208 – How to use humour to grow your business. How funny’s that?!

Troy:        

Hurray!

Zara:   

Good day, Timbo.

Tim:   

Lovely to have you guys on board, already got a smile on my dial. Now, let me start with the quote from the top of your website. You’re both looking at each other going “oh my God, what do we got there?”

Zara:       

Exactly, exactly.

Tim:      

I totally agree with what you say. “There is an epidemic of over-seriousness happening in the workplace and it leads to sickness, absenteeism, less creativity, poor customer service, reduced profit, and a high degree of party-pooperism.” The big question is what’s party-pooperism? No it’s not. What’s going on in the workplace?

Troy:    

It’s very scientific term obviously, Timbo, very scientific.

Tim:     

Correct, correct. What’s going on in the workplace?

Zara: 

I stand by everything we have said on the top of our website there.

Tim:   

Lucky that.

Zara:    

There’s a big problem going on out there, Tim. And I think that we’ve really lost our way. We think that capability and seriousness are connected, that they’re related in some way and they couldn’t be further apart. Obviously we need to be capable in work and life. We don’t always have to be serious and in fact being overly serious, and we do it all the time, and we spend almost every day in someone’s fabulous boardroom in some part of Australia, talking to them about their conferencing or their businesses, the programs they’d like to run. And the amount of times that people come straight into a conversation with the agenda, with what they want to get ticked off, because time is money but don’t take the time for the necessities, don’t take the time to actually build rapport.

Tim:       

So do you just stop at that point and go “hang on team, got a quick gag for you.”

Zara:     

Weirdly it’s not about jokes. It’s about a mindset. It’s about an attitude that you walk in with. It’s really not about jokes. I need you to hear this particularly, Tim.

Tim:   

What do you mean by that? Taken that one offline.

Zara:   

You know what it’s really about? It’s about being good company with someone and we always say if you want a good company, be good company. Be someone that people would like to spend time with and as I say, people jump into the business stuff and they don’t really care about building the relationships as much and I think small business people do this much better than the big corporations because they understand how important it is. We’ve got little tools that we use to kind of deflect or diffuse that kind of energy. They’re not necessarily ones that we ever share but I’ll share one with you now. It’s one that we use all the time, it’s just called the 1, 2, 3 thing to me, which is we always do 2 unrelated conversations before we get to the business conversation. So you walk in to work and as opposed to saying “hey, can you get me that file?” You say “hey, did you check out the game on Sunday night? How amazing was that” and “am I looking at something different in you? Is there a different haircut, different color? By the way, the kitchen’s on fire and can you get me that file?”

Tim:    

To that point, because you came back to me on an email yesterday and said, something to the effect of…gee, what did you say? You’re not big on the small talk because it was an email to you suggesting or asking you for something. To me what you are suggesting, Zara, I get but it also feels like small talk and it’s not necessarily authentic because do you really care about what they thought about the game?

Zara:    

Yeah I do, I do. And I think that you need to connect on someone else’s level. You need to see where they’re at as opposed to just what you did yesterday, Tim, bark orders at someone.

Tim:        

How are you, Troy? You’re good there mate?

Troy:    

Yeah I’m fine. I’m fine. Thanks, Tim. I guess what she’s saying is we kind of relate humour to humanity. It’s about sometimes that little bit extra you put in will often return to you because if you build those relationships, often then you get people helping you out. They go “I’m a bit of an expert at that so let me take over that.” For instance, I got a bit of graphic design query bumping around at the moment for someone on a project. I’m no graphic designer. I know a little bit about it. But it came down to a technical question and I’ve got a mate that I’ve known for 20 years, great relationship there, he’s working on something else right now but I can email him in another state and go “mate, can you just fix this for me?” and he’ll go “done.” It’s probably really about cultivating those relationships in a good way so that you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

Zara:     

He doesn’t just go “hey mate, can you help me with this?” Either he goes “hey how’s the kid? What are you working on at the moment? By the way, I’m in trouble. Can you help me?”

Tim:        

Here’s the thing, with my email yesterday, I didn’t realize this is almost like a counseling session now for me, so listeners go and do the dishes or whatever you need to do, but I don’t feel like I need to build rapport and I’m guessing there’s listeners hopefully, there’s a couple on my side going “I didn’t feel I need to build rapport every time I send someone an email” particularly you guys who I have regular conversations with.

Zara:    

Yeah sure. Well think about it like this. You walk into a party or you walk into someone else’s house, you’re not going to walk straight and say “where’s the fridge?”

Tim:    

I don’t know about that. The fridge, that’s important. I’ve got some cold beer I need to keep cold.

Zara:   

Or “what’s on the telly? Move aside, I’m going to sit on your seat.” You’re going to say “G’Day mate! Hey you’re looking good today. How’s your day?” And then you’re going to get to the real conversations but I think actually small talk leads to big conversations. We were in a meeting yesterday and this guy really pushed my buttons because we were doing them a favor, we’d already delivered an exceptional result for this particular business very, very recently. He wasn’t in this particular environment originally, so he was new to it. But he just was so rude. He was just so “what do you do? How’s it work?” And I feel like “talk to your team and then get back to us when you want to act like a human being.”

