Speaker 1: I get a groovers. It's Harps and Bobby and Tiffany
Speaker 1: and Cook. It's the U Project. We're sliding in towards Christmas,
Speaker 1: as we do at the end of every year. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: Christmas comes at the end of the year. Every year.
Speaker 1: It's a pattern. I don't know if anyone else has
Speaker 1: picked it up. I've noticed it. Look, this may not
Speaker 1: be groundbreaking for you, but and often often followed by
Speaker 1: New Year, so you're welcome. Call it science Hi, tiv
Speaker 1: high Harps.
Speaker 2: I find it very weird because it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 2: December the first, It's Christmas next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's like it is it is avalanching down on
Speaker 1: top of our little heads. And that's okay. But this
Speaker 1: is the time of the year when everyone goes, I
Speaker 1: don't know where the time's gone. Oh my god, where
Speaker 1: did the year go? Everyone says that every year everyone
Speaker 1: is surprised by how quickly the year went. But in
Speaker 1: the middle of the year sometimes it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is a fucking saga. It's like, and then at
Speaker 1: the end of the year, I can't even just just
Speaker 1: like a blink, it just went Hi, Robert, how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm doing well? Doing well. Yeah, I'm surprised that how
Speaker 3: consistent we have been with the whole Christmas New Year's
Speaker 3: thing right at the end of the year. Every year
Speaker 3: we've been great with it. We haven't believed where the
Speaker 3: time's gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we haven't missed one. And I don't know too millennia.
Speaker 1: I actually wonder when that's not that's that's not actually true.
Speaker 1: When did When did Christmas as a kind of a
Speaker 1: social I'm going to say social experiment, that a social thing. Tip.
Speaker 1: Can you figure that out? When did we start celebrating
Speaker 1: Christmas in Western culture?
Speaker 3: Bobby?
Speaker 1: What's your what's your guess? When did we start doing
Speaker 1: Christmas and presents? And I know it's become very commercialized
Speaker 1: over the last one hundred years, but when do you
Speaker 1: think that we started doing, Hey, merry Christmas. When do
Speaker 1: we got doing that?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know when we started doing Merry Christmas,
Speaker 3: but I think we started celebrating Christmas maybe sometime around
Speaker 3: I would guess the Medieval age, right around there. I
Speaker 3: know we had a we had a whole sermon in
Speaker 3: our church many many years ago against Christmas trees. Apparently
Speaker 3: Christmas trees were originally this pagan ritual that was adapted
Speaker 3: in and you know, the pastor was kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: just well, very keen on Christmas trees. I love a
Speaker 3: Christmas tree.
Speaker 1: And do you also know that Santa is an anagram
Speaker 1: of Sitan? Have you ever thought about that? What do
Speaker 1: you now? What are you going on about? Now you've
Speaker 1: taken it too far? Well, Santa? So you know what
Speaker 1: an anagram is, right?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I know what an anagram is.
Speaker 1: Yes, so Santa is the same letters as Syitan and
Speaker 1: the same number of letters.
Speaker 3: I ever thought about it be purely coincidental?
Speaker 1: Well it could, or it could be God telling us
Speaker 1: something Robert.
Speaker 3: Like sounds to clause isn't real?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he knows, Ti, what have you got for us?
Speaker 2: We know that Chatters likes to carry on a bit
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Come on, Chatters, keep it brief. Just go hey, chatty, Kathy,
Speaker 1: keep it fucking brief.
Speaker 2: In Western Christian culture, Christmas as a formal celebration shows
Speaker 2: up in the fourth century. Three point thirty six CE
Speaker 2: is the earliest clear record of Christmas on December twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: appearing in Rome.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: By the late three hundreds, the dates spread across Western
Speaker 2: Roman Empire like a hymn with legs.
Speaker 1: Is that what it says? Yes, Oh my god, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. Oh well, there you
Speaker 1: have it, everybody, the history of Christmas that you didn't need.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: I could have been more wrong. I missed it by
Speaker 3: like a millennia. But yeah, so sad to clause it's ideolatry.
Speaker 3: Don't do it, boys and girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the that's to take home message. Listen to
Speaker 1: us fucking raining on Christmas, you know. But it is,
Speaker 1: like you think about from a sociological and psychological point
Speaker 1: of view, Christmas is a really interesting time because so
Speaker 1: many people fucking hate it, and not for any religious
Speaker 1: reason necessarily, but because so many like it represents to
Speaker 1: some people like times that aren't great, or it reminds
Speaker 1: them that their family is not here anymore, or they're
Speaker 1: not with their family, or that they're alone, or that
Speaker 1: nobody cares about them or what it fill in the blank.
Speaker 1: It's like it's such a dichotomy of experiences ranging from
Speaker 1: complete jubilation and joy and present opening and kids riding
Speaker 1: new bikes and all the fucking Walt Disney stuff through
Speaker 1: to the other end of the scale where people just
Speaker 1: it's almost like the worst day of the year because
Speaker 1: it just you know, reminds them of what they don't
Speaker 1: have or where they where they're not But.
Speaker 3: Well, I blame those Hallmark films. Yes, those are very
Speaker 3: hard to watch. Other than that, I love Christmas.
Speaker 1: A little bit ambivalent. I don't. I definitely don't hate it,
Speaker 1: of course, but to me it's like, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: Thursday or whatever it is. What day is it this year?
Speaker 1: By the way, Thursday Thursday? Yeah, yeah, I always get
Speaker 1: I always send out a thing on Christmas to people, gone,
Speaker 1: Happy Christmas. Hope you have a great day. If you're
Speaker 1: not a fan of Christmas, you know, have a great
Speaker 1: fucking Thursday. And I'll see it tomorrow on Friday. You know,
Speaker 1: it is the psychology of it is interesting.
Speaker 3: What do you love about it?
Speaker 1: What do you love about it?
