Good Life Project - How to Be Funny (Even When You’re Not): David Nihill

Episode Date: June 26, 2016

This week, our in-depth conversation features David Nihill. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, David, like so man of us, had a deep fear of public speaking. But, he found himself having to face this head on, when he reluctantly agreed to host a benefit comedy show he had suggested for a friend, Arash Bayatmakou, who had suffered a severe spinal cord injury (Comedy for a Spinal Cause). He quickly realized the best speakers were also often the funniest. Not because of the one-liners they threw into the audience, but because they knew how to tell a story in a way that made people laugh.In at attempt to learn the craft and also face his crippling fear of public speaking, he spent a year traveling the country pretending to be an accomplished comedian and talking his way onto as many comedy show stages and festivals as possible. Along the way, he not only overcame his fear of speaking, he began to deconstruct the best story-driven comedy and figured out a methodology he could not only bring to the stage himself, but also teach pretty much anyone. Even people who consider themselves to have nearly zero ability to tell stories or be funny.The shared this approach in a book, k, Do You Talk Funny?, then launched a community, writers platform, and conference series under called FunnyBizz Conference: Where Business Meets Humor, with the intention of helping everyone from speakers and executives to content creators tap the power of storytelling, comedy and improv to engage readers and audiences on a whole new level.David realized he had learned something in the process that could be valuable to other businesspeople — most people, with the right techniques, could learn to be funny, (at least on stage) and learning how to structure a comedy routine involves the exact same skills as making a successful presentation. He now also runs an agency that lets anyone from executives to speakers to anyone who wants funnier content tap a team of freelance comedy writers to punch up anything from a keynote or best-man's speech to an article or boardroom presentation.In This Episode, You'll Learn:What it was like faking his way onto stagesHow his Irish heritage played into his ability to tell storiesWhich TED talks have the most laughs per minute.How comedy & copywriting are correlated.That US comedy is a testament to tight TV ready writing.How many laughs per day a baby has compared to adults over 35 years old.That CEOs perceive people with a sense of humor as doing better work.Mentioned in This Episode:FunnyBizz Conference: Where Business Meets Humor80 free tips from his bookDavid's udemy courseArash Bayatmakou's TEDx talk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So imagine stepping out of your day-to-day life and just dropping yourself into a gorgeous 130 acre natural playground for three and a half days of learning and laughing and moving your body and calming your brain and reconnecting with people who just see the world the way that you do and accept you completely as you are. So that's what we've created with our Camp Good Life Project or Camp GLP experience. We've actually brought together a lineup of really inspiring teachers from art to entrepreneurship, from writing to meditation, pretty much everything in between. It's this beautiful way to fill your noggin with ideas, to live and work better, and a really rare opportunity to create the type of friendships and stories you pretty much thought you'd left behind decades ago.

It's all happening at the end of August, just about 90 minutes from New York City, and we're well on our way to selling out spots at this point. So be sure to grab your spot as soon as you can if it's interesting to you. You can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes now. It works in every walk of life. That's the name thing. It really is our currency of human contact. And if you can tell a story in a more effective form, it helps you in everything you're going to do. Because ultimately, when you produce something to sell or you leave your job, start your own creative endeavor, it's based on your story.

And why are you doing this? And let me relate to it and see myself in it. Born in Dublin, Ireland, this week's guest, David Nile, was a natural storyteller, more or less. But like so many other people, he was absolutely terrified of public speaking. But he did the opposite of what most people do when they have that fear. Instead of running from it, he realized that he had to take a stage pretty soon, and he ran through it. And his approach was looking at what makes public speakers really great. And he honed in on humor, on being funny on stage as one of the cores. So he challenged himself to figure out how to be that person. And he basically pretended to be a standup comic and spent a year talking his way onto small stages in small comedy clubs

across the country until he started to dial it in. and that turned into some pretty awesome and very funny public speaking skills, which then turned into a business, which then turned into almost like a mini agency that employs comedy writers to help other people punch up their speeches, and eventually a really funny and useful book called Do You Talk Funny? Really enjoyable conversation and also super valuable for any of you who are really trying to figure out how do I find a way to be in the presence of others and engage them and uplift them? And how do I potentially even bring the craft of humor into that, especially if you don't actually consider yourself a person who is naturally funny. Lots to share, lots to play with here, and a whole bunch of laughs along the way too. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required Charge time and actual results will vary Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised

The pilot's a hitman I knew you were gonna be fun On January 24th Tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die Don't shoot him, we need him

Y'all need a pilot Flight Risk. Fun to be hanging out with you, and I want to get into your recent stuff. But I know very little about you, personally. Yeah. Clearly you're not from New York City. No. Well, you could be, actually, but I'm guessing not.

I could be. There's a fair contingent of mixed up Irish accents floating around here, but no, I'm from Ireland originally, but the accent has gone to pieces. I've lived in, I think, 12 different countries over the last 10 years and had a go at making a meal of many different languages. So, yeah, it's confusing for even my own family, I think, at this stage. So what were you into as a kid? All sorts of wacky stuff.

Motorbikes, racing motorbikes, boxing, getting up to all sorts of mischief. Then travel took over as soon as I got old enough to do it, and that's where it all went a bit sideways. But I didn't quite go like Chris Gillamboo, like 193 countries, but I got up over 50-something and then calmed down a bit. Oh, no kidding. What was that about? What were you looking for?

Nothing really. I guess my dad traveled a lot, and when I was growing up, I just had his stories from getting getting coral from the great barrier reef and going here and getting drunk in this place in china and maybe it wasn't even china i can't remember i was going so many places i was thinking that'd be pretty cool and i think once you get started you know it's just curiosity then it's just like how much can i learn and you learn so much as you know from doing it yeah and i think anyone around you it just allows you to relate to people on so many different levels because you have a story for

everything all of a sudden and especially cross-culturally and as you try and learn the language you just it's a good conversation piece yeah i'm fine was there um what was the first stop you went to like where was the first you know i went to spain and my mother like had a bet with my dad that I'd be back within like one week. Cause I couldn't work a washing machine. And my idea of cooking was like microwaving hot dogs until they exploded. Did you speak Spanish?

No, not a single word. I'm fluent now, but I didn't, I didn't learn there. I didn't even attempt to learn there. I just like total Irish style. I don't even know how I survived inherited like a three story villa on the

side of a mountain. True, like I did not grow up in a wealthy family whatsoever, but this was like a girl that my uncle was dating's family's somebody's house, and somebody just left us a key. We never met them. We had like a 25-foot swimming pool. I was like, I'm never going home. This is amazing. So, yeah, people I met there, it literally just spurned from there.

