The King of
Corporate Comedy

What I thought was bad about it 30 years ago has just multiplied exponentially. I am very disillusioned with it. There is still a part of me that misses television journalism. I miss that thrill, that adrenalin rush of covering the breaking news story, which I always really enjoyed.

The problem today is with the internet. People can pretty much write anything without fact-checking. I also get despondent when I hear journalists being spoken about so negatively.

I was scared to death for sure. But I never wanted to look back and say, “I wish I had tried this.” So, I thought, I'll see if I can make a living at it. If it doesn't work out in a year, then I'll reassess. But I was fortunate. The fact that I was a journalist helped me in my comedy career. It helped me cultivate sources and work the phones, go out and get work, and be proactive. Many comedians don't do that. As a result, they had to leave the business because they didn't understand how the industry works. They think it's all going to come to them, but if they had just a little bit of drive and business sense, who knows where they could have gone.

Well, the first thing you need is a little time. I started thinking about becoming a comedian, probably nine months before I did it. You also need to think with your brain as opposed to your heart. Have a plan for how you're going to make money. Do you have a backup plan for when money is not coming in right away? You have to pay your bills and survive. You have to make money. How are you going to do that?

That didn't happen right away. I was a club comedian when I started. I was the guy who thought that's how you did it because that's what I saw everybody else doing. You went from club to club. I was spending much time on the road driving. I was usually the opener or the middle act on a three-person show.

The first thing I did was move back to my hometown of Chicago. After a year, I started to realize that I could do this for the rest of my life and not get anywhere.

While attending a trade show one day, I connected with a company that hired me as a writer and as a performer. They wanted me to write entertaining presentations — for products, high-tech events, even medical shows or manufacturing. Then they hired me to be the spokesperson for a lot of those things. I was learning how to make people laugh about very technical subjects in a short amount of time.

People came to me after shows and said, “You just described what's going on in our office. Would you like to do that for our company retreat, our office, our Christmas party?” I started to get hired by companies to do just that. That involved a lot of customized writing. I was good at it, and very few people were doing comedy or humor in the business environment.

It came with better hours, better accommodations, better money. Then, before I knew it, I stopped doing clubs — and that was 20-some years ago.

I think just being able to laugh improves productivity. My goal is to have people leave the event feeling better than when they walked in. I want them thinking this is a pretty cool place to work because they hired that guy. They hired that guy to make us laugh about what we do.

Everybody needs to laugh at some point during the day, even in times when things are not going so well. If you can leave work after eight hours and go home and somebody asks how your day was, included in that response can be, “Oh, the funniest thing happened at work today” — and that's pretty cool.

First, I've never had somebody say we can't hire you because you're too clean. The minute you insert profanity into your act, you have just eliminated a segment of places where you can work.

Second, I think there's a lot of subject matter available that you can mine without having to resort to swearing. You start by working clean, and you just say, “I'm not going to do it,” and then you don't have that to fall back on.

I'm always trying to write, and I'm always listening and reading. I've added visual humor into my shows, including funny photos. We've become a very visually-based audience these days. It's harder for people just to sit and listen now because we need to be stimulated all the time because we're on our phones all the time.

I enjoy going to work. I have never said, “I don't want to do this,” or, “I don't want to be here,” and that's very rare. I think most people get up in the morning, and they go to work, not wanting to be there, and they don't love their job. I have always had a job that I love.

I think you have to have some sort of talent to even go on stage the first time. I would say, after that, it becomes a learning process. I would say it's probably 40% talent and 60% learning.

I would say, watch as many different types of comedians as you can because you can learn from all of them. There's enough of them out there now where you can do that.

Then try to figure out who you are, and figure out your voice. Don't try to imitate somebody else because everybody's different. Everybody has a unique personality. You can learn from everyone, but don't try to mimic what comedians do.

To create. Always be creating. I think a word like that just encourages everybody to realize that every day is a new day. Every day you can do something that you didn't do yesterday.