Speaker 3: Well, over here in the Northern Hemisphere it's bitterly cold,
Speaker 3: it's all snowy and gray and just drinking hot beverages,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's a time to take a break
Speaker 3: and pause and reflect and spend time with people you
Speaker 3: love and really watch films that you don't need to watch.
Speaker 3: You've seen them like ten times. You know how it's
Speaker 3: going to end, but you've got them playing in the background.
Speaker 3: You know you could another year to cry in front
Speaker 3: of love. Actually again, that's why I died love scene
Speaker 3: that people are ashamed of me when I watch that film,
Speaker 3: and I feel a lot of internal shame as well,
Speaker 3: and right for so. But I just I love, I
Speaker 3: just love. I just love the holidays. I love the
Speaker 3: lead up to the holidays.
Speaker 1: Well, good for you, dude, and you should. You should
Speaker 1: love it, you should enjoy it. It will not say
Speaker 1: everybody should probably stop saying should Craig? Okay, well done,
Speaker 1: not to self. I just reprimanded thing. So I've been
Speaker 1: doing this whole thing.
Speaker 3: I've tried it twice now with Scrooge, where looking at
Speaker 3: Scrooge from a perspective of well being and someone who
Speaker 3: lacked well being rather than being this mean, cromogeneous guy.
Speaker 3: I will say right now, nobody likes that story. I
Speaker 3: have tried it in front of a small group at
Speaker 3: a retreat and a large audience. They both looked at
Speaker 3: me like did this guy forget to pay his brain
Speaker 3: bill this month? Like some things like it's just I'm
Speaker 3: just looking at the bewildered faces, going wow, I've never
Speaker 3: had a story just like fourth this flat in my life.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I'm gonna try that again. So
Speaker 1: that's a lesson. That's a lesson, dude, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: read the room. That's your audience telling you something. That's
Speaker 1: an opportunity. Yes, it crashed and burned your story, but
Speaker 1: it's also a learning moment. So you learn this eating character.
Speaker 1: Eb No, don't start. Don't fucking try and wheel it
Speaker 1: out again. Fuck Scrooge, look at you. He's so desperately
Speaker 1: trying to tell the story that's failed multiple times. We
Speaker 1: don't want to fucking hear it, and we don't want
Speaker 1: to hear your positive being on a negative coun So
Speaker 1: you just put that shit back in the metaphoric box.
Speaker 1: If you want to talk about good things and happy people. Cool.
Speaker 3: You know, it's really interesting. Everything you just said is true.
Speaker 3: I have this obsession with wheeling out the same field story,
Speaker 3: over doing it.
Speaker 1: Stop doing it. It's like you're you're almost a stand
Speaker 1: up comic.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: You need to constantly pay attention to the audience. What's working,
Speaker 1: what's not working? You know, what's landing what's getting the laugh,
Speaker 1: what's getting eyeballs, what's getting attention, what's drawing people in
Speaker 1: read the room? Bro, don't keep telling the same fucked
Speaker 1: up joke. You've got to tweet either new joke or
Speaker 1: tweak the old joke. I love listening to comedians talk
Speaker 1: about the way that they design and refine and constantly
Speaker 1: re refine material. And it might be a clunky, kind
Speaker 1: of lopsided, like awkward ninety second joke that becomes a
Speaker 1: thirty second absolute banger, but it takes in two years
Speaker 1: and they know exactly when to pause and exactly the
Speaker 1: energy and exactly the words. But after like all this
Speaker 1: tweaking and refining and paying attention, they just come up
Speaker 1: with this bit that's just thirty seconds of fucking gold,
Speaker 1: and it kills in every room.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's the goal for you, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean the writing and the refining is constant, and
Speaker 3: it's like, to come up with even five minutes of material,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to write and edit quite a lot.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day. What really lands, it's
Speaker 3: not so much the joke, but it's the timing. It's
Speaker 3: completely the delivery. Oh my goodness, because like every week
Speaker 3: we get together in school and we practice things, and
Speaker 3: sometimes you'll deliver a joke in a certain way and
Speaker 3: there's you know, there's nobody that's harsher than your peers.
Speaker 3: If something's not funny, nobody's gonna laugh. Or if you're
Speaker 3: doing an open mic night we got one down here
Speaker 3: just for that's attended mostly by stand up comics, so
Speaker 3: they're just trying out their material on one another. And
Speaker 3: what's really great about that is the brutal honesty. If
Speaker 3: something's that funny, they'll tell you. But you'll see something
Speaker 3: and you'll just tweak a tone or a pause and
Speaker 3: the room explodes with laughter. Next week you're going over
Speaker 3: it again and you do it differently, seam jerk like flatline. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it lies in the air. So it's really interesting. I'm
Speaker 3: learning a lot.
Speaker 1: I just it's something that something that you should listen
Speaker 1: to because it's well, listen to me something Bobby. You
Speaker 1: might enjoy listening to Craig stop telling people what the
Speaker 1: fucking do, Bobby. Hey, here's an idea. Feel free to
Speaker 1: not do it. My suggestion for you is listen to
Speaker 1: the most recent Louis Throw. I'm sure you like Louis
Speaker 1: because he's British and you love Britain. Louis throw with
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carr and probably two people you like, and Jimmy
Speaker 1: talks about his process. Oh both of you have gone
Speaker 1: to your phones. That's good, Jimmy, come down. No, no,
Speaker 1: you'll love it because for you it's it's probably very
Speaker 1: very relevant and very timely where he talks about the process,
Speaker 1: like the creative process, the delivering, the content process, the
Speaker 1: reading the room, the you know, the written kind of choreographed,
Speaker 1: scripted stuff versus the freestyle stuff, and like basically he
Speaker 1: said for something like for the last year. I'm speaking
Speaker 1: as him now, he said, for the last year, I
Speaker 1: have done five days a week to two hour shows
Speaker 1: for the last year. That's twenty hours on stage a week.
