Ep. 78 The World's First Humor Engineer with Drew Travin

Hey, Darren Lacroix. How are you today, my friend?

I'm doing great. I am psyched. Nothing like learning from somebody like Drew.

Well, listen, the truth is, you know, there's two words I never associate with humor. One is accounting, and the other is engineering. Okay? But today, we want everybody to meet the world's first humor engineer, a man I had the pleasure of meeting when I was hosting two webinars for Toastmasters. I was falling on my face laughing. I. I can't wait to unleash this man on you and Darren. You're going to love this. He is even punier than I am.

Oh, boy. Mark, what I love, too, is he was so excited to just get maybe 1,000 views on his TEDx talk. 9.1 million views.

Boom.

Let's do this.

All right.

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

Let's dive right in. Let's meet the man himself, the world's first humor engineer, Drew Tarvin. Drew, how in the world are you, man?

I am doing great, man. That is an epic opening. I've never been asked to be the voiceover for one of those things. This is not the voice for Dwight now. Welcome to the show. It's not happening. Love it.

You know, it's funny, Darren. I met Drew when I was moderating these webinars for Toastmasters on humor, and my first thought was, you know, he looks like Topher grace with a 9:37pm shadow. But maybe he's been. He's heard that summary before. I don't know. Drew, what have you been hearing, man, about who you resemble? I'm curious.

I've heard a number of things. Probably most common or what people kind of shake their head the most. That is skinny Hugh Jackman. People always emphasize the skinny part, though. They don't want me to be confused. Like, you're not, like, massively ripped Wolverine Hugh Jackman. You're like, emanc. Like, like, like. Yeah, I don't know. Frail Hugh Jackman. I get sometimes. My favorite, though, and I've shared this before, is a woman told me after an event once that I look like Justin Timberlake. But just from here to here, just the eyeballs of JT Justin Timberlake in a burqa.

That's kind of cool. That's kind of. Well, you know, Drew, we always. We always ask, you know, we hear humor, an engineer juxtaposed, play side by side, and we end up like confused dogs. And when the dog goes, how do you put those two together? And how in the round world did you come up with that?

Certainly, I mean, people. Some people consider it to be an oxymoron, right? They say, like, wait, humor and engineer are those things together. But that's actually what humor is. Is interesting juxtaposition. So maybe it works. But the job title came from the first TEDx talk that I did for Ohio State. I realized I had to articulate what I was doing. And the source of that came from, I'm a computer science engineer by training, right? I'm obsessed with efficiency. I understand computers. And I got a degree from the Ohio State University in computer science and was working at Procter and Gamble as an IT project manager, solving workplace challenges with computer science, right? With programming, with project management with it. And so then after I left P and G and started teaching people about the value of humor and using it to be more effective with humans, some of that I wasn't good at before I realized, like, oh, I'm still solving workplace challenges, but instead of computer science, I'm using humor. So I guess that makes me a humor engineer.

Well, that's cool. Now, I think, though, Drew, you left out a critical part of the story because you're a Procter and Gamble, you are an it, and at some point you begin to insert humor. Was it in business meetings? Was it in a week? How did it begin to emerge in the middle of this serious IT engineering environment?

Certainly I remember being in this meeting at P and G early on in my career that was so incredibly boring, right? It was one of those meetings where you want to cry because of how boring it is. Like, one of those meetings where you just start daydreaming about all the other things you wish you could be doing. You're like, I would rather be folding laundry right now. I'm gonna schedule a root canal. Not because I need it, just so that I feel something again, right? One of those terrible, boring meeting. The problem with this particular meeting was that I was the one leading the meeting. Oh, yeah.

Ouch.

And I had this realization where it's like, if I'm bored while talking, the audience has to be bored while listening. And so I was talking with a friend of mine about it, and he was like, drew, you like to solve problems. And that's absolutely true. I love solving problems. I do, you know, sudoku for fun? Ken. Ken. I don't think of them as math problems. I think of them as math operations, opportunities. Love solving problems. And so why not solve the problem of boredom? And it was this particular person, this friend, who also happened to be the one who pushed me into improv and standup in college when I was at Ohio State, he wanted to start an improv comedy group. Needed people, force me to join, and we were terrible, at least to start, but he was like, why not bring in some of that stuff that we Learned in the 8th floor and improv into your work? And so that's what I started doing. I started to add jokes at the bottom of my emails. I started to teach improv exercises to my team members. I started using stories and images and puns in my meetings, and I started to realize I was getting better results. It was like working with the humans, which was great. And so that began this evolution of using humor not for the sake of laughter, not for just to be quote, unquote funny, but rather to solve specific challenges.

And I love the story about your grandmother starting to text. If you could share that. That's classic.

Oh, certainly. Yeah. So my. This is. See, this is how I know that technology is easier than humans, I think, right? As an engineer, because my grandmother, now, at this point, 87 years old, has 700 friends on Facebook. 700 friends.

Go, grandma.

I mean, right? So she understands technology. And years ago, she also started texting. And the very first text from my grandmother was adorable. It read, dear Drew trying out texting. Love your grandma. That is so adorable. She thinks it's a letter. I, like, texted back. I was like, hey, grandma, you don't have to include all that. And her response was, dear Drew. Okay, love your grandma. But my favorite part, though, is, like, so technology isn't always perfect because she hasn't figured out quite everything. She still was learning the acronyms and everything. A few years ago, I was in. This was pre pandemic. I was in Switzerland speaking for an event, and then it came back, and I was like, hey, grandma, just got back from Switzerland. And her response was, dear Drew, Switzerland, question mark, wts. I was like, grandma, what do you think WTF means? And she's like, oh, well, someone at bridge told me it means, wow, that's fun. That is exactly what it means, grandma, because I'm not going to be the one to share with my grandma what that is, but what's interesting. And so this is a story that opens my TEDx talk and would, you know, a lot of times we're going to talk about the value of humor. People say, oh, you should start with a joke or that kind of stuff. And so some people take that advice. They find a joke off of the Internet, they read it, and then the remaining 59 minutes and 30 seconds of their presentation is boring and dry and has nothing to do with the joke that they shared. What's great about effective humor is I start the TEDx talk with that story about my grandmother, which people comment all the time. They love my grandmother. But it also sets up the thesis for what I'm going to talk about. What I say then is like, that's actually how I think we can be more effective in our roles. If we all thought, wtf? Like my grandma. If we thought, wow, that's fun. And that's the power I think of. Humor is not just, hey, some laughter, it's a distraction. But more of here's some laughter. And now we're leading into what we really want to talk about.