Tim:  

Part of me goes “so that bloke…” because that was me clearly yesterday. I was on his side, and he’s obviously having a bad day.

Zara:   

He’s got pressures.

Tim:      

You could have used your skill of humour by lighting him up as opposed to, because it sounds like you might have taken that personally.

Zara:   

Well mate that’s a really good point. What happened was all of that’s firing in me at that moment I’m going “are you right? Who the hell do you think you are?” What’s actually coming out of my mouth though, what’s oozing from my demeanor is I really want to get this guy on side. I want everyone in this room to be laughing by the time we leave. I want him to believe that he’s in safe hands and that this is going to be an exceptional experience not just for his team but for him as well, and that’s exactly what happened.

Tim:      

Okay, so what did you do? What was your top little bit of secret sauce there, Zara?

Zara:      

I did a little bit of distraction, so I did a little bit of diffusing the situation to be able to sort of calm him down. I definitely used humour but I used some of our good humour is good business information to broadly, like to share it with the room but really I was talking directly to him. I was talking about the fact that there’s a real lack of playfulness in the way that we deal with each other these days and play is really important because when we play we gain access to our subconscious mind, which has an incredible capacity for creativity. He wants his team to be creative. He wants them to be innovative. But in many ways we have to give people permission to be able to lighten up because we think that seriousness equals capability. Seriousness means “I’m getting the job done” but in fact what this guy did yesterday was he made the entire room awkward. What we did was we just let diffuse it off a little bit. We just let the lid off the pod, let them know “it’s going to be a lot of fun and you’re going to enjoy it” and by the end of it he said “well I get a run sheet of exactly what’s going to happen?” and we went “nope” and he went “sounds awesome, can’t wait.”

Tim:    

Love it.

Troy:   

I think she’s a lot better at that sort of stuff than me, Timbo. I think I’m probably close to you in that I go “oh well, if you don’t mind I got other places to be. I can be having lunch right now. I’m helping you out.” To be fair, he was one of those marketing wankers. You got to watch them.

Tim:     

Careful, careful. Let’s understand this more. Humour isn’t being funny. Being funny is an element of humour and you talked about the fact that if you want a good company, you need to be good company. Is this more about, and I’ve had a few guests recently talk about this, coming from the heart, sometimes that means being funny, sometimes it means being compassionate, empathetic.

Zara:             

Exactly. It’s from the heart. Good speaking is speaking from the heart to the heart but it’s seeing where the other person is at and adjusting your style to suit.

Troy:   

And I think it’s being authentic too. You’re quite right Tim in that you can’t be who you’re not. What we try and do in the work that we do in corporate is try and educate people to use their own strengths in a more human, more engaging way that hopefully will bring better results for them personally and professionally.

Zara:   

But it should also come from truth. We define humour really simply as keeping a lighthearted frame of mind regardless of the circumstances. It’s really easy to remain lighthearted and upbeat when things are going well. It’s more challenging when it all hits the fan and you’re under time pressure or you’re dealing with difficult people and we’re all going to have to deal with them all the time. It’s putting some space between you and your reaction, exactly what you’re saying about yesterday’s conversation with this gentleman. If I can contain my own critical factors, if I can calm myself down and say “this guy’s just under pressure. He’s concerned. He needs to be put at ease” and I don’t take the tact of “well he’s just a really rude man and I don’t want to work with him.” I can reach a place where we can actually have a laugh and that’s what happened yesterday. It’s keeping a lighthearted frame of mind regardless of the circumstances but it’s also you can tend some pretty serious conversations into some pretty high comedy sometimes. I think you can.

Tim:    

Can you give me examples of that?

Zara:   

We do a lot of speeches and keynoting for corporate and I share a lot of really personal stories and I’m just trying to think of something that’s true where laughter kind of emerge from the truth. Probably the first one that pops into my head is when my dad died. You wouldn’t think that that’ particularly hilarious and it wasn’t I was devastated. I never really had a good relationship with dad anyway. I rang him every week of my life because he wasn’t part of my life and I’d always say to him at the end of the phone call “I love you dad” and he’d say “yep, yep, alright” and hang up. Every week I’d ring back and I go “I love you dad” and he go “yep, yep, alright. Bye-bye.” A week before we died, I rang him up and I said “I love you dad” and I went to hang up and he said “I love you too” and I almost missed it and I got the phone back to my ear and I said “what did you say?” and he went “yep, yep, alright. Bye-bye.” But when my sister called to say that he did, I found myself on my knees as you do when you found out that somebody has gone that for some reason you need to be on the floor.

Tim:       

Did you drop to your knees really? That’s kind of movie stuff.

Zara:    

I don’t know if you’ve lost anyone close, have you?

Tim:  

I have lost my dad.