And they're like, well, we're going to South Africa next year. Do you want to come? And, oh, we live in Australia. Do you want to come stay? And you're like, well, yeah, I'm just going to say yes to everything for a while and see what happens. And I very much did it. Yeah. So how many years?

On and off. I mean, I traveled for quite a while. And then I got lucky that I got a job for the world's largest private education company. And I was pretty much kind of like an operations troubleshooter so when something went on fire or something went a bit sideways somewhere in the world i got sent to look after it or fix it and that could be like hey you move to china tomorrow be like uh when am i coming back be good to know and they're like when it's fixed and that could be like a year's time or it could be a couple of weeks and sometimes it was a year so clearly you're somebody who's adaptable yeah i had no choice and can fix stuff yeah it was a year. So clearly you're somebody who's adaptable. Yeah, I had no choice.

And can fix stuff. Yeah, it was good. Like just operationally, I like looking at things and trying to break it down to a process and be like, what's going on here? Like, why isn't it working? Why isn't this team working? Or why is this situation totally bonkers? And how can I put some logic to it? Yeah.

So you're somebody, it sounds like you've sort of like you hit the ground a whole bunch of different places. And you also stayed for a while in a bunch of those places. Yeah, I did. It's just such a curiosity of mine, because I think so many people are terrified of dropping into a new culture, especially when you don't really know the culture, you don't know the language. Did you develop over some window of time sort of like, okay, this is what I do in the first 72 hours to feel comfortable here type of thing? Yeah, I guess it changes a bit every time depending on that country like when i china really freaked me out when i went there because i don't know one single word i don't even know how to get my head mildly around this language uh shanghai

and i like hit the ground running straight into business people no and i was at a meeting and i meant to be leading the meeting the next morning there's like 35 chinese people just looking at me going what is this guy trying to say? And a team of translators. And I was like, what am I doing here? I remember the wind just chilling through my bones like I've never felt before in Shanghai. It just has a real humid. It's a bit like Montreal.

It just has it extremely, extremely cold. Way worse than New York where you guys here. But just it would cut through the bones. Like I've never felt anything like it. And I've been all over the place in some cold spots. it was unusual but i guess the process is always it's not just find an irish bar and try and find some irish people but that's pretty appealing driving to shanghai where's the nearest irish bar you know that does work and i have done that at other places in the world and there's quite a network there of people that you can go in and talk to and at no stage

will they ask you what you're doing here or what's your job like they just talk to you about you as a person which i guess is very different to to how you'd start off a conversation in general in the state sometimes we're really into just finding out about the person but i guess the process is kind of same try and memorize some keywords so i don't get killed and can get around and try and meet some good people and and get somewhere to stay for the first couple of days and just say yes to everything. You have to be really open when you hit the ground running in a new place. You have to be looking for those couple of people that really get excited about sharing their culture with you, and those people are always there.

They're easy to find. The more lost you are, the more helpful they are. It's funny because I've heard some people say New York is a really cool place, people- and and then i've heard other people say new york is the warmest place i've ever been and i often wonder whether so much of it is the mindset that you bring to just hitting the street you know i agree i think it's mindset it sounds like you you threw something out though which is that is that sort of culturally like when you hit the united states very often the first question in somebody's mouth when the person meets you is, what do you do? What do you do?

You know, where is. And that freaks us out. So take me into that. Well, yeah, I get really weirded out by that, especially like, I'm like, well, do you want to know my name? Like, well, we start with names or, because I would always say, well, where are you from? And, you know, here, even if they're very visibly, like they do not look like somebody Columbus would have found when he got here. They'll still very vividly answer from a part of New York. And you really have to dig deep to go, well, what's your background? Like, were you an immigrant here?

Were you family? Do you speak another language? There's a hint of an accent there. And I find that that stuff is often buried a bit more, whereas we would put it at front and center of the conversation. If we're like, here's where I'm from. Here's why I sound like this. I don't know. We kind of address those things a bit earlier.

So it takes a bit of getting used to doing business here because within four seconds, someone's got a business card in your hand and you're like, I don't know who you are. Like, I don't want to throw your card away. You obviously spent money to print it, but you've left me with nothing memorable about you as a person. Like, no story, no background, no way to form a bit of a human connection. And then they just kind of they fade whereas we're very much like tell a story the person remembers something about you you find like if you talk any story with somebody for 60 seconds you're going to find a mutual connection like stories are the currency of all human contact i very much believe and i think yeah we there's

very much our approach to doing it so it takes a bit of getting used to being in the states yeah i i sometimes think we're just so defensive that, you know, somebody really wants to know your story. Because I've sort of asked similar questions, you know, at a cocktail party or at a quote networking thing or something like that. And people get a little bit freaked out, actually, if you don't just immediately ask sort of like the standard three questions. Like, what's your name? What do you do? But, you know, if you ask somebody, you know, like, what's your name? What do you do? And, but after, you know, if you're, if you ask somebody, you're like, what do you, you know, what are you deeply interested in? Or, you know, like, or like you said, where, you know, where are you from? And

then you actually want to know more along that path. Some people get a little weird because it feels, I wonder, I wonder sometimes if Americans are just sort of culturally, we kind of feel like that it's intrusive to go there that fast, whereas outside of- We're the opposite way. It's the opposite. It's like, let's just, let's jam and get personal. And then at some point, we may or may not get around to what you do, but who really cares? Oh, I remember I left university and I was trying to get a job with the Irish government. That's ultimately how I ended up moving to America. So I asked my dad, like, do you have any contacts

with this particular government agency? Oh, no, no, think so so eventually i got the job and it was a lot of hard work to get it got it and we were being sent to new york last time i was here i think our second last time was to meet with some very important guy from our government agency and uh i'm all nervous because everyone says well we should be very nervous around this guy he's very important and i met him and the minute i told him my last name he's's like, oh, you're Patrick Nihilson. Oh, let's get out of here and have a few beers. Like, he's a great fella. I was like, you know, my dad.

I was like, yes, I rang my dad. Dad, I'm out with this guy. He's the head of this company that I was asking you, could you get me a job with back in the days? And he's just like, oh, I never knew he worked for them at all. I was like, how long have you known the guy? He's like, oh, 10, 11 years now we've been playing golf. So you never got around to asking him what he does. And he's like, no, never came up. He's a great man for a story. I just, I never know whether it is that good or bad. Like, is the human connection the best way

to go? But do you need to get quicker to the business angle? I don't think so. I don't know. I'm always on the fence. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think you're, I think you're spot on, actually. I think as Americans, we've actually kind of got it wrong. But you have it right financially. That's the thing. But do we really? Because financially, you know, so many people lead with that as a metric for success in life. And honestly, like, I would, I'd rather, I'd rather leave the planet with just like amazing friendships and incredible stories.