Yeah. And I love the background you have. You and I have similar stories other than you're smart and I'm not that little caveat. But anyway, you started to be fair.

I have to be smart though, because my blood type is A plus.

I have to be a motivational speaker. Mine's B positive. So.

Man, you your toys down. That's great.

Tell us a little bit about your. The improv background. And do you think that really help build your humor muscle? Because we always talk about you got to take a humor class because that was my definite foundation.

Yeah. Well, and that's what I love about the intro and I love about the sign above your head. Right. Is stage time. You know, I think if I think in terms of the tools that have made me successful as a, as a humorous one of the big ones certainly is stage time. Because. And I was fortunate enough, like I said, I got pushed into to improv because I was not the type of person that was like, hey, I'm funny. I did not watch shoes line is in any way and be like, I'm totally going to do that someday. It was more just that my. My friend really needed people is like, if we're going to start an improv group, you need multiple people to do it. You do it. And so in one of the talks I share, you know, when we first started out, I wasn't so good at the comedy stuff, but I was good at the comedy. Project management.

That was.

My role was like, if we're going to do this for real, we're going to practice three times a week. We're going to record all of our shows and go back and watch it as if it was like game film, like if we were in sports, etc. And we're going to have business meetings every Monday. And it was that practice and repetition that that helped. Right. It's that thing where it's failing forward almost, in a sense, or what I've learned through improv and then also as a programmer. Right. There's a lot of similarities between computer science and humor. I think one of those things is iterative approach. And in this regard, failure is just data. Right. I had to learn pretty early on, like, okay, because we didn't read any books, we hadn't taken any courses, we didn't know what. Yes. And was. But we could know, hey, when we tend to do this, when we stand to argue in a scene, it doesn't really work that well. But if we. If we agree and build off of each other's ideas, oh, we get a better response from the audience. Right. We could see that by going back and watching this. This tape. And so it just gave us this, okay, the more we practice and improve, the better we're gonna be. And that's held true for my entire speaking career as well. From the very beginning, I was like, okay, if the only way that I got decent at improv was by doing it a bunch, the only way that I'm gonna get good at speaking is if I do it a bunch of. And so that stage time piece is absolutely key to learning.

So what you just described about your project management, which I love, you are the Tom Brady of improv. Then you did the work, you turned it into a science, if you will, which is awesome. I love that. Mark.

Question for you, Drew. How do you respond to those who might say, come on, Drew, you can't project manage your way to fun and humor. That sounds also serious and so pedantic and just to. What about being, you know, spontaneous and free and having fun? How do you respond if someone offers that approach to their. To their. Their view of humor?

Well, I think a couple of things. Well, first of all, I'll say to Darren, I will take that compliment, because Tom Grady, begrudgingly, is one of the greatest of all time, which I say begrudgingly because I went to Ohio State. He's a Michigan grad as well. So I have to say that. But I think, to answer your question, mark, it's, I don't think that. And this is what we've learned. And what I've learned, kind of as we've started training more and more people how to use humor, because that's our focus with humor that works, is teaching not stand up comedians how to use it. And not always speakers. Sometimes we work with speakers, but it's even, you know, the accountant, right? That's not quote unquote funny. Or the person who's in sales who's always been told that they've been funny. But also maybe some people see them as a class clown or whatever. So in our training, what we've learned is that there are different styles to us. It's not necessarily, are you funny? The question is, what kind of funny are you? And this I learned because of an experience that I had with my brother. So my brother is a professor at Texas A and M, and he started getting interested in humor as he saw me use it more. Like, I would go down and guest teach his classes in rhetoric and in communication. And at the end of his semester, people would, like, he would do a feedback survey and they'd be like, my favorite class was Drew's class. Or Drew's class was so amazing. Or Drew, like, when Drew came down and we did improv together, it was so great. And he'd be upset because he's like, I did 99% of the work. And the one thing they remember is you coming in like, what is going on? Something is happening. And so he started to explore it as a rhetorician, because he's a rhetorician. So he started, he created a course called the Rhetoric of Humor. And we were presenting together on a. At a conference in Morocco. And after the event, we were in the elevator ride down and this woman gets in and she's like, you know, she's talking with us. She's like, I think it's so fascinating that you all are brothers. And first of all, it's because we look nothing alike, right? I kind of look like skinny Hugh Jackman. He kind of looks like Jesus, right? Super long hair, very big beard, et cetera. But she's like, I think it's so interesting because you have different styles of humor. She turned to my brother and she's like, your style is very warm. It's very. Right. It's like. And it's true. It's conversational. He doesn't always know why he makes people laugh. All he knows is that they laugh when he presents but it's not necessarily structured. And then she told to me, and she's like, and yours is more cold. And I think what she meant by this cold sense of humor, though, was, I think, was that I'm very structured, that I'm very clearly set up in punchline. Here was a joke. Here was a tag. Here was a callback like, I'm very structured. And so, Mark, to answer your question, one, I think there are different styles. Some people are going to be much more conversational. Some people are going to be a little bit more. This was intentional, I think, to answer your question, though, around structure in creating humor. I think that's what helps us. When we can learn some of the structures of how humor works, it can help us to be more creative. It doesn't make us less creative. It just makes the process easier. And this I learned from musical improv. Right. When you learn musical improv and you're singing songs, something that Mark happened to do. I don't know. Darren, has Mark told you about what he epically did in the second Toastmasters?

