McGraw Shtick to Business

What the Masters of Comedy Can Teach You about Breaking Rules, Being Fearle
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0806-1
Verlag: Lioncrest Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

What do comedians know about killing it in business? Just ask a behavioral economist who teaches MBAs by day and decodes comedy by night. Dr. Peter McGraw-a business school professor, professional speaker, and founder of the Humor Research Lab (aka HuRL)-translates the genius and madness of the world's funniest people into powerful prescriptions for professional success. Drawing on cutting-edge research, case studies, and his own comedy successes (and failures), Peter reveals surprising business lessons from the masters of comedy: What Bill Murray and Groucho Marx know about career management. Why Dave Chappelle and Joan Rivers are a blueprint for brand building. What Tina Fey and Amy Poehler can teach you about leadership and teamwork. How Jerry Seinfeld's daily rituals made him the wealthiest comic alive. The insights in Shtick to Business will help you improve innovation and outsmart the competition. You'll build new skills-enhanced creativity, better decision-making, and a marketing mindset-to launch a business, tackle tough management problems, and build a serious career. And you'll never have to tell a joke.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McGraw, Peter

Leseproben

Chapter 1
1. Reverse It
“We need bullies.” Chris Rock shares this unsettling perspective in his Netflix stand-up comedy special, Tambourine. He describes the strict no-bullying policy at his daughter’s school, one so strict that any bully will be kicked out of school immediately. His response? “And right then, I wanted to take my daughter out of the school.” Chris Rock has written, produced, directed, and starred in movies and television, but he is best known for his stand-up. His comedy specials Bring the Pain and Bigger and Blacker made him a household name (and one of my favorite comedians). He developed his delivery style by observing his father and grandfather, both preachers. Rock paces the stage, repeats his premise, and often stops suddenly for emphasis. He even has his own catchphrase, “Yeah, I said it!” Rock believes the world is better with bullies. Bullies prepare children for the harsh realities of adulthood. “Bullies do half the work. That’s right. Teachers do one-half, bullies do the whole other half. And that’s the half you’re going to use.” He points out that, sure, you may know how to program a computer, but that doesn’t matter much if “you start crying because your boss didn’t say ‘Hi.’” He closes with this bit of wisdom: “Pressure makes diamonds. Not hugs.” Sure, bullies are bad, but Chris Rock makes a compelling case for the opposite. He is a master of the reversal. Smash the Status Quo
Chris Rock, like most comedians, is no fan of the status quo. Comedians are constantly looking for what’s wrong with the way things are. They seem to recognize what most people (and businesses) don’t: the status quo is something to be loathed and avoided at all costs. Most of the time, people seek to maintain the status quo. No big changes. Let’s not get crazy. The desire to cling to the status quo and avoid change is so pervasive and problematic, scientists have given it a name: the status quo bias. Behavioral economists, entrepreneurs, and CEOs are (or at least should be) particularly concerned about the status quo bias because it inhibits risk-taking and disguises opportunities. People with this bias (in other words, most of humanity) find it exceptionally difficult to move away from their current state of the world. The bias makes change difficult, so things stay the same. The underlying cause of the bias is loss aversion: the loss of a change looms larger than the gain from the change. Basically, we are more sensitive to potentially bad things than potentially good things. Have you ever started a new job and made a suggested change only to hear the response, “That’s not how we do it here”? You have just witnessed the status quo bias in action. Thinking in reverse creates a path that deviates from the status quo in a direction that few people are thinking. It often makes people uncomfortable. But extraordinary results do not come from ordinary thinking. Hardcore for Your Health