Zara: 

I just found that the floor was the safest place to be.

Tim:      

Yeah right.

Zara:       

So I was just sitting on the carpet in my lounge room having this conversation with my sister but one of the first things out of my mouth was a bit of lighthearted humour. It was just between her and I, now it’s between everyone, but it was just between her and I, and at that time we’ve been helping dad out a little bit financially and my first response was “oh well, at least we’ll save some cash.” Now there was that awkward pause, there was that awkward silence and we both went…and you know what’s happening there? And we use this phrase a lot, if you can joke, you can cope. It didn’t take the seriousness out of the situation. It just meant for a split second my instinct was to use humour as something to hold on to.

Tim:         

Zara, a – thank you for sharing that very personal story and b – I personally use humour to…for me, that was your way out and I find I use humour in the same way. Sometimes I feel like I’ve crossed the line. You could’ve felt, maybe you’ve crossed the line, because you’ve just told a funny story about your dad’s passing and that line annoys me because it’s like it happened recently where I was like I thought we did something really funny. I won’t go into the details but it was like the other person just didn’t find it funny and I’ve looked at it and gone “well it’s not offensive.” They cannot find it offensive and I sort of gone through the different aspects of why didn’t they find it funny and I just arrived at the fact that they’ve got stuff going on and it wasn’t time to laugh at me or anyone else.

Zara:  

Sure. You can’t please all the people all the time. A comedy audience, we teach standup comedy, in any comedy audience, even if you’re having a great night, 95% of the room will love you and there’ll be a couple of people there that are completely indifferent and couple of people that just hate you.

Tim:    

And don’t they have some power.

Zara:      

And don’t they have some power. And so why are we so focused on the very small percentage of people that don’t like us? They tend to be the ones that we deliver everything to. I think I few things – learn to fail or you will fail to learn and you can’t win all the time. With humour and comedy it’s a risk. You’re stepping out of your comfort zone. Secondly, if it goes wrong, sometimes you can own it. You can say “that all went a bit wrong and I think it’s probably time we got back on track” or “anyone else feeling the awkwardness in the air at that point?” and sometimes we can go, if we are at a lump, you go “you know what, I totally understand why you would get upset by that. That was inappropriate of me. I thought that we were having a joke together and I just didn’t read the situation.”

Troy:  

I think that’s really worst case scenario. What I love bout humour is that it’s really tied in to the Australian identity. If you look back through history, you look at description of the Anzacs, the forming of the Anzacs and that whole identification of a national spirit that applies to us and also to New Zealand, humour is a big part of that. It’s always what’s talked about and that was in the face of some pretty serious stuff. A lot of young men went and didn’t come back in that war and we were renowned for bringing a capability to the battlefield. We were good at what we did, but also a sense of humour, a sense of lightness even in the face of probably the worst thing you’re ever going to face, which is your own mortality.

Tim:    

Yeah, that’s interesting. We did bring that. We’re good at that. By the way I have listeners in Kazakhstan and Madagascar so they have no idea what you’re talking about but we’ll move on to that. They can Google it.

Zara:      

Do you really? Do you really?

Tim: 

I do. I got an email two weeks ago from a bloke. I knew I had listener in Kazakhstan but a bloke from Madagascar emailed me and said, I thought it was Prince Julian but it wasn’t. It was just a business owner. Business owners are listening guys, and business is serious but I really want them to walk away from this going “okay, how do I inject humour, lightness, the odd gag, into parts of my business that I would never have thought of.” I was thinking about this beforehand guys, I was like “what parts of the business?” Not only did you pull me up on an email yesterday about two months ago. You pulled me up on my voicemail. You guys are seeing opportunities every step of the way to add lightness or a laugh, a smile on the dial. We’re talking voicemail, we’re talking your log, your website, the way you present at a meeting, a sales letter. Obviously not every aspect of your business has to have a gag but how do we do it? Which aspects of the business are we talking about?

Zara:   

Yeah, I think as many of them as we can possibly focus on. I think it comes down to intention. I think seriousness has a time and a place but really if you make a decision today and humour is a decision to go “life is short” and truthfully we know this instinctively, don’t we? We know that all we’re doing with business is filling in time, evolving as human beings and inviting some expansion into our lives. That’s what business is. We’re trying to grow, we’re trying to make ourselves bigger, better, explore more. That’s what it’s about. That’s a really positive thing, but because of time pressures, because of money pressures, we forget what we’re in the game for and it is a game. So bringing that playfulness, as you said our voicemail has humour on it, our sign off and our email, I think as directors of Humour Australia and inventors of the unicorn. It’s stupid stuff but it’s stuff that…the amount of people that leave messages on my phone and go “I love that message. Geez, that makes me giggle.” You can find opportunities for it absolutely everywhere. When you go to the shops and the shop assistant says “what would you like?” You say “I’d like my own island in the Bahamas and these Tic Tacs, thanks. But for now, I’ll just have the Tic Tacs.”

Tim:  

That’s my little gag.