No, I have not heard that story, man.

They were doing the. Yes. And improv. We were told to have fun on the webinar and just break up and do improv. Right there. I did. Yes.

And.

And it went from one person to the other to the other. And then Drew tosses me. It's my turn. But he sets me up as being on the beach in Jamaica, and he wants me to start spitting rap at him live on the webinar. I have never. Never have I ever been asked to rap, much less live on a webinar for 9,000 people. And my kids heard about this, and they ruffled, as in rolling on the floor laughing. I'm not gonna do it again because I think our views might go down on the podcast.

Come on. You can't open that loop. You know better. You know better. Come on.

No, I don't even. I can't even beatbox. I don't know how to rap, but I wear a cap, and that's all I can tell you. I don't know. I'm not a rapper, but he forced me to get out of my comfort zone and do something really strange and really different. So I think people kind of laughed at me as opposed to laughing with me.

It all counts, man. It all counts.

It's what kind of funny you are. And you said something earlier, Drew, and I don't mean to cut you off, but you said you don't want to be the class clown, and I Get the feeling there can be a fine line between being humorous and being so humorous. People laugh at you and not with you. What are your thoughts?

Absolutely. Well, and I want to come back to that, but I want to. I want to hit on a learning point. I think that's very valuable. And what we just talked about with improvisation is one that, you know. So Mark absolutely crushed this, me setting him up for what? I had gotten to know Mark enough that I was like, okay, he can be successful with this. So, like, I kind of, like, set him up for something, but he absolutely crushed it. And the fact that he's willing to take that risk, I think a lot of people kind of saw that. But the other thing is. And so this is what I learned from musical improv and is that to completely just freestyle rap is difficult. To make up a song kind of completely off of the top of your head is challenging, however, if you have structure. So in improvisation, for example, there's an exercise called Beastie Rap. And Beastie Rap is kind of brought from the Beastie Boys. And the idea is that you get one syllable word, and then in between it, you do a little bit of rhyme. So, for example, you might start with someone's name, right? My name is one syllable, Drew. So you might say, like, I know this guy, and his name is Drew. His favorite color isn't red, but it's blue. He doesn't like one, but he likes number two, whatever it is. Right? But that structure makes it actually easier to be creative in the moment. I'm still improvising, but in some way, it's a structured spontaneity. It's a structured creativity. And that applies to all types of creativity. You already see it in music today, right? There's sort like most pop songs follow, like the core spot, the chorus, verse, structure, verse, chorus, or maybe a tagline song. You see it in Disney movies. Almost every Disney musical follows the same rough structure of like, an opening number, a protagonist song, an antagonist song, a charm scene, a conflict resolution, the big closing note, right? This structure, which exists in music, tv, storytelling, et cetera, speaking, happens to exist in humor as well. And like I said, it doesn't make that it's less creative. It doesn't mean that you can't be funny. It just means that there's some structure that helps you to be a little bit funnier, to be a little bit more intentional about it. Now, to your point, Mark on that is if you do it too much or if you're not connecting the humor to value, to the reason why you're doing, at least in the workplace, you don't necessarily have to do that as a comedian. If you're on a stand up stage, you don't have to be like, and I told you this because we don't need to know why you said that pun. If you're in a stand up. But as a speaker or as a leader of an organization, if you're using humor just for the sake of humor, you might come across more as like a Michael Smith Scott who's like, from the office, like, just try, wants to be liked, versus, oh, hey, I'm using humor in this instance so that people pay attention to my message. Or I'm using humor here so that I build rapport with someone. Or using humor here to diffuse tension. Right. When you can connect the purpose for why you're using humor, that's where my engineering comes into play. That's where you see better results.

How did you take the bridge? I love what you're saying, so thank you, thank you, thank you. I think most people realize there's structures and formulas in humor and comedy. And so you just see the comedian, you think, wow, they're genius. Well, there's some genius to it, but there's also study and understanding of the patterns, if you will. How did you go from improv with your college buddies to I'm gonna be on stage by myself speaking? Give us a little bit of that background, please.

Sure. Well, so it started first with standup in college, because in improv, I didn't for sure if I was actually funny. Our shows got funnier over time. Right. When we first started, we're terrible, but our shows got funny over time. But part of me was like, well, maybe I'm just surrounded by funny people. And so then there was a standup comedy competition at Ohio State, and a number of the people in the improv group were like, hey, we should try that out. Because the thinking was, if we're funny when we're making it up, it's got to be easier to be funnier when we've planned it. And it turns out that it's way harder, at least for me. I think stand up is way harder than improv. I think that stand up is probably the hardest form of public speaking, aside from teaching a class of second graders. That would probably be the hardest for me. But I think it's teaching second graders and, like, actually educating them. And then stand up comedy is the hardest form, which is great because that's the weight room for speaking. That's Why I still do stand up when I'm prepping for speeches, because I know if it's going to work in stand up, then I know it's going to work in a keynote. So I start to do to stand up. And the first laugh that I got as a stand up comedian, that's when I was kind of like, yes, I want more of this. Because it was like, here is me by myself with just a microphone. And I made people laugh at something that I thought, like a random thing that it came up. And so I was like, okay, I really like this. How I got into speaking with that though, was I go to P and G, I still do improv and stand up on the side, but I think I'm gonna. Because my career goal was Procter and Gamble. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, their global headquarters. I grew up lower middle class. My brother and I were the first people to get college degrees kind of in our family. And so my starting salary at P and G was higher than my mom's current salary, like my mom's salary was at the time right when I started, because I had this college degree. So I was like, I'm set. This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, is I'm going to live in Cincinnati, live very comfortably, work at a great company. But I'm still doing improv and stand up on the side because it's fun. And then someone reaches out NP&G. They knew that I was doing standup and they're like, hey, we just read this article on Harvard Business Review about the value of humor. We have this women's and networking group at P and G. We wanted to talk about it, but we figured rather than us just talk about what's in the article, maybe you as a comedian could come in and talk with us. And so she sent over to me in company mail a huge stack of like, the research that she had already done on the value of humor in the workplace, which I did not know exist. And it was amazing because it was stuff in the Harvard Business Review and Forbes and like these books that had been written. All of this, like, this is amazing, right? I had started to experience this for myself as an engineer, but I was like, oh, there's actual research on this stuff. And so I do my very first keynote, essentially, or my very first speaking presentation was for about 20 people as part of this women's and networking group. I did about 15 minutes of standup up top that was kind of about Procter and Gamble. And then I did kind of my summary of what these articles had read, and I fell in love because speaking was stand up with a message. And I was like, oh, this is it. This is the combination of what I want. I want to be able to make people to laugh, then get them to think and then help them change. Like, I want to be able to do that. And that began that evolution of like, okay, how can I do more of this?

