Ep 81 The Real Reason Chris Rock Was a Successful Oscar Host Public Speaking March 21

Comedian Chris Rock receives rave reviews for his hosting of the 2016 Academy Awards. What's the real reason for his success?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Folks, it is hard to host the Academy Awards and not get trashed. Vilified by most of the pundits. David Letterman, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, all of them hosted and all of them at various times were Criticized to the 9th degree. Most recent hosts have gotten tremendous because it's just a hard gig. Expectations are so high, so many people want to complain about how long the show is. It's a hard gig to get just right. A little bit different this year. Chris Rock, the comedian and movie star, hosted and as far as my calculations, he's received, I would say about 95% positive praise for his hosting. Why did he do so well? Is it just luck? Is it just the year and his style? I'm not saying there's no luck involved. There's luck in all sorts of things. But it's not about meditating. It's not about putting his hands on his hips and posing like Wonder Woman. I'll tell you exactly what the real secret to his success is in just a moment.

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So the real reason Chris Rock succeeded at the Academy Awards, the secret reason it was uncovered by those investigative sleuths at the Washington Post. Here's what they found. For a couple of weeks before the Academy Awards, Chris Rock went to the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and and practiced his comedy out loud. Sometimes it would be 15 minutes for a set, sometimes 30 minutes. He did this at least 10 times, possibly more over the period of two weeks. That's right, folks, the secret to success, Good old fashioned hard work. Practice and practicing out loud. Now, I don't know if he video recorded these practice sessions. The thing I do know, when I see a lot of top quality comedians at the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village in New York City, which is my favorite comedy club, some of the very best comedians will still bring out a small audio recorder or they'll put their cell phone out and capture the audio so that they can go back and listen to exactly what they said and how they said it, how long they paused and what the reaction was to the joke. How long was the laughter, did the audience groan? And they take that information every single night. And with some comedians, it's three different sets or four different sets in a night. They'll compare and they'll make tiny micro adjustments. Still that of pausing for one second, they'll pause for a second and a half. And sometimes that makes the difference between a joke falling flat and everyone falling on the floor laughing so hard. Tiny, tiny little adjustments. Now, according to this Washington Post article, Chris Rock tried out all sorts of material and would say, would talk to his colleagues afterwards, that one isn't going to work. Or he'll say to the audience, I'm going to have to refine that. It is a process. Fortunately for most of us who give speeches in the corporate world, the government world, the nonprofit world, the standards are lower, the expectations are lower because we're not hired to entertain in front of 100 million people. The expectations put on an Oscar host are astronomical because you have to do a lot of things in real time and you've got to be incredibly funny and you've got to hit people the right way and yet not hit too hard. Chris Rock did an amazing job. It was a tension filled year with all of the criticisms of the Academy Awards not recognizing the talents and accomplishments of African American actors. So there was a lot of criticism and ratings were, in fact down. But pretty much everyone I talked to liked what Chris Rock did. Yeah, there were a couple of jokes, and some people in the Asian community felt that one of his jokes was insensitive. But for the most part, high, high praise. And again, the point I want to stress is it's not an accident. He looked like he was full of confidence up there, not filled with doubt because he'd already practiced all of those jokes in front of people. He already heard laughter. Now, some of you say, well, tj, yeah, but that's completely impractical as a business leader, as an entrepreneur. It's apples and oranges. Well, I'm here to tell you. No, it's not. If you have a really, really important speech you have to give to, say, your entire corporation, you have an international meeting of all your sales reps from around the corner, from around the world. And it's a large company, you're speaking to a thousand people. You have an opportunity to speak to local sales offices, maybe the month leading up to that event. Maybe you're just speaking to them through a webcast or Skype video. Practice your speech. Try to get a reaction. Practice your speech and then ask people, what do you remember? It's a little bit different than a comedian. You're not judging your success on laughs or how long the laughter is and you don't have to calibrate a second and a half versus two and a half seconds for a pause. But the basic concept of testing out your material to see does it make sense, do people like it, does it work? That is 100% applicable with comedians. The does it work? Part is very concrete. Did they laugh as a business presenter or someone in the world of politics or public affairs? The does it work? Is slightly different and that you should define it as do they understand my message and do they remember it? Now, here's the thing a lot of business communicators don't realize is if you're giving a speech and it's a new audience, but it's a concept you've already talked about before, then give them your best stuff, even if you've said it a thousand times. There are a number of highly successful stand up comedians who are not regulars on the TV circuit, but are very successful on the stand up circuit. And it's because they tell the same jokes all the time. So they don't have enough material for their own shows and be regulars on shows. But their material is so good that anytime an audience hears them for the first time, they think it's hysterical and they make a very nice career out of that. So. So the lesson is, if you've got good material to communicate why you started your company or why your product was so needed, then reuse it. Don't come up with new stuff that is untested. So if you have