Speaker 1: Imagine that TIF as twenty hours live. And it's not
Speaker 1: like he's talking to fucking seven people, Like he's doing
Speaker 1: rooms with between two and twenty thousand, depending on where
Speaker 1: he's at. And yeah, five days a week, two times
Speaker 1: a day, two hours each time, and he you know,
Speaker 1: there's no like you know where people it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a sense of duty. It's just what he
Speaker 1: fucking loves it, and he talks about his first twenty
Speaker 1: minutes is essentially just pre choreographed, scripted. Here's a joke. Laugh,
Speaker 1: here's a joke. He's a laugh, and he just does
Speaker 1: all these stuff and it's it's similar, but like these
Speaker 1: are just jokes that he's written that he's just wheeling at.
Speaker 1: And then from there, once he's created whatever he needs
Speaker 1: to create, the energy, the connection, the trust, the whatever,
Speaker 1: then he just starts to freestyle and interact. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so if any well else wants to listen to that,
Speaker 1: I think also, like, obviously I'm not a comedian, but
Speaker 1: I just as somebody from a point of view of
Speaker 1: building rapport with people or trying to understand people, or
Speaker 1: how do I communicate effectively? Like so much because I
Speaker 1: think think if you can do comedy, you can almost
Speaker 1: do any kind of communication.
Speaker 3: It's a different world. The expectation of the audience is
Speaker 3: really high, so you really have to be on. It's
Speaker 3: quite difficult. I mean, Jimmy Carr is an absolute master.
Speaker 3: What I like about Jimmy Call lately is he seems
Speaker 3: to be incorporating some of his ideology and some of
Speaker 3: himself into his comedy more than just jokes. There's like
Speaker 3: a message there, and that's something that you didn't really
Speaker 3: hear from Jimmy Call many years ago. But I like it.
Speaker 3: I like this evolution because I think he's quite switched on.
Speaker 3: I was listening to walso on Diary of the CEO,
Speaker 3: where he was talking about that and so many things
Speaker 3: that he was saying resonated with me from being on
Speaker 3: the road. Where he's talking about, you know, it's not glamorous,
Speaker 3: like a lot of times your plane's delayed. It's like
Speaker 3: you're not getting out and then you're sleep deprived and
Speaker 3: you're in a cab somewhere in a city you've never
Speaker 3: been to. And he was talking about how much he
Speaker 3: loved all of it. I was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: you know what, Like I didn't like when my planes
Speaker 3: were delayed. I didn't like when things were rearranged and
Speaker 3: there were set backs, or you know, occasionally you're not
Speaker 3: in a four or five star hotel, you're in a
Speaker 3: shitty one star hotel where the heater doesn't work. I
Speaker 3: didn't like that, But I loved all of it, do
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 3: in love with the lifestyle and the work, and there
Speaker 3: was nothing that felt like, oh fuck, I got to
Speaker 3: sit down and prepare this shit. It was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: what's my environment? How do I remove interference? That was
Speaker 3: the biggest thing, is removing interference and zone in Do.
Speaker 1: You remember it would have been? I think it was
Speaker 1: When were you and I? When did you and I
Speaker 1: got London together? Was it ninety eight ninety nine? Kevin
Speaker 1: Laferrier and Richard Boyd? And do you and I? Anyway?
Speaker 1: I think it was just before two thousand and I
Speaker 1: remember you and I stayed in a hotel room. If
Speaker 1: you know how big my office is, this hotel room
Speaker 1: was the side of my size of Now I'm in
Speaker 1: the whole room and it was like it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been one star? Do you remember that? It was disgusting, Bobby?
Speaker 1: It was so fucking low brow, It was so dirty.
Speaker 1: I slept in my clothes because I didn't want my
Speaker 1: skin to touch the fucking sheets.
Speaker 3: It was. I've stayed I've stayed in a few hotels
Speaker 3: like that in London, in Kingston, the Antwinette, Oh my goodness,
Speaker 3: that was. Yeah. I used to have like clothing that
Speaker 3: I would bring just to like wear to bed. And
Speaker 3: just like a hat from my head and then I
Speaker 3: would bag that shit. It had For a shower, there
Speaker 3: was a hose coming out of a wall and he
Speaker 3: had to squat down and shower and rooms smelt like
Speaker 3: must and mold. It was so absolute and cleaning products.
Speaker 3: It was so disgusting. And before the smoking ban, this
Speaker 3: is you would walk through the lobby. They had the
Speaker 3: actual keys. The keys were gigantic. That was cool, but
Speaker 3: the lobby had this thick haze of cigarette smoke just
Speaker 3: hanging there. Oh. I used to feel like shit after
Speaker 3: getting out of there with just one night.
Speaker 1: Good times, Yeah, great time. Speaking of comedy, how's your
Speaker 1: comedy career going?
Speaker 3: What do you so?
Speaker 1: For those who don't know, Bobby is a presenter and
Speaker 1: a coach and a mentor and a workshop facilitator and
Speaker 1: all that, but not a comic, but kind of becoming
Speaker 1: a comic. So just putting his toe in the comedy world. Warders,
Speaker 1: what do you have to report?
Speaker 3: My second show that I've done since I started going
Speaker 3: to school. I have another show that'll come up, and Jane,
Speaker 3: it went better than the first. It went well. First
Speaker 3: one didn't go bad either. You know, I've got to
Speaker 3: credit the other students that are in the room. You
Speaker 3: got everyone who is a novice and just wants to
Speaker 3: try this out, either because they want to be a
Speaker 3: comedian or they just want to be better at communicating
Speaker 3: from a stage. And then you got like working comedians
Speaker 3: that are constantly working on their craft and like they'll
Speaker 3: give you notes. They're fantastic. My teacher, Tony, it's a
Speaker 3: really cool guy. He's he's very subtle, very direct, but
Speaker 3: very subtle, and he'll just like throw things out, give
Speaker 3: you feedback, and then it'll hit you when when you're
Speaker 3: doing your writing and editing that week, it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: let me cut this back. So I love I love Tony.
Speaker 3: It's one of the best decisions I've made in a while.