Zara:       

Is it?

Tim:  

Yeah. “What are you after?” “A week in the tropics.”

Zara:      

That’s great.

Troy:  

Beautiful.

Zara:   

You give them the opposite of what they’re expecting. It’s that opposite, it’s that surprise element that actually brings some humour to your life but really there’s four steps that we use and GSOH stands for good sense of humour. We think of it the G is good company, as I said be good company with people. When you do that, you don’t walk in with your own baggage. You kind of lighten up. “Hey! What’s going on with you, mate? What’s new?” That tends to spark a little bit of that rapport we were talking about. Also get interested in people. You were saying there’s no time and we’re busy so let’s just cut to the chase.

Tim:  

I don’t feel my counseling session is finished. What I was saying is I felt as though I had rapport and didn’t need to do small talk in our emails every time. If it was someone who I hadn’t emailed in a long time or called in a long time, then let’s talk about the weather.

Zara:  

On that, two things – we do have that kind of relationship, which is why I can say something back to you and call you on it.

Tim:      

Lucky we’re not recording this.

Zara:   

At the same time, there are also 200 other people who are also asking for things across your day. Sometimes the way you ask. It’s not just what you do.

Tim:   

The context.

Zara:       

It’s how you do it that gets the result. There’s this great study in the states at a restaurant chain a few years back with this waiter and a bunch of control groups. With the first group, the waiter brought the bill tray over with one mint on it and the tip went up by 3% consistently. With the second group he put 2 mints on the tray and it went up by 14%. With the third group he put 1 mint on the tray, went to leave, and then like it was an afterthought came back and went “have another mint.” The tip went up consistently by 33%.

Tim:  

Nice.

Zara:    

It’s not what you do. It’s how you do it. Get interested. Be a good company. Keep your sense of perspective. Have fun, that’s something.

Tim:    

Hey we’re going back to GSOH. So G was good company, S sense of perspective.

Zara:   

Look at you, following along. It’s brilliant.

Tim:         

Yeah that’s me. It’s my anal retentiveness.

Zara:       

That’s great. I missed the O then anyway. It’s good company and get interested, S is sense of perspective. Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor, psychologist, was famous for saying “between stimulus and response there’s a space” and in that space is our ability to choose, meaning between something happening and our reaction or our over reaction, there’s always time to rethink it.

Troy:     

Yes but I think the problem with that is we become conditioned because of these time pressures, these money pressures, all these stuff that we do day to day, especially running a small business, that we’ve been thought that that break doesn’t exist anymore. I think it’s become nothing or even a negative. What you need to do is practice identifying that little moment between your stimulus, between something happening and your reaction to it and expanding that gap, using that time a little better, little more wisely.

Zara:  

The amount of times that we…we all want to respond immediately. Let’s just get it done. They’ve asked something, let’s just respond. The amount of times that we as a unit in our business, write emails and put them in drafts and come back to them 12 hours later or even that afternoon, particularly if they’re prickly ones. And the amount of times we change what we’ve written and soften things up. That space is something that’s available to all of us. There’s a tool we use too and we often share it with people, which is just a life scale – 1 is everything’s great, 10 is death. It’s usually the other way, but 1 is great, 10 is death. Let’s say you’re in the car, you’re on the way to a multi-million dollar meeting. Someone has said “do not be late. This guy will not stick around.” You’re 10 minutes late, the traffic’s stuck. You’re freaking out. Where is that normally for you on that scale? What does that feel like as a number? It can feel like a 9 or 10 sometimes.

Tim:    

Yeah, it would feel big. But relative to death, 2.

Zara:      

So how do you put the space in? How do you change it? How do you get from a 10 to a 2? It’s generally conscious thought. You’ve got to actually do the work and people think being good humour is actually easy. It’s work. It’s constant consciousness to be able to do it. But if I’m in a car, I’m freaking out. I’m at a 9, I can say “alright, I’m at a 9.” I got to acknowledge where I am right now. I’m at 9. I’m out of my mind. I’m not thinking straight. I’m not going to be safe on the roads and this is bad for my health and bad for the world. I’m at a 9. How do I get to a 7?

Tim:     

Go to a pub.

Zara:    

I’m stuck in a traffic but maybe that could help. That’s one thing.

Troy:   

Just get out of the car and walk away.

Tim:       

Like Michael Douglas, what film was that?

Troy:   

Falling Down.

Tim:    

Falling Down.

Zara:      

I don’t think that ended well though.

Tim:    

No.

Zara:   

No. So how do I get to a 7? I just kind of think to myself. I logic myself out of my drama by saying “everyone’s late once in a while. Maybe they’re late. Maybe it’s an opportunity to actually share the entire disaster story, get them on my side.” Now I’m at a 7. I’ve just put a little bit of a distance between me and the big number. If I’m at a7, I can get myself down to a 5. If I’m at a 5, I can get myself down to a 3. And actually I can do that in about a minute and a half.