Yeah. And crawl across the finish line in pieces without a penny and just go, I used everything. Yeah. You know? And so sometimes I think, I think you're right. That is largely,

and of course we're making big, giant sweeping generalizations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Huge. But, but let's go there.

I mean, we're already heading there. Yeah. But, but you know, I do. And it was interesting. I think, you know already heading there. Yeah. But, you know, I do. And it was interesting. I think, you know, the fact that this, that Good Life Project exists is almost like, and that we're still here years later, is almost like to a certain amount evidence of the fact that people just yearning for more stories about like people. So we don't, I don't sit down and say, okay, tell me about your job.

You know, it's like, we'll get there eventually. But it's really like telling about you you. No, it's huge. And it was stuff listening to podcast. It's funny these days because everybody's so starved for time that you traditionally look for a mentor back in the days. But I think now books become mentors because they're just even more easily accessible. But all of a sudden podcasts and who's on the podcast is a bit of a mentor because you get to be a fly on the wall. And I remember hearing a bunch of your podcasts early days about getting over fear and i was like all right everybody's been through this like they all had this same fear but yet they went on to achieve

all this stuff like let's just go with that and it was funny it was going deep but it was it it just brings you back to the currency of human contact it is stories and you're like well if they can do it maybe i can do it and there's an inspirational side of it that really resonates and sticks with you there. Yeah. So speaking of stories and your years and years of travel, what's like one of the scariest or most surprising or most interesting or like moments through your journey? Scariest. I've nearly got eaten by sharks a couple of times i suppose that's fairly scary but i do love them all over the place yeah australia south africa fiji all sorts of wacky

sharks was my obsession i think it's just because we don't have anything like that in ireland like you can get attacked by a cow in ireland that's about it so like sharks and we do have a few off the coast but you're not going to see them anytime soon. So, yeah, that's definitely left to a few hairy encounters around the world. I've definitely nearly been at some from hairy predicaments. The guy I'm staying with here in New York at the moment, I actually randomly bumped into him walking down the street in a mountain town in Peru just after I'd been robbed. And my passport was gone. Everything was stolen. And I was so frustrated after they

robbed me I tried to catch the guy and missed him but like those guns involved and all sorts too I got off a bus and everyone was speaking in Spanish like oh no they're gonna rob the gringo and I was like oh where's the gringo and I was like oh I'm the gringo I was like this is gonna end badly so I was super like down on life for you know that you just feel terrible when something like that happens I kicked a wall in frustration, very stupid, broke all my toes. So now I'm like limping down the street in this mountain town that I've done like a 40 hour bus ride to get to go hiking. And I can't walk. And it was before Facebook, just around Facebook came out in 2006.

Actually, I'm walking down the road and I'm like, what are you doing here? One of the guys I was at university with just happened to be wandering down the street in a mountain town called cuarez in the middle of peru and he convinced me like everything is fine and you should just move to london i look out let's just buy a ticket now i had a few beers bought a ticket online ended up moving to london living with him and now he subsequently moved to new york and i'm staying with him at the moment for the next few days so it's it's funny and there's always mad stories from travel and there's always mad struggles and adventures to it. But funny, the human contact is the memorable thing

that comes out of it all. And there are friendships that are formed and very deep experiences that tend to go on for many years, whether it's being eaten by a shark or just bumping into a stranger that was already your friend or vice versa, walking down the street. It's amazing when you can weave the fabric of life that way. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. So at a certain point, you get interested in humor and comedy. Not intentionally. Well, I think Irish people were always intentionally interested in comedy. Like if you ask the average American, are they funny? They'll be like, oh, I don't know. The average Irish person, they'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm funny. No worries at all.

But I used to go to pieces on stage. I was always petrified by public speaking, single biggest fear. Not many of my friends knew that, outside the ones I went to university with or the ones I worked with that witnessed me doing my Shaken Stevens performance, which was my nickname because of what happened, pages in my hands when I was trying to hold them. I was so bad. And by circumstance, a friend of mine suffered a severe spinal cord injury.

My interest in comedy was just like the rest of us, I guess, to that point. I liked watching it. I liked funny people. I liked being around them. I liked the way that, you know, they just... It was nearly the quickest way of making a human connection in any form was just true laughter. I always admired it, but I never had

done it on stage i never had done any public speaking stage i never had any connection to comedy apart from this one neighbor i had who'd become a touring comedian and headlining comedian my friend suffered a spinal cord injury and up to that point i would have described my fear of public speaking as crippling like 100 if you ask me is it a crippling Yes. But when your friend is being faced with the reality of being in a wheelchair, potentially, you just, you can't look at it the same way. And they wanted me to host this charity show that I put together to try and raise funds for him when his insurance provider cut him off. And I was like, well, I can't say no, like compared to why he's going through. So right time to get over this.

And I was like, you know, I'm funny. I approached it as getting over a fear. I wish somebody had told me at the start, right, time to get over this. And I was like, you know, and funny, I approached it as getting over a fear. I wish somebody had told me at the start, you don't really get over it. You just kind of manage it, or you use it, or you feed off it, or like everybody else is afraid, they just don't tell you about it. That would have saved me a lot of effort. But anyway, to get over it, I was like, well, who are the world's best public speakers? If I had to break this down, like was like 10 000 hours rule malcolm gladwell

who makes a master i'd you know what makes a master i'd read a lot around that i was like well surely comedians are in that stage under the most difficult circumstances for the most time and bringing people over the biggest range of emotion so i studied them the charity show went really well we've been doing it like for two years now and raised about 40 grand for people kept it rolling um but it went so well i was like you know what maybe i'll keep this going for a year and i got a bit carried away totally dead i was like right i'm gonna create like a fictional website a facebook page i'm gonna like buy likes which i know is ethically questionable but it was the easiest way to pass myself off as an already accomplished comedian from ireland who just happened to be on

tour in america and i crashed as many clubs as I could under the name Irish Dave, which nobody questioned whatsoever. Like, how is Irish Dave big in Ireland? Like, surely that doesn't make sense. But nobody said anything. So you're just like, in the US, you're just kind of like, I just happen to be here. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But I lived there. So I'd be like, hey, San Francisco, main comedy club, I'm just in town for these dates only. And, you know, it kind of gave them an option of three dates. So they generally pick one instead of saying no. And it just snowballed. And I got on all these comedy shows and festivals that I was like, I'm going to keep it going for a year and document it to some extent. And see, can I learn in anything that can help people?

