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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Bill, Hi there. Welcome to the biz communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the biz communication guy, bringing you tips and strategies on communication that will boost your business. And I do that through a conversation with a highly qualified communication expert. Today, it’s a special privilege to welcome a long time friend professional associate, Jeff justice from the Atlanta area. Jeff and I became acquainted through the Georgia chapter of the National Speakers Association, and he’s had a stellar career, which I’m happy to describe. He spent 14 years headlining the top comedy clubs across the US. For the first past 34 years, his focus has been on empowering corporate Americans to reduce stress in both business and personal life. Hey, we’re all for that by using the safety valve we were born with our sense of humor. Jeff is also the founder and head laugh master at Jeff Justice’s comedy workshop, which, over the past 34 years, has taught over 3000 students the art of stand up comedy. Jeff’s true gift is helping helping people laugh at their mistakes. I’ve needed him many times for that laugh at their mistakes so they can take themselves lightly and their work seriously. Jeff Justice’s innovative ideas have been featured many times on CNN and CNBC. Juan has expertise in humor. Has also been recognized in numerous magazine and newspaper articles plus radio shows across the country.
His prestigious client list includes IBM, Coca Cola, Southern Company, Kroger, Food Marketing Institute, National Association of Realtors, James Madison University, and the list goes on. His latest book is laugh more, stress less, and avoid getting burned out. A great formula. There join me in welcoming Jeff justice to the biz communication show. Hello, Jeff bill.
Jeff Justice
How you doing?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I’m doing better now that the humor guy is with me, because I need a lot of humor, as so many people do, and you have provided that for such a long time, question that I’m sure our viewers and listeners would have in mind would be what prompts a guy to get into comedy, I think, for example, as everyone would think right now, what a competitive field that is. There so many people who want to be professional comedians, are singers, are actors, are performers of some other sort, and yet you chose this, and for 34 years, you’ve been extremely successful with it. What prompted you initially?
Jeff Justice
Well, Bill, I always like to say it chose me, because I wound up I was doing magic here in Atlanta. We had a magic shop, and I was performing for people at the Omni. There was a an open mic night, as they called it in the comedy world here in Atlanta, and make a long story short, I went there and performed and got these great laughs, and was hooked. It was like, once I got that laughed, I wanted to hear it again. And about two months later, I was on a stage in front of about 900 people, and they laughed, and that was just addicting. So once that happened, my whole goal in life was to do comedy, whether I made money at it or not. I just loved being up there and and getting people to
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
laugh. That sounds like a guy who found his niche instantly. And if you were, if you were performing before 900 people in a couple of months, and getting the last oh my gosh, Destiny was was in play. There, in my judgment, you work with executives. You’ve done that for a long time to you. Help them use humor effectively in the workplace. Tell us if I were, for example, an executive, which I was for a couple of decades, what would you do if I hired you as as my comedy humor Coach, what would you lead me through? And what would you help me accomplish?
Jeff Justice
Well, the first thing I would tell you is to never use humor except to make a point. And I think that’s a mistake that a lot of people do. They’ve always heard, well, you should start off with a joke. Lighten up the crowd getting to like you. No, not, not if it’s not making a point. And the great thing about using humor to make a point is that if it’s funny, great, it drives your point home. And if it’s not funny, sometimes it even drives it home better. So you want them to remember what you have to say. So one of the things that I start with people is is I tell them to put this speech together and do it in a serious way and add to it all the stories that they want to put in there. And then what I do is I go through their presentation with them and find humor that helps drive their point home for their stories. And of course, I have to teach them a lot of the basics about how to do humor. You want to hear some of those?
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, yes.
Jeff Justice
I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, I never announced that you’re going to do a joke. You know, so many times hear people say, Well, you know, I I heard a great joke, so I wanted to start out with it today. Well, a lot of humor depends on surprise. And as soon as you announce that you’re going to use humor, well, kind of killed the surprise right there, didn’t it? You’ve
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
set yourself up for potential flop, haven’t you? Yeah.