Wow. When you're creating a keynote now versus when you first started, take us through just a quick version of your process now versus the first one. Because this is for unforgettable presentations for people who give presentations. And some people are emerging, some people are pros. But just give us a synopsis, if you will.

Certainly. I mean, when I was first starting, it was. I didn't have much structure or anything behind it. It was kind of like, I think this is going to kind of work. And luckily, as an engineer, it's always been, okay, what's the logical process? And I've found, even for myself, if it's hard for me to make a transition, if I'm like, I don't know how to get from this point to this point, it means that I haven't structured it well enough. Right. Like, for me, I want my thing to be a natural flow, and I want it to connect at the beginning in the end. Right. That's what you see in my TEDx talk is I start with a story about my grandmother, I end with a story about my grandmother, and it kind of helps to make it more cohesive. So when I was first starting out, I didn't know. Now what I do is I've had the good fortune. I don't know if you. You all have. Have met or chat with Tamsyn Webster. She's a phenomenal speaker based in the Boston area, used to be the former executive of executive producer of TEDx Cambridge. And she's developed this kind of structure for her own speeches called the red thread. Right. She's looked at a bunch of the threads and also the TED talks that they've done at TEDx Cambridge that have now gone to the TED Global, like, elevated to the TED Global level. And there's kind of five parts to it. And this is what I'm talking about, like hidden structures that you don't know exist that are incredibly powerful. So for me, I follow her red thread, which very high level. Like, she's someone that can talk about it more deeply, but it's basically what is the goal of the audience walking in and not your goal, but what's the goal of the audience? Like, what are they going to want or what, what challenge are they trying to solve? The problem statement. So some type of, you know, issue that they don't necessarily even realize exists. But that's the problem that's going to prevent you from getting that goal. The idea or the truth? This is something that is, is true. And once people hear it, this is the idea we're spreading. Right? For me, this is like the skill of humor. Humor is a skill which means it can be learned. Then there's a change that has to take place in order for that truth to become a reality. And then there are actions that you need to do to support that change. Having that type of structure when I'm starting something new, it's like, okay, let me put that into a rough order. Now, obviously things are going to change. I might move things around a little bit, it might adapt. But having a starting structure for me is helpful. And then what I do is I book a lot of standup shows and I work on stand up material to get used to the material. Like the TEDx talk that I did, I did, I think probably 40 stand up shows before I ever even did that talk. To work on the humor, to work on the timing, to work on the punchline and the callbacks of that iteration is helpful. And the other thing that I'll do, and this I grabbed from the world of standup, is when someone like Dave Chappelle oftentimes is working on a brand new special, some people will start completely from scratch. They'll say, okay, here's this special, I'm retiring that completely and now I'm starting from scratch. Other comedians, what they'll do is they'll take stuff that exists and they'll say, okay, that's going to be the beginning part because I have to start strong now. I'm going to add some new material in the middle and then I'm going to add on something old. Then you're basically evolving the talk over time. It's not a start and finish process and onto the next one, but more of, okay, I've done 20 minutes of this chunk. Now let me move that to the beginning and add in new stuff. So it's an evolution of the talk a lot of times as opposed to a straight, like, I'm sitting down and writing from scratch now, this brand new.

Keynote that's so interesting because you're taking us through a process and Darren will tell you, you we've been teaching process for Years and structure for years. And it's really cool to know that that works for you as well as you combine the humor with the keynotes. And the idea of combining humor and keynote, funny and serious. I have to ask this question, Drew. How do you take that and work with groups like the FBI? We think of the FBI, you know, the G Men and the suits and the earpieces. Kenneth, cool. Like you have in your ear right now. And help us to understand how humor and humor engineering syncs with groups like the FBI and how that works for you and for them.