Because I was like, I don't think the average person really likes public speaking. Most of them are really freaked out with it, even more so than me and my sharks. And rated up there as the top fears. And most conferences and public speaking, apart from yours, obviously, are extremely boring. And I was like, there's no way they're intentionally boring. They just haven't figured a way to put their own stamp or personality on it and be a little bit humorous. And I'm like, I think I can break that down a bit by studying these guys if I went all 80-20 principle on it. And I'm like, well, what are the 20% of the things that are given 80% of the results?

So, yeah, I got a bit carried away. So you were kind of like, you were operating on two different levels. You were one, you were actually just iterating maniacally. It's nearly getting on stage as much as you can where you're just like constantly testing different ideas, different material, different techniques. Or was it more about observing the other people who are in the club or was it some kind of blend of that? You know, I had a theory. I guess it started from a curiosity and I started with business talks actually and worked

backwards. So I contacted a guy who'd completed a TED talk and a study identifying the key elements to make up successful TED talks and he'd correlated everything except humor. So I reached out to him like, how come you haven't correlated humor? Surely that makes a more successful talk. Has anyone ever studied it? And he said, no. So I sat down and watch all the leading Ted talks and I counted out a metric using laughs

per minute that comedians use. And we found that every single one of the top 10 most popular Ted talks was funny. And some of them at levels that are funnier than the Hangover movie and funnier than the airplane. Like literally they get more laughs on a per minute basis than the funniest movies of all time. Do you remember how many laughs per minute? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So like Ken Robinson, most of you, Ted Talk of all time, 2.9 laughs a minute. Rene Brown, 3.4 laughs a minute.

Some of them are up to 4.1 laughs a minute. To give you some comparison, the Hangover movie is 2.9 laughs a minute, or Tree, and Airplane, the movie is Tree, and they're the two funniest movies of all time. So obviously it's different. Like a movie has a script to it. The laughs are going to be louder in the Hangover. But the evidence was there all of a sudden that I just got more curious,

and I'm like, right, well, are they using comedians techniques? And then I started watching comedians and trying to replicate the techniques, and I realized that they were using stories the most effective ones the most fail-safe ones the things that weren't bombing or having that moment when everyone's like oh like groaning at you yeah i was like they're just telling a story and the story just happens to be in a short effective form that would lend itself to a stand-up comedy stage and all of a sudden i started seeing all these correlations and patterns which i'm sure a million other people have seen but i just i couldn't find it when i went looking for the documented uh work around it or i couldn't find anybody synopsizing what they were doing so

i was like these business speakers are doing it the question is do they know they're using comedians techniques and can i do the same thing and float effortlessly between both arenas so i never really sat down and tried to be Jerry Seinfeld in any way, because that's impossible. His writing skills are amazing. But I was like, if I just tell a story, like Bill Burr, Louis C.K., in my world, like Billy Connolly, famous for being storytellers, it's like, well, I've got lots of stories. And often the most common ones or the most popular ones are the most relatable.

So it's not about me nearly getting eaten by a shark in South Africa. It's about me just going to the supermarket and having a strategic exchange of opinions with someone. And sure enough, they're the, they're the little stories that are evident in all these talks. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting to have a chance to sit down with John Acuff, who speaks a

lot. I think he's the best business speaker in the world for my money. Yeah. And, and what's interesting is, as I, you know, his goal is in the book, actually. Oh, awesome. He, he wants to make people laugh, you know, and he says for every business talk, you know, his goal is in the book. Actually. Oh, awesome. He, he wants to make people laugh, you know? And he says for every business talk, you know,

he studied a lot, you know, for every business talk that he studies, he says he studies like nine standup because it's the same thing. He's like, that's where, you know, he wants to know how to,

how to take people there. And it's funny until I actually had a conversation with him about, I never really thought about it. And I never seen it written about. I saw him and I just went, I was at world domination summit, which, you know, we've both been to, Oh, he martyred it. I know that thought about it, and I've never seen it written about. I saw him, and I just went. I was at World Domination Summit, which we've both been to. Oh, he martyred it. I know that for your listeners who are not familiar with it,

I know it sounds like a conference where people are going around in assless chaps, but it's definitely not. It's hugely motivational. And some amazing people there. He took the stage, and I was like, that guy could do stand-up at any moment. I need to talk to him about this. So I called him, and he was nice enough to chat through it, and he told me the exact same thing you just said.

He's like, dude, I don't watch business figures. I watch comedians. I got a multiple of maybe even 10 to 100 on the average. He's like, comedy was a currency in my family. I love studying it. I've had a few friends who tried to get me to do it. But he is so good, and he's just telling stories. There's no moment there.

The thing is, if you tell a story and it's people don't laugh then you just told them a story no downside like you never go to somebody and go shut up telling me your stories i hate stories like show me that pie chart again i want more of those graphics but you know it's it's just a central thing to all these talks was like people want to know a little bit about you they want to know your defining moment and this is in your ted talk as well that I've seen as well. It was very much around 9-11 and very much of how you felt at that moment when you figured there could be some big loss. And that makes it memorable for me.

The most powerful thing you can ever do in any form of storytelling is allow the listener to see themselves in your shoes. And John Acuff is amazingly good at making it very relatable. So although he's talking about him you're hearing it as you absolutely it's like you transfer right in there and it's funny i i really start to key in on humor um when i also uh you know it's great that you um notice that john acoff also and i can't wait to read more about it in the book but it's funny you mentioned sort of like literally counting laughs per minute. One of the conversations that we did here in the last year was with Liz Gilbert, the author, and got tremendous, tremendous reaction.