Speaker 3: My first show, I was intense. My energy level on
Speaker 3: stage was particularly high, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Second show, No, I still had my personality, unfortunately, but
Speaker 3: I was a little bit toned down and my pauses
Speaker 3: and you know, and delivery it was a little bit sharper.
Speaker 3: I think it went better. I liked it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would imagine that doing comedy and even
Speaker 1: doing you know, open mic nights and getting up for
Speaker 1: ninety seconds, two minutes, five minutes, whatever the allocation is.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't end up being a comic, although
Speaker 1: you well could, but even if you don't, it's still
Speaker 1: going to help you as a facilitator in front of
Speaker 1: an audience anyway. It's gonna bring another dimension to how
Speaker 1: you do what you do.
Speaker 3: I would imagine, no doubt whatsoever. I think comedy is
Speaker 3: sharpening my skills. It's teaching me a lot of lessons.
Speaker 3: There's one thing that comedy requires, though, that I was
Speaker 3: trying to get away from. But I think it's I
Speaker 3: think it's really good. Actually, where I've mentioned that I've
Speaker 3: over prepared a lot, I've been extremely intentional on things,
Speaker 3: and like I would get on stage and try to
Speaker 3: memorize everything else, going to say not word for word,
Speaker 3: but pretty much bullet point by bullet point, which really
Speaker 3: is the worst possible thing you could ever do. But
Speaker 3: in comedy, if you've got ten minutes, that's tight, or
Speaker 3: if you're doing an open mic night and you've got
Speaker 3: five minutes or three minutes, you better have things memorized
Speaker 3: because you could go you go go short. Like if
Speaker 3: you they give you five minutes and you do four,
Speaker 3: nobody really cares. If they give you five minutes, you
Speaker 3: do six, You're probably not going to do an open
Speaker 3: mic night.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that an open mic night is. I
Speaker 3: mean there are advantages of it. I think you learn
Speaker 3: a lot more when you do actual shows. That's been
Speaker 3: my limited experience. But you really have to have it tight.
Speaker 3: You get it so tight that when you get up
Speaker 3: on stage, forget, forget everything you remember, just go. It
Speaker 3: should be second nature.
Speaker 1: Just perform and are you okay with the iterative process
Speaker 1: of getting up being not great, getting up being a
Speaker 1: bit better, getting a bit right tonight, getting it wrong
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. And one hundred shows later, you're starting to understand.
Speaker 1: You're starting to because I feel like this is not
Speaker 1: something that you get good at in five attempts, you know,
Speaker 1: no matter what your starting point is or your natural
Speaker 1: talent is. I think like for comedy, for me, comedy
Speaker 1: is like I think anyone can get up and not anyone,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people can get up and just
Speaker 1: talk and do like I think what I do is
Speaker 1: not I was going to say it's not that hard.
Speaker 1: I guess it is for a lot of people. But
Speaker 1: I think what I do is infinitely easier than doing comedy,
Speaker 1: because your whole job in comedy is to change people's
Speaker 1: emotional state, is to get a visible response, Like you
Speaker 1: want to see them laughing, You want to see their
Speaker 1: head moving, you want to see their facial expression change.
Speaker 1: You want to see a psychological, emotional, and physical outcome.
Speaker 1: You want to like, I would be so fucking terrified
Speaker 1: to wheel out my first Joe Core story or two
Speaker 1: or three, and I've just got fucking dead pan faces.
Speaker 1: I mean, like so whed craiggo I actually moved to
Speaker 1: the country. We've never heard from him again, and that
Speaker 1: was ten years ago. Yeah, yeah, apparently he's living in
Speaker 1: a subterranean bunker eating fucking weedies. He won't talk to anyone,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I think, hey, that's actually funny. I
Speaker 1: should put that in. But you know, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think being I love amusing people and being spontaneously
Speaker 1: funny if that's what works in the situation. But walking
Speaker 1: out for the ex express reason of being funny, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna walk on in sixty seconds, and in sixty
Speaker 1: one seconds you're going to start to be funny. Fucking hell,
Speaker 1: that terrifies me. Are you scared of that, I hope.
Speaker 3: So I look, this is what I tell anyone who
Speaker 3: I've ever coached as a speaker. If you are not
Speaker 3: scared to step out on a stage, you don't belong
Speaker 3: on one, because you're either delusional about what you're stepping
Speaker 3: into and what it's really going to take to get good,
Speaker 3: or you're not taking seriously the fact that you have
Speaker 3: an opportunity to impact people. This is some serious shit.
Speaker 3: You could be the person that says that thing in
Speaker 3: a way that has never been said to that one
Speaker 3: person in an audience of three hundred before, and five
Speaker 3: years from now they look back and like that was
Speaker 3: the day. That was the day things changed for me.