Tim: 

And my big one there would be, because I am a bit of a fatalist, and it’s like “it was meant to be.” I don’t do it that easily but that would be me. I’d get to the 2 by the time I say to myself “I don’t think I’m meant to be getting this job.” I’ll go through it and I’ll get there but if I’m late, I’m late.

Zara:   

Yeah, well that’s a skill, mate. That’s a real talent.

Troy:    

I think you’ve really hit on it too, Zara, in that it does take practice. Developing good mental habits like anything else just like exercise requires a little bit of trial and error and don’t be afraid to fail. Fail quick and move on. When you talk about life scale, bringing yourself down from an 8 or a 9 to a 2, you’re not going to do that in one jump. With practice, you’ll be able to go from an 8 to a 7, and then maybe a 7 to a 6, and then maybe you’ll be able to go 8 to 5 but it does take trying and retrying these techniques in order for them to click and really understand and feel them in your bones.

Tim:     

I did something funny yesterday. Can I share it with you?

Troy:  

Yeah

Zara:     

We’d love you to.

Tim:     

I think it’s to do with sense of perspective but I want to share it anyway. After I flicked you that really abrupt email, either before or after I did something funny, and I thought what I’ve been making a habit of is ringing past clients that I’ve done keynotes for in the last 12 months and I rang one yesterday and a very serious insect is this person, very serious. We always cut to the chase; can’t find the humour because her job is the busiest job in the world. I knew she wouldn’t answer the phone. I hadn’t spoken to her for about 9 months and on her voicemail her message went beep and then I started to sing “you don’t send me flowers anymore” and then said “hey, I haven’t heard from you for ages. I’m just touching base and hope all is well.” That was kind of my sense of perspective because I knew where she’d be because she’s always flat out.

Zara:     

I love it. That’s a circuit breaker right there. That’s a circuit breaker because she’s not expecting it. It’s something that it’s very difficult to actually be critical in that moment because she doesn’t know who’s singing to her.

Tim:        

She hasn’t called me back.

Zara:       

You know what’s great about that too is it was good for you. I think that humour, we’re so focused on making things right for the other person so often. You’re really good at this. You do have a playfulness towards life and I think that the happier we can make ourselves, the more pleasant we are to be around anyway. People want to do business with people they like. People want to do business with people who make them feel good. That’s why it’s worth investing some time to do it. I was going to say on that email, you made me laugh as a response to that because not only did you acknowledged it and own it, the next email because you said “I don’t want to talk about the weather”, you gave me a full page rundown on the weather. And you made me laughed out loud. I absolutely loved it because you got it.

Tim:  

You didn’t respond to that and then my initial thought is like “geez, have I crossed the line? Does she now think I’m overplaying the gag?” I think I won that.

Zara:   

Wasn’t the head up to that email, Cloudy with a Chance of?

Tim:      

Meatballs. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Zara:     

I responded. I just didn’t respond to the weather because I thought with that little component of our day was maybe done.

Tim:  

And then I’m going like “oh man, is this now a lifetime gag where every time I speak to Zara or Troy I’ve got to speak about the freaking weather!”

Zara:   

With comedy and humour too, sometimes knowing when to get out is a really good thing. We’ve had our moment, we don’t have to drag this on. That’s what comedy is. You can love a comedian but if a comedian dribbles on for 1 or 2 sentences after the tag of the joke, after the punch line, we don’t laugh as hard. It tends to be, good comedians in Seinfeld is an absolute genius of this, is economy. That’s why you can’t use time as an excuse not to build rapport with people because you can actually do it in 15 seconds or 5 seconds and then get back to the business in hand. Good company, get interested. Sense of perspective, get some space between you and the drama. O – O used to stand for optimism but we’ve actually updated it to being an optimalist.

Troy:

That’s a new word.

Tim:     

That’s a new word.

Zara:    

It’s a new word.

Troy:      

It comes out of the skill of positive psychology and I guess everyone probably knows what difference between an optimist and a pessimist. I can sum it up for you like this, Tim.

Tim:          

Yes, professor Troy.

Troy:   

Well there was a family and they had twin boys and they were concerned that one was growing up as an optimist and one was growing up as a pessimist. So they took them along to see a child psychologist, which frankly was useless because the psychologist was only 3. No, that’s not the joke. Anyway, they took these boys along and they said “we’re concerned. One is an optimist, one is a pessimist.” And the doctor said “very interesting. Allow me.” And he basically took the boy, who was a pessimist, down the hall into another room that was filled with brand new shiny toys. And the boy looked around the room and started crying. That doctor thought “this is interesting.” He said “what’s the matter, son?” And the boy said “there’s all these beautiful toys but if I play with them, I might break them.” The psychologist thought “okay, okay that’s fair enough. Come back with me. Come on. We’ll go back and see mum and dad.” He took him back to the waiting room. And then he took the boy that they thought was growing up as an optimist, down the hallway again, this time into another room and this room was piled high with horse manure and the kid ran straight to the top of the pile and started digging. The psychologist thought “this is really interesting.” He said “what are you doing up there, son?” And the kid said “well with all this horse poo in here, there’s got to be a pony somewhere.”