And there was something that happened in the room when we were talking also that was different than almost everything else. And almost the same thing happened actually with Brene Brown when we sat down with her. And I'd been trying to figure it out and trying to figure it out. And then I actually had hers transcribed and I looked at the transcript and I'm reading and I'm noticing all these things from the transcriber,

little brackets with the word laughs. And it starts appearing more and more and more and more. And so the exact same thing for the first time i'm like i never paid attention at all i'm like huh i wonder if there's a relationship between the frequency 100 of laughter and relatability and just like it's it's just engagement it just keeps you in there in the story and we noticed this i ended up starting a company out all this with all the comedians i met putting them to work as copywriters so we take any form of business copy and we make it funnier and if i approach anyone to try and sell this to a large organization and go hey you need to be funnier

do you ever think about that they're going to tell me i'm nuts but if i use the metric engagement and that's their big problem is engagement then all of a sudden they're very open to it because that correlation is already there like humor of course drives engagement we know that but yeah i was just amazed nobody had actually studied it and looked at it so you know i wasn't doing it at only great research level but it was it was just a very clear pattern that the humor and the stories led to a higher engagement rate it's funny too because when you think about uh injecting humor into speaking i think most people will think well let's just you know write as many one-liners or like let's write jokes that's gonna end badly yeah and it's where it's really cool and the way that you're talking about doing is no actually like tell a story but like tell a story in a way where there's well it's a short form like if i if i tell you a story about china and

you're in the audience and you've been to china you're into it your ears perk up and you're like oh china crazy because you're automatically populating your mind with your own images from you being in that scenario but if you've never been in china have no interest in going to china and you're not chinese you don't care about my story so automatically i've kind of isolated you and the listener but if you rephrase that like a comedian would who would set it up in a way to make it relatable to the audience he would literally just make an opening statement it's very general brings everybody in and says something like being in a new place can be challenging and every single person in the audience is like well i've been in a new place and now they're coming along for the ride in your story and you tell them you got into an old

car that was a beat-up car they don't really have an image but you're like it was a 1981 volkswagen polo and it had like three wheels at one stage and one of the windows disappeared and it was just this horrible wine color and automatically your mind is starting to search for your own experience with a beat-up car your first car your friend's first beat-up car there's something in there so you're allowed you're becoming part of the story yeah and that's when it gets cool and powerful i think as storytelling so i do a lot of it like i hosted the m the NPR story series, and I've told a few and I have to do one again in a few weeks in front of like 1400 people. So it's somebody who's still very much afraid of public speaking that I'm not looking forward to that. But it's always amazing. Yeah. So what do you think of the idea of some people are just funny and some people aren't yeah some people are naturally gifted at being humorous but and so to be honest and you can't really teach people to recreate that but you can teach them on stage i

mean humor is a skill so you can get better at it but what i saw the comedians that were naturally funny were way more likely to be successful as comedians and the ones who weren't they just worked harder and to be honest they they got funnier over time like every one of these guys i went to a comedy club one night and there was a guy sitting there and i got talking to him i was like and it was very hard to have a conversation i was like oh is your first time to this comedy club and he's like all right man i gotta go i'm up next and i was like wait you're a comedian i was like this is a terrible plan no no you're like this guy's the least funny person i ever met his friends must have played a cruel joke on him and told him that this was a career choice. And he got on stage and absolutely crushed it.

Like he had people doubling over in laughter and then just got off stage and went back to being quite passive and quite shy and very much introverted. And it was very clear that these guys were becoming better writers. So the key to being funny on stage is tapping into your own stories,

but writing them in a more effective manner. And if I told you you could be funnier, you'd say, nah, I think you're nuts. But if I said you can become a better writer, you'd just say, well, of course, I just write a little bit every day. And that's what comedians do. But they're just better than the average person of taking note of all the funny stuff around them in the world. Like every day you see something that's kind of quirky or wacky or funny in a way. And you just don't really take stock of it and go back and dig into it for material. So if anyone's listening, they're like, I want to go on stage.

I want to be a better, funnier public speaker. No one liners. That never ends really well. Or it doesn't. On average, there's always a risk to it. Like it's going to bomb sooner or later. So just make a list of stories. Keep a file on your smartphone.

That's actually like funny story file. And it's nearly like a little happy list journal that you end up creating because you're like, I overheard this thing today. It was amazing. It's going on the list.

And then when you're doing a presentation, you just pick two, three, four of your favorite ones and you shoehorn them in there and link them to the topic. Yeah. And I love that too

because, I mean, for so many different reasons. Number one, it's like, you know, it doesn't let anybody off the hook. It's kind of like, you know, but there's a good part of it that's work. The other thing that's really interesting to me is that it's as much about your powers of observation as it is about your powers of presentation.

You know, it's like, how can you actually just like, you know, and I think this is with artists too, you know, it's's like it's not just the way that they paint or the way it's the way that they see yeah or it's their capacity for seeing stuff that just other people don't even see it's like the smallest little moments where somebody's like oh there's something there yeah or you know it's that combined with actually doing something about it as well because you have to see it and you might see it but you might not register it and then if you didn't register to write it down are you really going to remember that with all the stuff that's going on in your head that day or that year? So I think it's one looking at things differently.

Like we looked at that talk from John Ankoff and we're like, that's amazing. What's the correlation here? Or you went back and looked at the episodes. And I think a lot of people, they don't get to that point of like the curiosity really festers and it becomes like a burning desire. And you're like, I'm going to figure this out. I don't care. Like, I don't to figure this out. I don't care. Like, I don't care what it takes.

I don't care if there's no money in it. I don't care if there's no market for it. Who cares? I'm just going to figure this out out of pure interest. And I think that curiosity just starts the whole process. So, so for you, what's,

what's the seed of that curiosity around this? For me, it was just to see, did humor make a massive difference? Like I'd worked for companies, I won't name them, but one's definitely called PricewaterhouseCoopersopers which is not known for very exciting and the other one was the irish government they were my two big corporate jobs starting off and i was like does it

really have to be this way like why are they making it so boring like surely it doesn't need to be this way and anytime i was given the chance i injected humor anywhere i could just because it just helped me resonate with people like and you know and I found more clients were bringing me out places more people were inviting me places more people were offering me jobs and they didn't know much about my work experience background they didn't care that like all these things were coming from the human connection so my curiosity was to see does that translate into public speaking and should it be encouraged to translate and is there a way we could break it down for a business audience in any way that it's acceptable, that it's not risky?

Because people are always like, oh, humor is risky. And then you see President Obama every night on TV absolutely crushing it with very good humor. And you're like, well, if the presidency isn't humor, I might be OK to have a go at it. And I was just saying, can we give people a process to replicate this? So something that's a big fear can now be a little bit more fun. Yeah. And I think it's a big fear also in this in the business world especially just because people are so freaked

out about how they're perceived and are if i say something and it lands flat you know if you're hanging out with a bunch of friends at like a local stand-up and you know like you get thrown on stage for three minutes and it falls flat they make fun of you and then whatever it's over whereas if you're in a boardroom you know and you try and you know say something humorous and it falls flat. They make fun of you and then whatever. It's over. Whereas if you're in a boardroom, you know, and you try and, you know, say something humorous and it falls flat, or,

you know, I think the bigger fear in business is in some way, someone takes offense. Yeah. And that becomes a quote mark in your folder. Yeah. A hundred percent. You know,

I think people get freaked out about that. Or even like on a broader level, if you have a spokesperson for a company who then says something that is perceived as offensive, you like, you like throws out a, and this happens all the time on social media, especially. Somebody says something humorous, and then a plane touches down, and all of a sudden you realize it created a huge thing. Well, humor doesn't always translate the waist, then humor becomes very replicable. You can recreate it, you can use it, and you cannot land in trouble for it, like 100%. And we've seen that.