Speaker 3: If that doesn't scare you, do something else. And I
Speaker 3: know that there are a lot of A listers out
Speaker 3: there that they lived that lifestyle of bombing constantly because
Speaker 3: they due to a degree, write their own stuff still
Speaker 3: and they go to small comedy clubs and they'll get
Speaker 3: on stage and just try shit out. So my first show,
Speaker 3: what happened was we had a professional not like not
Speaker 3: like a name, not anyone who you would have heard of,
Speaker 3: but they said that this person was constantly working in
Speaker 3: La San Diego, you're a working comic. You're really good,
Speaker 3: and you've worked very hard to get there. He got
Speaker 3: on stage and it was so uncomfortable, and most of
Speaker 3: what he threw out bombed. It was Oh, it was cringe. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And you can tell up the look on his face
Speaker 3: he was enjoying the whole thing. Wow, because as a
Speaker 3: working comedian, he just got on stage that night, and
Speaker 3: you know, they weren't paying him to be there for
Speaker 3: that evening. He was just you know, getting up to
Speaker 3: do a set. Ninety percent of what he threw out
Speaker 3: he learned, Yeah, that doesn't work. That ten percent. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna refine that. And he does that all the time,
Speaker 3: and I think that's life. Ninety percent of the stuff
Speaker 3: you do is probably gonna suck, and then the ten
Speaker 3: percent's not, and then you keep refining that the ten
Speaker 3: percent of the ten percent is going to be amazing,
Speaker 3: and you just keep doing that. You're gonna have a
Speaker 3: large enough body of work where you could just get
Speaker 3: up in whatever your stage is, wherever you play, and
Speaker 3: perform really well because you've worked on craft long enough
Speaker 3: to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: Tell me about like you said something like, if you're
Speaker 1: not scared something's wrong or and I kind of I
Speaker 1: understand that, and I would be fucking terrified by the way,
Speaker 1: which is why I'll never do it, because I'm a
Speaker 1: big baby. But at the same time, we know that
Speaker 1: if we're scared, our you know, our critical thinking and
Speaker 1: our timing and our skill and our judgment. Like if
Speaker 1: ow amigdala is fucking lit up like a Christmas tree
Speaker 1: because we're fucking terrified, we know that all the other
Speaker 1: kind of cognitive skills drop. So how do you be
Speaker 1: simultaneously scared and get up there and do a great
Speaker 1: job when you probably can't think the way that you
Speaker 1: need to think to be excellent.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great question. The answer is, like
Speaker 3: anything else, you practice strategies that help you mitigate as
Speaker 3: well as direct, the emotional intensity you're feeling in the moment.
Speaker 3: Like one thing is movement, right, burn off that epit ephroent, Like,
Speaker 3: just burn it off. Move I'm not saying pace the
Speaker 3: stage like a cage tiger because you'll freak everyone out.
Speaker 3: But if you can help it before you go into
Speaker 3: your next meeting, before you know you go on your
Speaker 3: next date, or get up on your next stage instead
Speaker 3: of just sitting there the audience, Like you know, twenty
Speaker 3: minutes before you're gonna go on if you can, or
Speaker 3: even ten minutes, go for a walk, put on a headset,
Speaker 3: listen to some music that inspires you, instrumental and that movement.
Speaker 3: That movement will help with your stress hormone levels. Then
Speaker 3: when you get on stage, be deliberate within your movements,
Speaker 3: your expressions. Also, like you said, Jimmy call what he
Speaker 3: was talking about. I never heard him say that, but
Speaker 3: that's interesting because I found that worked for me. Let's
Speaker 3: say you have thirty minutes in front of an audience.
Speaker 3: The first five minutes, YE script that. Practice it, because
Speaker 3: once you deliver that, you're already moving into the quote
Speaker 3: unquote zone. It's really hard. Like if you have to
Speaker 3: manage two streams of consciousness, what you're trying to remember
Speaker 3: and what you're trying to communicate, that's way too much
Speaker 3: cognitive load. But if you have an opening signature story
Speaker 3: or a point that you want to make to draw
Speaker 3: your audience in, if that's rehearsed, you could just get
Speaker 3: into that. By the time you get out of that,
Speaker 3: you'll be flowing a lot more. So, there's steps that
Speaker 3: you can do. So there's a movement, there's deliberate action
Speaker 3: is another one. There is getting your first five to
Speaker 3: ten minutes of delivery so tight that that emotionally, biochemically,
Speaker 3: psychologically guides you into the presentation I think you know.
Speaker 3: And also find somebody in the room, unless you're presenting
Speaker 3: to an auditorium where you just look out into thousands
Speaker 3: of people and it's blackness, find someone, look at that
Speaker 3: person for a few seconds. Deliver to that one person,
Speaker 3: because here's the thing, that one person will be like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, this person's talking to me. What seems like
Speaker 3: an eternity for you, because sometimes like I don't want
Speaker 3: to stare at one person that's creepy, that's like they're
Speaker 3: going to report me to HR. If you lock eyes
Speaker 3: with them for three seconds, what feels like an eternity
Speaker 3: for you is a moment for them, and the rest
Speaker 3: of the room will feel more as if you're speaking
Speaker 3: to them looking at that one person than if you
Speaker 3: were just staring off into space or the back of
Speaker 3: the room. Then find another person, Yeah, particularly the friendly face,
Speaker 3: not the person who's frowning, not the person whose boss
Speaker 3: made them go, who's hoping like you have a stroke
Speaker 3: in the middle of this thing, so they can go home.
Speaker 3: They don't want to be here, not that person, but
Speaker 3: the next friendly face lock eyes with them, and just
Speaker 3: keep doing that. Within fifteen minutes, you'll be in a
Speaker 3: completely different state. So it's not a matter of having butterflies.
Speaker 3: Butterflies are great. Can you train those butterflies to fly
Speaker 3: in formation?
Speaker 1: That's the question, Oh, beautiful metaphor. I remember I've told
Speaker 1: this once before, but I've done a bunch of gigs
Speaker 1: where there was somebody in the audience who, in my mind,
Speaker 1: as I was on stage, they're looking at me, and
Speaker 1: clearly they fucking hight me me. I'm crashing and burning,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you the first time I so you speak, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, probably the first hundred times I spoke. But
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, like I'd be in a room
Speaker 1: with a one hundred people or whatever. It was a
Speaker 1: whole lot of people, and most people are somewhere between
Speaker 1: seemingly interested and really enjoying it, somewhere in that space,
Speaker 1: and I'll always find the one that looks like he
Speaker 1: hates me. It's usually a hymn, and all I do,
Speaker 1: like the other ninety nine who were digging it. They
Speaker 1: don't even come into my attention. But this one dude
Speaker 1: who fucking hates me, he has all of my energy.