a story that makes people understand why you started a company, you might get bored of saying it, but it's not necessarily boring to your audience. Use it. A lot of business people who fancy themselves really smart get bored easily and they don't like to repeat themselves. So they come up with new stuff. Big mistake. It's not for you, it's for the audience. I remember 20 some years ago I was talking to a friend and colleague, Jim Bohannon, who is a talk radio host, used to substitute for Larry King on the old late night Larry King radio show and was telling me that he used to hear Larry King speak all the time. They worked out of the same office in Washington D.C. for the big radio network. And I said, oh, Jim, that must have been fantastic. What's it like to hear Larry King speak? And he said, oh, T.J. it's so boring. It's so awful. I just go underneath the table and fall asleep. It was so boring. I said, oh, that's kind of disappointing, Jim. I would have thought that Larry would be A much better speaker. Jim, I'm just curious, what was the reaction from the audience? And Jim said, TJ Always the same laughter, tears, cheers, standing ovation, lots of applause and a big six figure check. Jim, that's kind of a huge contrast. Why such an extreme variation in the response? He said, TJ he gives the same darn speech every single time. The same anecdotes, the same stories. What Larry King understood and what all great communicators understand is if you're giving a speech to a particular audience and they've never seen you before and might not ever see you again, give them your best content, your best stories, even if you've heard them numerous times. Larry King understood that most people who hear him speak at a national trade show, a national convention, some big corporate event, they've never seen him speak before live. They may have watched him on TV back when he had a daily TV show on cnn, but that's different. If it's a TV show and you're on every night and you have the same audience, you can't repeat yourself. But if you're giving a speech, a live speech at an event, and people have never seen you before in person, they may never see you again. Then you can repeat yourself with stories that you know people are going to remember. Now, I've heard Larry several times and I do remember one of his stories when he was talking about his very first radio gig in a tiny, tiny little AM radio station in South Florida, in South beach in Miami, which coincidentally is a station where I used to host a show. And he got a call from a fan, a woman, saying, why don't you come on over and basically let's fool around. And it was only a few blocks away and he looked at his watch and he figured out he has this one album with a song that is, you know, a 29 minute long song. He figured he had 29 minutes. He put it on, went to the woman's house, came back and the record was skipping and it was skipping, and forgive me, I forgot the exact phrase, but it was something of a somewhat lascivious nature where the record just kept around skipping and said, and screw. And screw. Something like that. That's not an exact. But the point is, it's funny. You can visualize it, you can remember. Sort of gives you a flavor of how sort of carefree the early days were in the early 1960s in Miami when he was beginning, or perhaps the late 50s in Miami when he was beginning his career. And it somewhat humanizes him and it's a little bit funny, but he always tells that a speech, but he's not going to say that every night on tv. So that's really the lesson, I think, from Chris Rock, from other celebrities and from non celebrities alike too. Don't give an important audience information that you're saying for the first time. Test it. Case of Larry King. He's tested what he's giving you today on real audiences all over the world for decades. If it's the case of Chris Rock and you're hosting the Academy Awards and you're in front of tens, if not hundreds of millions of people, then you test the content on 20, 30, 40, 100 people in a comedy club tonight, another 50 people at a comedy club tomorrow night, and another 60 people at a comedy club three Thursday night. It doesn't matter that the audience isn't exactly the same. What does matter is you're actually practicing your content on human beings. And the human beings are close in their mindset, their perceptions, their judgments. Comedians, Case the sense of humor is the audience you're talking to. 50 people at a comedy club in LA probably aren't that different in what they think is funny from an audience watching the Academy Awards. As long as you're not talking about truly insider information about the motion picture industry. And that's why it works. So those of you who think Chris Rock is lucky, he may be in a lot of ways, in the sense that any of us who are well fed and have an interesting job and good health care anywhere in the world are lucky compared to most human beings. But his success as a comedian, his success as a television host is not because of luck. It's from good old fashioned hard work. But it's work in a particular way. People always say to me, oh TJ I know the secret to public speaking. It's practice, practice, practice. Well, that's only partially. It's not just practice, it's practice. The right way. Case of Chris Rock. You, you practice your jokes in front of people who are expecting to be entertained and you listen to their reaction. In the case of business speeches and presentations, it's about practicing on audiences of a similar nature and then just asking them what do they in fact remember?

Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author TJ Watts? For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter jwalker.

Folks, thanks for joining me today. We are out of time. I appreciate you hanging with me till the end of the program and those of you who do listen, I really appreciate it number one. Number two, I do want to hear from you. Don't just be a lurker. I want you to place comments on the comments section if you are listening to this or watching this from the blog@mediatrainingworldwide.com but if you're listening to this or watching it on Facebook or Flickr or dailymotion or Vimeo or or itunes, wherever you are, doesn't matter. Post your comments in the forum where you are and then send me an email and any other comments you have. I want to hear from you. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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