Yeah, certainly. Well, I mean, I will say, yeah, the presenting for the FBI was probably the most intimidating audience I've ever presented in front of me because it's the first time that I presented to an audience where 90% of the room was armed. This doesn't go. They can shoot me. I will say actually, even scarier, though, was a week after I did that presentation for the FBI in San Diego, I was in an event in Wichita, Kansas. I share that kind of as an observational humor line of like, hey, just presented for the FBI, 90% room was armed. And like, no, no, 90% of this room is also armed. That I will say, is actually more terrifying. But as you can imagine, so, right. An organization like the FBI, they are intimidating just by name. And so the group that we were working with was specifically the office of private sector. And they wanted to build better relationships with senior level executives at big companies because they figured that would help them to be able to stop white collar crime, to be able to mitigate, you know, embezzlement, or if there's a cybersecurity threat or whatever, it's better to have a relationship already in place. But they recognize, like, hey, we're already intimidating when we call and FBI is on the caller ID or is in the meeting invite, people are nervous. And so they wanted to understand how do we use humor to build stronger relationships, to build rapport. And that's where. That's how that key, that's how the energy comes together is when we're working with the UN or the FBI or the Red Cross is again connecting it to the larger purpose. And so if you take something like that is serious, right? So maybe you're a speaker who speaks on death or on cancer or on kidnapping or whatever, like these very serious topics, humor is still valuable. It's not to say that we're going to poke fun at these things, but we know that once people are laughing, they're listening. And if you get people to Laugh, you're getting them to listen and then you can kind of tell them the important stuff. And this we actually learned from a gentleman at the Red Cross because he said when they're talking about disaster preparedness, when they're talking about how to survive a flood or a drought or something coming up, boredom has very serious consequences. Because if you're not paying attention when you're learning life saving information, then it's going to impact your ability to do things later. So we want to use what we know to be effective with humans, which is humor. Now the question is, okay, how do you actually do that? And there's a couple of things. One of the ways that I think is incredibly powerful is creating associations or what we call the humor strategy of reference. Funny. So if you are going to present something, you can create an association for this. So for the Red Cross particular, gentleman was talking about geoengineering in one presentation. And geoengineering is basically went like us adapting the earth to kind of combat climate change. And one of the ideas of geoengineering is releasing a bunch of sulfur particles in the air. They act like tiny little umbrellas and they reduce kind of the overall amount of sunshine coming in. Very technical presentation. So a simple example that I gave to him was, hey, when you're mentioning the umbrellas, make a quick reference to Mary Poppins did something simple. She had a giant umbrella. She came floating down on that. And this guy admittedly was like, that's stupid, because he was going to be presenting to a bunch of high school students. He was like, first of all, I don't think the high school students will even remember who Mary Poppins is. And second of all, I don't like Mary Poppins the movie. And it's like, okay, ignoring the blasphemy, that is not Mary Poppins. I was like, no, I think it's going to work. It's going to get them to lean in a little bit more and it gives you a chance to have a little bit of fun. Luckily, this person's a scientist, so he's like, okay, that's your hypothesis. Let's prove it. So we work on kind of the incorporation of this reference. We record the audience with their permission. And then we ran the audience footage through MIT mood analytics, which is basically they read facial expressions, they read engagement, attitude, et cetera. And afterward we go through it and we see a little bit of a spike in the middle of the presentation. We're like, what is that spike? It's the reference to Mary Poppins it turns out that a spoonful of sugar helps the incredibly complex solutions for climate change go down. What happens is by that reference, they're not expecting it. So they lean in a little bit more. Now, if this person wanted to, they could do their own poor rendition of one of the songs. They can add a little bit of humor. They can take, you know, additional 60 seconds to reference Mary Poppins. That makes it funny. And then they can say, but this is actually very valuable. Just like she came down on the umbrella. The umbrella works to block the sun. Like this way, right? So you've made fun of Mary Poppins, not of the solution, but you've still incorporated humor in the presentation so that people are leaning in.

Wow.

Yeah. I learned from one of my humorous mentors. Her name was Rosemary Very. She said, the problem is funny, the solution is serious. I was fascinated by what you just said. I'm like, mit, oh my gosh, there's a science behind this. And testing it, I just test it the old fashioned way, do it a thousand times. I like this way better. Where do I get one of those machines?

Exactly. It's one of those things to, like, see. And that's what it's like. The. Right. This is where being a computer scientist, I think helps. Not because of the technology side, but because, hey, how do you get better? You test it, right? You see, you see what the response is, and I had to learn from standup and improv and even computer science is that no feedback is feedback. Right. If you don't. If the absence of laughter means that your presentation isn't necessarily that funny, if you don't get reactions from people after an event that says, hey, this was great, that is feedback. If you've got a brand new website but no leads are coming into it, that is feedback, Right. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a terrible website. Maybe you just don't have tr. Right. But there's certain data and the lack of data. I kind of liken it to like, if you get a haircut and then you see like your best friend and they're like, hey, you got a haircut. That can be feedback. Because they didn't say, hey, I like your haircut, or hey, your hair looks good, they've just factually stated you got a haircut. Right. That might be particular feedback. So I think I also recognize this. I'm saying this to two people with great haircuts and also as I have the longest hair that I've ever had, but. Right. So lack of feedback is feedback. And that has been very valuable for me in my career. I a speaker because my primary business development strategy is that I want to be really, really, really, really, really, really, really good. I want to be good. I want my business development to be. I speak in one place and it's, it hits the right chord and done such the right way that it leads to three other speaking engagements. Or that's the same thing that happened with the TEDx talk. The reason why I sent so much time on that in terms of standup shows and speaking and all this other stuff was like, okay, if this, then it can be business development for me or at a minimum it can be an 18 minute video that I share with prospective clients and say this is me. I want to be able to look at this and say this is an accurate representation of what I can do.

Wow, so you've sent it out to 9 million prospects.

That's what it is. It's just repeating. It's funny, like talking about that specific thing. People are like, how did you, like, how do you get it to that many views? And I'll be honest, I don't know because six months after the video came out it was only at 3,000 views, right? And so I was just kind of like, okay, this is it. This is actually, you know, it's not gonna be great. I'm still very proud of it. I still worked very hard at it. It's not a lot of views. So that was six months later at the nine month mark. So three months later it somehow gone to 200,000 views. By the year mark it was at 1 million. And now three and a half years later, we're at 9 million. So it certainly wasn't one of those instant viral things. And so the only thing that I know that I specifically did different in that time period from 3,000 views to 200,000 views was I added a picture of it to my dating profiles.

There's my problem.

It was, I don't know if it was Tinder and Bumble or something like that. Like people, because I will admit, like I if 197,000 women in New York City and maybe men, I don't know. But if 190,007 people in New York City saw that, a bunch of them didn't like it because I didn't get nearly that many swipes corrections. But like that's the only thing that I know. I know that it got big in India first. I started getting a lot of LinkedIn requests and things like that internationally. And then from there it was one of those talks that, you know, people commented on, I think because it's humor and people would say, hey, I agree with this, or, hey, this person isn't funny, or I didn't think you could learn humor. So I think it really resonated with people. And multiple people have told me they've been watching TED talks. Mine came up and mine was the first one to make them laugh out loud. So that's the power of humor, right? It's because it got people to pay attention, it caused a visceral reaction in some way. And they're like, okay, there's something to this.