Speaker 1: And anyway, I had this one guy. It was actually
Speaker 1: at a gig that I don't normally do. It was
Speaker 1: in a gym, so it was members of a gym,
Speaker 1: and I remember I'm looking at him. I'm thinking as
Speaker 1: I'm talking, I'm thinking, this stuff is relevant. This is
Speaker 1: an area that I'm really comfortable in. I'm talking, you know,
Speaker 1: if I have any area of expertise, it's the shit
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about right now. Because I was talking
Speaker 1: as an exercise scientist and a jim Anna, you know,
Speaker 1: a trainer of people over a very long period of time,
Speaker 1: and I just like it was bothering me at the
Speaker 1: same time as I was like completely my fault. I
Speaker 1: ended up doing I would say a seven or a
Speaker 1: seven and a half out of ten. It wasn't brilliant,
Speaker 1: it wasn't terrible, it was okay. Anyway, the dude who'd
Speaker 1: just been like cold, staring me, not smiling, looking at
Speaker 1: me like he just had contempt. At the end, he
Speaker 1: comes up to talk to me, and he's with his
Speaker 1: wife and he walks up and he's holding her sleeve
Speaker 1: and he's legally blind, so he couldn't even fucking see me.
Speaker 1: And he's like that was amazing. I'm like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: I go really, I go, do you know what?
Speaker 1: Can I tell you something funny? He's like what, I go,
Speaker 1: I thought you hated me. He goes why and I go,
Speaker 1: cause you're kind of looking at me like with that
Speaker 1: I hate you face and he goes, I can't see you.
Speaker 1: I'm legally blind, or he goes, I can see you
Speaker 1: kind of now, but I couldn't see you there. He goes, No,
Speaker 1: you're funny.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 1: It's like, ah yeah, like I literally invented a problem,
Speaker 1: like I plucked the problem out of thin air, and
Speaker 1: I actually made my own experience bad like no one
Speaker 1: else did. So it happens. Hey, tif, I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you, similar to Bobby's kind of thinking around getting
Speaker 1: on stage. You did a gig very recently, quite a decent,
Speaker 1: big gig, well paid, grown up like look at tiff,
Speaker 1: I'm a pro speaker gig, and how that was one.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've done quite a bit, but this was
Speaker 1: like stepping up a bit for you. It was good Money,
Speaker 1: good group quite a long time on stage. How did
Speaker 1: you feel going into that? Because I may or may
Speaker 1: not have got a call from a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who was a little bit panic strict, and as she
Speaker 1: was driving.
Speaker 2: In, you're talking about that the recent workshop.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, yeah, yeah, that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well it was I didn't love it, Harps.
Speaker 1: I didn't love it.
Speaker 2: This time because I've got all these new ideas and
Speaker 2: concepts and strategies and stuff in my mind. So I
Speaker 2: felt like I was in the middle of tif pre
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five learnings and TIFF post twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: learnings and then doing something completely new in a completely
Speaker 2: different environment. So it's interesting because there's so much stimulus.
Speaker 1: To Can I just interrupt it? Can I just interrupt?
Speaker 1: Tell our audience that might not know what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is you've just been immersed in this speaking program
Speaker 1: for six months or so, and so you were looking
Speaker 1: through that lens and that was and then you stepped
Speaker 1: into this environment where that wasn't really that appropriate, right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, look it could have been, but there's you
Speaker 2: have to make a choice of how how would I
Speaker 2: like to deliver this workshop? And this is how I
Speaker 2: normally deliver workshops, but this is this new framework and
Speaker 2: there's some new ideas and strategies and how would I
Speaker 2: like to choose to operate this time? And so for me,
Speaker 2: it felt like there was a lot of spinning plates
Speaker 2: in my mind in the middle of doing the process,
Speaker 2: which is funny. And what was very funny is I
Speaker 2: rang you afterwards and I was like, I hated it.
Speaker 2: Not good the feedback. The feedback was surprisingly really good,
Speaker 2: but I didn't love it. But the last concept I'll
Speaker 2: remember speaking to these people about was how our perception
Speaker 2: of our performance is never never accurate. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: not ironic, right, because then you going, oh, my performance
Speaker 2: was terrible.
Speaker 1: YEA, so funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What I would ask you guys before when you were
Speaker 2: talking about the comedy, and this would apply to perhaps
Speaker 2: speaking as well, but how much do you think the
Speaker 2: success of a working comic comes back to the curating
Speaker 2: of your audience over time? Because you talk about speaking
Speaker 2: in warm rooms as opposed to cold rooms, so that
Speaker 2: makes a huge impact on delivery. But also you think
Speaker 2: about if someone I was reflecting on going to see
Speaker 2: Hannah Gadsby when she was in Melbourne and there was
Speaker 2: a great comic that came on before her that no
Speaker 2: one knew who was ended up being quite funny. But
Speaker 2: there's no warmth. There's no warmth when they walk on stage.
Speaker 2: They have to earn that with hard reps. And then
Speaker 2: I remember Hannah Gadsby, a song comes on and everyone
Speaker 2: laughed and applauded, and she hadn't even and then she
Speaker 2: might have said some one word or something over the
Speaker 2: mic as she and everyone was clapping and laughing, and
Speaker 2: like she has that rapport over time, and everyone knows
Speaker 2: what and you know what style of humor you're there for,
Speaker 2: you know, the intellect of the person that's delivering that content.
Speaker 1: M That's the terror and horror and vulnerability of being
Speaker 1: a corporate speaker. Where you go to rooms. Where I
Speaker 1: did a gig at Crown, there was one thousand people
Speaker 1: there and the guy said, who knows Craig's work, and like,
Speaker 1: fuck nobody, And I'm like, oh, awesome. So I'm like, hey, mate,
Speaker 1: shut the fuck up, get off the stage, you know.
Speaker 1: And so there were really the best part of a
Speaker 1: thousand people who didn't know who the fuck I was.
Speaker 1: You know, I may be a few people, but the
Speaker 1: vast majority didn't know who I was, so there was
Speaker 1: no expectation. There was no you know, there was and
Speaker 1: they weren't. Well, they were cold in that they didn't.
Speaker 1: I had to work.
Speaker 3: I had to.
