 I was told to my mom that I was going to do a Ted Talk and she's like is it going to be weird to stand in front of people and not make them laugh and I said mom you must have forgot about the beginning of my career. There was a lot of Ted Talks going on then. How I use stand up as a keynote speaker. I fell in love with stand up comedy in the mid 80s and I'm still a devout fan four decades later. As a teenager I was drawn to the storytelling, imagery and rhythm. It was clever. It was controversial. It was honest. It made me laugh. It made me think. It made me question. Stand up comedians were oratory savants. I would never have guessed that 35 years later I would find inspiration from George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Steve Martin and use their unique comedic genius to help me level up as a corporate keynote speaker. Fast forward to Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Louis CK and Brian Regan and I continue to consistently study stand up comedy to this day to help me improve my storytelling, my improvisation, my timing, my tone and my physicality when I'm on stage. Stand up comedy has made me a better professional speaker. I would say rehearse the out of it because you're going to get frazzled up there. Everybody thinks oh this is good material but you also forget about the other part of delivering it. Having confidence, being likeable, having timing, having a cadence, figure out who you are, figure out what the audience thinks you are or how they perceive you. Bombing is not failure. It's just data. It's going oh okay I gotta retool that. That didn't work. Something wrong there. I missed the word there. So you gotta treat the act almost like ingredients in a cooking, in a dish, you know like oh that I put too many eggs in. Take an egg out. You gotta treat it like that and just almost be a robot and just keep going. I like to explain to you how life works at least from a comedian's perspective. First there's a setup and then there's a punch line. Your setup is your talents, your resources, and your opportunities and most of the time we use our setup to ensure that the people around us are moving in a direction that serves us which means the punch line occurs when you change that direction in a way they're not expecting. How many people here know what your setup is? Every one of you would be able to tell me because your setup is the fact that you have a house, a car, you've been married, you went to school. Your setup is about what you've received but what if I ask the question what is your punch line? Because your punch line is about what you're called to deliver and if you only know your setup and not your punch line you'll make the mistake of trying to add more setup. If I could just get another degree, if I could just get married, if I could just lose weight but what you really need is to know your punch line. Again because to know your setup and not your punch line is an uncomfortable place to live. Your setbacks are part of your setup so you can deliver the punch line you're called to deliver. Much like a slingshot the further you've been set back the further you're going to reach but what are you gonna aim for? Everyone has a setup and everyone has a punch line. You need to find your punch line and deliver it.