Speakers blogging about speakers? Cool!

Here’s a recent post about my recent speech in California where I worked in San Francisco for the National Speakers Association. I thought he did a great job summarizing a couple of my points… How Cool is that?! Here’s how he wrote it up…

Executive Communications » National Speakers Association Northern California: Laugh Your Ass Off!
Brad Montgomery – Got Mirth? Milking Your Material For All The Humor It’s Worth

Wow! A stand-up comic who started in the business when he was 16, is a magician and he has his own blog! What’s not to like!

Brad took an analytic approach to generating mirth in front of the mike. He spent time putting our fears to rest by sharing some groundrules:
# Expect to bomb – the audience will still love you if they see you try, and who was to know that what you just said was meant to be funny? Get over it, just don’t let them see the fear. Johnny Carson made a career out of bad jokes, one golf swing later, America still loved him.
# Lighten up. Any humor in a business setting lightens up the program. Engage with the audience by recognizing someone in the front row by name and asking them a question or two. It makes it more human.

Brad gave us great tips for livening up business audiences.
# Planting a n obvious question works on many levels. The CEO would love to ask something nonsensical in a serious tone – they have precious few ways to demonstrate they’re an average Joe to the troops.
# Rehearse some lines to deal with predictable failures – the mic and powerpoint will fail (“I guess the mic/bulbs here are supplied by [the competition]”), there will be a cell phone that will ring (“Gee, I didn’t know that 900 numbers now call you back…”).

Let the audience see you are having a good time.

Yours,

Brad Montgomery, Teacher of Comedy & Humor Technique, Goofball.

Technorati Tags: Comedians, Motivational Speakers, Humor, Technique.