Speaker 1: Work hard for the first fifteen minutes to not fucking sink.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like, it doesn't matter what your
Speaker 1: content is. The first five to ten minutes is do
Speaker 1: we like him? Do we trust him? Is he a
Speaker 1: fuck with? Does he know anything? Do I want to
Speaker 1: listen to him for an hour? Is my Instagram feed
Speaker 1: going to be more interesting in the next five minutes
Speaker 1: than this fucking idiot? And why should it? You know,
Speaker 1: It's like and as you're up there, there's this myriad
Speaker 1: of you know, emotions and thoughts and ideas and feelings,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, you don't want any of
Speaker 1: that to transfer to the room. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: me talking at a Craig Harper Live event like you've
Speaker 1: been to multiple times, like Bobby, you've spoken at you
Speaker 1: know where we're at. Where at Angle c doing a
Speaker 1: or Man Lives are doing a camp, or where at
Speaker 1: Deacon University where seven hundred people in a room Like
Speaker 1: I literally can walk out in that room with seven
Speaker 1: one hundred people and just look at people and smile
Speaker 1: and just be cheeky and people laugh because it's they
Speaker 1: want they want to be there, and they chose to
Speaker 1: come to see me, whereas a lot of events nobody
Speaker 1: chose me. I just happened to be the bloke that
Speaker 1: they're wheeling out at ten o'clock. You know. So it
Speaker 1: is a completely different challenge and a completely different dynamic. Bobby,
Speaker 1: you would have had the same thing, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, completely different dynamic. When an audience knows you
Speaker 3: and they're there, I mean they want to listen to
Speaker 3: your content, but they're there because they want to listen
Speaker 3: to you. They like your style. There's there's a resonance,
Speaker 3: there's a familiarity. It's a completely different animal than walking
Speaker 3: into a cold room. I think the longer you have
Speaker 3: to present, the easier it is to overcome that yeah
Speaker 3: you said, you said something really important. When you step
Speaker 3: out on stage, the first thing is an audience is thinking,
Speaker 3: as with any rea it could be a metaphorical stage,
Speaker 3: is so what and why should I listen to you?
Speaker 3: So people tell you, Well, when you come out, just
Speaker 3: like start delivering takeaways. That's like telling somebody the first
Speaker 3: you know, four weeks of working out, like you just
Speaker 3: want to get as strong as possible, Like you're an
Speaker 3: early stage motor learner, Like what are you even doing?
Speaker 3: So you got to win over that room before they
Speaker 3: even trust you and give you permission to influence them
Speaker 3: in any way, because you're always there by permission. So
Speaker 3: it makes that emotional connection even more important. If you
Speaker 3: got twenty minutes hard to do, if you got an
Speaker 3: hour easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so true. It's like the longer you have,
Speaker 1: as long as you're not dying for twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: At the stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I like it when I have two
Speaker 1: or three hours because I don't have to rush. I
Speaker 1: can make it much more interactive. I know that I
Speaker 1: can talk for three hours without any prepper, and I
Speaker 1: know it gives me a lot of space to be
Speaker 1: able to go wherever I want to go, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of content and activities and connection and energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the hardest gigs are twenty I've only done
Speaker 1: maybe one or two, but I've done like literally where
Speaker 1: I've been paid a stupid amount of money to go
Speaker 1: to a conference to talk for twenty minutes. I'm like,
Speaker 1: do you want me to talk for forty five minutes?
Speaker 1: I won't charge you anymore. They're like, no, we just
Speaker 1: want twenty minutes. And it was basically a roster of
Speaker 1: pretty good speakers that just got up for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm like, fuck, I do not. This is so much
Speaker 1: harder than two hours because I don't know what I've
Speaker 1: got to leave out ninety eight percent of what I
Speaker 1: might you know, it's like, all right, so I'm maybe
Speaker 1: going to get through four things in these twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: So what are those four things? Tif If you had
Speaker 1: to do that workshop that you did recently, you had
Speaker 1: to do it next week, same workshop, but to a
Speaker 1: different group of humans, what would you change?
Speaker 2: Just a just a tighter plan. I think I had
Speaker 2: a I had a I had a plan, but then
Speaker 2: I kept it loose and interactive, and I just think
Speaker 2: I would probably have a tighter plan with around wrapped
Speaker 2: around that same you know, the same all of the
Speaker 2: same concepts and topics we talked about, but just yeah,
Speaker 2: because it was two hours, so it was it was longer,
Speaker 2: and you never know, like you never know how many
Speaker 2: people are going to interact and how how how much
Speaker 2: the conversation will take place, and that I really like
Speaker 2: to have workshops to be very interactive and conversational, which
Speaker 2: had got in the end, it was very much like that.
Speaker 2: But I, Yeah, the time frame for me was I
Speaker 2: felt like I was very aware of how long is
Speaker 2: this taking? What have I gotten through? Where have we been?
Speaker 2: Where are we going? You know, just a lot of
Speaker 2: but you can't you can't learn. I can't learn without
Speaker 2: putting myself into that situation. So come out of that
Speaker 2: and went oh and sometimes, but that audience was very different.
Speaker 2: I there were some things I mentioned and people hadn't
Speaker 2: heard of the people, and I remember thinking, who, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't know about that? So used to people knowing
Speaker 2: about maybe the people I refer to or talk about
Speaker 2: or some of the concepts, so that you know, just
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff. What am I talking about? That
Speaker 2: I might not be taking that into account?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that exactly what level is this group out in
Speaker 1: terms of what they know or what their you know,
Speaker 1: their language or their Yeah, if I'm talking to an
Speaker 1: academic group, it's totally different to if I'm talking to
Speaker 1: a bunch of blokes on a construction site. Nobody's smarter
Speaker 1: or dumber they're just different. Yes, they're interested in different
Speaker 1: things and different language. And you know, like I've spoken
Speaker 1: a few times in prison, and I figured out first
Speaker 1: time I was in there. I figured out what they
Speaker 1: are interested in from me, the excise scientist is they're
Speaker 1: interested in learning how to get as strong as possible
Speaker 1: with no equipment or limited equipment. So I taught them
Speaker 1: about manual training. So I would every time I went in,
Speaker 1: I would get one of them to go get a towel,
Speaker 1: and I would train the strongest guy I could find
Speaker 1: with a towel doing manual resistance training, push pull training,
Speaker 1: and we'd have no dumbells, no bar bells, no gym equipment.