Now, Drew, I know we talk about humor. We think of standup, we think of improv. It's very verbal, it's very visual. We discuss unforgettable presentations, but I think huge. You also admire humor in images, in cartoons. And visually, how do you incorporate the visual piece? I mean, picture we have of you right there. Tell us the bookstore picture real quickly.

Yeah, certainly. So the picture that we have here is, I'm a big fan of the visual. I'm also a big fan of small, subtle jokes. That's not going to be for the entire audience. And this started in my improv days. So in improvisation, they have something called object work. And that that's where you are like kind of, you know, if you're going to take a drink because you don't have those physical props with you, you pantomime pretty much everything except for a chair. You can't pantomime a chair because your legs get tired really quickly. But aside from that, you pantomime everything. And improvisation and small things, like, you know, even something like, you know, a feather duster or a pen, you're actually creating with a little bit of space in between. So an improv like phone is. You're holding the phone. It's not your finger and thumb out. That's a stand up phone. This is an implementation improv phone. Because this is what you would actually be holding, etc. But I was always a fan of small things. Of like if I was playing a janitor or someone sweeping or mopping something, I would like use the mop and then I would set it down after the scene was over. And like 99% of the audience would ignore that. They would never see that it happened. But there'd be one person that came up and be like, oh my God, I thought it was so amazing that you set the invisible broom down at the end of the scene. So I'm a big fan of that. Subtle type of humor as well. You'll see it whenever I do a screenshot of something in my humor. I will. If it's like, of a website, I'll have other tabs open to see if people, like, notice what the tabs say. And a lot of times they'll say things like, why is Andrew Tarvin so funny? Or why are you peeping at my tabs? Or whatever that small visual humor is for like, little nuggets or rewards or Easter eggs for people. But to answer the bigger question around visuals is especially as I've started to present more internationally, more across different cultures. Visuals are such a quick way to resonate with people. And you want, again, like, to your point, humor isn't necessarily just punchlines. It's just not what is funny. It's sometimes just something a little bit different. So you can add. One of the strategies that we talk about is incongruity. And it can be a simple visual incongruity. So over my shoulder is a painting of Calvin and Hobbes that my brother did for me, for me and my wife, like, as a wedding gift. It's. It's. Instead of it being Calvin and Hobbes and Susie, it's me and my wife and. And Hobbes, or my degree over my other shoulder, which my wife makes fun of because my wife is German. She's first German I've ever dated. It's the most efficient relationship I've ever been in. But she's like, wait a second, like, why? She. She thinks it's very weird in American culture that we frame our diplomas and put them all on the wall. My point to her is that this is the most expensive piece of artwork that we own. A lot of money to gain this. But something visual like this is now something that I can reference. Or if I'm on a video call with someone and they went to a Ohio State, they'll kind of. It creates an instant connection. Or if I'm doing a keynote for a group, even out of thousands of people, I'll get an oh in the chat so I can kind of respond IO like, these are small connecting moments where it might not resonate with the entire audience, but for certain individuals, you're now building these stronger connections and it is more humorous. Right. This is the advantage of humor outside of a. Of a stage. And this is one of the things that we talk about as well, is like, you know, there are pros and cons to doing humor in a stage environment versus, like, say, a speaking or a corporate Environment in a standup club, it's nicer because people are expecting to laugh. And if you say something that people don't really like or resonate with, most of the time, it's just gonna be like, well, I just don't like that comedian. If you say something wrong or inappropriate or offensive in a corporate setting or in a business setting, you might be fired. You might not get your paycheck. There might be a lawsuit, right? You might get, like, not hired ever again within that particular group. So the stakes are higher, but the bar is lower. The bar for what is engaging or humorous or funny in a speaking presentation is so much lower than what it would be if you are doing standup. And so something simple, like visuals in your presentation or in your background. Great way to kind of get people to like, okay, this is a little bit more fun than maybe what I'm used to.

I love what you're saying and how you're saying it. I'm fast becoming a fan, a Drew fan. A Drew natical. I'm still trying to figure out. Mark will tell you I'm not great with words. Rhetorian. Like, I'm still working on. I gotta go look. Rhetorician rhetoric.

Yeah, it's a. Yeah.

Studies rhetoric, which is a really fascinating thing to think about as well. To borrow a little bit of the content from my brother, right, we know Aristotle has a triad, right? Ethos, pathos, logos. This is something that can be helpful in our influence, right? We know that logos is the logic. And so there's some people who appeal to logic. So you want to have things. That's why in our prairie presentations, we include the 30 benefits of humor. Then there is the ethos, Appeal to ethics, as well as kind of credibility. So this is why we talk about, hey, we've worked with Microsoft, IBM, the un, Right, Et cetera. There's like, hey, if other people have done it, then we want it as well. And then there's pathos. This is the appeal to emotion. And so this is the, you know, the impact of telling a story, right? And you get that moment like, oh, okay, now I experience this. I feel this. But my brother's exploration in the rhetoric of humor is that there's a missing one that Aristotle didn't talk about, and that is humos. That is humor, right? This idea that we can use humor across any of these, right? We can use humor in some ways. Humor helps us to see the logic in something, right? This is what they talk about, the truth and comedy. You can make someone laugh. At a certain idea and be like, oh, wait, I've never actually thought about it that way, but that's absolutely true. You can use it as ethos, as a way to be like, I want to be liked. People want to be humorous. They want to be seen as funny. I want that or pathos of like, hey, this emotional. This made me feel good. This speaker makes me feel good listening to them. So I want to listen to them more because it's fun and engaging and a positive moment in my life approach.

