free at http://www.7comedyhabits.com/80tips). These are seven principles and a host of tips that would have saved me a lot of time and embarrassment if I had only known them earlier. Trust me, if I could defeat Shakin’ Stevens, you can get over your own fears, too.
My year of study and self-experimentation brought me to three conclusions:
1. Top business speakers are using humor.
2. They are developing laugh lines using the same process as comedians, even though most are unaware of it.
3. You don’t need to be naturally funny to get laughs. Most comedians I met were not.
To be honest, I still have a fear of public speaking. The difference now is it’s manageable. I have a tried and tested array of stories and funny anecdotes I know will initiate one of the most powerful forces available to mankind: laughter.
“I am from Ireland so I do have a bit of an accent. If I say something funny and you guys don’t laugh, I’m going to assume you didn’t understand and just say it again.”
I still use this line—in fact, I have used it many times—and it always gets a laugh. Developed in comedy clubs and at open mic nights, it’s the same line I use when speaking in a business environment, and it’s one of many. It follows a structure and a methodology that, when combined with six other habits, will make you a funnier speaker and make your fear of public speaking a thing of the past.
This is not a magic book. Simply reading these seven principles won’t make you instantly funnier, more successful, or more attractive. Add a little practice, however, and it just might.
“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”
–Robert McKee
I woke in the middle of the night to a series of loud rumbling noises. My location was a small, windowless room in volcanic Guatemala. I was twenty-five years old and had just moved in with a local family as part of a Spanish language school home-stay program. Unfortunately for me, the epicenter of this rumbling was my stomach, and the cause was food poisoning. And, as I was about to find out, it was a very bad dose. While I was curled up in the throes of intestinal anarchy, my host family was in the next room, completely unaffected by the gut-twisting superbug. The projectile vomiting started twenty minutes later and seemed to have no stop. With no windows, no trashcan, and no time to react, my backpack loaded with clothes bore the brunt of the storm, with the floor and walls coming a close second and third. I heard footsteps coming to check on me.
My host mother, Flor, a robust lady in traditional long, local dress, came rushing in to find me covered in puke and her whitewashed walls looking like fifty shades of green. I wasn’t due to start classes until the following day, so at this point my Spanish was nonexistent. I rummaged through my sodden belongings to find a small pocket dictionary and flipped to the health section. I looked her in the eyes with my most pitiful puppy-dog-meets-drowned-rat face and, pointing to my source of wisdom, read aloud, “Vomitando . . . Vomitando aquí,” as I pointed to my bag; “aquí,” the floor; and, “aquí también,” (“here as well”) as I gave the walls a broad stroking.
“Alcohólico de Irlanda,” she mumbled, assuming incorrectly that my culture and not her local dish had gotten the better of me.
Tell a Story to Teach
Thankfully, my condition and my Spanish improved quickly. I never forgot the Spanish word for “vomiting,” and I suspect you won’t, either. Experiences do that to you, and stories—shared experiences—do that, too. For better or worse our brains are hardwired to recognize, remember, and appreciate the information that comes to us through storytelling. Stories help us learn.
Rapid language acquisition experts like Benny Lewis (a fellow Irishman) also stress the use of mnemonic devices. Defined as “any learning technique that aids information retention,” mnemonics aim to translate information into a form that the brain can retain better than its original form. Benny has a great example with learning the Spanish word caber, which means “to fit.” Caber sounds like two words more familiar to native English speakers, cab and bear. Utilizing mnemonic devices, we can construct a short visual story of a bear trying to fit into a taxicab. To best remember it, you visualize the unlikely scenario in your mind in as much detail as possible. The premise of this idea is based on something scientists have known for a long time: the mind learns in stories and visual cues. Benny speaks twelve languages, and he learned them all in less time than it took me to learn basic commands en Español.
“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.”
–Mary Catherine Bateson
Thus, one of the reasons for using stories in our speeches is that stories help us learn and remember things. We all want our audience to learn something and remember what we said.
Many of us have been to a comedy club and laughed hysterically at the comedian, but struggle to remember his/her name or what exactly was said. We’ve had the same experience with business speakers. When someone delivers information as a series of facts or opinions, it’s hard for our brains to recall them.
Don’t be that person. Our aim as public speakers is to be more memorable and have our audience spread our message for us. The best way to do this is to make it work the way the brain likes it—by wrapping the information in a story.
Tell a Story to Build Your Brand
Stories are great for memory retention, but there’s another reason to tell a story: it connects you with and humanizes your brand.
Consider the origin of the word brand. It comes from a hot piece of metal people use to mark cows. True brands tell the world a very simple story, like, “This is Dave’s cow.” The job of the other kind of brand is much the same: to influence what people think of when they think of you. Stories are great for that. They give people’s brains a thing to connect you with. They do the job marketers are supposed to be doing by giving people something to think of when they think of you. Yet much of the marketing industry still thinks it can get away with calling colors, typefaces, and canned music “branding.” If those things are elements of a story, great. But without a story? That’s just a random cow.
Ann Handley is a content marketer who inspires an entire industry. When it comes to storytelling, she says, “Some brands are doing it really well, but storytelling is not a skill marketers have necessarily needed over the last few decades.”3 In an article by Harrison Monarth in the Harvard Business Review, Johns Hopkins researcher Keith Quesenberry discusses the effectiveness of commercials that are like “mini movies.” He says, “People are attracted to stories, because we’re social creatures and we relate to other people.”4
You may not be in marketing, but when you get up to make a speech, you are selling your
