When I first moved to Atlanta,
I was driving a 15-year-old, aqua-green, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme
with over 300,000 miles on it.
Now, where I come from, they call this kind of car a "hoopy."
So for all of you who are not from the hood,
let me explain.
A hoopy is an old car, it's a junker, it's a beater.
It's one of them cars you're determined to drive until the wheels fall off.
Well, my car's name was Miss Bessie.
Now you know if you ever had a hoopy, you've got to give it a name.
(Laughter)
I wrote a speech about my car.
That speech was called "Miss Bessie, the Hoopy."
In that speech, I talked about how, every time I drove this car,
tow trucks would be circling around me like vultures.
(Laughter)
This car burned more oil than a deep fryer at Church's Chicken.
(Laughter)
I no longer had a car note, but repairs were running me $450 a month.
(Laughter)
I entered that Miss Bessie the Hoopy speech into a speech contest,
and that year,
I won first place in the Toastmasters humorous speech contest
for the state of Georgia.
Now, I tell you that story because it's the perfect example
of what I've come to call "Finding the Funny."
I do a lot of public speaking.
Over the past 25 years or so,
between giving sales presentations,
doing training sessions, speaking in Toastmasters,
I've probably spoken over a thousand times in public.
Out of all the things that I love to do when it comes to public speaking,
I love to tell humorous stories and to give humorous speeches.
In 2010, I wrote a book called "Finding the Funny."
That book was a compilation
of a lot of humorous speeches that I had done up until that point.
So, after winning the contest and writing the book,
people have asked me to come out in their workshops and seminars,
teaching people how to develop humor in public speaking.
I call this philosophy or the body of knowledge "Finding the Funny."
So what is Finding the Funny,
and how can you use it to help you as a public speaker?
Finding the Funny, first of all, is a mindset.
Finding the Funny is looking at the world through humor-colored glasses.
It's about taking all the things that happen to you
on a daily basis,
and trying to find the humor in it.
Let's face it, if you have to speak in public,
if you have to go out and give presentations for work,
you need to have a little humor in your presentation.
When you learn to develop a Finding the Funny mindset,
you're able to take those things that happen to you on a daily basis,
and you're able to develop humorous stories and vignettes
that you can incorporate into your speeches,
so that you could be a more entertaining speaker.
Speakers love to tell jokes,
and audiences love to tell jokes
and hear speakers be funny.
When you can add humor to your presentation,
it lets the audiences loosen up,
and it helps you become more entertaining or likable as a speaker.
So, what can you do to Find the Funny?
First of all, I'm going to give you a few examples
of how I was able to Find the Funny.
So I'm having Sunday morning with my wife,
we're sitting there at the table,
we're looking out our back window, having Sunday breakfast,
and my wife says to me, "You know, we should get a bird feeder."
I said, "No problem."
Like a good husband, I march off to the hardware store,
I get a bird feeder, I bring it back, I hang it up on the deck.
No problem, right?
Wrong!
That's when I discovered
that, in addition to attracting birds, bird feeders attract squirrels.
I had just purchased a squirrel magnet.
That one suggestion that my wife gave me of purchasing a bird feeder
started a whole series of events.
It was a battle royale.
Oh, it was on!
It was between Al versus the squirrels,
and I was determined
not to let a rodent with a brain the size of a peanut outsmart me.
I was determined to find a squirrel-proof bird feeder.
I got online.
I started googling high-tech bird feeders.
I'm looking up bird feeders with names like:
Super Stop a Squirrel,
(Laughter)
Stump a Squirrel,
(Laughter)
Squirrel Be Gone.
(Laughter)
It got so bad
my wife walked in the house one day
and found me laying on the floor with a BB gun aimed out the window.
She said, "What in the world are you doing?"
I said, "I've got to keep those squirrels away from the bird feeder."
Totally obsessed, right?
So I wrote a speech called "Squirrels at the Bird Feeder,"
and this became one of the leading chapters of our book.
Let me give you another example of how I could Find the Funny.
So I'm sitting on my sofa one day, I'm channel-surfing, I'm watching TV,
and all of a sudden, I can't get the remote to work.
So my first thought in my mind was,
"Ah, heck, I have to get up and walk all the way over there
and change the channel."
That's when it dawned on me:
are we so spoiled by our technology
that it's actually making us lazy?
I wrote a speech called "Is Technology Making us Lazy?"
Well, I made a direct comparison
of all of the gizmos and gadgets
and high-tech things that we have in our life,
and how we're getting a little soft around the middle.
I even developed a name for this phenomenon.
I call it techno-lazy.
Just think about it.
We don't have to wash dishes anymore,
we don't have to open doors,
we don't have to walk up stairs.
I just used the restroom at the break.
I didn't have to turn the water on,
I didn't have to flush the toilet.
(Laughter)
All of these gizmos and gadgets are making our lives so much easier for us.
Techno-lazy.
Another way to Find the Funny is to make fun of yourself.