You know who else is no fan of the status quo? Tony Horton.8 For decades, the status quo in the fitness industry was to sell “easy” ways to get in shape. ThighMaster. Vibro-belts. Sauna suits. Jazzercise. Toning Shoes. 8-minute abs. 7-minute abs. 6-minute abs. 5-minute abs. You get the point. And the Shake Weight. The Shake Weight is a ridiculous product. But what should have amounted to a trip to HR somehow resulted in sales exceeding $40 million. Then along comes Tony Horton with a reversal. In the eighties, Horton was a struggling actor and aspiring comedian living in Los Angeles. To make ends meet, he did a bit of everything. He was a bartender, waiter, carpenter, handyman, and go-go dancer at Chippendales. As he pursued acting, Horton got seriously into working out (e.g., weights, biking, runs, calisthenics, hitting the heavy bag), once helping a pal in the music industry lose more than twenty-five pounds. Seeing results like that, Tom Petty (yes, that Tom Petty) asked Horton to help him get in shape four months before a tour. After Horton took Petty through his paces, Petty was so ripped that he started wearing his leather vest sans shirt on stage. Suddenly, Horton was an in-demand celebrity trainer for Billy Idol, Bruce Springsteen, and Annie Lennox. When Horton was approached by the company Beach Body to create a new fitness product, he used tactics that worked for his celebrity clients: “muscle confusion” (i.e., variety), a cheeky attitude, and of course, tough workouts six days a week. The high-intensity program features weight training, plyometrics, kickboxing, cardio, yoga, and the AbRipper. Not convinced? The company asks that you have your health assessed by a doctor before you begin. You might know the workout as Power 90 Extreme (P90X). P90X was invented with an inverted promise from other products in the market: P90X is hard. P90X is hard. P90X is hard. I know this to be true. While researching this story, I did a workout with Horton in his backyard and was sore for two and a half days. I didn’t know my groin even had those muscles. P90x flipped everything the industry was doing. A session can take ninety minutes. You won’t see results in just ten days. It costs more. Yet the program sold over four million DVDs—and is worth $200 million to its parent company, Beach Body. In addition to the sales, P90X became the most pirated DVD of the day—people were ripping how to get ripped. Bad joke. Where’s Shane when I need him? By reversing the status quo of exercise from as easy as possible to intentionally difficult, P90X tapped the market of underserved achievers. And, as Horton quipped, “The Shake Weight became a paperweight.” This is just one example of a reversal at work in business. Let’s look closer at this principle through the eyes of comedy so you can begin designing reversals of your own. Architecting a Reversal
Flipping what is expected in the mind of the audience is one of the first tricks—likely the first—a comedian learns. The reversal can be seen in a comedy premise, such as a bit about bullies being good. A movie’s plot can be based on a reversal. For example, in the movie Trading Places, a street hustler, Eddie Murphy, and a wealthy banker, Dan Akroyd…trade places. The typical romantic comedy follows a standard storyline: Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. The movie Trainwreck, however, is a reverse rom-com. The leads switch stereotypical roles. Amy Schumer plays a party girl who resists monogamy until a kind, successful doctor (played by Bill Hader) helps her see the benefits of “settling down.” Flipping the typical romantic comedy premise refreshed an otherwise tired storyline—and made $140 million at the box office. A reversal can also occur as part of a punchline. Stand-up comedians will often set up an expectation at the beginning of a joke, only to reverse course at the end. Chuck Roy is a six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound bear of a comedian. He is also a reversal personified: a gay Republican. Here’s his system for creating comedy reversals: Step 1: Start with an anecdote or phrase. This is the setup. Here’s Chuck Roy’s setup: I’m from New Hampshire where the State Motto is, ‘Live Free or Die’… Identify the direction the anecdote or phrase takes the audience. Step 2: Turn the anecdote or phrase. This will be your punchline. To find the perfect punchline, Roy asks three questions: What is the reverse of that direction? What is the opposite idea of the phrase? Is there a switcheroo? I’m from New Hampshire where the State Motto is, ‘Live Free or Die’. I chose move. Step 3: Pause for the laugh. I added this one. Roy is still young. Here’s another example from one of the masters, Henny “The King of the One Liner” Youngman: When I read about the dangers of drinking… And now Youngman’s switcheroo: When I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up reading. Classic. Enjoy these other comedy reversals: I tried being a stay-at-home mom...