Humor and Public Speaking

A few weeks ago, I attended an event sponsored by the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers' Association, where I had the opportunity to hear from two gifted public speakers, David Glickman and Brad Montgomery.

Each had reams of good advice for creating humor, customizing it, and milking your "material" for more humor.

As somebody who loves to laugh, I had a ball. If you want to share in the laughter, visit their web sites - both for a view of both men at work and some great material (I read a joke on Brad's site that had me in stitches - literally - I fell of my chair while laughing, hit my head and had to get stitches!

Really! I'm just kidding!)

I thought I'd share 5 pieces of advice from each presenter that I found particularly useful:

From David:

1. Have the tools with you to capture your funny ideas at all times (recorder, pen, paper, friend with the memory of an elephant, whatever).
2. Brand names are funnier than just saying something generic.
3. Odd numbers are funnier than even numbers; and planned mispronunciations (and other mistakes) are funnier than...not using them? (OK - so I squeezed two into one line item - so sue me! On second thought, please, please don't!)
   
4. Use the "Rule of Three" - the first two statements are 'normal', the last one is funny.
   
5. Try a new laugh at least three times before dropping it.

From Brad:

1. Impromptu humor doesn't have to be as funny as prepared humor; therefore, make everything look impromptu and spontaneous.
2. The audience doesn't know what you have planned. Therefore, they will not know if your joke bombed...or if you planned it that way. Ack like you planned it that way.
3. Humor doesn't always mean punch lines and stand-up comedy. Therefore, even non-funny people can use humor to lighten up the program and to connect with the audience.
4. Blue or dirty humor almost always offends at least one person in the audience - so, don't do it in a professional setting or context!
   
5. Comedy ain't easy; so give yourself time to study it, try it out, succeed, fail, and most importantly, learn.

Both of these gents provide Customized Corporate Comedy; so if you're in the market for that service, I'd give them both a close look. David provides clean, clever, customized comedy entertainment for your convention, meeting, sales rally or banquet. Brad does motivational humor, serves as an MC/Master of Ceremonies, provides executive humor coaching, and delivers corporate entertainment.