Audiences love it
when you can use a little self-deprecating humor
and make yourself the butt of the joke.
So what you want to do is you want to find
all of the weird and crazy little wacky things that you do,
and you want to learn -
I know you all got them, right?
Everybody's got all of our little weird perks in that.
Take a look at those things, make a list of those things,
and be willing to talk about those things in your speeches.
For example, you could talk about where you're from.
Now, I happen to be from Detroit, Michigan,
born and raised.
I grew up with kids named Rocky, Bonky, and Oogie,
and these were the girls.
(Laughter)
I wrote a speech called
"My Pet Peeves, Idiosyncrasies, and Quirks,"
where I talked about all of our little quirks.
I talked about how I'm a neat freak, how I'm organized, how I'm a germaphobe,
and how I'm faithful and loyal, just like a dog.
Ah, my wife threw that last one in.
(Laughter)
So,
once you start developing this Finding the Funny mindset,
you develop the ability to see your life almost like a sitcom,
and you walk around
and you start Finding the Funny in everything that happens to you,
Let me give you a little formula
on how you can use Finding the Funny
to develop it into speeches and humor when you have to give presentations.
I call this formula "OCDD."
It's observe, capture, develop, and deliver.
First of all, you've got to observe.
Humor is around us everywhere.
You've just got to learn to see it.
So always be on the lookout for humor in your life.
Everywhere you go, things happen to you,
but you just don't notice the humor in it.
Once you start developing a Finding the Funny mindset,
you'll learn to see the humor in everything; so always observe.
The second is you've got to start capturing these events.
Now, because I'm a humorist
and because I have a Finding the Funny mindset,
I have a notebook that I carry with me all the time.
Even when we go on roadtrips,
I give my wife the book, she's writing, and I say,
"Honey, write this down."
I'm thinking about ideas.
Over the years I've accumulated this shoe box full of notebooks
just with all of these little ideas that I capture on it.
Some of you are saying, "Notebooks? That's old-school,"
If notebooks are too old-school, there's probably an app for that, right?
So you have to capture all of these ideas.
So once you capture these ideas -
What I've started doing recently is I've even started taking pictures
of funny things that I see.
I was sitting at a light the other day,
and I looked, and this guy next to me had a landscaping truck.
The name of his landscaping business,
emblazoned in a big logo on the side of his truck,
was "The Weed Man."
(Laughter)
How many times a day does this guy get stopped by the police?
(Laughter)
I envisioned there were two guys sitting in the truck.
They looked just like Cheech and Chong, right?
They roll the window down, and smoke comes on out of there.
So, you guys, start capturing these ideas.
Capture them, write them down, put them on the voice-controlling app.
And then next, you have to start developing your ideas.
Once you start building up all these ideas and that,
then you can sit down.
Sit down with the ideas.
Work with them, embellish them.
If nothing occurs to you that's funny about it at the time,
google the idea with the word "humor"
just to get some ideas flowing.
You've got to play with the ideas.
All it takes is a little creative imagination
and a healthy dose of embellishment.
So always create.
And then, next is delivery: work on your delivery.
What you want to do is to find a good Toastmasters club
or a good public speaking venue
where you can stand up, and you can practice these ideas,
so that you can get some humor, and you can get some feedback.
So that's how you develop the Finding the Funny mindset.
I witnessed something recently
that I think is a perfect example
of using the power of humor in public speaking.
Two weeks ago,
I watched the Toastmasters International
2019 World Championship of Public Speaking.
This was broadcast live
from the annual convention in Denver, Colorado.
Now this is, by any stretch of the imagination,
the largest speech contest in the world,
with over 30,000 participants
from over 140 countries.
At this stage, there were six finalists who had made it to the world stage.
Now these six finalists
had to give a significantly original five- to seven-minute speech.
And keep in mind, this contest is international,
so these speeches had to be universal enough
to appeal to the international audience.
Six finalists had made it to the world stage.
As they began to speak, I started to count the laughs
that each number of speakers received.
I found it very interesting that the first-place winner
also had the most laughs at 26.
The second-place winner had the second highest laugh count at 25.
The third-place winner had the third highest laugh count at 20 laughs.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a powerful example
of using humor in public speaking.
What I hope I've shared with you today
is developing a Finding the Funny mindset.
Here's the most important thing of what I'm saying with you today.
If you develop a Finding the Funny mindset,
it not only helps you as a speaker, when you're giving presentations,
but it will also help you in your personal life.
I could count the times on one hand that I have a bad day every year
because I've learned to see the humor in life.
When you develop a Finding the Funny mindset,
you bypass all the negativity and all the divisiveness
because you will always find something to smile about.
Finding the Funny is an "Idea Worth Spreading."
Just one simple change in mindset
has the ability to change your entire outlook on life,
and not only will it make you a better speaker.
I hope that every single one of you will develop a Finding the Funny mindset,
so that you can wake up every day,
and you can put on those humor-colored glasses
and Find the Funny in your life.
Thank you.
(Applause)