Tim:    

You funny guy.

Zara:   

That’s a good example.

Tim: 

That is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. What is an optimalist?

Zara:        

Okay, there’s also a difference according to Tal Ben-Shahar, who’s a lecturer at Harvard University.

Tim:      

You’re rolling out the big ones now.

Zara:   

I know stuff, mate. I read things. He says there’s a difference between a perfectionist and an optimalist. Perfectionism is good. We all want to do great. We all want to do our jobs as well as we possibly can, but there’s a real problem with perfectionism, is that…

Tim:    

No humour in perfectionism.

Zara:    

Not a lot, mate. Not a lot of time for humour or for detours. Perfectionists tend to be one note. They tend to be risk averse because they’ve got a plan. I’m at A, I’m going to B. I’ve got my little business plan. I’m going to get there. Nothing’s going to get in my way. An optimalist knows in fact that that’s not the way life works. If you imagine a perfectionist’s journey as being a straight line, which it never is, an optimalist journey is really a big squiggly line. It swirls. We know we’re starting at A, we know we we’re going to be B but it’s not a straight line and we take detours. I call it the scenic route sometimes and we get thrown off course and rather than going “oh I’ve been thrown off course. Damn! I had a plan and now it’s ruined.” You go “oh I’ve been thrown off course. I wonder if this is going to open up some new opportunities or maybe I’ll meet someone now that everything’s going a little wrong who’s actually going to unlock some potential that I couldn’t see when I was stuck to my rigid plan.” You’re still getting there in the end but you really kind of allow for the process of life to not be a linear one, to be more of a roller coaster.

Tim:   

I’ve noticed that just in the simple project that I’m working on this week, which is preparing to emcee this 2-day job and the perfectionist in me saw that job as like at the end I need to have a set of scripts that are going to allow me to introduce people and make everyone feel blah, blah, blah and I thought I just sit down and write those scripts. But man, I have been going left, right, up and down. I’d be going down rabbit holes that took me to all sorts of places online and offline, but then I get back and I keep reminding myself that I just got to come back and I just got to write that little introduction and I’m nearly there.

Zara:  

And then you simplify it too because you’ve given yourself some space and then you kind of go “maybe I don’t need all of that. Maybe it just needs a very simple kind of link or segue to get this person up.” We’re doing one on Friday. I think you’re coming along to it.

Tim:    

I am, TEDx.

Zara:   

Yeah. It’s got 800 people in the audience. We’re yet to receive any of the intros or bios. They’re still changing the order. Sometimes I can be a little bit of a perfectionist. That’s one of my flaws. I like to know what I’m doing and how it’s going to go and I like to know what jokes I am doing. But sometimes you also need to go “I’ve been doing this for 25 years” and sometimes you can do a little bit of preparation and allow some space for a bit of magic to arrive as well. I’ve done gigs where we’ve literally shown up and gone “let’s just be good hosts to this audience” and that can sometimes be more wonderful.

Tim:        

Well I think this story a few weeks ago where one of my biggest keynotes of the year, an audience of 500 real estate agents and the technology, with 30 seconds to go, was not going to work so I had no slide deck and ended up having to do a Q and A and I was just, as you talk about being in the pocket. It’s a jazz term and I’ve just got to find that space, find some humour, be light about it, because the other option was that I have a meltdown alongside everyone else. The organizer, the tech people, the VA guy, everyone was having a meltdown. I go “well, I could either go in their car and we’ll crash or as you say “lily pad the fuck out of it.”

Zara:    

Is that going to make sense to anybody else?

Tim:    

When I beep the F word, it will.

Zara:    

It means really just do it a light touch. Just hop, skip and a jump. Just get over the drama and find the place where you can be in the pocket and you’re quite right. In the pocket is that you’re clicking your fingers, you’re comfortable, your heart rate is calm, you’re going “you know what, I’m here for you. We’ll get through this.” And people actually, they like it when you acknowledge a drama, when you don’t become the drama, but you actually acknowledge that things haven’t gone the way that they should have gone. We kind of like that. But if you look nervous, we look nervous, and then suddenly everyone’s freaking out.

Tim:

H Czar or Troy, what do you got?

Zara:    

Good man, are you writing this down? Because you keep coming back to us.

Tim:    

Well can I just tell you, listeners know I have a little bit of anal retentiveness going. I’m not a big fan of acronyms. This one GSOH is not pronounceable but geez I wish it was GOSH but there’s no way of making it like that.

Zara:   

I know GOSH, GOSH would be better.

Tim:    

GOSH would be unreal. You can’t do it though.