We've seen so many people do it. Like I've worked with a bunch of people helping them like shoehorn little things into their presentations, and we know it's going to create a laugh. The only question is how big a laugh is it going to create really when we put it in there so it's kind of cool to to play around with little elements like that and see the changes they make and we do it for online stuff like courses and scripts and all sorts of stuff yeah and it's cool you had you have a company also does basically punches up yeah yeah stuff right yeah punches up anything using comedians how did this start to happen? Well, I just kept meeting, actually, you know, here, the first guy I met was here in New York and I went, somebody invited me to this comedy club.

I was here running a conference. I got a bit carried away actually. And I decided that the missing ingredients for a lot of online content was humor and story. So people weren't putting enough of their own passions or personality or skin into it. They were just like getting the hardcore, how to do stuff in there. And I was like, well,

maybe we could do a conference where we get together. Everybody that's really uber creative in this area around humor and engagement and put them all together. So we did it here in New York. Actually, we did it in San Francisco. We're doing it again in June where we had like founders of the onion. We're going to have on the next one.

We had like AJ Jacobs. Yeah. He's awesome. Awesome. Bob Mankoff from the New Yorker. Yeah. But we also had all these like we found a lot of people in business who had risen to very high levels who just happen

to have sneaky backgrounds in creative projects or stand-up comedy or acting so they're amazing on stage and i just keep meeting more and more and i went along to a little comedy club here in new york and this guy got up and he just dead panned every joke and i was like this guy is amazing didn't even react didn't even break a smile nothing and i was like i gotta get his story so i rode with him after on the subway out of here and it turned out he formed a twitter create a twitter handle that was hire me at saturday night live and he just kept tweeting them with his stuff until his stuff became more popular than their stuff and then they hired him and he was amazing and i was like how many people is there like this guy who aren't really working with any businesses out there but would love to and would love to keep working on

their writing and not drop out of doing comedy so a lot of comedians actually three or four years in who give up on comedy realize they've developed really good copywriting skills because they become good writers a lot of them are working for agencies but not as many of them as there should be so a lot of them are looking for a way to sustain their writing passion and keep practicing writing because a couple of years into comedy they know that you have to become a better writer that if your writing's really good your delivery you don't have to worry about like if you put the key the funny word at the end of the sentence and structure it in a way that that naturally creates a pause then everybody says your timing is amazing and it looks like you're amazing at delivery even though it was amazing

writing yeah so it has a massive impact so i just wanted to connect all these people i was like this makes sense like these businesses they're not hiring agencies because they have to pay too much money the comedians can't really find a way into the agencies but they do want to work in the money let me just try and connect it to them so yeah it's been a bit wacky but it was just one of those ideas jim i bet you were there at world domination summit derrick sivers was speaking yeah and they were asking him how do you know a good idea he's like a good idea is just when somebody doesn't look at you a bit weird they don't process it they just go that's a good idea and they're visibly excited about it and whenever i told anyone i might do this they were like that's

a good idea does it exist it was like no they're like get on that then and go for it so yeah i've been having a lot of fun i just keep meeting more and more people that just had insanely creative, funny, humorous backgrounds and just could create really good copy, whether it was their sales emails or like we were punching up white papers that would normally put you to sleep. But like people invest so much time

in creating content. As you know yourself, if you've been blogging or writing, you spend so much time, but it's very hard to step back from that and go back in and go, right, I need to make it a bit more lighthearted. And I had to do it with my own book. And I probably, if I had any brains, I would have outsourced it to all these comedy writers, but I didn't because I was like,

well, it better sound like mine. But that's really interesting though, because you just came out with a book for those who want to check it out. It's called Do You Talk Funny? And you can find it all over pretty much. So when you're writing your own book you know what's what's your process right do you basically just spit the whole thing out and then go back and try and punch it up or are you trying to sort of like make it funny as you go uh do you know what i did actually which is is quite wacky and quite different to the way most books are done i'm dyslexic and i'm the worst writer ever like i have no background in writing i have no confidence in

my skills writing so i wanted to dictate it. And I started trying to use dragon dictate. And it doesn't go very well with Irish accents. So it just ended up me like just shouting in a room like, damn you, dragon dictate. I hate this thing. No, David. I tried to. So that's why chapter eight is called damn you, dragon dictate.

Yeah, damn you, dragon dictate. Chapter eight. Yeah, exactly. An appendix of just curse words. Like what is it going on in this page it looks like he had a wee mental breakdown um no i dictated the whole thing as a course so i was like right is there a market for this so i created an online course and i was like that allowed me to dictate it and test it interactively and then i could put little

jokes in there and i could see how people were interacting with the content and i could change it so i could get real-time feedback. It's like you workshopped it. I workshopped it, the whole book. And then when it got to a point over about eight months where I was like, okay, people are able to apply this, they like it, the metrics are high on it, the feedback is high, then I had it typed up and then I started working backwards.

So mentally that was a lot easier to do than looking at a blank page. I was like, I'm looking at like 300 pages. So now I just got to tighten it up and put in some of my own stories. then of course i was like all right i need to put in some more funny into this so yeah when i first wrote it it wasn't as funny as it should have been and that was some of the feedback i got they're like you can't put the word funny on the cover of it not be funny and i was like well it's funny compared to other public speaking

books and they're like yeah man but that's a pretty low bar right you need to get people are not reading public speaking books for fun. Actually, they don't even want to be reading them in the first place. So interesting category choice. So I actually did go back in and went very hard to make it a bit funnier. What a cool way to actually write the book, though. It's almost like you're workshopping. Yeah, like you're...

You know, I had zero audience. Nobody. I had no email list. I had no nothing. I didn't want to tell my friends I was going to pretend to be a comedian called irish day for a year or my family with no objective to be a comedian and i was very nervous about anyone finding out about everything so it allowed me to keep everything hidden because the platform i used was udemy and they drove all the traffic for me like i never marketed i never even told anyone and all of a sudden i've i think i've like nearly

7 000 students on there at the moment so when you launched a book then you you have people who are interested in your topic people who write reviews and people who you emailed them out hey want to help with this launch and i was like nobody's gonna want to help i feel like a weirdo even asking like 70 people wrote back and someone wrote back and was like oh yeah do you want to come in and speak at google headquarters doubt i was like oh my god this is insane so like i felt terrible about so embarrassed about reaching out asking for anyone like i didn't want it and then sure enough that helped us start coming from everywhere so it was cool it all came back to the the approach to doing the book which was like all right test it at a higher price point so people are paying more money than they would for a book and then at least if you approach a publisher well you're like i

have like six or seven thousand people who paid money at a higher price point. There is an interest. It's popular. You can read the reviews and relating, see what you think. Yeah. No, it's a really interesting way to go about doing it. So when you're on Udemy, were you Irish Dave or were you? No, no, no.