Speaker 1: I would put that guy through twenty or thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of hell, and because I understand how to make him
Speaker 1: work hard, and you know, and they're like great, But
Speaker 1: that's because oh I'm in prison. I want to be safe,
Speaker 1: i want to be strong, I want muscle. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go in there and talk to them
Speaker 1: about fucking the meaning of life, you know, or how
Speaker 1: to you know, be a better communicator on stage, you know,
Speaker 1: or whatever. It's like horses for courses, Hey, Bobby going
Speaker 1: to wind up. But so with your first two gigs,
Speaker 1: what's one thing that you wouldn't do again or one
Speaker 1: thing that you thought was a mistake or didn't fly,
Speaker 1: and what's one thing that perhaps went great.
Speaker 3: H that's a hard that is a hard question.
Speaker 1: Because let me ask let me ask an easier one.
Speaker 1: What did you learn something that because I feel like
Speaker 1: you're doing comedy schools so to speak, but there's no
Speaker 1: learning environment like the actual job itself. Like, so when
Speaker 1: you're doing the job in front of the room, what
Speaker 1: was the maybe the key takeaway for you.
Speaker 3: That would be it? I think you just said it.
Speaker 3: And it's like, if you're going to get good at anything,
Speaker 3: it's wraps. I mean I could go to swim school
Speaker 3: and I could, you know, study the biomechanics of swimming.
Speaker 3: You're going to get in the pool and do some
Speaker 3: laps if you're ever going to be a decent swimmer.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think the lessons are a lot
Speaker 3: of people talk about imposter syndrome, where I think that
Speaker 3: could be either crippling or it could be an advantage
Speaker 3: because to some degree, like there's an element honesty there.
Speaker 3: But yes, just like our attitude shape, our behaviors. Our
Speaker 3: behaviors conversely shape our attitudes and beliefs. And that's one
Speaker 3: of the lessons I've learned from my teacher is the
Speaker 3: power of belief. I feel uncomfortable saying that because it's
Speaker 3: a language I've kind of moved away from the past
Speaker 3: few years, mistakenly. Having that belief in yourself and that confidence,
Speaker 3: it not only inoculates you from a lot of the
Speaker 3: hurt and disappointment that you're going to have to face
Speaker 3: in order to get better at just about anything that's
Speaker 3: important to you, but it also allows you to excel
Speaker 3: in self expression. And that belief comes from execute on
Speaker 3: a series of behaviors. So getting up on stage that
Speaker 3: was like the best and the worst of it, and
Speaker 3: I know that. In class Tony was like, you know
Speaker 3: what your problem is? He thought my second set was fantastic.
Speaker 3: He's like, but it's your delivery because you have not
Speaker 3: completely committed to delivering this. You do not believe yet.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yes, okay, and he's one hundred right.
Speaker 3: So it's that belief and whatever you want to get
Speaker 3: good at, what are the behaviors that someone who is
Speaker 3: really good at that has done or still does start
Speaker 3: doing those behaviors.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to try real hard but simultaneously look
Speaker 1: like you're not trying at all.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's where trying hard comes in, because
Speaker 3: when you're on stage, you should be trying hard at all.
Speaker 3: You should just be in the flow and performing. That's
Speaker 3: why your practice is so damn brutal. That's why you
Speaker 3: need so many reps. And I think one of the
Speaker 3: things that benefits you is it is there an arena
Speaker 3: where the stakes are different, because I can understand something
Speaker 3: like going, oh, I don't want to do trial and
Speaker 3: error at board presentations because I'll get sacked if I
Speaker 3: screw up with those. But one of the things, like
Speaker 3: if you have a domain like comedy, nobody's gonna sack me.
Speaker 3: They might not invite me back. But if I bomb
Speaker 3: on stage, and I don't want to because if people
Speaker 3: are paying like whatever, they're paying like sixteen bucks to
Speaker 3: come see me, like, I respect that. I want them
Speaker 3: to have a really good time. But if I did
Speaker 3: bomb on stage, I personally would enjoy it because I know,
Speaker 3: maybe not that night, but next week, next month, there's
Speaker 3: a lesson there. And I just think the irony of
Speaker 3: someone who stands up to do comedy and just dies
Speaker 3: in front of the room is hilarious. Maybe not for
Speaker 3: the audience, but for me. I wouldn't feel the same
Speaker 3: way if I was at work. So if you can
Speaker 3: have a compartmentalized arena where you can go through the
Speaker 3: pain and the struggle of gruth, but the steaks are not.
Speaker 3: Oh jeez, I just lost I just lost a major
Speaker 3: account for my company. I think that's something that people
Speaker 3: should consider. Get looking into.
Speaker 1: Oh, doing scary shit, Folks doing scary shit to learn
Speaker 1: and grow and evolve a bobby. Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: How can they connect with you online? I don't mean personally, physically, geographically.
Speaker 3: Hi unfriendly? I want him, I'm looking for you.
Speaker 1: See him about give him a cuddle, just maybe stand
Speaker 1: back a little bit, just offer him some food, don't
Speaker 1: get too close to his mouth. Where can they find
Speaker 1: you online?
Speaker 3: LinkedIn? Okay, all right, that's and well I have websites too,
Speaker 3: but LinkedIn? Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: All right. He does have a podcast called yo.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're fucking terrible at promoting yourself. Uh, TIF, thank
Speaker 1: you any words of wisdom as we wind up?
Speaker 2: TIF, that's it from me, mate, you're the you're the guru.
Speaker 2: I'm just.
Speaker 1: I'm just the ship kicker. I'm just up the front
Speaker 1: steering the ship. You're the captain. Thanks everyone,