Zara:   

I’ll tell you the H. The H is really simple. It’s have fun and get it done. I’ll put another way, if you have to get it done, why wouldn’t you have more fun? Why wouldn’t you make life more pleasurable for yourself and the people around you? So many businesses talk about customer service, customer expectations, but they don’t, in any way, focus on making it a great place to work simultaneously. That’s the secret – to take your job seriously and yourself lightly, to make it really fun. Turn your day. And that could mean having fun breaks. Even we are guilty of not doing this when things get on top of us, but truthfully you should be doing something active or fun or lighthearted, even if it’s stupid. I’ve got juggling balls sitting behind me, my desk. Sometimes when I’m working on something and I think I’m stuck, I just juggle or I walk around the block or I play an improvisation game with Troy, a creative game, or you reboot yourself. If you’re pushing on for longer than 2 or 3 hours on the one problem, you’re doing yourself a disservice because you’re not actually in your creative space. Out of that acronym, mate I really think the most important one is the G, which is good company. Because I think if you do that and you’re good company for yourself and you’re good company for everyone you meet – the person you pass on the street, the person you buy your Tic Tacs from, the person you live with, the person you’re doing business with, not just the people that can serve you or you serve, I think that life becomes happier. You’ll live longer, you’ll be healthier and there’s a flow on effect on the world. People feel positive energy and go “I don’t know what it is about that guy buy I like him.”

Tim:         

Yeah. Then people excuse you for everything else. There is greater leeway to be excused. I talk about it in marketing where if you build a brand and a brand is an emotional attachment and if you build emotion between you and your client, and that can be done via humour. It can be done by a whole lot of things. Humour is just one of them but if there’s emotion, there’s a greater connection and when there’s a greater connection it’s harder for people to severe the tie. It’s harder for people to leave, to go to a competitor, to negotiate on price, all that stuff.

Troy:      

Definitely. In fact it’s been proven time and time again, Tim, that if you create that emotional connection, whether that is by humour or loyalty or however you go about that, Apple’s a great example of this, people will actually pay a premium. They’ll pay more than what the market says because they feel attached to that brand. Actually there’s one that I could really recommend. I don’t know whether you’ve seen it, Tim, the Smart ad that’s on at the moment with the dancing crosswalk. Have you seen that?

Tim:     

Yeah

Troy:   

It’s totally worth searching. I think that’s a great example of marketing, not with comedy but with a sense of humour. So it’s a practical applicable thing that we get very quickly. Watching that, search for it. It’s online. I think it’s called The Dancing Traffic Light.

Tim:     

I’ll put a link to the YouTube video in the show notes to what is episode 207. You know what, it’s funny because I didn’t end up getting what it was for. I just thought it was very clever. It was almost like a clever piece of art but listeners, people hopped in a booth on the side of the road near some traffic lights. A camera was in the booth. You started dancing and somehow the camera then translated your dance into the little guy on the Don’t Walk sign of the traffic lights.

Troy:     

Yeah and they found that people were observing this and going “wow! Look! Look! That’s really interesting” but it was making them stop crossing the road illegally, which was the purpose of the thing. It was bringing a benefit to society, which is a good thing.

Tim:      

A community announcement.

Troy:    

Yeah totally. And the other thing I guess from a marketing point of view, if you want somewhere safe and small to try out your sense of humour, why not do your 404 page on your website. 404 page is your error page. If you Google those, there’s a whole bunch of funny ones. If you get an error on our website, it tells you “oops, something’s gone wrong. If it keeps happening, please let us know and we’ll dispatch the IT donkey rapido.” You can have a bit of fun with that. It’s just a page that only people will ever see if something does go wrong on your website. It’s a very safe way to do it. There’s a million of them online that you can Google and steal another one if you like it.

Tim:      

What if people are listening and going “but I’m just not funny” and I don’t mean me. They’re talking to themselves. What do you do there?

Zara:   

Again, it all comes back to the G. Just be good company. If you put strangers together, I mean how many times have you walked into a part, a cocktail event or some kind of networking event, everyone’s awkward at the start. Walking up to a group of people that you don’t know is hard, but once we do it, once you kind of get the pleasantries out of the way, “G’Day mate. Where are you from? Oh you travelled here.” Just listen for how quickly the first laugh arrives. Even in a group of relatively serious people, there will be a giggle, a connection, because we’re searching for it. As human beings, that’s what’s driving us. We want to form a real connection with another human being. That’s what it’s all about. And we do that accidentally. You don’t have to focus on being funny. You just have to focus on being good company and allow the humour to unravel in you. It’s in you. It’s just waiting to be given permission to be explored.

Tim: 

Be a good company. I like that. Can I finish with a joke?

Zara:      

I love it, Tim.

Tim:  

Maybe you could too. Maybe we could critique each other’s delivery and level of funniness. I was trying to think, because often I think “gee, what if something asks me to tell a joke.” Often I don’t have one on my back pocket. It’s like that “oh geez, I’ve got so many but I’ve forgotten them all” but anyway I was thinking about it because I knew you guys were coming on the show. This old pretty much deaf guy and his wife go to the doctors because he’s a bit crook and the doctor goes “oh yeah, we’re going to have to do some tests. We’re going to need some samples of sperm, semen and stool.” And the old bloke says “what did you say doc?” He says “I need some samples of sperm, semen and feces.” And he goes “I can’t hear.” And his wife butts in and says “he needs to borrow your pajamas, love.” I didn’t get that quite right, didn’t I?

