the end of this month. When you listen to this podcast, the end of this month, just go to stagetime workshops.com stagetimeworkshops.com. and you can see our schedule coming up. So Find the Funny is about uncovering humor in your stories. Humor Bootcamp, which we're doing in the fall, late summer, early fall, that is about writing jokes. So I got the question yesterday, Chris, what's the difference between Find the Funny and Humor Boot Camp? Find the Funny is about storytelling and uncovering the humor in storytelling. And I love. Linda Marie said yesterday, Chris, we were on a, on our other event, and she said, find the funny, change the way I tell stories. If you don't go to Find the Funny, you're missing out. So I just wanted you to know she said that.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. That workshop, the one this month is it's two days on humor and storytelling and one day on the absolute essentials of storytelling, which a lot of people, I mean, to me, I love teaching it because it's about the craft and not the art. The humor is really more about art and storytelling and structure is about the craft of it. And the craft super important. If you don't know how to build the foundation. Humor is painting. You know, you're just putting paint on a dilapidated house. So I mean, I love that course. I think it's super important. And then Humor Boot Camp is really about technique, like joke writing techniques and advice and best practices for, for doing humor. And we would like all this location stuff that Darren's talking about. That's a humor boot camp topic.

Yeah, I, and I really want to back up if you're serious about this. If you're a high level speaker, Chris McGuire is my secret weapon. Hire him. Like, you can learn the process. Like we can teach you to fish, or you can just hire Chris and he'll hand you fish. Like highly, highly recommend. So, Chris, how would they find you?

You can find me at laugh. Laughwithchris.com is my landing page. You can set up a free discovery call. We could talk about what your goals are, see if we're a good fit. You could also, if you want to test out what it is that I do, I have a substack, it's letstalkfunny.substack.com and I do, it's. It's a newsletter. I do it for like an audience of speakers and it's about humor and storytelling for speakers. And I talk about different strategies, techniques, and put up funny stuff every week.

Nice. Well, Chris, best investment I made was investing in you to help me and get me there deeper and more quickly than I had time to.

Well, I'm glad you got out alive. You did a good job. You got it. Look, if you do something like that, you're talking for 10 minutes, stuff you've never talked about before. And you're graceful when it doesn't land. Exactly. But you're getting, you're making connections. You can hear them with applause, breaks and stuff like that and big laughs. Then you, you did a great, you did a great job. We could talk more in depth about whether you should have done 10 minutes, but you certainly, by the time you got ready to talk about your more serious stuff or inspiring stuff, you've already established trust with that audience for you.

Again, listening to this. If I just did the Adi joke and then went into my content, that would have set me up and I would have done better just because of that one joke period. Because now it's like, oh, he knows us. The trust is built, the rapport is built. And I've been observing what's going on. You know, I, I invested in you and I invested in being there for a day and a half to see what was going on. It was my observation that saw the taxi thing as the opportunity. Invest in time, invest in Kris. If you'd rather join us or do both, please, please check out stagetown workshops.com Chris, final thoughts on getting more laughs.

I mean, just in general, just remember you have up, like, take the opportunities. So if the, if the most important thing is to have something at top, the top of your speech that connects you with the audience, it could be a question, it could be some kind of dramatic look, it could be a story. Humor will connect you faster. So it's worth taking a little bit of a chance, taking a little bit of time thinking about what everybody in the room is experiencing, which is you're all in the same place. If you're traveling, you might be fish out of water, whatever. And it's a great opportunity to be like, I'm like you. And that's all you want to do is get them to feel like you get them.

So check out laughwithchris.com Do a free discovery call with him and he'll talk it through with you and. Or join us at Find the Funny coming up to the end of the month or humor Boot camp at the end of the summer. Chris, thanks for being here. We'll see you next week.

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