Go ahead. I got to do this. Drew, we are brothers, Darren and I, and we always tease each other. And I want to make sure Darren understands humus is not hummus. Okay. To be sure.

Wow. Wow.

Drew, this is our 78th episode, and it's the first time I got slapped by him.

Wow. You can see it. Understand, of course you would talk about hummus, because he, in fact, is PETA, which people might know is. Is an acronym for pain in the butt. We'll say.

Just. It's the puns. That's the. You guys are pun brothers. And, Drew, I know you have a book, humor that works. What's the book about? Why did you write a book?

It's a great question. And so I have three books. The first book came out right when I left PNG, and it's simply 501 ways to use humor in the workplace. Because I would speak and people would be like, okay, this is great. How do I get started? And so one of my thoughts was like, well, if you had a resource guide of just a bunch of different ways, could you open that book up and just randomly pick something? And it's categorized by different skill sets and things like that. So it's like, here's 13 ways you can use humor in an email or 20 ways you can use humor in a meeting, et cetera. So the first book would kind of to answer that question. Second book is called the United States of Laughter. I went to all 50 states. Booker performed in all 50 states in a year. And so this is just a book about that journey, a little bit more on the personal side. And then the most recent book, Humor that Works, was really the culmination of 10 years of doing this. Right. Because I know that some people really like speaking, but I also know that I'm not going to be able to speak in front of every person live. And so a book is another way to get that information out to people. And that was the reason for writing the book, was to say, okay, can I distill what we've learned so far and put this in the book. And this, the book itself is not about how to be funny. So if you were like, yes, I want to learn about a comic triple, or about callbacks or about the structure of humor, or, you know, I want to learn my own personal humor style, etc. Right. That's all stuff that we're working on now. It's not in book form yet. This is more of a 10 humor strategies that anyone can learn to be more effective at their work. Because we break down work into five core skills. You have to be able to execute a task, right? You need to send an email or shave an alpaca, if that's your job. You have to be able to think. That's, you know, strategic solving, problem solving, or strategic thinking. You have to be able to communicate in a way that people actually understand and that they listen to. You have to connect. That's emotional intelligence, rapport, psychological and safety. And then you have to be able to lead. That's influence, motivation, etc. And so we believe those are the five core skills of work. No matter what who you are, what you do, even as a speaker, you sit at those five things. And so the book is, how does humor apply across each one of these skills to make you more effective? How do you execute faster, think smarter, communicate better, connect closer, and lead further using humor in the workplace and their strategies related to it. So that was the idea of, like, okay, here's a guide for people in the workplace to get started of, like, whether you're quote, unquote funny or not, these are things anyone can do, strategies anyone can use to start to see the benefits of humor in the workplace.

Mark, I'll just throw my last question in because I know we gotta honor your time here. We have presenters of all different levels who listen to this podcast. If you were to sit down over coffee and there was a presenter in front of you who wanted to be funnier, and he gets a minute with Drew, what advice would you give him or her?

Only a minute man go on for days about this. So the way that we structure things is I would give a little bit of a peek into the structure of things. So first of all, I'd say the way that we frame the skill of humor wanted is a skill, which means it can be learned. So if you have a limiting belief of like, oh, I'm not funny. Just again, not are you funny? It's what kind of funny are you? Right? And anyone can learn to be funny, or there's an Art and science to humor. We can teach you the science and then through practice and repetition, you develop your art. The sense of humor. The skill of humor is broken down into three things for us. Starts first with your sense of humor. This is what you find funny or interesting about the world. And for us, it starts with a tool for that is a humor notebook. Go around and write down the things that make you curious, the things that make you laugh, or if you say something and make other people laugh, write it down. Or if there's a story that happens to you, write it down. By keeping a humor notebook, you start to refine your sense of humor a little bit more. You notice how many opportunities there are for humor in the life, the world around you, and it starts to train your brain to look for the humor in different moments. That's kind of an un, Un. Sometimes unarticulated value of a humor notebook. Because of the, you know, reticular activating system. We can get into the science of it or whatever, but it's like, okay, you'll start to notice it more. So keep a humor notebook, whether physical or just on your phone. The second component is your ability to humor. This is turning that idea of your sense of humor into something funny that other people can resonate with. That's ability. That's maybe taking an improv class or a standup comedy workshop or working with a coach or just getting quote, unquote stage time. But what we say is all the world is stage right, like Shakespeare said. And so it doesn't have to just be those moments. Those are great opportunities to learn that. But you can also share it in a group chat, or you can post it on, you know, a Facebook group and get feedback from it, or you can share it in conversation with your spouse or your cat or whoever. Right? It's those repetitions that you're getting in. And then the final piece is your agency or your application with humor. And this tool that we talk about there is your humor map. Understanding and being intentional about your medium, audience and purpose. And so once you define those three things, then you can kind of say, okay, I'm going to use humor not because I want to be seen as funny, but I'm going to use humor at the beginning so that people, people lean in and paying attention. And then I might use humor partway through my presentation so that I create a positive moment. So when I actually have a serious moment, the delta change is bigger and people are more likely to remember that emotional change or arc that I went through, or I'M going to use that at the end because of the peak end principle. And I want people to think that this is a fun presentation, so they're going to remember the peak of the experience and the end of the experience. Right. So there's different reasons for it. So I'd say you start with those three tools. Keeping a humor. No notebook, getting stage time, and processing that humor through the map.

Yeah. And I just realized when you talked about patterns, right at the beginning, you talked about your blood type. And then I piggyback with that blood type of mine, which was a perfect segue and a setup. But here's what everyone needs to know. That was just a pattern, because that's a joke that I used to do in standup, and you triggered it. So it was in my head, and it just brought it to the horrible forefront. So it sounded like improv, but it was actually just a pattern in my head that connected to what you said. There you go.

