Lesson 1: Exposing Common Joke Mistakes

Introduction

In addition to the issues associated with joke telling being a self-taught affair that most people aren’t very good at as described in this article…

There is another important issue that contributes to a lack of proficiency when it comes to telling street jokes which is this:

It is rare for anyone to provide any type of constructive feedback about a person’s sense of humor or their inability to select and/or deliver a joke.

It could be described as an unspoken social taboo of sorts.

Unfortunately, this situation can contribute greatly to an individual’s belief that they are proficient at joke telling when in fact they are not.

And that’s not all…

People can form some very negative opinions about someone based on the sense of humor that they use and the jokes that they choose to tell.

This is not restricted to casual conversations but to applies directly to public speaking as well.

The information provided in this lesson has two very important purposes:

1. Provide you with information to raise your self-awareness about critical mistakes that people tend to make when they are delivering a joke, whether it be in casual conversations or in front an audience of strangers as a presenter.

You simply cannot make intelligent corrections or adjustments if you don’t actually know what to correct or adjust.

2. Provide you with solid, baseline information that you need to conduct a critical review of any video recording of you delivering an open source joke that you have edited and personalized using the information in this course.

As mentioned on the course description page, this course is intended specifically for those who are or intend to be speaking publicly on a professional level.

Subsequently, unless you are delivering the same speech or presentation over and over without change, you should be getting video recordings of every talk that you do for performance improvement review — particularly when it comes to any content that is intended to generate laughter.

So I would highly recommend that you pay close attention to the information provided in this lesson and refer back to it when needed.

Every other lesson in this course is provided to help avoid or overcome the issues identified here and to provide you with all the information you need to have the best possible laughter results when you use any open source joke in your public speaking.

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Mistake #1: Poor Joke Selection

When it comes to public speaking, joke selection is critical for success in generating audience laughter.

Jokes are very powerful communication tools. As I said earlier, people can — and will — judge you on a personal level based on the types of jokes you choose to tell without ever revealing those judgements to you.

There are three primary considerations when it comes to selecting jokes for use in speeches or presentations:

1. The appropriateness of the joke content.

2. The length of the joke.

3. The level or degree of “funny” the joke has to offer.

Appropriate Jokes Only

In public speaking, the audiences expect presenters to be professional and to be aware of boundaries upon which those expectations are established.

Jokes that are delivered without consideration of the appropriateness of content can quickly sour an audience very quickly. Some of the content you typically want to avoid includes, but is not limited to jokes that fall into these categories:

• Sexual in nature
• Racial
• Political
• Sexist
• Involves handicapped people
• Gender slam
• Dirty joke

Also, you should always avoid jokes with content that could polarize or offend the person or group you are telling the joke to.

A good rule of thumb is this — if you have any doubt about a joke, leave it out of your speech or presentation. There are simply too many other choices you can make when it comes to open source jokes.

Joke Length

It is always better to select shorter street jokes for use in a speech or presentation for these reasons:

1. It’s quicker to get to the punchline (and the resulting audience laugh).

This is also important if there are additional transition lines needed to introduce the joke (covered in lesson 5).

2. There’s less editing involved to produce a crisp, ready to verbalize (not read) joke.

3. There’s less information to remember when rehearsing or preparing to deliver the joke.

Determining The Level Of Funny In A Joke

Any street joke can be tested during casual conversations in order to visually determine what level of laughter it can generate before it is delivered to an audience, keeping this in mind…

If a joke works well on an individual basis, it will usually work very well when delivered to an audience.

There is a specific punchline attribute that you can look at to help determine just how potentially funny a joke may be before you tell it that is covered in the next lesson.

Here’s the bottom line when it comes to selecting jokes for a speech or presentation:

Be very selective about the jokes you choose to tell — you only want to tell the funniest jokes that you can find.

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Mistake #2: Limited Inventory Of Great Jokes

Everyone has met that annoying guy who can remember 1000 jokes and spit them out indiscriminately, one after another whether they are funny or not.

You don’t be that guy. As a matter of fact…

Really funny and appropriate jokes that will consistently generate big laughs when told any audience can be somewhat challenging to find.

The good news is this:

The special report Killer Story Joke Resources (introduced in Lesson 2) contains multiple online story joke resources, along with additional online and offline resources that can be used to find the story jokes you are looking for.

You only need about 6-12 exceptional jokes for use in virtually any public speaking endeavor, which shouldn’t take long to find using the resources provided in that special report.

And those 6-12 jokes (or more if you so desire) can literally serve you well for years.

The reason I say this is because carefully selected, skillfully edited and professionally delivered street jokes are simply one humor resource in the toolbox of tactics that a presenter can use to keep audiences engaged and entertained.

I have personally used street jokes at every position in a presentation (beginning, middle and end).

But I would primarily use them at the beginning or end of a speech in order to generate a guaranteed big laugh.

Note: I have always been more dependent on injecting original humor into speeches and presentations because it is easy to do once you know how to do it.

The more truly funny jokes you have in your public speaking joke collection, the easier it will be to have the right joke to tell at the right time.

Start a file of your funniest jokes — ones that you have tested and that you know work well.