I put it under my name, but at that time their search, their CEO wasn't so good. So it didn't come up. Now, if you search my name, it's the fourth thing that comes up. I'm like, oh, no, I have a self-help course. I can't hide it. Because that's what I'm what i'm thinking i'm like okay how do people back home feel when they start but they never they never they wouldn't have been searching it and honestly it only started ranking first on uh on seo like maybe in the last year so i've gone out my way to hide everything i've ever done so irish dave like you can't find his videos i have a website

but it was very well hidden when i did the moth and the NPR story competition, I never gave anyone the rights to anything. So I was like, this is very much to go unknown and just say, I'm a dude no one's ever heard of. I'm not trying to be Louis C.K. I'm not trying to be a comedian. I'm just trying to, you know, there was a program in the UK and Ireland called Faking It when I was a kid. And it burned a hole in my mind that they would take someone and train them intensively for one month in anything and then put them into a competition or some form at the highest level and see could they pass off as someone who really knew their stuff. And the only person they couldn't get away with doing was a surfer. They tried to enter him in a surfing competition after one month and it was just disastrous.

But everything else was fine. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to do it. And I'm just going to see, could you pick me as the imposter? And then surely if I can do it, other people can do it as well. Yeah. It's interesting also, because there was, I can't remember who was the conversation.

I was listening to two comedians. It may have been Mark Maron and someone else, but what they were talking about was, or maybe Louis CK actually. Anyway, it was two really established comedians and they were talking about how long it takes. And one of them said to the other, I can't believe I'm forgetting what this is.

But basically one of them said, as a standup, it takes seven years minimum to even have like the most basic understanding of whether you're any good or not. So he's like, you know, if you quit before then, he's like, you know, you, because you think you just like, you don't have it and you'll never have it. He's like, you're quitting too soon because it takes seven years just to even like start to get halfway decent and figure out if you even have what it takes to be good. It sounds like you don't agree with that. No, you know, and I don't. It does. It fits with Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours rule. So if you work out how much the average comedian in New York per se puts into writing and performing and practicing,. It turns out to trade to four hours a day and it works out pretty much as seven years,

10,000 hours. So it makes sense from that point of view. But in the U S success as a comedian is very much judged and established by a five minute late night TV slot, very punchy, every single word counts. And that determines whether you can get now booked as a headliner or not. So these guys develop very tight, beautifully well-written humor.

And they finally get on TV and they do it. And it's amazing. And it's very short form. It's not stories. It's very observational for the most part. Very little witty twists that are like 12 to 15 second bits. Because that's what a TV audience demands. Or they're just going to change channel in 12 seconds.

Like they're not going to stay on board. Get your beat and then move on. Yeah, but now you come out all of a sudden and you're booked as a headliner. And you're like, well, what am just going to change channel in 12 seconds like they're not going to stay on board get your beat and then move on yeah but now now you come out all of a sudden you're booked as a headliner and you're like what am i going to do i have loads of little tight little sets but i don't have one that goes deep into my own life and all it takes like probably three four years to get to that tv slot maybe five for some of them six and all of a sudden now they're filling an hour so what do you do when you have an hour to fill and you don't know what to talk about you don't have an hour of witty observation so you start mining your own life for stories and experiences you apply the same writing structures and all of a sudden you fill that period with stuff you probably should have done with the start if the tv slot

didn't exist so irish and uk comedians are very much storytellers by nature because they're not going for that five minute tv slot but it's also the reason you don't see them too often on U.S. television. But we rely on stories. We're much more running around. There's much more extra words, whereas U.S. comedy is a testament to tight TV-ready writing. And that's what makes your career. And that's why when I always listen to comedians having that conversation,

part of me is always like, it's not right. It's right for U.S. TV, and it's right for, you know, and you have to factor that they're super famous when they're having that conversation so part of them doesn't want to admit that they would like why weren't you famous in the first year or two if you're really gifted at all this stuff like how come it took you seven or eight years but honestly i think that's what they learn i think they become an amazing writer i think they get a support of other amazing writers but i also think they mind their own personal life a bit more. And that's when they're, they're said like a

writer to find their voice. And there's always a way to get around that. So with my book, if you read it, you'll be like, this sounds like this dude talking. And you're like, well, that's because I dictated it. That's my voice. Like, I didn't want to find my voice for years.

I was like, well, let's just use my voice. Yeah. So I think there's always a way of, of looking at it. So I don't totally agree with it. I agree that it takes years and years to develop that level of talent. Like you won't read my book

and be Eddie Louis CK or Jerry Seinfeld, but you will be funny on stage and you will understand how comedy works at a functional level and you will populate it with your own life experiences, which worst case scenario, if you never go on stage,

you'll be pretty funny down the pub. Well, and that's exactly, it's funny because that's exactly where my head was going because I'm like, you know, there are probably a tiny number of people that think about, okay, I want to be funnier on stage. But who hasn't walked into a room

where it's sort of the first time that they've met people at a dinner party or something like that, and they want to sit down at a table, and you want to be the person where everybody's turning to you because you're just telling this beautiful story and everybody's laughing along with it. I mean, I think almost everybody has that fantasy. I'm an introverted guy.

But, you know, if I close my eyes for a moment, I'm thinking, you know, like, how cool would it be, you know, to sort of like be at a nice dinner table and there are a dozen people or eight people sitting around the table and you're kind of holding court. You know, and everyone's in the palm of your hand, even if it's just for a moment. It nearly feels unfair when you know it's going to work. Yeah. And it's funny because, you know, I've probably been chasing that now that I'm actually thinking about it for a long time because I'm not that guy usually. So what's really interesting to me about the work that you're doing is I speak. So yeah, I'm really curious, like how could I actually really think about integrating

stories in a way where it brings humor into what I'm doing? I mean, you see John Acuff really curious. Like what, how could I actually really think about integrating stories in a way where it brings humor into what I'm doing? I mean, you see John Acuff do it. Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. And he's so like, just so everyday and so relatable. Yeah, here's a story about my kid. You know, and it'd be, cause you can cultivate emotion.