Jeff Justice
And also you raised the bar very high on it. Because, you know, there’s a lot of people there when you say, Well, I heard a very funny story. They’re going well, I know some pretty funny stories. I can’t wait to see how funny this one is. So I always just say, if you’re going to use humor, especially at the beginning, using story, just go into it. Don’t apologize for using humor. Don’t ask permission to use it. Just go ahead and do it. I use humor that pokes a little fun it yourself. Okay, that’s always the best shows you can take yourself lightly, yet stole take your job seriously, as I say,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
excuse me. I am a huge run in Dangerfield fan. Run in Dangerfield perfected that. I’m not sure if many people know that Ryan Dangerfield started in show business as a comedian. He didn’t make it at first, and then he had his his meteoric rise was not like yours. He sold aluminum siding for Yes, before he got back into the business. So there’s an illustration of some people make it right away. Some people never make it and see, some people make it eventually,
Jeff Justice
right? And that’s the story goes with Rodney. Is because I was a big Rodney fan too. Is he was selling aluminum siding, but he was still doing open mic nights around New York, and there was a club in Queens, I believe, was called pips. And he went on, did a set there, and did his usual kind of, you know, not going to say laying, but didn’t get much laughs. And the famous connection was the owner or the manager the club said to him, hey, Rodney, you know what your problem is. You don’t get no respect. That was it. That was that one sentence kicked off the rest of his career.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Oh yes, oh yes. Well, I broke your train of telling us about working with executives. So get back to that, please.
Jeff Justice
Okay, great. So this is the hardest thing for people, is one, don’t drop your voice when you get to the punchline. So many people, they get to the funny part of what they’re saying, and then they drop their voice like this. Well, it’s called the punchline for a reason. Gotta have a little punch to it, okay? The punch word is, there’s usually a word or two words in a story or joke that the joke depends on, and those we call the punch words, those need to be the last words you say of that joke or that story. Don’t say anything else after it. You know, like an example would be the old head of Youngman Lanier. Take my wife, please. You know, he wouldn’t say, take my wife please. Would you do me a favor? Because that would really help me out, and I would appreciate it. You know, it just it kills the joke if you continue to talk after the punch word, so once you say the punch word, stop talking. Give them the opportunity to laugh. I
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
have to tell you the. But years ago, when I lived in Kentucky, I was fortunate to go to a Henny young Henny Youngman show. Oh, great. And afterwards, his show, of course, was, was great. And afterwards, Henny was dining in that same area, and I felt, well, I won’t get this chance again, so I’ll go over and introduce myself. And my wife went with me, and he was very cordial to him. He named my my daughter and her boyfriend are here. They’d like to meet you. Can I bring them over? And he said, Sure. So they came over. And I said, Here’s Shelly and Jeff Henny. And he said, which one’s which?
Jeff Justice
Always the comedian. Huh? Always
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
a comedian. And my favorite of his, and I would imagine, you know, this is where he when he was in, when was not on the road, he dined in the same restaurant practically all the time in New York City. And every time he would go in, and he would say the same thing, and if any other customer tried to do it, it would be corny after a while. But not Henny. He walked in and he said, get me a table near a waiter. And and only Henny could get away with that, Rodney, when you, when you establish, I’m just, you’re the expert on this, but when you establish your style, you stick with it. But because that, that’s, that’s your stick right,
Jeff Justice
right? That’s your persona. Yes, that’s, it’s, and that’s, that’s that’s the one thing that people can’t steal, which is great. As a comedian, a lot of times I can hear a joke and I said, Oh, that’s got to be such and such a joke, because it fits right in with his type of delivery and the type of jokes that he or she would do.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, and I’ve noticed on the the internet that there are people who don’t always give credit.
Jeff Justice
Yes, what a shock, huh? Yeah,
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
what a shock. If they write a joke or tell a joke, they act as though they just thought about it, and that makes me ask a question I didn’t have intended, but is there such a thing as copywriting jokes? There
Jeff Justice
is not. But, I mean, you might remember an old saying with professional speakers, is the first time somebody uses somebody’s material, they’ll say, well, and as Bill Lampton once said, and they’ll quote you, and then the next time they used to go, as somebody once said, and then the next time says, As I always say, yes, yes, you can’t copyright it because of like thinking, you know, something happens in the news, you and I might have the same exact take on but you know, we’ve never talked to each other about it, and that’s happened to me in a club where I where I did a joke on a topic, and the person that came after me didn’t watch my set, and they came out there, and I got great laughs on it. They came out and did almost the same exact joke and got nothing, because to the audience, it looked like they took it from me.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
You and I remember the the National Speakers Association meetings. And I remember where, one time someone on there was telling about setting a speaker up, and they told him, tell the group the starfish story. And the this is a great story, you’ll get wonderful response. And the guy who told that story said, and, gosh, I don’t understand. Everybody told me this one would work well, Jeff, any other comments about how you train executives?