This is important because unless you are “that guy” that I referred to earlier, you won’t be able to remember every joke that makes it to your A-List of jokes.

Don’t depend on your memory alone to remember the great jokes that you find and spend time preparing for use in your presentations or speeches.

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Mistake #3: Poor Joke Introduction

This is probably one of the most common mistakes people make when they tell a joke. If you say something like…

• Here’s a joke for ya…
• I heard a funny joke you’re really gonna love…
• Ready for a joke? Here ya go…

Once you say something like that, the person(s) listening to the joke is more focused on “figuring out” the angle of the joke instead of listening to what you are saying and reacting with laughter when you get to the punchline of the joke.

The bottom line:

You reduce the laughter impact of the joke by introducing a joke as a joke.

But even with “obvious” jokes — don’t introduce them as jokes!

Instead, say something like “That reminds me of a story…” or “I just heard a story…”.

Note: The use of transition lines as described in lesson 5 are NOT for the purpose of introducing a joke as a” joke” — they are used to introduce a joke to illustrate or accentuate a particular element in a speech or presentation or as a transition between topics.

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Mistake #4: Jokes Not Adequately Rehearsed Or Practiced Beforehand

If you want to get the maximum laughter impact from a joke that you want to tell, you need to rehearse it and know it like the back of your hand BEFORE you ever tell it.

If you don’t rehearse a joke properly before you tell it, you can end up:

• Forgetting key elements of the joke and having to “go back” to put that information in
• Forgetting or irreparably altering the punchline
• Leaving out key pauses
• Not having the joke aligned with the way you naturally talk and express yourself
• Poorly delivering the joke

But rehearsing jokes is not just about memorizing the jokes!

Simply memorizing a joke is NOT enough. If you are simply mouthing the words of a joke that you have memorized, you are not going to get the great laughter response you want from telling a joke by being just a talking head.

It’s also about incorporating your natural sense of timing and body language, facial expressions, and voice attributes in a way that is ORGANIC to your usual expressive traits.

And it is also about making sure that any joke you tell includes your natural timing and important pauses automatically.

This can give a joke even more laughter power.

This course focuses on transforming open source jokes into personalized stories that take 60 seconds or less to tell.

That means that in just 15 minutes or less a joke can be easily memorized and rehearsed for a natural and flawless delivery.

This is just another easy thing in a long list of easy things that can be done to make sure that a joke that is delivered to an audience is not only consistently effective but also generates the biggest laugh possible.

Lesson 4 contains everything about enhancing the delivery of jokes that you have carefully selected and edited for use in your public speaking, along with some advanced tactics that you can use that involve your smartphone.

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Mistake #5: Absence Success Mindset

One of the huge mistakes that many people make happens before they ever tell a joke. How?

By saying things like this that creates a roadblock to their success:

• I’m really bad at joke telling.
• I always mess up a joke when I try to tell one.
• I couldn’t tell a joke if I had to.
• I have difficulty memorizing jokes.

While I realize that statements like that may be historically accurate, it also amounts to potentially sabotaging any joke you want to tell in the future.

When someone says things like this to themselves, they are programming their subconscious to make sure that they don’t do well when they tell a joke.

And once this sort of mindset is established and continually reinforced, the best techniques available to remedy the situation are rendered impotent.

It’s no different than the people who say that they are bad at math. The truth is that people are bad at math primarily because they had teachers who couldn’t teach it well.

Unfortunately, someone reinforcing that they are bad with math only exacerbates the problem, causing it to become increasingly more difficult when it comes to solving future math problems.

Don’t tell yourself or anyone else for that matter that you are a bad joke teller or that you always mess up telling a joke because if you do…

You are conditioning yourself for failure and probably don’t even realize it.

Keep this in mind as you move forward:

Most people are not proficient at telling jokes and getting great laughter results because they were never exposed to an effective process to show them how to do it or how to make intelligent corrections if they don’t do it well.

This course provides you access to the most effective process available for selecting, editing, personalizing and delivering open source jokes as well as insight on what to review for improvement if needed.

Having confidence in the process that you use before you deliver a joke is key to gaining ever increasing confidence from getting the laughter you want when you do.

So don’t blame the basketball because it didn’t go into the hoop.

Tell yourself “I am a great joke teller” (even if you aren’t quite there just yet) and start using the strategies and tactics that you need to make that statement is 100% accurate.

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Wrap Up

Probably the most important thing that you should get from this lesson is this:

Success is a product of focused and effective effort to produce a desired result.

Great joke telling is not about one specific thing — it’s about a combination of things that happen in harmony that appears to happen effortlessly and without much thought, which means that…

• You need to start with great jokes that are funny to begin with.
• You need to skillfully edit and personalize those jokes.
• You need adapt those jokes to the way you naturally speak and express yourself.
• You need to rehearse those jokes to ensure a flawless delivery and…
• You need to review video recordings of your public speaking to make sure you are hitting the mark and getting the laughter results that you want.

Then you need to congratulate yourself for a job well done when your audiences laugh long and loud because you managed to do what 98% of people won’t do which is — prepare to succeed.

That is the professional approach and that is what this course is all about.

With that said, it’s time get the scoop on finding the best possible reality based jokes available for your public speaking endeavors…

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