Like you can connect with people that way. But the, the, probably the bigger thing for me as I'm just thinking out loud and sort of listening to is, you know, just everyday life. You know, how can you learn how to connect with people, tell a story long or short and in a way that deepens the connection between two people or a small group of people, you know, like how much better would your life be if you had that capability? How much better could theirs be if there was a moment of lightness in a day where maybe it was not a good day?

Yep, I think so. That's pretty powerful to have that ability. I think it is, and it translates to work. I mean, there's a lot of metrics on CEOs that they surveyed about the power of a sense of humor, the value they put on employees, but it was like 91% of them valued employees with a sense of humor above other employees,

and 89% of those same ceos taught that they did better work to people with a sense of humor so it's funny yeah liz wiseman wrote a book called multipliers with another author i don't know if you read it but they found a sense of humor was one of the key things to successful managers so it's not i mean it works in in every walk of life that's the same thing it's it really is our currency of human contact. And if you can tell a story in a more effective form, it helps you in everything you're going to do. Because ultimately, when you produce something to sell

or you leave your job, start your own creative endeavor, it's based on your story. Why are you doing this? And let me relate to it and see myself in it. Yeah, and it's the thing people remember. People don't remember facts. Do you know, I screwed this up with the book. So I self-published this book originally just as a how-to.

And it did really well. It was number one for public speaking for ages, like a few months, which was weird because I didn't think it was that good at the time. But I didn't put my own story in there. How ironic is that? I never told a single person that I'd pretended to be a comedian called Irish Dave for a year. So what was that like now? Was this the modesty thing or was

this yeah i just like it was the same pressure i was like i just have to give people the information that's all they care about and i'm like i'm such an idiot when i was a year deeper into it and people started telling the story for me so oh this guy's a comedian and he wrote a book and i'm like no i'm not i pretended to be a comedian to it for a year to get over for public speaking and then i managed to help my friend in the end. He got to give a TED talk and it was all amazing. And I was like, wait, I didn't put any of that in the first book. So like, how can they tell the story for me?

So now it's a really short, like, oh, this guy pretended to be a comedian for a year to get over for public speaking. That sounds funny. And people will actually share that story and ask me about that first. But when it was like, oh, this guy was a comedian and wrote a book on comedy who cares about that that sounds fairly normal so there was a uniqueness to the story and the angle of my reason for doing it and the fact that i hate public speaking now i wrote a book on it people are like will you speak at our conference and i'm like no i hate speaking i hate public speaking leave me alone do you want to come to our plumber convention speak to four

dozen people no absolutely not that's a terrible idea leave me alone i hate public speaking i wrote a book go read it so it's totally ironic and it doesn't fit and like you know there's no upsell there's no seminar there's no nothing like i just want to solve a problem like for myself and then at the end of the journey i'm like well you don't overcome the fear it just becomes manageable but here's a bunch of techniques that can get you through it where other people won't know you're about to lay an egg on stage, even if you are. And that was it. So it was unique. It was such an irony that I forgot to tell my own story in my book like that,

that, that gave me a few laughs over a few years and it took me a year to correct that mistake, you know? Yeah. And so, and, and it's interesting that other people had to kind of like tell you now.

They had to tell me. Yeah. They would hold, I'd hear my story from somebody else. Even the publisher originally kept saying, producing press releases. And I was like, no, that's not, that's not the story. Like, that's not what I did at all. And I was like, how can I not be telling my own story correctly?

All right, I need to fix it. But yeah, that's the irony. If you don't tell your story, other people are going to tell some variation of it for you. So it's kind of up to you to tell them what you're doing and what you're doing. And it won't be as funny the way they tell it. No, they'll be smart enough not to put the word funny on the yellow letters on the cover of their book. Unless they read your book and then it'll be really funny.

Then they'll be crushing it. Maybe even in an Irish accent by the end of it. So what are you up to now? Like, where are you going with things? I'm running a conference again in June in san francisco and we'll keep doing the writing aspect to it with the written work which i like a lot actually i feel like i'm kind of helping there's just two problem areas there with comedians looking for more work and companies looking to be more engaged basically or up engagement levels with people and be more humorous but they don't

know how because they think it's risky so i keep doing that basically yeah it does it's there's a feel-good factor to doing it every time i do do even the smallest project, I'm like, that's cool. I don't care how much it pays. It's just one of those things where I'm like, you know, I'm just going to do this anyway. I don't care. I'm going to keep doing it no matter what the income level is to it. And everyone will be like, oh, what's your pricing? What's your longer-term plan?

I don't care. I just see a problem that I want to help solve. And the same with the book. How much are you going to make from the book? Are do a book tour don't care but now that you know now it's out there you have to do a few bits and pieces but honestly like if so what do you care about right now i like helping people in any way i can it's really weird but that's what i like doing so if anyone comes to me and asks me um i'm very bad at selling things like anyone emails me i have a problem with public speaking i'm like here's a course access code for free and here's whatever they're like you have to stop

doing this or you're going to be homeless like you need to start selling people stuff the conference i care about i think helping people get over anything that where they feel like i have a fear of this or i can't be funny i'm like of course you can i know you have amazing stories in you it's going to take me two drinks with you to try and figure out what they are or to get you comfortable telling them. And then, you know, you'll tell that story again and you make a deep connection with someone. You never know what's going to happen. So I like spreading that. I mean, there's no downside to it.

There's a great metric that, like, people used to laugh on average as babies 300 times a day. And by the time you get to 35 years or older, you're down to about 15 laughs on average a on average a day so like i always figured anyone who can bring back some of those lost laughs can be a bit of a hero yeah and man how much do we need it these days we we definitely need it we need there's i think there's such heaviness that people walk around with like they feel like that if you just have a moment of lightness well at least you let it out in the u.s and ireland we bottle up all the heaviness like don't tell me about that heaviness. Go away. So why don't we come full circle?

It's in the name of this Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? What does it mean to you? Yeah, to me, it's adding to that story collection. I think life is just a big collection of stories that you either share with people or use to make connections with other people and it's travel a lot and learn a lot and get out there and put yourself out there and every time you see fear just go

alright, everyone's afraid of this I just gotta spin it in a positive way and use it. And to me that will become a good life in any way, shape or form. Thank you. That sounds way too deep. That comes out on air. I'm not going to be let back into Ireland.

Hold on. Redo one the way that we can release it. Say it in a sexier voice. Right. We have a lot of listeners in Ireland, so we need to do two cuts. Oh, good Lord. Thank you, man. Hey, thanks so much for listening.

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