Jeff Justice
You know, I try to get them to understand that it’s their voice and not their words that makes that shows the audience what’s important. You know, how you emphasize things? And a lot of executives that aren’t experienced speakers wind up kind of flat lining. There’s no delineation. Like one time I was working with a senior vice president with Georgia Power, and she had me watching one of her videos that she did in big presentation, and she’s talking about all the different awards that they won, like the JD Power award and this and that. And I stopped the video. She said, What’s the problem? I said, are these important awards? She goes, Oh, yeah, they’re like, the, you know, the top ones in industry. I said, you sound like you’re reading your grocery list. I said, Your voice has to tell the audience that you know. And we won the JD Power award, you know. And in 1999 once again, you know, you’re emphasizing the points that you want to get across to your to your listening audience.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, it reminds me of what I tell my speech coaching clients. I say I had much rather have to tame a wild stallion than wake up a sleeping mule.
Jeff Justice
I’m going to steal that from you, because that’s the same thing I try to get across my comedy students. I said, I’d rather pull you back than try to push you forward.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, yes, and that’s one of the great things that we didn’t have so many years ago, we didn’t have it at reasonable cost, and that’s video. When we started training people, 25 years ago to have video was just cost prohibitive, and also technology prohibitive because nobody could. And so to produce a, what, a five minute video, you hired somebody, and you got, they brought a crew, and you probably paid $5,000 for that. So been there, yeah, and training people. Now coaching people, you can make a point. But as I tell my clients, the camera doesn’t lie, right exactly. It’s one of the great tools that we have and coaching and training. Jeff, in just a couple of minutes, I want to come back, and I want to talk with you about the comedy workshops that you’ve held for years and years with 3000 graduates, so we’ll be right back. Okay, do you
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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
we’re here with Jeff justice, one of the finest comedians I have the opportunity to know personally, and also one who has trained many other comedians in your workshops. Tell us, Jeff, how that works. What’s the format, the length, what’s the activity we’d like to know about that, how
Jeff Justice
it works. Send me money. I’ll make you funny.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, then I won’t, I won’t get
Jeff Justice
Yeah, it’s a six week course here in Atlanta, and we meet one night a week from about seven to 1030 and you learn all the basics of stand up comedy, how to write jokes, tell jokes, how to take things that you feel are funny and in life and make them funny on stage. Because there is a difference between being funny with your friends and being funny on stage. So over the first four weeks of classes, they basically develop their routine. We work with them joke by joke. I have two other writers that work with me, and we help them rewrite their jokes to make sure they’re funny. Show them how to order them into an order that works the best. We always say, start big, finish bigger. And then the most important thing is we spend the last two sessions working on delivery, because it’s just about everything. I would say about 90 95% of comedy is delivered because otherwise it’s just words, and words just spoken without any intonation and delivery. They aren’t that funny, unless you’re like a Stephen Wright so and then they get to graduate on stage, the punchline. And you’d be surprised, maybe you wouldn’t be how many business people I have taken the class, because they know that if they can add humor to their presentations, much better chance of people paying attention to them. And I’ve probably had at least half the speakers at the National Speakers Association Georgia chapter, take the course over the years, and I’ve always been surprised at people at very high levels, still took the class and they’re going, well, you know, I’m a lifetime learner. So and I always encourage my students, instead of going into stand up comedy that to go back to their profession, which probably always has meetings, and put together a program using the inside information they know about their profession, whether it’s real estate, being a lawyer, doctor and particularly funny presentation for them, and make the big bucks instead of going all over the country for a few bucks as a stand up comedian.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
So. Most interesting and and I know that many of your graduates have spent wonderful hours on the stage, entertaining people and fulfilling something that they had always wanted to do. You mentioned delivery couple points I’d like to make on that certainly the facial expressions you mentioned the voice, but my gosh, the facial expressions mean so much. And I would go all the way back to somebody that might not be familiar now, but Jack Benny was one who made the most of that he could. He could milk a joke or align with his facial expressions. And the other point I’d like to make is, and I I know you make this with your students, is that there’s a vast difference between spoken humor and written humor. I’ll give a quick illustration. I had a boss one time who was a very demanding guy and and he had practically no sense of humor. Well, one day, we talked about a program that he wanted me to initiate, and I didn’t think the program was going to work, so I expressed that thinking was okay to give my opinion. He got back to his office, and he wrote me a rather factual email, and at the end of the email, he said, do it my way. And you know, if somebody says to you and they’re they’re with you and they’re smiling, hey, do it my way and the tone of voice, but print, I would imagine you you coach your clients that humor in print has far more interpretations or misinterpretation as possible. Yes,
Jeff Justice
I had that conversation with my wife quite often, especially with text between our kids and stuff. I said, this is why I don’t like the text, because you read the intonation that you want to read into it, and you can take something that’s like that, something might be very positive, and the term also because of your feelings about the person or your feelings about the situation, you take it as a negative.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I’ll tell you. Also, in text, you can, if you’re not a 100% proofreader, you can make some mistakes. Can be quite offensive. I was for quite a few years. I was commuting from Gainesville, Georgia, my base, to meetings in Gwinnett. I was an active member of the Gwinnett chamber, and my wife was I appreciated it. Very concerned about my going through Atlanta traffic all those times. So she said, text me when you get there. So I always did. And one night, I wrote the text, and luckily Jeff I read it before I sent it, because I had intended to say, got here just fine, having a great time. And I wrote, got her just just one letter. So fortunately, I corrected that before I sent it, and when I got home, I told her about that, and we had a we had a good chuckle about it. Jeff, one more question we have time for, and that is you, as you say, have coached professional speakers as well as business executives in the corporate world. And of course, you coach business executives who are giving speeches. Now, what would you tell a speaker? We we were talking about comics for a while. But what would you what one or two points would you tell a speaker about using humor effectively?