Zara:   

It was good enough. We knew where you were going. It really just says a lot about you, I think, the choice of joke that we decide to share with the world.

Tim:    

Filthy.

Zara:   

Yeah filthy, totally filthy.

Tim:      

I think filth works.

Zara:  

It can work in the right company. With us mate, anytime.

Tim:    

Yeah well there’s no one else listening, so…

Zara:  

No, that’s right. You’re pretty safe.

Tim: 

What’s yours?

Zara:    

I didn’t know one. I’m not really a joke teller either.

Tim:  

I’d say that.

Zara:     

Well I don’t. In terms of joke jokes, because everything we do is you write it yourself, it’s part of stories. That’s the thing. The only joke I know is about a learned guy who goes to a pet shop and says “I’m looking for a pet.” And the guy behind the counter says “look, it’s a bit weird. It’s a bit weird but this is a centipede and he’s really talented. I think you’ll find that he’s going to be able to help you around the house.” And the guy goes “I don’t know.” And he said “just take him home. Just give him a go. If it’s a problem, bring him back.” So the guy buys the centipede and he takes him home and he says to the centipede “alright, my lounge room is a mess. You’ve got 30 minutes to vacuum it, clean it up, make sure there’s nothing on the floor, the remotes are all where they’re all supposed to be. 30 minutes, your time starts now. Go!” He comes back 30 minutes later and unbelievably Timbo, this centipede has absolutely done the most remarkable job. The lounge room is just sparkling. It’s just perfection. And the guy grabs the centipede and takes him to the kitchen and says “you know it’s not over yet.” And the kitchen’s a bit of a disaster. “You’ve got 15 minutes to do the dishes, make sure it’s all…I want to be able to eat off the floor” so he comes back 15 minutes later and it’s unbelievable. The centipede has done a better job than if you got a team of cleaners in there to make it extraordinary. And so the guy says “alright, one last thing. One last thing then you can turn in for the night.” He says “I’m out of some food. I want you to go to the shops.” He says to the centipede “I need some milk, I need some juice and I need some apples. You’ve only got 10 minutes. Your time starts now. Go!” 10 minutes goes by and the centipede isn’t back and the guy sort of waits and then 30 minutes goes by, still no centipede; 45 minutes, 60 minutes later still no centipede. And finally the guy is getting worried. He goes to the door. He opens up the door and he looks down and there’s the centipede sitting on the doormat and the guy goes “what are you doing? I told you to go to the shops” and the centipede looks up and even says “give me a break. I’m still putting on my fucking shoes.”

Tim:        

Troy and Zara, Humour Australia, thanks for putting a smile on our dial.

Troy:       

Thanks Timbo!

Zara:     

Thanks Tim.

Tim:           

Hey! What about that? Did you enjoy that interview as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you? Well you’ll never know because you don’t know how much I enjoyed bringing it to you. Well, a lot. Thanks to Netregistry and 99 Designs. I want to share my top 3 learnings from it and then I want you to share your learning from it by going over to the show notes. More on that in a minute. #1 your capability does not equate to how serious you can be. Oh God, I love that. Zara was  full of great quotes, wasn’t she? How often do you see people trying to prove how capable they are by being incredibly serious? Observe yourself. If that’s you, maybe just factor back the seriousness and inject a bit of humour. And as Zara says, you don’t have to crack gags in order to be humourous. That takes a bit of pressure off. #2 want a good company? Then be a good company. Love that too. I like the idea that if we can establish rapport with the people we’re doing business with, whether it be a prospect, an existing client, a supplier, the media, your staff, whoever it is, then I can’t help but think everything else falls into place a lot easier. I know it’s not that simple but boy o boy, if you establish rapport, then the idea of just life becoming a little bit easier, people giving you a little bit more leeway. I think you’ll find that will happen. Third learning, start to look for ways to inject humour into your business. I love the idea of looking at all your marketing touch points and just set yourself the challenge. Once a week, where can you inject some humour? It might be your voicemail. It might be your 404 error pages. I’ll put a link to some examples that Troy was talking about into the show notes of this episode. It might be your logo. There’s a great book, I’m going to link to it in the show notes called A Smile In The Mind and it is all about beautiful design that puts a smile in your mind, puts a smile on your face. Not always hilarious, but just a nice little kind of design trick each time that kind of lightens your day or even your email signature and I’ve got to refer it to Troy and Zara’s. They got a couple of fun things in their email signature. They call themselves Directors and then in brackets [and communication shaman] and next to their name they have PhD’s, looks like PhD* and that stands for pretty humourous dudes. So all along the way, they’re finding opportunities to be funny. Head over to SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com. Look for episode 208, not 207 as I said during the interview.