Well, and it's. And it's an example of. Yes. Anding a moment. And this is a big difference between improviser comedians, rather than like other people, is if in a conversation, someone says something funny, a lot of times people would just laugh. An improviser will. Yes. And that mindset, they'll come to it. And this is the value of being an amorphous, extemporaneous mindset. Right. This is what my brother teaches with public speaking. I'm sure many like, rather than trying to be perfect word for word, for a script, for entire 60 minutes of a presentation, you're more extemporaneous. You're going off of a set list. And that allows you the freedom and flexibility to be like, oh, this thing that I said seven years ago that I haven't thought about. Oh, that can build off of what just happened. This is exactly what happens in crowd work. When comedians think, like, when people are doing crowd working, like, oh, my God, they improvise all that. It's like, well, I know the question that I'm going to ask. And so you can create planned spontaneity in your programs. Right. I know. I'll ask the audience when we're doing our workshops, because we'll work sometimes with groups like NSA and et cetera, to, like, help people understand, okay, how do we actually add humor to our presentations? We'll do certain writing exercises, and I know the certain types of things that are going to come up. One of the questions we ask is, what are you obsessed with? What's something that you spend more time thinking about? Than other people. Because that's a great opportunity for humor. Because of your passion to. For that, you're probably going to find some humor in it. And we've got common things. So now if someone says, oh, I'm obsessed with running, it's like, oh, maybe I have some running humor that I've used in previous workshops that I know work that I can now bring in. And it feels spontaneous. And in some ways it is because I didn't plan it. But it doesn't mean that it's completely from scratch that I've never said it before.

Man, just being so much here. I mean, I'm. My mind is blown here. So much from an engineer and my background is mainframe computer programming back in the 1980s. We won't go there. Darren, real quickly, I'm going to yank the wheel very briefly. If you look at Drew's background, we did two days back to back webinars and what Drew did was he would switch things up in his background and ask if anybody noticed. And the reason why I point that out is we can use the visual and not just the verbal. Particularly now as we're doing more and more virtual presentations, we can really have fun with what people see to keep them engaged and keep them interested. Because, Darren, you and I do two day workshops. So maybe we could do something kind of interesting this week with our background to add some fun and some frivolity to the experience. Drew, how do people get hold of you if they want to learn more from you?

Certainly. And that's a great recognition from Mark. And for me, it's all about kind of having fun with the audience, creating, like I said, these rewards. And that's some of what humor is. Laughter is an example of a reward of like, hey, I'm being rewarded now for paying attention to this thing. So I think it's a great call out and highly recommend. And those are all small examples that anyone can kind of start to incorporate if people want to learn more about what we do. You can go to humorthatworks.com we've got a bunch of free articles there, information about the book, information about our workshops. We also do free open mics every weekend. So if people want to come and that's a great way to work on your humor. So you can come and do a three, four or five minute story and then Tess or someone else on our team gives a little bit of feedback to people like, hey, this is what I liked. Or areas to explore a little bit more. Because sometimes having that outside voice is Incredibly helpful to be like, oh, I never realized I could take that joke even further or go this direction. So hugely beneficial there. So you can join for that kind of stuff if you want. Again, also, information about our. Our one on one coaching and punch up services, et cetera. People just want to connect with me. They can find me @drewtarvin on all social media. So, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. I still have a MySpace page. I don't know why. Don't know why I didn't. You know, MySpace is still around, apparently, and I still have a page, apparently. So if that's your. If that's your jam, you can kind of find me there and connect there. But more than happy to connect with people, answer questions, and be of service.

Awesome. Thank you, Drew. Listen, before we go, I want to give you what we call our keepers. Unless Darren, got any more questions for Drew right now. All right. And a couple of things that really stuck out with me. You said, use humor to set up the thesis of a topic. Use humor as a setup, not random. Our readers. I just joke. Use humor to set you up. You said, failure is just data.

Wow.

Perspective. It's not, are you funny? It's what kind of funny are you? That's gold right there. Use structured creativity and structured spontaneity. And your formulae. Teach us how to do that. Connect your humor to the value of your presentation and your message, and connect your humor to your purpose. You began to view speaking as stand up with a message, and that perspective was a big shift for you. Awesome. And humor, I love this. Thank you, FBI. Humor is a tool for building relationships, because when people are laughing, people are listening. Everybody get this. No. Feedback is feedback. Okay? And I love Drew's primary business strategy. Be really, really, really, really, really, really, really good. Okay? And visuals are a quick way to resonate. By the way, Drew, I got one last question. Where can I go to learn how to shave an alpaca?

I was just gonna say those are fantastic keepers. What a great gift to give. I would add one keeper to that list, which is Tim Howard. That's a U.S. world cup soccer joke. He's a goalkeeper.

Oh, Tim Howard.

Yeah. Gotta in on a bad pun. That doesn't work at all.

Well, for me it does, because Tim Howard, now an analyst on NBCSN covering the English Premier League. Love Tim Howard. He played for Man United, my team, and then Everton for many, many years. So I know that's a really good keeper. By the way, a bonus keeper for everyone here. If you look at humor Differently, you can treat your script like a set list and keep you on track. Darren, my buddy, I want to turn it back over to you for final thoughts on today's podcast.

My final thought. Wow, that was fun. And Mark, there is one more keeper. You hit all the ones that I wrote down as well. But I love this. If we think about this, especially for our fellow presenters out there, the three phases and I might have changed a word, Drew to Darrenize it, but get them to laugh, to get them to think, to help them, you know, give the message. So I don't remember your exact words, but the laughter to get them to think, to help them. Drew, thank you. Thank you so much for spending the time with us. Tell your grandma we love her and your brother for all he helps you do and the difference that you're making in the world. So if there's any way we can help, let us know. Mark Brown, take us home.

Hey man, this was so much fun. I got to meet Drew and he was pretty kind. He wasn't too punny. But listen, friends, find your. Find your voice, find your method. You can be unforgettable and use humor as a tool to move the masses. We'll see you next week for our next podcast. Have a great day.

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