Jeff Justice
Well, you’d also ask me one time about any books I would recommend? Yeah, I would recommend a book called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the boardroom. Okay, the second edition of that. That’s a book that I used to craft a lot of the presentations I did for business leaders, and it’s just for business Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the boardroom. And I don’t make anything off that. I just think it’s a great book. Again, tell people to be prepared, not to embellish the humor like we do. If I’m telling you a joke, I may go on and on and on, because I got a private audience, but on a stage, shorter is better. Always. Whenever I have some somebody write a joke in the class, I always tell them to go back and after they finish joke, look at and go. What am I trying to say? And then go back and say that in as few words as possible. So use personal stories. Poke some fun at yourself if you’re in another location, don’t poke fun at that location that you’re at. Poke fun at maybe where you came from. Don’t poke fun of the group that you’re talking to, unless you’re part of that group, like, I’ll do programs for lawyers. And somebody always say, hey, you know what? They love lawyer jokes. And I go, good, why don’t you tell us some, but you’re the comedian. I said, Yeah, but you’re the lawyer. I said, if you do it, you’re poking fun at yourself. If I do it, I’m making fun of you. So, common sense, yeah, very
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
good words of caution there. Jeff, so many people have had the privilege of hearing you perform, and so many people have had the privilege of building careers because of what you taught them. It is, it is a an extreme privilege and pleasure to host you on the biz communication show, and I know that our viewers and listeners will benefit tremendously from the ideas, the strategies and the tips that you’ve shared today. Also, I know that our audience would like to have your contact information, so give that to us please. It’s
Jeff Justice
Jeff at Jeff justice.com and the website is comedy workshop.com and workshop is spelled with 2p and an E, like workshop a and I got to say, Bill, it’s been an honor being on your program. I’ve known you through so many years, and know all the wonderful things that you’ve done, and I’ve always been impressed by your work. And when you asked me to be on the podcast, I was like, Yeah, okay, what a great way to spend a half hour talking to Dr bill.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
I appreciate that, and I’ve valued our professional association, and continue to value that and our friendship. Thank you for that, Jeff. Now that you’ve given your contact information, I’m happy to give mine. You mentioned YouTube, and my YouTube channel is the Lampton PhD. I started posting videos there in 2007 Wow, quite a long time ago. I don’t want to look at those, but in recent years, I and total, I’ve posted more than 500 videos. And in recent years, much of my work has and my pleasure has been hosting the biz communication show and talking with and listening to advice from great guests like Jeff justice. So invite you to go to my YouTube channel and subscribe when you’re there my website. Since I’m the biz communication guy, my website is quite logically, biz B, I Z, biz communication guide.com, and then after you’ve seen the services that I provide, I certainly encourage you to give me a phone call so we can talk about your communication challenges and problems and how I can assist you with them. Jeff, again, this has been phenomenal, as I knew it would be. So please, in about 30 seconds or so, how would you pull together some of the main points that we’ve made do that for our listeners and viewers.
Jeff Justice
Well, to me, humor is essential in the workplace, if not for just relieving stress and bringing people together, for bonding people. If you’re going to do presentations and put humor in it, people are going to listen to you more and just again follow the simple things that we set out during this 30 minutes about making what you say shorter, making to the point knowing your audience, and, of course, always, always use clean humor. My, my key for that is when in doubt, leave it out. Yes. So if you have to ask somebody if that’s appropriate, you’re already telling them, I don’t think this is appropriate. What about you? Nobody’s ever been chastised for being too clean in the business presentation.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
All of that so well said, as was the entire conversation. I don’t call it an interview, as I say, this was planned, not canned. Jeff justice, thank you so much for being our highly informative and entertaining guest today. Thanks to those of you who joined us on video and on the podcast, we are glad you’re with us, and we invite you. To be with us for the next edition of the biz communication show. I’m Bill Lampton, your host. You
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
