How to Be Funny in Public Speaking

In my last post, I wrote about being “system smart”, the third Intelligence after “book smart” and “street smart.” Today, I will reveal the system that I use to make myself funny in public speaking.

Why funny?

As a keynote speaker who writes and speaks for a living, I average about 40 talks a year. One of my most powerful tools to deliver a good talk is humor, which is an amazing lubricant for knowledge intake. If people are laughing at your jokes, it’s so much easier for them to pay attention and remember your lessons.

If your talk is like fried chicken, and the key takeaway is like the tasteless chicken breast, the jokes you deliver are like the hot fried breading with honey mustard sauce. That’s how you make the whole thing easy to go down.

In fact, if you mix the right amount of humor and takeaways, your talk will be a feast.

My best talks were like a virtuous loop made out of laughter. When I hear the audience responding to my jokes, my confidence grows, and I use that energy to naturally slow down, ease up, and deliver even better lines, which induces more laughter and elevates my delivery. On and on it goes. When I am done, I walk off the stage like a conquering hero.

On the other hand, when I tell my first joke and no one laughs, it’s an “uh-oh” signal that a tough crowd is at hand, and the rest of the talk will be an uphill battle. I might end up getting more nervous, and the audience could feel it and become even less likely to laugh. If I go through an entire talk without any audible laughter, it means I have bombed and didn’t connect with the audience at all.

“Bombing” is a term used by standup comedians whose sole purpose is to get people to laugh. If they tell jokes and get no response, it’s called bombing, and it’s one of the most demoralizing feelings you can have. (If you are a fan of the show The Office, this is exactly what Michael Scott went through in his attempt to use humor in a talk.) Although I am a keynote speaker, not a standup comedian, I use a lot of comedic techniques in my talks and follow similar principles.

No worse feeling than bombing a speech

Nature vs Nurture:

Many people ask me, “How are you so funny? Are you funny by birth or practice?”

My answer is that I am not naturally funny, although I do have weird thoughts here and there (I’ll come back to that later). In fact, the worst question you can ask me is to tell you a joke. It would be a mini-disaster waiting to happen for both of us. Because you might feel so uncomfortable seeing my futile attempt, you may feel obliged to fake laugh just to ease my embarrassment, which will end up as an awkward memory for both of us.

But I am system smart. Yes, I have a system to generate, write, and practice jokes, so I can use them in my talks.

And… here is my system… (OK I’m about to give my secrets away. But what the heck—you’re my friend, right?)

Lean In

My system is called Lean In. No, not the Sheryl Sandberg book that teaches women to kick ass in corporate rooms (although if you’re a woman who can captivate with corporate speeches, you’ll have a similar effect in the ass-kicking department).

What I do is lean into my weird thoughts every time I encounter them.

In our daily lives, we see things all the time—mostly normal things, like an old lady walking across the street. Sometimes strange things, like a car beeping at you for no reason. Often, these things evoke an emotion out of us, however slight. Most of the time, we just ignore what happened and our emotions and go on with our lives. Who has time to think and reflect on what just happened, right?

Well, that’s not how comedians think. They capture these moments and emotions like treasures because they are the basic material for their bits. In fact, the best comedians go through every day like playing Pokémon Go, but instead of collecting monsters in an app, they collect things and emotions.

What do they do with them, you might ask? Well, they lean into these scenes, thoughts, and emotions and go crazy with them. They try to expand on their thoughts and make them weirder and weirder to the point of absurdity. And the result can become an amazing bit.

Strong emotions and weird feelings? They are your treasure for comedy

For example, Louis CK… OK, first of all, screw that pervert. I am not condoning his behavior whatsoever. But I do believe in separating the artist from the art. And in this case, I am separating the artist, whom I very much abhor, from his artistic method, which I very much admire.

OK, Louis CK, the most talented standup comedian I’ve ever seen, once talked about his process of coming up with jokes. One day his flight’s wifi broke down, and he felt annoyed, just like everyone would. And most people would just wallow in their own frustration, or stop there and move on without a second thought. But Louis CK captured the moment and his emotions, and started to lean into it, hard! He invented a character who was complaining about the broken wifi, and started ridiculing the character to an absurd level, even though he was actually the person who complained in reality. It became one of his best bits.

Leaning into your weird thoughts from seemingly innocuous occurrences is such a great comedic method, I started using it in my own talks.

For example, in my talk, when I describe my search for a cure for the fear of rejection, I could have just described “I searched online and found Rejection Therapy.” But what I did was lean into the weird things and feelings I encountered during the search, from seeing articles written by psychologists and sales gurus, to my thoughts and feelings when I finally found Jason Comely’s Rejection Therapy and my decision to do 100 Days of Rejection. Here you can see how I’m leaning into my own weird thoughts.

Another example: when I’m describing my first attempt to get rejected—trying to borrow $100 from a stranger. I could have just said, “Day one, I wanted to borrow $100 from a stranger. I got rejected and uploaded the video on YouTube.” It would have been fine. The audience would get what I’m saying and maybe even laugh at the absurd idea of borrowing money from a stranger.

However, in my actual talk, I fully leaned into all my weird thoughts at that moment, from my body’s reaction to my reviewing of my own video like an NFL scout, seeing how we both behaved in this video. This type of dramatic and weird detail made the talk not only funny but real.

There is no better feeling than walking off stage with a standing ovation

If it is weird to you, it’s weird to everyone

We all have weird thoughts constantly going through our minds. Most of us don’t pay attention to them and even actively suppress them because we don’t want to think weird and feel weird.

However, these weird thoughts are seeds of ingenuity and ingredients for humor because if it’s weird to you, it’s weird to everyone. If you know how to recognize, capture, and lean into these thoughts, you can develop comedy that resonates with everyone. And when they’re laughing, you can teach/sell/inspire them however you want.

Do you need to be born funny and quick-witted? No. All you need is a system and to be “system smart.”